Joe Lake's comment in the Gazette 65

Sleep Apnoea
Dreams come with bated breath
from lost memories in virtual reality
as obscure infinities.
You wake and shuffle to relieve yourself
(precise sleepwalking) then fall back into bed.
Those edifices, those early prisons
where one spends one’s working life
reward me with this restless, breathless sleep.
One would edit one’s life if one could.
The traffic moves on into the distance
as the digital camera records the landscape beyond
to focus on the dead tree of Golgotha.
On the horizon, low dark clouds creep
as the rain falls.
Joe Lake

Joe Lake's comment in the Gazette 65

It is spring once more. I sit at the computer where no birds sing but the rain dribbles down relentlessly outside to fill the farmer’s and Aurora’s reservoirs that have dire need for capacity. My tulips are out; timidly they rose from the earth to open themselves to the rain. The almond tree initially had only one blossom and now more and more dare to expose themselves to the world of kissing bees and blossom-eating birds. It has been a cold, wet winter. Judy said, "Turn the heater down, the electricity is expensive." I get my blanket and watch Family Plot by Hitchcock on DVD a couple of times then pause and read New Scientist about colliders and quantum and find that we don’t know where the universe is or how we got here or when precisely since the big bang nor what we are doing here. It’s all about the atom and quantum effects and into the infinitesimally small and large, and we spend trillions of dollars on war and research into the beginning of the universe and how to build bigger atom bombs, and the string theory, and only a pittance on the cure for cancer. Humanity isn’t very bright, I suspect. No, sorry, I don’t suspect, I know.

Michael Garrad, Sept 09 Gazette, number 65

End

To the end,
Which is the beginning
and the end,
When breath bursts
and gasps,
As supple body
is now flaccid, wrinkled,
When the paper
is fresh and clean,
And skin is parchment thin,
Such is the start
that finishes,
As it does with radiant sun,
And cool, damp dead air,
Where we are,
And where we are not,
The nothing
is the everything we fear,
The earth will have us
even as the womb rejoices.
© Michael Garrad August 2009

Elaine Harris's poem in Sept. 09 Gazette

A couple of years ago I asked people to write a poem including the words lust,infidelity and spam. - Elaine Harris

Big Brother
In every shop the goal must beComplete consumer loyalty.

For every product we may lustand place in each our total trust.

Without this goal they soon would seeConsumer infidelity.

Be constant and they'll send emails

With news of specials, gifts and sales.

But should you go elsewhere to shop

They'll send you spam mail till you stop.
© Elaine Harris

EUROPA POETS' GAZETTE