The Children At The Funeral

Children
feel ashamed when laughing at death,
And try
to hide giggles from grown up ears,
Confusion
and guilt grow deeper when caught,
Adult
admonishment demanding tears.
What is
lost comes in memories and dreams,
What is
suppressed in wild anger and fear.

But love
cracks its whip against adult grief,
Uses
phrases like Chin up and Be brave,
Has it
smile at clichéd consolation,
Shoving
it down the long path to the grave.
One more
freshly dug hole of remembrance,
For
broken lives that kind words cannot save.

Forced
solemnity and awkward shuffling,
A child
watches a worm that will fall,
She
moves forward and carefully lifts it,
To spare
a loved one from something that crawls.
Some
adults look abashed, some start coughing,
She studies
it and shows nothing at all.

Pat Brien is British and has been published in various independent national magazines in England,as well as having several literary short-stories and a dramatic monologue broadcast on BBC radio.

A literary story One Of The Boys appears in edition #22 of R.P. Burnham’s annual US literary journal The Long Story; one of his screenplays landed a semi-finalist position in Francis Ford Coppola’s first Annual Zoetrope SP Contest.

A poem Genetically Modified Food For Thought was published in the fourth edition of Van Gogh’s Ear and he was Senior Correspondent for Francophile Internet magazine Bonjour Paris for one year, writing two full-length Paris based articles each month.

A credited Bonjour Paris guest article written with Karen Fawcett (President) and Sarah Gilbert Fox (Directeur Général) was published in the 3rd edition of the popular guide-book Paris For Dummies.

His BBC monologue was translated into Serbian by translator Djordje Krivokapic and received a radio broadcast in Belgrade. He was elected to full membership with the Society of Authors in 2010. In late 2010 he published a fantasy/horror novel called Denied. He works professionally as a copywriter and currently lives in Dorset in the UK.

The Christmas Tempest, 1999

Something’s wrong.

No sound or wrench of air,

but sleep’s been flushed from my veins

and I pace the study wondering why.

Moon so bright the sky looks placid,

except that it flicks like a kid’s homemade cartoon:

clouds faster than jet trails strobe the light.

The trees are thrashing – poplars in whiplash,

pines writhing and resisting,

only the oaks too heavy to react.

Across the fields,

beyond the dark chateau,

an eighty-five-foot fir snaps halfway down,

its top blown away before I can watch it go,

the wounded trunk still forced to bow and jig.

Picturesque, from my safe window –

pale clouds whirling past a full moon,

trees dancing.

Beyond this sheltered home a continent of forests

shatters and falls, littering the world.

(This poem appears in Susan’s most recent book, Border House.)

Susan Fox’s poems have appeared in dozens of literary and popular journals, from Poetry and The Paris Review and Chelsea to The New York Times. She was born in Ohio and has lived in New York, Rome, and Paris. Joel Mandelbaum’s opera to her original libretto on a hidden child in World War II premiered semi-professionally in New York, and she has also collaborated on several projects with painter Richard Ryan. Fox lives in a village in Normandy called Secret Source.

Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett’s Flowered Garden

Not ageing, not going bald
or cultivating fat, eating too many pork chops,
wearing hand-me-down cardigans
in faded out pinks and browns,
not forgetting
the dusty stringless guitars in the basement…

Syd Barrett’s spirit roams bird-free
scattering a spiral of psychedelic bats
from the cob-webbed belfry
of his scintillating mind…amazing us with his words,
his fragile breaking voice, a zen koan
echoing on and on
forever

We were scraping the surface of the moon,
exposing our dog-bellies to the Goddess,
lost to the sound, in effervescing light.

It was the pursuit of the miraculous, really.

I was sleeping in the woods one night
and I saw a woman appear from nowhere:
it was her, it was Emily…

Diamond-eyed, he trip hops
through tantalising tulips:
this shaman, this seer,
this poet, this voyant…

this ultracoloured madcap, his laughter coming
from deep within the heart of nowhere.

So tell me Syd, what exactly is a dream?

It was playing Interstellar Overdrive
over and over for hours and hours.

