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Volume One, Number Four January 2010
Dark Lady Poetry is an online literary
magazine, with a focus on poetry. With an eclectic taste,
anything goes, and we encourage up and coming writers in their
pursuit to be read. Good words are always
appreciated. Dark Lady Poetry welcomes Two-Thousand Ten, and all the possibilities a New Year can bring. Number four has a global vibe, bringing together voluminously talented writers from all over the world. From Lagos, Nigeria, we have an incredibly vivid and beautifully apocalyptic poet, Jekwu Anyaegbuna. Also joining the roster of fourth issue poets are U.K-bred wordsmith, Paul Grimsley, and from Limerick, Ireland, Edward O’Dwyer. But three is never enough, so to add to the array of worldly poets, issue Four is also home to a lyrically handsome poet from Taiwan, Chen Chengli, and Brandon Swarrow, a sharp poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Due to a high volume of submissions and a marvelous amount of readers, issues will appear on a monthly basis, with new issues live on the fifteenth of every month. Thank you again, to our readers and contributors. Be sure to check out the subscription feature and receive notifications about updates, upcoming issues, DLP contests, and future events.
Mindlessness New Factory Mouth Gun
Actor
Empty Phrasing Voices Breaking
Femme Fatale Dark
My Babe Monster Those Were The Days
Hugo's Song Ring on the Second Hand
Jekwu Anyaegbuna
Mindlessness
They discover you’re a thief the day you bury your mother. You steal the coffin from that
carpenter, whose head resembles nothing but a long ridge full of white weeds.
Sympathizers discover and recover their long-forgotten properties you stole earlier: cups, spoons,
kettles, brooms, calabashes, shirts you are ashamed to wear, towels. You steal a bible, and place it inside the stolen coffin for your
mother to read inside the grave. You go to confess to that clergyman who doesn’t believe in God, yet he celebrates Mass,
shouting, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He tells you that Jesus created God, and you believe him, believe his avowed forgiveness.
Now your mother enjoys the grave, but you’re restless over the gold that glitters on her neck, around her fingers. You are night-is-dangerous. Night
protects you as you dig and steal the gold. You think your mother’s embalmed corpse should not be left to rot away; you cut and auction parts of her body.
Your next daughter is your mother come back without limbs; and your mother says she wants to punish you for amputating her corpse: a clear dream last night.
Your next son is a hawk, a fall-and-pick-and-run-and-hide: part of the punishment. Expect more because your mother is a crippled corpse, a great disability in heaven.
New Factory
My new factory manufactures Holy Spirits, so you can buy one and get really possessed, and cast out demons, and make the blind see and immediately recognise that red is red, the colour of fire and blood. You can resell my Holy Spirit to someone else; my products are transferable.
Never doubt how a blind person gets to know the colour of fire is red: Has he ever seen fire before being sighted? Miracle. Has he ever seen blood before? Why does he say the colour he sees is red? The Holy Spirit I produce remains impotent on doubters. Doubters don’t buy my products; only believers do.
My new factory manufactures salvation. This product is free but we distribute it like raffle draws every Sunday. Employees that fail to work on Sundays miss this product, and their bought Holy Spirits, even the most expensive, do not bear enough fire to attack demons. Demons rejoice when such absentees shout, “Holy Ghost fire.”
In my new factory, tithes and offerings are constitutional. The Holy Spirit you purchase does not work for you unless your tithes and offerings are consistent. Several rounds of offering per Sunday ignites the fire in your purchased Holy Spirit. After all, a hungry prophet only sees doom; a well-fed prophet sees progress and prosperity.
My new factory has been ordained by bishops, and soon it will grow into a big church, provided we sell more and more Holy Spirits to believers, gullible enough to resell and convert other believers in another factory to see the power and potency in my products. My new factory will move into a big warehouse soon!
Mouth Gun
You are the cockroach that commits the crime for which rat is blamed. You use your mouth to cut down a tree, to cover your shame with the leaves.
You are an owl that brags, that dirty-mouthed owl that says, “ Whenever my mother is to be buried, I will dig the grave with my mouth and feed all birds to the brims of their stomachs.”
Then your mother dies, suddenly, of hunger, and boils come visiting you; some sit on your cheeks, others inside your mouth. Your cheeks are bulging; your mouth is bulging. The birds are waiting to be fed. And the grave has not been dug. Your mouth is a gun that aims at nothing, but shoots itself.
