Poetry and Short Stories

Creative writing compiled and edited by Ade Jackson
All submissons by e-mail to: Backtothemachinegun@hotmail.com

"Our Wild Times" by Sam Gill

There's no more horses at the purple turtle
Wooden now window, let sign on a post
Still my head swimming, still she's a ghost
Pale under bar lights, hot under dress
Only an eyelid, one move, in success
Of impressions made upon eyes
Mine were there too, in the dark
for the start, of our wild times.

I could take you back there
Crow the old bar
Remember footsteps
Of the wine
Footprints in my mind,

The smell of damp hearts
sticky floors, cramp starts
creaking the pipes along the dancefloor
Fade reverb, past chords echo as fresh snare
glass breaks, I take your hand
A final cut foot dance.

China urinals, the long looted condom machine
Two flat pints of beer
My personal sick bins, long turned penicillin
Murderous old medicine
We once drank here.

"The Bus" by Paul Sumpter

He just sat there and the more he tried to hide it the more he became noticeable. On a packed number 10A, taking its lunatics to each of their asylums, as we passed through Kenny's smacked-up 80s landscape, he started to cry. A simple release of expression, a rejection of the multitude's plan to keep it together, a rebellion against the etiquette of the bus, an act so beautifully simple it made it impossible not to stare at him.
Many times I have felt like slicing open the dulled oppression of the bus and many times the view of Kenny on mornings such as this have made me want to cry, but I had never thought that the two could be so intrinsically linked.
But this man's refusal to hide his obvious distress filled me with belief that it was possible to beat the bus. He suddenly became James Dean, his fake Berghouse a biker's leather, his tears a switchblade, each one slashing out with years of frustration behind it. And it was happening in front of me in the last place I thought it possible - the 10A at 9.11 on Tuesday morning.
As he hopelessly tried to gather himself together and re-enter the bus he found he couldn't. So just after the Royal he departed, a victim of his own heroic actions. No doubt in search of a way back in. A reluctant hero, but a hero all the same.
As he fought his way down London Road away from the bus, surrounded by people who had no idea, I knew it was going to be a good day.

"City of Light" by Victoria Morgan

We see the tree lit up in books:
A stabbed-at metaphor for where we're heading.
Projected knowledge - for bright futures
We'll invent a structure in its image.

Protracted light spikes up on the horizon,
Speaking meagre dreams;
You're asleep.
We don't want to wake you from smiling.

Streets cajoled into silence by our gluttonous gaze.
Eyed up imperfections
From beyond the waterfront discarded,
Arid Quarters dominate, appropriating life.

It's all about face.

'What's Goin' On?' leaks through spaces
left by broken buildings and rubbed out edges.
The decay of forgotten lives…
..the stream of urgencies…sshhh…
…the pool of unrecorded losses…sshhh…

…. reforms itself
around the granite backdrop
as skin and blood congeal
after trauma.

We have all been stabbed in the eye.

Escape the hypnosis of images.
Candy-coated surfaces burn holes through humanity
In the City of Light.

"Trippin down Mathew Street" by Kev Milliband

Out the doors
down mathew street the cobbles rise
the night shrinks to a six foot box
(dyin young) yer best intention
placin yer eyes
on whores bores oil paint cohorts
smithsonian degradation cheap junk appreciation.

yer underwater this night like others yer spottin faces in crowds
eager to love
refusin to please
all yer knees
all yer shoppin lists
of all yer needs

(Oh yeah yer young now yer really livin) trippin over kerb stones gropin fer skins
in yer delirium makin yer way to some kinda romance
yer can leave it fer the crows I say
yer romance I say
yer can leave it fer the crows and other early mornin scabpickers
yer lists yer knees yer small change
leave it fer the crows.

"Sonia (Plovdiv. New Years Day 1996)" by Danny Hughes

Maybe I'll never see you again.
The snow has been falling for days on these streets; for me a tourist wandering through it's like a fairy tale; but the old and the poor of this East European town, are tired of this weather and the cold that follows it. I wander down these cobbled streets, passing purple, turquoise, yellow, red and blue houses, built by the Bulgarians 'designed' by the Turks, the paint is now flaking - but despite the memories passed on through centuries, these buildings still stand.
Like preying cats on walls, the shadows of these seventeenth - century Gothic castles and churches spread out across the top half of this tiny city. I walk towards them, down and down then lift the latch of a door, pass through an archway then ascend the two hundred or so steps that lead up to them. But when I stopped half way up, out of breath, and my soft skinned companion continued. It was then, when I looked down on the white roofs, the snow covered streets, the street lamps in the dusk, that I was moved; it was then that I thought of you, and all that was unresolved came back to me.

"Undressing" by Sarah Maclennan

She untied her apron
and hung it on a railing,
dumped the rubber gloves
on a junction box,
left her bag at a bus-stop,
kicked her shoes up into a tree,
walked out of her socks.
Dropped her jeans into a puddle,
draped her shirt on a shrub,
snowballed her knickers at a taxi,
catapulted her bra into the Mersey.
Wriggled out of her skin,
drained her blood into a gutter,
fed her muscle & fat to a litter bin,
arrived at his door, just
in her bare bones.