It was too many trips.

It was the mad bastards I lived with.

It was leggy, open-mouthed groupies.

It was always wanting to paint.

It was smashing a twelve-string guitar
to matchwood splinters.

It was brylcream and mandrax
melting to mush in the limelight.

It was playing
only one chord
forever and ever.

It was being called Roger
and living in a suburban semi
with mother.

It was being hospitalised
for having too many dreams.

In my dreams Syd
your spirit rises above the penumbra
of burnt-out acid madness.

You are dancing and singing,
all movement accomplished in six stages,
your voice lilting,
echoing across time, across space,
painting pictures in the sunset
where seven is the number of the young light.

You are the quintessence of spirit, of laughter,
of second sight

reverberating in the raw bone,
in the naked soul of every drifting dreamer.

You once said
change returns success, action brings good fortune.

So here, cast your brass coins
in the Sybil’s cleansing fire,
be hypnotised by the shadow of this rainbow.

Throw away the sedatives,
turn back the clock and rewind the years.

Run naked
through the mystery
of this forever-flowered garden.

Be mythological.

Sing your tripped out poetry
deep into the heart of everyone.

“Syd Barrett’s Flowered Garden” in audio

Dee Sunshine is an artist, writer, musician, yoga teacher, tantric massage therapist and new age hobo. He gave up the life of the homesteader in August 2006 and has since then spent most of his time in Spain, India, Thailand and Indonesia. He is the author of three poetry collections The Bad Seed (Stride, 1998) and Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels (Bluechrome, 2004) & Visions Of The Drowning Man (Skylight, 2012). He has also published a novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God (Bluechrome, 2004).

Dee has put blood, sweat and tears into being of service to other writers and artists, most notably in the time-consuming production of the free resources on his website, especially The AA Independent Press Guide, which he edited, in one form or another, from 1998 until 2011. He edited two print magazines, Dada Dance (1984-1990) and the short-lived, but sweet, Acid Angel (1998-2000). He also edited the charity poetry anthology, The Book Of Hopes And Dreams (Bluechrome, 2006).

Dee’s art is frequently used in print and internet magazines and has graced the book jackets of collections by Janet Buck, Clarinda Harriss, Rupert Loydell, Norman Jope and many others. Dee’s art is now available in high quality, inexpensive reproduction prints, posters and cards from Red Bubble and on various gift items like t-shirts, mouse mats, mugs and fridge magnets from CafePress.

“Gormenghast.” Novel by Mervin Peake. Published by Easton Press “Masters of Fantasy”

The Empty House

When entering the empty house of silent noises,
Creaking floorboards set your nerves on edge.
Chilled breezes brush through darkened windows
Squinted eyes peer in from an outside ledge.

Footsteps plod across the sloping rooftop,
Shuffling slowly as if dragging weight,
Cicadas shrill their endless chatter,
Telling everyone that it’s much too late.

Blackened vapors swarm and engulf the dwelling.
In the basement cobwebbed fingers
Hug the corners with their twisted touch,
As puffs of ghostly chalk dust lingers.

Shadows crawl across the planks and doors
Whispers fall from hidden places,
Scampering icy nails rip from above.
Groans, then moans drip from cracks and spaces.

Long extinguished lights sit waiting patiently,
A candle ignites, then expires.
Petrified drips suspended in space
Remains of the once flickering fires.

Spirits of those who lived here once.
Sweep though each lonely hall and room,
Seeking what was so alive to them
Before they met their doom.

The empty house will ever stand as it was found,
Memories trapped by doors long sealed.
Unknown souls here wander undisturbed,
From our world they are concealed.

(The Empty House was originally published in The Horror Express magazine/Issue #3 Winter 2004)

“Tales by Moonlight II.” Edited by Jessica Salmonson. Published by Tor Books

“The Deathbird.”Collection by Harlan Ellison, “Deathbird Stories.” Published by Easton Press.

