Tag Archives: Snakeskin

Sonnet: Bob Trewin, ‘It Doesn’t Last’

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No matter what you do, it doesn’t last:
Your best endeavours are gone in an hour.
If you could see the present become past,
Your better weather just a passing shower,
If you could see your garden run to weeds
That once was hoed and tended with such care
And understand you only bury seeds
That will outlive us, and will still be there
When we are gone, to sprout and live anew,
Would you think that your labour is worth while
To do the things you feel you have to do,
To make the effort, go the extra mile?
What else is there to do but push ahead?
So damn them all and be glad you’ll be dead.

*****
Bob Trewin writes: “This is my first poem in Snakeskin. I have previously appeared in some anthologies produced by the Holmfirth Writers’ Group (published by George Simmers, who is a founder member). I have also self-published two collections: Snowflakes in the Night, available from Amazon and the Lulu bookstore and Sonnets and Sundries, available from the Lulu bookstore.

“As for where this poem came from, I wonder how much you, living elsewhere, are aware of the rapid transformation that is happening in the UK, a transformation that no recent government has had a mandate to sanction, let alone actively pursue. If it is reversible, I will certainly not be around to witness it.”

Since scribbling some mediocre verse as a teenager, Bob Trewin put aside his pen for the best part of half a century. He began writing poetry again after retirement and now belongs to a number of groups scattered across the Pennines in West Yorkshire. He has won first and second prize in successive years in the National Association of Writers and Groups’ Open Poetry Competition.

“Garden work” by Bilderschachtel Photography is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘Below’

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What hovers above condenses below
And the vagus nerve has wonders to show:
Mill of the belly, invisible grind
Slick convolutions sculpt all they find
Smooth muscle contracts around traveling scat
As sensual as the yawn of a cat.
An abdominal chorus—how it gurgles!
Saturn’s own voice, corruptly fertile.
Cells split and shimmy, chromosomes boil
Identity settles, signed with a coil,

Written in meat’s salty alphabet.
Pulsing skin shimmers, scented and wet.
Eyeballs disguised writhe over a dream.
Our rubbery hearts, the genitals’ steam
Carbon dioxide’s vegetable tang
Ancient green song all vertebrates sang
Wet from the lick of valence’s tongue.
Leaping or lurching down star light’s descent
Trailing our dreams and our excrement.
From acids and stink the soul forges land:
Thoughts in our heads, and work in the hand.

*****

Elizabeth Hurst writes: “Below” was inspired by the concentration of nerves in our guts that functions as a second brain, the alchemical axiom “As above, so below” & “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement” from Yeats’s Crazy Jane poem.”

‘Below’ was first 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.

“Body Fluid Cleanup Kit, bus, Colorado River Discovery, Page, Arizona, USA” by gruntzooki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Paul Burgess, ‘Another Old, Familiar Story’

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“The strong survive, and all of that,”
he’d tell the limply dangling cloth
between his beak, a former moth,
but doesn’t sense the lunging cat,

who doesn’t think the wheels that run
consider cats their proper prey.
Yet, now he’s just a dead display
beneath the slowly dying sun.

Who knows if later down the road
that truck won’t strike a rotting tree
and bring to bear on top of me
its paralyzing wooden load?

Though like a reel of comic scenes,
it’s also how our stories go:
the endings are the same, we know,
but brought about by varied means.

*****

Paul Burgess writes: “Earlier in the summer, a bird appeared in front of me casually holding a dying moth and looking almost cheerful. The encounter got me thinking about deaths that come suddenly, without malice, and without much meaning to the creatures or things that have caused them. I can’t say exactly why, but some combination of my mood and the circumstances made the sight more vivid and significant to me than it might have been on another day.”

‘Another Old, Familiar Story’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Paul Burgess is the sole proprietor of a business in Lexington, Kentucky that offers ESL classes in addition to English, Japanese, and Spanish-language translation and interpretation services. He has recently contributed work to The Road Not Taken, Blue Unicorn, Light, The Orchards, Pulsebeat, Snakeskin, Lighten Up Online, and several other publications.  https://paulburgesswritingandlanguage.blog/

“Kaka (Nestor sp) and Pururi Moth (Aenetus virescens)” by Nga Manu Images NZ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Into the Attic’

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In the narrow hallway, almost out of reach,
Is a cord you pull down, lowering stairs
To access the attic, which is stuffed
With all manner of wonderful, half-forgotten things.