Paul Grimsley
Actor
i paralysed
myself intentionally
Empty Phrasing
poets and prophets of nothing
Voices Breaking
some
voices are lost in the passage of time
Edward O'Dwyer
Femme Fatale
She came strutting over so boldly, tapped him on his shoulder, said she’d been watching all night and asked if he’d like to dance.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m seeing someone,” but she just said “don’t worry, I can keep a secret,” her face one big seductive smile. “Come on, let’s have a dance.” “You don’t understand,” he resisted – “It’s serious. We’re in love.”
At this she fixed him in such a stare, unblinking mascara eyes. “What’s her name?” she asked. “Life,” he answered. “Ah yes,” said she – “I know of her.
“But still,” she went on, “I should probably warn you, I can be persistent once I know what I want. And I’ll always get it, sooner or later. Just wait and see – I’ll have you.
“I’ll be there some night when you’ve had a big row, and you’ll be alone. You’ll turn around and there I’ll be, and it’ll happen, you’ll see.
“I’ve met many like you. You’re no different, and you wouldn’t admit it, I know, but you don’t need to; I can see it clear as day, what you’re thinking now – that I’m much prettier than she is.”
Dark
Though you may know me as his bitter, resentful brother
yet I only fall and always do so gently, never with force, on all those things and in all those places
he is so suddenly leaving, taking back his gifts of radiance, patina and lustre and heading off beyond horizons to where you cannot follow, and so
though you may know me as his bitter, resentful brother
yet I fall like consolation, so gently and always without force, on all those things and in all those places
he once was but is no more, and here I will stay - with you - being what I am and sorry this is all I know how to be, until his shining face rises apologetically over the hills and it’s time I go, and
though still you may know me as his bitter, resentful brother.
Chen Chengli
My Babe Monster
-To Thesis
I was a child unfamiliar to life, Married to my blind passion. I was pregnant with you, My invisible babe. You had been sleeping all day And growing up silently in my brain.
You were a gluttonous babe, Absorbing my train of thought And my happiness and hopes As your essential nutrition. Hence I got a migraine afterwards, And fell ill with no fixed schedule.
My heart broke each time I thought of you, My dearest babe. When my youth was wandering on the pages, My dream could never escape from the hard covers. In the labyrinth of books, How dazzling I was when I kept vomiting words. You were doomed to be malnourished, A fateful freak.
My babe monster, I gave you birth under my fingertips. You, so unsightly, but do not worry. I would apply cosmetics on you every day and night, Until the venerable professors hold you in their arms.
Yet I had to hold a public hearing for you, And disguised you as a hopeful child in advance. I would shout myself blue in the face, Until the stern judges throw an unwilling smile to you.
Those Were the Days
-To a Knowledgeable Friend
We meet. And climb. 15 floors high.
We chat. We debate. We smile.
We share movies, stories, Theories, melodies, And unforgettable memories.
We msn. We email. We click, type, and type.
Then we pause And listen To a final farewell.
Brandon Swarrow
Hugo's Song
Attention – She craves it Money – She caresses it Love – is non-existent
She has no ears just lips to suck the good out of you She has no tears just hands to take it all from you Daddy is a starving influential maestro Hugo Read This!
Values – They rape them Manipulation – At its peak Scheming – New ways to poison
If you would only just absorb Society desensitized but every bit as lethal Hugo Read This!
Arrogance is tolerance - delusional worship Paparazzi heads hang like tiny pears Hallucinations, infatuations are just two omens Ignorant rivers of our evolution
What’s that dripping from your sixth finger? It is the consequence – the most obsessed of fans
Ring on the Second Hand
Time flies by is cliché you know, Hey, where did that last minute go? Are you better, are you wiser? Make an effort to surprise her?
Twas’ precious then, forgotten now As good a time to make a vow A minute longer waste no more Aging, saying you’re “just plain bored”
“Forever’s” new profound lush tone Marks each moment a new milestone Idleness stops eyes open wide Revealing bright and polished diamonds
It’s beautiful to laugh and smile Take a forbidden chance right now Life ticks and talks and waves goodbye Achieve love most before you die |
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Dark Lady Poetry, 2010. All Rights Reserved. ISSN 2152-8594