Sphinx

“Haeckler’s Tale” by Clive Barker from Dark Delicacies ed. by Del Howison and Jeff Gleb

Big Driver by Stephen King from Full Dark, No Stars. Published by
Cemetery Dance Publications. 2010

“This is Our Last Chance.” Illustration from the story “On the Downhill Side.” Collection by Harlan Ellison, “Deathbird Stories.” Published by Easton Press.

For over 32 years Jill Bauman has produced hundreds of book covers, many more hundreds of interior illustrations and has worked for most of the major publishers. Her work covered many genres including, horror, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, children’s books and mass media. She has received five World Fantasy Award nominations, Chesley Award nominations and many best in show ribbons. There have been shows at the Delaware Art Museum, the Moore Gallery of Art in Philadelphia, Lever House Show in New York several pieces exhibited at New York’s Illustrator’s Society and the Seattle Museum of Science Fiction.

Some of her clients include: Berkley Publishing Group, Ace Books, Viking/Penguin, Putnam/Jove, DAW Books, Doubleday Direct, Easton Press, St. Martin’s Press, Bluejay Books, Leisure books, White Wolf Publishing, Warner Books, Fedogan and Bremer, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance Publications, Reader’s Digest and many more. Her works have appeared on covers and interiors of many magazines such as Weird Tales magazine, Fantasy Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fangoria Magazine, Amazing Stories magazine and others.

Jill has illustrated the written works of authors of horror, mystery, and imaginative fiction such as Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Fritz Leiber, Richard Laymon, Jack Dann, H.P. Lovecraft, Jonathan Gash, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Robert R. McCammon, Peter Straub and Lilian Jackson Braun to name a few.

There were the stories of fantasy and science fiction she illustrated by authors such a Mervin Peake, Orson Scott Card, Nancy Kress, Ann McCaffrey, John Crowley, Katherine Kurtz, Michael Swanwick, Gene Wolfe, Gregory Benford, Paul Di Filippo, Pamela Sargent, Jack Williamson, David Brin, Mike Resnick and J.G. Ballard. She lives in Queens, NY.

http://jillbauman.com/

IN THE OLD DAYS

the executioners wore hoods
in the days of hangings when
the public was invited to watch
the spectacle

the man who drops the pellet
is faceless, as is the executioner
who pulls the lever

desserters are blindfolded
when facing the firing squad
and in Utah its optional

they offered Lorca
a blindfold too
but he chose to look them
in the eye
as the bullets tore into
his chest
the day the dirt turned red
in Spain.

A. D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer. He is the author of over fifty books, including North Beach Poems, North Beach Revisited, and This Land Is Not My Land, which won a 2006 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature. Drowning Like Li Po in a River of Red Wine: Selected Poems 1970-2010, and the just released San Francisco Poems.

He worked as an editor and writer for the San Francisco Art Commission from 1975 to 1980, during which time he produced the Second Coming 1980 Poets and Music Festival, honoring the late Josephine Miles and The Blues legend John Lee Hooker.

His work has appeared internationally in over 2000 literary magazines and anthologies. Winans is a member of PEN, and has served on the Board of Directors of various art organizations, including the now defunct Committee of Small Magazine Editors and Publishers (COSMEP), The South of Market Cultural Center, and Friends of Services For the Arts.  He is currently serving on the advisory board of the San Francisco International Poetry Library. His archives are housed at Brown University.

(PURITY

feeling a deer
quicken its leaps—

the artist avoided
aftermaths of wounds

How might a grid eliminate
gesture from paint

viscous as it flows
like a menstruation—

a loss that teaches
intensity

and failed mitigation
through geometry

Encaustic will fail:

did the Greeks attain
Purity?

Did I earn the moments
I made my mother cry

Eileen R. Tabios has released 20 print, 4 electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art-essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, a short story book and a collection of novels. Recent books include 5 Shades of Gray (i.e. press) and the relational elations of ORPHANED ALGEBRA with j/j hastain (Marsh Hawk Press).  Recipient of the Philippines’ National Book Award for Poetry, she has exhibited visual poetry and visual art throughout the United States and Asia. She has also edited, co-edited and/or conceptualized nine anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays.