Imagine if you could find another cord there,
To pull down to access the entire world above–
Overhanging trees and sky and space and planets and all.

*****

There is so much magic in attics–and even more so if they can only be accessed by pull-down stairs. My five-year-old grandson in Canada will be visiting us in the Bahamas in a few weeks, and he only had one question when I called him on his birthday: Would he be allowed in the attic? Whether he heard wild stories from his father, or whether he was put up to be the petitioner by his older siblings, I have no idea. But in the attic and on the roof are both super exciting places…

‘Into the Attic’ was originally published in Snakeskin–thanks, George Simmers!

Illustration by RHL and Quill, my ChatGPT. (I told Quill that an engineer might question the integrity of the mechanics, but I’m not an engineer so I’ll live with it. The mood is perfect!)

RHL, ‘R.I.P. the English Girl in the Bahamas’

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There was a young girl who married a pirate
They boarded a ship called La Mouette.
They had a ship’s cat and also a parrot –
Well, if not a parrot, a noisy old rooster –
And a couple of cabin-boys who called her Mum –
And a sea-dog of course, or at least they used to.
They dressed up in finery, drank lots of rum…
They sailed ever sunwards, and they’re sailing yet.

*****

People who move to the Bahamas are an odd and interesting bunch, which is fine because it’s an odd and interesting country… but then, so is everyone, everywhere. Anyway, this particular lady (or one somewhat similar in some ways) and her family lived across the street from me, growing up.

This poem was first published in Snakeskin‘s recent edition of short poems.

“Pirate family” by Graham Ó Síodhacháin is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Joe Crocker, ‘Bedtime stories’

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Pyjama’d, nightied, they are read to,
snuggled close, or independently alert.
The Baudelaires’ unfortunate events unravel.
Hogwarts weaves a family for Harry.
Boyhood and a Bear are said goodbye to.

The boy enjoys but doesn’t like to show.
His sister smiles because she knows, she knows.
The youngest bites her toes.

The youngest settles back
and blithely bites her toes.

*****

“Bedtime Stories” was a happy memory of that short time when our three children could each enjoy listening to the same story.( When it wasn’t my turn to read to them I would sit in on my wife’s episode, just to keep up.) I tried to stick to the bare facts and avoid any too obvious doting. But it is a very fond memory.

“Bedtime Stories” was first published in Snakeskin

Brief biography of Joe Crocker (masculine/feminine/neutered)

He writes his stuff and slides it under doors.
His age and sex, his fantasies, are no concern of yours.

The rhymes reflect his humour — down to earth.
A pamphlet is forthcoming but refuses to come fearth.

Winner of the Awkward Prize, ham-fisted.
Never short- or long- but  sometimes black- or shopping-listed.

Nominated (pusher) for the pushcart.
Squawking from the slush pile, self-regarding little upstart.

Google says he’s one of Sheffield’s legends
— a rock star who gets by with little help from friends, well… ex-friends.

*****

Photo: “grandpa jeff reading a bedtime story to his grandsons – MG 6276.JPG” by sean dreilinger is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Squib: Max Gutmann, ‘Pointedly’

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Seurat completely placed his trust
in pointillism, never fussed
with other styles, for they’d have just
been pointless.

*****

For me this falls right on the border of the category I call ‘Unforgettable Nonsense’ verse – typically short, with puns or other jokes… But this isn’t strictly speaking nonsense… Yet the use of rhyme and rhythm with the wordplay makes it super easy to memorise, which is something I always enjoy. Max Gutmann declines to comment on the poem – which was first published in Snakeskin – other than to suggest I classify it as a squib. – RHL

Max Gutmann has contributed to New Statesman, Able Muse, Cricket, and other publications. His plays have appeared throughout the U.S. (see maxgutmann.com). His latest book, Finish’d!: A Pleasant Trip to Hell with Byron’s Don Juan, is forthcoming from Word Galaxy.

