Monthly Archives: February 2026

Valentine’s Week: Simon MacCulloch, ‘She’

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The people I know are an indistinct flow
The people I knew are a blur
No lover or wife in the drift of my life
No thoughts of such friends as there were.
But she, whether blessing or bane
Yes she, only she, will remain.

She took me to heart at the innocent start
She’ll take me again at the finish
No question of why, just a smile or a sigh
A memory no time can diminish.
She’s gone but she’s here all the same
Forever asserting her claim.

I don’t really care for the foul and the fair
The judgements of truth and of beauty
The rankings of love, the below, the above
The endless directions of duty.
For hers is an absolute essence
Whose value is simply its presence.

Return to your god or revert to the sod
Such outcomes are equally empty
Whatever damnation, whatever salvation
Her ownership serves to exempt me.
Wherever we go when we die
She’s there, so of course so am I.

The dancer’s the dance, the entrancer the trance
And all is as real as it seems
Her being’s persistence defines my existence
My life is the stuff of her dreams.
I ask for no more and no less
And she, only she, can say yes.

*****

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of journals including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Spectral Realms, Altered Reality, Aphelion and others.

‘She’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

A goddess poem, not directly inspired by H Rider Haggard but perhaps reflecting a broadly similar romantic sentiment.

“Venus, Roman Goddess of Love” by 1way2rock is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Valentine’s Week: Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Hearts and Flowers’

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Genitals? They look like mouths
Splayed wide open to the south;
The backyard’s cool and scented tongues
Sing the lyrics of mud and dung.
They slobber pollen on the wind,
Obscenely, but without meat’s sin.
No lubricated pump and writhe
But floating leakage to contrive
Survival of their rooted kind,
Just letting loose to maybe find
Receptive innards gaping wide,
Exposing their perfumed insides
To dust from reproduction’s floor.
So why so sexy? Not called for
When all they need is neutral breeze
To engage in flowery sleaze
As one sweet self blows to another.
Most chaste of all the planet’s lovers
And we give them for Valentines
Along with silly little rhymes
To sanitize our sweaty humps,
And thickened fluids in a clump.
But all this grossness turns to joy:
The heart’s true love or blissful toy,
As sticky human lust conspires
To imitate the spring’s desires.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “This poem was inspired by the short California spring.”

‘Hearts and Flowers’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“Lady Orchid” by anataman is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

John Gallas, ‘Timmer’s new specs’

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See the horses run.
Mares’-tails in a row.
Yurt No 1
a toy drum way below.

Del-skirt sponged with dew,
up the hill goes Timmer:
bright the early air,
grasses waft and shimmer.

Brand new SPFives.
High above the plains
he counts the hairs of horses
and sees the songs of cranes.

*****

John Gallas writes:

*’Timmer’ is often used in Mongolia as a short-name version of Timmerlane/ Tamerlane/ Tamburlaine – adds a little heroic element to fat-boy’s climb and specs. 

*SP5s – SP (with an H) means (according to Specsavers!) ‘Sphere’ and is a power-measure of a spec lens: and ‘the higher the number the stronger the lens’ – so Sp(h)5s are a power. I’ve cheated for the rhythm (with no ‘h’), but hopefully all will understand they were the specs!

This little poem is from a set of 10 formal pieces describing scenes from YURT life in Mongolia. I made books full of notes when travelling there years ago, and mined them for the whole set. They range from bike-generating electrics, a horse-riding tiny-tots’ ‘raid’, a new felt lining, and a wash-your-yurt product, to a quiet Winter camp, a visit from a People’s Painter, and a ‘moving house’ journey. The poems are intended to have no ‘meaning’ beyond what they are and say: something I’ve tried hard to do for the whole of ’10X10′.

’10X10′ is:  

  1. 10 formal, 3-verse poems called ‘ffenstri’ (people-sketches/resurrections from Welsh gravestones)
  2. ‘Southern Critters’: 10 not-real Aotearoa/NZ animals, made to look real. Spot the lies.
  3. as set 1, but telling the sad tale of ‘Lawrence of Australia’.
  4. ‘Wasted by Whitemen’: 10 awful colonial disasters: all true, fully researched. 4 prize-winners amongst the 10. 
  5. YURTS as above. 
  6. ‘The Persian Version’: my take on 10 medieval Persian poems, redone from a 1931 booklet by the Rev. H. Minkin.
  7.  ‘It’s Your Sam’: as 1/3/5, 10 formal little poems dedicated to Samuel Beckett.
  8.  ‘News from Niue’: 10 brief travel-poems from my favourite Pacific island.
  9. ‘Luminosities’: little formal poems from literal ‘bright spots’ on my travels over the years.
  10. ‘Episodes from the Cuban Revolutionary War’: 10 utterly objective poems from Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s writings: these intentionally a ‘bowing-out’ of the poet as him/herself an interesting person with interesting thoughts and feelings. Guevara’s unselfish eye is a lesson to all.