Ms. Tabios has crafted a body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, computer-generated hybrid languages, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Music, Modern Dance and Sculpture. As part of her poetry-as-performance approach, she blogs as the “Chatelaine” at http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com; edits a popular poetry review journal, Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) at http://galatearesurrects.blogspot.com; and founded Meritage Press (www.meritagepress.com), a multi-disciplinary literary and arts press based in San Francisco & St. Helena.

Carried at libraries and other fine establishments worldwide, the Van Gogh’s Ear anthology series offers works from some of the most innovative minds on the planet and imaginative freedom for creative people of all walks of life. As a thank you to those who offer “the complete Van Gogh’s Ear experience” we will be listing your locations. If you are not yet listed and carry the series, please do send us an email so we can include you as well? Our deepest gratitude to our readers and all of you who do carry the series, helping to encourage a greater appreciation for the arts in every form.

(Please do bear with us as we are working to update the list to include all of you. Thank you for the continued support of Van Gogh’s Ear. Sincerely, Tina Hall at thall2@highland.net)

Canada

WAC Bennett Library
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Barnaby, BC V5A1S6
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/

University of Northern British Columbia Library
3333 University Way,
Prince George, BC, Canada, V2N 4Z9
http://www.unbc.ca/

University of Calgary Library
University of Calgary
2500 University Dr. NW,
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
T2N 1N4
http://www.ucalgary.ca/

Bibliothèque et Archives Nationale du Québec
475, boul. De Maisonneuve Est,
Montréal (Québec) H2L 5C4
http://www.banq.qc.ca/accueil/index.html

United States

The University of Chicago Library
The University of Chicago,
5801 South Ellis Avenue,
Chicago, IL 60637
Telephone: 773.702.1234
http://www.uchicago.edu/

The Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street
Chicago, IL
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

The University of Iowa Library
Iowa City, IA
Telephone: 319.335.3500
http://www.uiowa.edu/

University of Oregon Library
Eugene, OR 97403
Telephone: 541.346.1000
http://uoregon.edu/

The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
Phone: (510) 642-6481 (Ref.)
Fax: (510) 642-7589
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/

University of Arizona Poetry Center
1600 East First Street
Tucson, AZ 85721
http://poetry.arizona.edu/

Woodberry Poetry Room
Lamont Library, Level 5
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 495-2454
Fax: (617) 495-1376
www.hcl.harvard.edu

Mid-Manhattan Library
455 Fifth Avenue (at 40th Street)
New York, NY 10016
www.nypl.org

SUNY Buffalo
7461 Girard Ave.
State University Plaza
Albany NY 12246
http://library.buffalo.edu/

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library
Brown University (Serials Dept.)
10 Prospect Street
Providence, RI 02912-9109
Phone: (401) 863-2167 (Ref.)
(401) 863-2165 (Circ.)
Fax: (401) 863-1272
www.brown.edu

University of Washington Library
http://www.washington.edu/

University of Wisconsin Madison
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
www.library.wisc.edu

United Kingdom

The University of Cambridge Library
The Old Schools
Trinity Lane, Cambridge CB2 1TN, UK
http://www.cam.ac.uk/

The Poetry Library
Level 5
Royal Festival Hall
London SE1 8XX
Phone: +44 (0) 207 921 0943/0664
Fax: + 44 (0) 207 921 0939
http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/

Ireland

Galway Public Library
Cathedral Square – Island House
Galway – Ireland
Telephone: 00 353 + 91 562471
Fax: 00 353 + 91 565039
www.galwaylibrary.ie

Scotland

Scottish Poetry Library
5 Crichton’s Close, Canongate, Edinburgh, EH8 8DT
Telephon: +44 (0)131 557 2876
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/

United Arab Emirates

American University in Dubai Library
P.O. Box 28282
Sheik Zayed Road
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Telephone: + 971 4 3183-183
http://www.aud.edu/Library/Index.asp

A Face in the Crowd
38cm x 28cm, mixed media on paper, 2012

No Face to This
40cm x 40cm (approx), mixed media and collage on paper, 2012

Ian Gamache

Ian Gamache is an artist from Montreal, Canada. His work is rooted in painting and drawing, but he also incorporates photography and collage. For more, please visit: http://iangamache.com/

