3 poems from Barney Ashton-Bullock in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020

Mass Grave #58

The bloodrot rooting
Over the rise that hides the pit,
That mallow mound that salves the flatlands vista.

From outré putrefaction, the wilder roses bloom,
Their pungent spumes of spiky fumes,
Fragrances that flounder in dead-hand dealt air,

A stasis that unstirs the shrill, still sadness,
Staunches the undertow flow of the unforgiven
Charred and hidden in the sods of soil despoiled;

Limbs oiled in its threadbare muddy mercy.

The irremediable blue

in ten years time you might retire,
you might come back to Blighty,
we might return to Port Isaac,
we might have time again
to ride again our bicycles,
from Cornish coast-to-coast again.

wannabe wayfaring,
we might loll laughing again
on a wafeted, scrumped tat
o'tartan rug again
on a dot-dash of distal headland
in the mizzen drench sea-mist
of a "Fogust" again

and brush fingers again
and have, again, the intent of a kiss,
not and never had,
but ever much onwards missed,
again and again, since then,
old friend,
when we'd talk in a distinctly
distant flannel;
we swarding swatches aswirl
within this still vast vista
of irremediable blue...

the last laugh never came to pass

crackling, crackhead rapidity of speech,
in a cack-handed matey tempo
spackled with infomercial riddlings
and pseudo-psychoanalytical patter
about the love in every one of us
being all that really matters

personality types as if purloined sachets
to add a touch of bitter or sweet to the mobby broth
whose vibrant, rolling broil of events
are tampered/sieved/blent into spuzzy negatives of denials
all misfiled into microfiche mêlées of confusion
in a filled-up soup of psyche (with its linger of crouton tumours)

oh, then, to defrag these fleshy coils of cortex
to promote more systematic recall
a crumbly softness arcing through
the spindrift spun trace remembrances
of cogency condensed to illegible;
slapdash jottings made with leaky fountain pens
on absorbent flays of blotting papers
and in there, somewhere, the specifics
of what you'd dare to recall
clogged in five years of such mulching, moulder of drippage
and when, and if, ever discerned, decrypted as
mere juvie, virtue-signalled, naïve jibberish
with no stanchion of good will or best wish
for this unanchored flail of flatline future


Bio: Barney Ashton-Bullock, is the poet/librettist in the ‘Andy Bell is Torsten’ music-theatre-poetry collective and he narrates his own verse on the Downes Braide Association albums. He is the founder of Soho Poetry Nights. He has poetry published, or pending publication, in a wide range of cult poetry journals**, in the ‘Avalanches In Poetry’ tribute anthology to Leonard Cohen, in the Dreich pamphlet ‘Famous’, in the Pilot Press ‘Queer Anthology Of Healing’ and in the 'Soho Nights' anthologies published by The Society Club Press who also published his first collection ‘Schema/Stasis’ in 2017. His latest poetry pamphlet ‘Café Kaput!’ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2020.<br>(**the Wellington Street Review, the New River Press Yearbook, SPAMzine, Re-Side Magazine, -algia Press, Scab Mag, Pink Plastic House Journal, Lucky Pierre Zine, Poetry Bus, Neuro Logical Magazine and the Babel Tower Notice Board)