Photo: “Georges Seurat” by rocor is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

David Callin, ‘Sangliers’

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It is not a forest, more a sun-
dappled woodland near the Pont du Gard,
the river fol-de-rolling merrily.
Here, where they’ve been told the wild things are,
a family, a mother and her young,
step through wild garlic till they come upon
a small ménage of wild boars, sangliers:
a mother and her young, a glade away.
Their shadows lengthened by the dappling sun,
each gives way to the other and trots on.

*****

David Callin writes: “There are no deep secrets about the poem. It’s a memory from a family holiday in 2006, and my wife’s description of the experience of this strange meeting on her return from it. It struck me strongly at the time, but I must have stored it away, because I didn’t try to turn it into a poem until nearly 20 years later. Then, as a non-metrical poem, it didn’t take, but I found it again when looking for inspiration for George’s excellent short poems Snakeskin (issue 339, May 2026). It seemed to blossom in its new form.

“This is unlike the bulk of my poems, most of which – but by no means all – arise out of the life, history and folklore of the Isle of Man, where I’ve lived all my life apart from a brief period in the 1980s when I made a bolt for freedom, first to London and then to the Netherlands. But the place has a way of reeling you back in.

“My first full book of poems, From the Nab, is essentially Manx in subject matter. There is a review of it in Light (whose editor, I see, also features in your blog). This is the link to that … https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/book-reviews-summer-25/

“If any of your readers should like a copy – and who wouldn’t, based on that review? – a simple email to me, with their postal address, would do the trick:  dcallin2bvc@gmail.com

“Other than that, I pop up in Snakeskin from time to time – as often as I can, really. And occasionally in other places.”

*****

The image features a wild boar (Sus scrofa) with its piglets, commonly known as humbugs due to their striped appearance. 

Joe Crocker, ‘A one-way visit’

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to the vet with our decrepit cat:
snaggle-toothed, arthritic, ectoparasitic.
His kick-ass piebald coat is now a mat
for fleas to wipe their feet on.

His legs are lame. His dignity is flat.
He used to know his name was Tipperary.
Today it could be Tom or even Jerry.
Enough. He’s had enough.
And that is that.

*****

Joe Crocker writes: “Tipper” was my youngest daughter’s cat. He had white socks and a white tip to his black tail. “Tipperary” seemed like a fitting formalisation for his vaccination record. (And somewhere in my head was TS Eliot’s “The Naming of Cats”.) I don’t suppose Tipper ever really knew our name for him. In his final weeks he looked utterly bewildered and certainly unable to “keep up his tail perpendicular, spread out his whiskers or cherish his pride.”

‘A One-way Visit’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Brief biography of Joe Crocker (masculine/feminine/neutered)

He writes his stuff and slides it under doors.
His age and sex, his fantasies, are no concern of yours.

The rhymes reflect his humour — down to earth.
A pamphlet is forthcoming but refuses to come fearth.

Winner of the Awkward Prize, ham-fisted.
Never short- or long- but  sometimes black- or shopping-listed.

Nominated (pusher) for the pushcart.
Squawking from the slush pile, self-regarding little upstart.

Google says he’s one of Sheffield’s legends
— a rock star who gets by with little help from friends, well… ex-friends.

*****

Photo: “Portrait of a Very Old Cat” by sjrankin is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Tom Vaughan, ‘Stuff Happens’

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Bad stuff happens.
Some survive
but it’s a risky business
being alive.

Good stuff happens
too – though don’t
count on it lasting
long. It won’t.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “Stuff Happens was of course part of a remark by US Secretary of Defense/Defence Donald Rumsfeld in 2003 in response to widespread looting in Baghdad following the US/US military ‘intervention’. Although I wrote the poem on the eve of the current war in the Middle East, it was intended as a more general comment on what a long-ago Roman called the nature of things, in personal as much as in global affairs.”

‘Stuff Happens’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “Stuff Happens” by Chris Piascik is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.