I try not to ‘explain’ the poems in ’10X10′ as they are truly an exercise in not-me writing: or, when there, using the ‘unselfish eye’. I’ve always preferred telling tales to parading my thoughts and emotions, except in ‘The Extasie’ (Carcanet) – which is the Big Download of personal Love. 

*****

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.  

Photo: “_WIL0594.jpg” by Paul Williams www.IronAmmonitePhotography.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Richard Meyer, ‘Sapiens’

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By evolution born and bred
with something extra in the head
(and maybe also in the heart)
that sets us markedly apart

from all the teeming life on Earth,
we sapiens, for what it’s worth,
create and feel and comprehend,
but to what purpose, to what end?

Wisely foolish, cruelly kind,
with jumbled passions, muddled mind,
we’re oxymorons through and through.
In what we do or fail to do

a pestilential gifted ape
with a history we can’t escape.
Our future tenuous and stark,
we stumble onward in the dark.

*****

Richard Meyer writes: “I’ve always been amused that our species defines itself as Homo sapiens, meaning “wise man” or “wise human.” The history of humanity contains much that is wonderful, beautiful, and commendable, but it also records much that is horrible, dreadful, and appalling. The verdict as to which tendency will prevail remains uncertain. It’s difficult to be optimistic when the Doomsday Clock was recently set at 85 seconds to midnight. In addition, the political situation in the United States is grim. So, we stumble onward.”

‘Sapiens’ was originally published in the Alabama Literary Review (2023, Vol. 32)

Richard Meyer, a former English and humanities teacher, lives in Mankato, MN. His book of poems Orbital Paths was a silver medalist winner in the 2016 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards. He was awarded the 2012 Robert Frost Farm Prize for his poem “Fieldstone.” His poetry has appeared in a variety of print and online journals and has also received top honors several times in the Great River Shakespeare Festival sonnet contest. He is also the author of Wise Heart, a memoir of his mother Gert who was born in poverty, came of age during the Great Depression, enlisted in the army during World War II, served overseas, achieved the rank of first sergeant, and was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service performed during the Battle of the Bulge. Richard’s most recent book is Stumbling Onward, a collection of new and selected poems. His books are available on Amazon. 

Photo: “Homer Sapiens” by Brett Jordan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

R.I.P. – X.J. Kennedy, ‘Epitaphs’

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I who in life stood upright as a tree
Have found a still more basic way to be.

—

Dirt was I made from, back to dirt I went.
Envy me now. I’m in my element.

—

The hardest part of dying is to turn
Your back on that deep calm for which you burn.

*****

X.J. Kennedy, one the greatest and most active formalists of the late 20th century, died last week at the age of 96. Short pieces like his ‘Epitaphs’ can be found in the Brief Poems blog; longer and somewhat less flippant pieces all over the place, including in Poetry. He published dozens of collections of verse for adults and children.

Midge Goldberg, ‘Words My Mother Didn’t Know’

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Starting with the obvious:
iPad, cell phone, cannabis,

Mitochondrial DNA—
but science changes every day—

sushi, pad thai, jasmine rice,
almost any kind of spice,

zipline, snowboard, kayaking,
tongue or belly-button ring.

Then, things she’d heard of, so she knew,
but not imagined one could do:

Go to Iceland, make French bread,
care what anybody said,

watch a sunrise, touch a bug,
want to give your child a hug.

*****

Midge Goldberg writes: “Often I’ll find myself in situations or places that my parents never would have encountered or dreamed of. That got me thinking of even words that they would not have known. I started writing the funnier couplets, then all of a sudden the poem took a darker turn that I hadn’t expected. Writing in rhyme and meter does that for me sometimes, leads me to a more complicated poem than I had originally imagined.”

‘Words My Mother Didn’t Know’ was originally published in Light, and nominated by them for a Pushcart Prize.

Midge Goldberg has published three books of her own poetry, including To Be Opened After My Death, a children’s book, and was the editor of Outer Space: 100 Poems, published by Cambridge University Press. She lives in New Hampshire, where her newly expanded tomato garden is now under two feet of snow. She still has the same approximate number of chickens.

Photo: “Untitled” by Leon Fishman is licensed under CC BY 2.0.