Photo by Georgia Cruse

IT’S ALL IN THE EYES

it’s all in the eyes you know
that’s where language begins
all language begins there
you speak with your eyes
and then the rest follows
so does everything else
that’s where connection lies
it all begins within the eyes
speaking out with the words

Phillip Ward is a writer, poet, artist and photographer. Ward’s photographs and writings have appeared in an array of journals, magazines, books, and Internet, including The Purple Journal, Van Gogh’s Ear, The Chiron Review, The Onion, HX, Bent Voices, Priapus, and The Sentimentalist, and has participated in exhibits in New York City, London and Japan. Mr. Ward is the archivist and curator of the Crisperanto: The Quentin Crisp Archives (crisperanto.org) and executor of Quentin Crisp’s estate. Phillip Ward lives in Manhattan.

In Praise of Surf

At Point Lookout, Maryland, earth turns into a sharp needle, stitching St. Mary’s County into the Chesapeake Bay, and all along the beach, a snaky filament of white cotton surf tries to thread itself back into the needle’s eye.

These waves. Wind beating ocean’s drum skin thousands of miles away, wind switching on ocean’s lamplight, thousands of miles away, wind gifting itself to ocean’s embrace, thousands of miles away and precisely now, the energy that was wind, precisely and exactly here, the energy gifts itself onto the shore as waves of water, tumbling, surging. As waves of sound, crashing, dashing. As waves of light, throbbing, pulsing.

These waves. Even as they leave the bay for the beach, they depart the beach to return to the bay. The simultaneity of them. Not this coming then that going, but both together, coming and going, arrival and departure, the boundary between this and that, between then and now, blurring, in the swirling surf, blurring, in the watching woman, blurring, the waves and the woman, two tines of a tuning fork, struck, reverberating as one pure note. Call it eternity, or infinity, or forever.
Or call it love. On the way down to the beach, I passed a family out for a stroll. Mother, father, child. I asked the little girl, “Are you having a nice walk?” She replied, “I love my Daddy.” I thought, Out of the mouths of babes! Love is the answer to every question, a perpetuity of give and take, the child offering to me what she received from her father, the tumbling, surging surf offering to earth what it received from air, giving back to water what it’s taking from land. A triune transmutation of energy, endless in its duration, constant in its changeableness.

Yes, call it love, the surf, and hold fast to it through your days and nights. As you wake, with salty dream-fingers still clutching the pristine sand of your barely conscious mind. As you plod to the bathroom to brush your teeth, each footfall a transmutation of energy given to the floor from your body, from yesterday’s meals, last month’s crops and critters, last year’s sunshine, all of that now offered back to earth precisely and exactly here, in each shuffling footstep that echoes – doesn’t it? – the sibilant shuffling of waves on the shore.

In all your hours, hold fast to it. In the crashing, dashing cycles of grievance and forgiveness. In the throbbing, pulsing revolutions of mistake and rectification. In the comings and goings and arrivals and departures that crest, fold in on themselves, wash up onto your experience then wash back down into your memory, the boundary between this and that, blurring in the swirling surf, the boundary between then and now blurring, in the watching soul, the surf and the soul, two tines of a tuning fork, struck, reverberating as one pure note called eternity or infinity or forever or love, until all that surging, snaky filament threads itself back into the needle’s eye.

(Editors note: This poem originally appeared in Invitation To Wonder: A Journey Through The Seasons (2010 Veriditas Books)

Elizabeth Ayres, author of Invitation to Wonder, Know the Way, Writing the Wave and two Sounds True audio albums, is the founder of the Center for Creative Writing, now celebrating its 22nd anniversary.  Her award-winning newspaper column has been delighting Maryland readers for over four years. Elizabeth lives with two cats, and spends long hours pacing shell-strewn Chesapeake Bay beaches, plucking words from the soft salt breeze.  Her spiritual autobiography, Home After Exile, is forthcoming from Veriditas Books in 2013.