Jerry Sadowitz and The Ghost of a Thousand by Rodney Wood

JERRY SADOWITZ

There's must be some mistake. He's the 15th greatest standup
but he's aggressive, tasteless, racist, sexist and smells,
has a face like a soggy football, hair that's been fucked up
and wears a top hat stolen from Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

I wish this man to be struck deaf, blind and dumb,
suffer anal fissures, asthma, constipation, impotence,
varicose veins, bedwetting, gonorrhoea, bleeding gums,
piles, hives, insomnia, apoplexy, nose bleeds and cramps.

I wish this man more. I want at least pulled muscles, gout,
amputations and fungal infections. I want to chain him to
the goalposts in Wembley Stadium, see him eaten by scouts,
his remains shitted out and recycled as a dildo.

Even that's not enough. I want all those who howl or laugh
at his shows to be fucked in the ass by Timmy Mallett.
If none of my wishes are granted at least give him Whooping cough,
the occasional boil, court orders or gigs with Jabba the Hutt.

As you may have gathered I don't like this so-called humourist
who smells, is aggressive, tasteless, racist and sexist
and who in 2008 was number 15 on Channel 4's greatest
standups. But to be fair he can do some pretty neat card tricks.


THE GHOST OF A THOUSAND

Ruby Revenge counts the days before
her fav band appear in Aldershot.
She's just 15 and can't fucking wait.
When the hour finally comes and after
Rolo Tomassi and Casino Brawl
have displayed their hairless armpits,
The Ghost of a Thousand take over
the scaffold and Tom screams into
the mic, Mem has a drumkit for a throne,
Gaz is a lumberjack chainsawing his bass
through Left For Dead and Blackday Number
and Andy and Jag thrash their guitars
bringing them to life through the flickering
silver, gold and black of Matchless amps.
During As They Breed They Swarm
headbanging fans become a shoal
of fish around Ruby Revenge who keeps
a curtain of hair over her face showing
her refusal to conform, her sense
of isolation, her feeling she's only cool
wearing the merch and that now
she's just 15 and can't fucking wait.


Rodney Wood says: I've been published recently in Nth Position, Interpreter's House, Krax, Stride and elsewhere previously. I help out at our local arts centre and one day the Director said as you like the gigs so much why don't you write about them. So I have. Everything from thrash metal, country, comedians, guitarists etc to Tibetan monks. I'm the guest reader at Writeangle in Petersfield in November. I'm on Facebook and www.myspace.com/rodneytwood

A Lovely Sense of Closure - Poems by Andrew Taylor

A LOVELY SENSE OF CLOSURE AND THE FREEDOM TO REIN YOU IN

back from the edge, where the waterfall's spray coats
your skin. Oh to be in Wales in the Autumn! When the sky

threatens to crack and take you with it, remember the candles
lit in your honour, bottom left. I always choose left over right

an odd trait from 1980s Liverpool, turning left at the bottom
of the stairs at the Everyman Bistro into the melee of familiar

Friday faces, The Blue Nile oozing from the Third Room.

After rain freshness. Trackside fences littered with amber,
reflections cast off polished rails, diesel pools a rainbow.

This Autumn age! Comfort of dark nights and neon. The
city draws in river mist, halos round street lights



AMARI

How I love the smell of Autumn in the morning.
Wind throws spent leaves in a merry dance,
power cables whistle in time. As the storm
gathers in, a train pulses by on a grey horizon.

A heater clicks in Room 111 of the Days Inn,
Bristol West. Workplace shelf cleared, neutrality
brushed aside. Make a mark! capture the image,
the M5 at its rush-hour best.

Light streaks luminous outside lane. Air-condition
cold swirls through service station view. Nature
and human interaction, hard shoulder borders
ripple with nocturnal creatures.

October mist descends like a shroud, brings evening
on board. Journey through carved country, picturing
the view of cows from bridges, that cross to shelter
and dream of daybreak.


Andrew Taylor is a Liverpool based poet and co-editor of erbacce and erbacce-press. His latest collection comes from Sunnyoutside Press, Buffalo. Check out Andrew's website.

Gower Road and Fall: Poems by Cliff Yates

GOWER ROAD

He dreams all day of a crowded party,
strangers dancing round his room
with the sink in the corner

and American
novels on the mantelpiece.
All he has to do is lie there

every possible future
at that moment before him.

Rain streams down an inside wall
loosening the plaster.
We gather downstairs in the sitting room

with the landlord’s piano
then it’s Saturday Night, the gateway
to Sunday Morning

by Velvet Underground and Nico
the one with the banana on the cover.



FALL

The tablets work but send him to sleep
though when he can make it, the eight inch reflector
is manoeuvrable, so that’s a blessing,
what with the dodgy hip and that hill of a garden

and bearing in mind that time observing Mars
when he stepped back off the low stone wall
at three in the morning and lay sprawled
on the rockery and January frost
calling softly for help while the guinea-pigs
trembled in the corner of their hutch

or after the Beer Festival, when he opened
the door pulling into Southampton, stepped off
the train before it stopped, fell and rolled on his back
after insisting that all the commemorative
glasses go in his rucksack because
he’s the mature student, he’s the sensible one.


Cliff Yates is the author of Henry's Clock (winner of the Aldeburgh first collection prize and the Poetry Business book & pamphlet competition). A new collection, Frank Freeman's Dancing School, is forthcoming from Salt. Cliff's website - www.cliffyates.co.uk