three poems

by Stephen C. Middleton

Carnevale (Interrupted)                          

Carnevale

Masks eczema & worse

The plague women of Martinique

Stand (in) for…

Dormant

Now wildfire

Or skin …& island

Erupts with pyroclastic flow 

Surge …she shrieks a sneeze

Contagion’s spatter (& flow) patterns

Carnevale, which cannot be stopped,

Interrupted

(The breeze from the Windward Isles)

Eruption

An imprint on the young Jean Rhys

On Dominica

So, tonight we dance

In the town under the mountain

& tomorrow

…all fall down.

Gatekeepers / Off Limits

The new phrase is pathway, he says

& gatekeepers are indistinguishable

                              interchangeable

One, for example, did not know ‘fermata’

& made this into his victory   

& my exclusion

Another speaks of technique

& gives me ‘flensed’ for what I do /

Am doing with language

He makes no offer of publication

But he admires the commitment shown

Strange then, that the stakes should feel so low

Praxis, though – flensed or rococo /

Baroque or bare – is more personal

Praxis is off limits

Systems

(From ‘Depositions Before Surgery (the Allodynia Variations / Improvisations)

What is the tonic?

No doubt rhetorical, Charles

‘Dissonance’ she says

Untutored on arrival

Working with it

Split this or that

In performance

Without baggage

Tactics

Or; stet / the chaos intact

More systematic than free

(Leo says –

He knows about freedom

What it is & ain’t)

Of haints

& ways of seeing

Trickster links

& tonic

Photo of Stephen Middleton

BIO: Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), & Yesterday’s Music Today (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2015). For several years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz related poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide. He is currently working on projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.