Tuesday Poem: "The Gift (for Thomas and Ryan)" by Andrew M. Bell

When we are cosmic dust
blowing through the universe

and memories of us fade

like colours in a Polaroid

you can pick up your guitar and know

your parents gave you a gift

no one could take away

NOTE: The poet would like to acknowledge The Press in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Ransom Note" by Andrew M. Bell

Leave five billion dollars in

hard-earned taxpayer money

by the ruins of the Cathedral.

Do this or your city dies.

P.S. Don't even think of going

to the authorities.

We are the authorities.

NOTE: The poet wishes to acknowledge the anthology, Leaving the Red Zone: poems from the Canterbury earthquakes, edited by James Norcliffe and Joanna Preston and published by Clerestory Press, February 2016, in which this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Poem On My Father's Birthday" by Andrew M. Bell

Photographer Unknown (Lost in the mists of Time)

On the train to Haifa

I think about my father

in wartime Palestine,

a different time, a different name

but the same place.

His memories of oranges and beaches

and warm, Mediterranean swimming

are the times he chose to rescue

from the six years when the world

was drowning in its own blood.

The weather is blue and grey

but the sun shines

like my father’s medals

on his blue-grey air force uniform

that entranced me as a child.

As the helicopter gunships prowl over Mount Carmel,

speeding north to Lebanon,

I wonder what times I will choose to rescue

from a land built out of longing,

but paid for in blood.