• Archive of all Poetry Space showcases
Guest Editor : Michael Kwake Kesse Somuah
Michael Kwaku Kesse Somuah from Ghana, West Africa, is a former student of The University of Cape Coast and an avid poet.
He has kept a diary of word plays because he is so obsessed about them particularly folklore of African literacy with a blend of facts, nature and memories .I asked Michael what inspires him and he said: “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good I can do, or any kindness that I can show, let me do now, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Copyright of all poems remains with the individual poets. Please do not reproduce without permission.
Photographs by Chris Sims (copyright applies)
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Body and Soul – Piotr Balkus
Body likes to travel
discovering new lands
taking photos and touching
unknown stones and trees
the soul is different
soul stays on the spot
not moving from one place
which is like home for her
soul puts roots to the ground
body take them out
soul loves just to exist
body needs to be lived
disobeyed for each other
staring at their own mirrors
like tomorrow missing yesterday
like yesterday saying tomorrow
sometimes they bury the hatchet
sometimes it comes naturally
they meet each other and talk
and pushing some boundaries
but suddenly they begin to argue
about time or death – something stupid
they stay in the distance again
like two poisonous angry stings
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Thoughts About My Mother – Diane Coffey
Your face is
sunken now,
dentures cast aside.
Eyes filled with
questions, fear.
I gently ease
your arms above
your head,
take off your dress,
your slip, your knickers;
reach for your nightdress,
resist my urge
to touch your
still plump breast,
feel primeval love
for what was
mine to suckle,
shake such
thoughts away,
help you into bed,
leave your care to others.
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Leicester Square – Alex Wyatt
She said she loves me,
So I turned away.
Face blurred,
Cavernous silence,
Broken by raindrops.
The question of the rose.
We’re all looking for an invocation,
Pupils open,
Endless.
Clothes on the floor,
I only wanted a false salvation,
A painted image.
Instead I can’t forget your eyes,
Coloured with fear.
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Lincoln’s Inn Fields -Alex Wyatt
Waiting in darkness,
And there are cars,
And lamps,
And people walking in emptiness.
Grey, black,
Brick, steel,
Faces changing,
And long hair,
And short hair,
And sparks in the windows.
The sky oddly lit,
Shadows on trees,
Damp hangs,
Everywhere stone,
Everywhere to run to.
No, it was good once,
A leader in golden clothes,
Now, a doll sits in my place,
Ragged,
People come and go,
Talking,
Watching things they know.
Shocking fate.
But it’s me,
And only me,
No-one else can take this place.
My words are whispers in the winter,
Lost to us all.
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Desideratum – Daniel Robinson
I want the root of you,
your holy heart and matter,
that unobtainable inch
of your static whole,
the very stasis of your soul.
I want your secret shock
and subconscious ether,
your naked nuance
and private bedroom dance.
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Lysergic Wood- Daniel Robinson
The wooded militia teem and swell
their private and corporal root.
Amassed and thickened they unfurl.
The whole pumpkin-jack congregation,
postulate and prising from the world,
bestowing bicep and branch
and clamber of bough,
retching in the sky,
writhing from the sun.
What evil forms they hold;
twisted steeples of lanced oak
mahoganied muscle
skeleton beech, and
waffen-trooper willow
scattered like nerves upon the sky.
Varicose veins on these sad junky trees!
big narcotic knot-eyes
menaced fusty brows
and black apple sockets.
ah, this dental stench
putrefies oxygen
“Conformity! Conformity!”
they howl it in unison;
“we are come” they say “to set you free!”
Goethe like names are carved into these
Eichmann, Göring, Mephistopheles,
maladies of feckless thugs
hear, the bitter cud, the
goose-stepped root, the sallow
foot of wood upon wood
a master race! a mouth!
a Mao! a strand of Stalin!
Herr Fuhrer!
red cedar rulers
risen in ash
with absinthe eye!
and ash! with risen match
I make; Out of flame! Out of fire!
Out of train ride from Munich to Kiss-my-ass!
out of clawed steel, nerve, fibre,
skeleton and smouldered frame,
again, again and again–
O, but you wear your rue with a smile,
I can stomach your stench
but not that stinking rue,
what Nuremberg for you?
what Hague? what semblance
of justice? that we can show you
fear in the neck of a rope!
how else to end it then?
Death is too small
a scope for
this olympic
measure.
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Compliment – Moira Andrew
Met Fred the other day,
one old colleague to another
Art department, remember?
I do, although it’s going on
for thirty years since we worked
together. The poetry plaque
Fred made hangs on the wall
in my hall – a leaving present
from the College.
We talked about the old days,
about you, he goes on. Fred says
you had the best legs in Craigie!
It makes me feel good, lets me
ignore my wonky eyes,
brings back a forgotten flutter.
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White Gold – Neil Leadbeater
On a dirt road in the early sun
you came across this abandonment:
an old mansion in weed-choked fields.
and it made you think of the white gold,
the Belle Epoque Town Hall
and the solid civic buildings – a time
when cocoa was the food of the gods
and chocolate a drink for Kings.
That was before Vassoura de Bruxa –
the devastation in the Year of Our Lord
1989
the year you moved into a new direction
the fulcrum that altered lives.
Now the plants lie idle. The jobless
live in make-shift shacks,
rents are down to an all-time low
and the largest airline has dropped Ilhéus
from its list of passenger stops.
It made you yearn for your uncle’s trees
in the 5-10 acre holding
and how you used to watch
when the pods were split to yield their seed:
thirty or more in a white gel,
spilling their pearls to the world.
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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR POETRY SHOWCASE
A big thanks to everyone who has sent in poems for consideration so far this year. Poetry Showcase is published online four times a year, March, June, September and December and we choose up top ten of our favourites to include here.
Submissions can be sent in by e-mail at any time to be considered for showcases throughout the year. You will be informed if your poem is to be included.
