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AUTUMN SHIFT issue

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A SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHY & POETRY EDITION

ISSUE #8 FALL 2012

cOCK no. 7

WELCOME

AUTUMN SHIFT

cOCK no. 7

ISSUE #8 FALL 2012

Editor: Angel Ito Cover Design and Issue Layout: A. ItoPublished by Cock No. 7.Photography unless noted by Angel Ito

Contact: Post: 1 Oval House, Rushcroft Rd. London, U.K. SW2 1JUFor General Enquiries and Submissions:Email; cockno.7@gmail.com Website: www.cockno7.comFollow us Facebook:facebook.com/CockNo.7

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cOCK no. 7

the shadows dancing in my head are amber, rouged, and pale green-and they are whispering into the wind,winding up the clocks,and stretching the sky across my eyes.Mesmerized, I look on-as they say their goodbyes to summer.A. Ito

CONTRIBUTORSALAN C SMITH ANDRA SIMONS SOPHIE MAYER MATTHEW PLUMB

JOAO TRINDADE JEAN LUC URBANSKI ANGEL ITO

cOCK no. 7

AUTUMN SHIFT ISSUE #8 FALL 2012

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CONTRIBUTORSALAN C SMITH ANDRA SIMONS SOPHIE MAYER MATTHEW PLUMB

JOAO TRINDADE JEAN LUC URBANSKI ANGEL ITO

AUTUMN SHIFT ISSUE #8 FALL 2012

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Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can StayRobert Frost (1923)

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JOAO TRINDADEWHEN SUMMER LEAVES

Images by Joao TrindadeLayout design by A. Ito

Check out more of Joao’s work-http://www.joaotrindade.com/

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Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me. Sigmund Freud

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me. Sigmund Freud

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3 uji breathsthese days when you go cold and absentI breathe a few uji breathsand sink a few sun salutationsin seated forward bendsI meet my kneeshug my feetand feel closer to my mindcloser to claritycloser to the unfettered prize of meyesI feel myselfI listen toobut have not yet learned to heedthat first mind of mine he’s almost always rigid rightbecoming more flexible gradually

these days when you go incommunicadoI breathe into that sore spotyou leave vacated relax the tightness of your absenceI fill the void left by your wordlessnesswith silence and meditationI visualize I plan a garden in the same rich red groundwhere you uprooted us again

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Image: golden shifterby Alan C. Smith

Read more of Alan’s work at his websitehttp://acsmithart.wordpress.com/

ALAN C SMITH

silver-fingered 1: virtual enigma

your profile from retrospective perspectivelooks not unlike minebut with panels secreting painin locked cedar boxes

silver-fingered you

under your keystrokesI feel somewhat discoveredentranced by the enigmaticmultidimensional missing wordschosen meticulously

this poem is writing itself slowlythere is a bit of a knot there tied expertly with those dexterous silver fingers I gather

noose or tether what to tie down or strangle out?

we are virtual you a construct I have assembledfrom words kept in lineand reserved when enteredwith bursts of enthrallingly disturbingpain passion and longinginstant messaged manically

what wonders I wonderwhat delicious dark chocolateendorphin seeped secretswill I gently pryfrom those metallic fingersclenched protectively gnarled around giftsthat my tongue teases round?

silver-fingered 2: island elemental

silver-fingered words all the things that I want to bekind of chilly just beneath your tipsyour lips seal a cold front or twoto play between your icicleswhere I would venturein a searching kissto greet the winter thereblow into you a subtropical breezelightly sea salted to thaw you from the insideI would not be a tourist trapif my clear slurping waters did not beckonif my name were not musicalor the melody infectiousI am most home to those who sing and whistle me incessantlywithout fear of the spirit those utterances unleash

silver-fingered 3: the fluid snowman

when we kissedI did find the air there brittlebut your body warm pristine animal shaped like some benevolent incubussearching and conformingto the shape of minefur coat-likeunhurried by needcoaxing out the warmest want in meI saw us from all vantage pointsgorgeous and grandiose in the white crispnessof your winter roomthe space we did not inhabitas much a part of the motion of the art we createdand I had to keep it mostly locked inthe celebration songbecause the cold always makes me quiet

ALA

N C

SM

ITH

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A Healing

Felt the raw soreness of wounds caused by too long rubbing against the same hard surface then the bubbling and the splitting of the skin then the ringing stingingof stripped flesh smooched by the windsalways a delicate boy under sensitive skinsalves and ointments never worked on methe wonders of a swimbut it was past the season for a dipthe cold gnarled fingersof late autumn already chalked my lipsand I walked past that beach dailyto the din of my body’s complainingjust to gaze into the glazed glassy seaand begin to enter but then always refrainingtill one day azure especially becoming beckoned me cautiously I disrobed obediently and enteredfound your waters warmer than expectedon my feet my skins and knees I ventured further trudging that exaggerated waterlogged struttill your waters caressed upper legs then hipsand waist then the generous swell of my winter gutand still I soldiered on with the arousing weight of the water on my marching thighsthe contoured press on my belly and the wet sips on my nipples and my pleasured sighsat the medicinal relief and the ease I was feelingthe water slurping round the troubled spotsthe pulsing subtle rhythmic healingand I submerged completely then headed back inwater dripping on the sand gooseflesh prickingsenses drawing on relishing the sea within

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ANDRA SIMONS

Turtlemen: Canadian Rendezvous

My first love was a loon, who thought he was a man, who thought he was a water buffalo. In fact he only dated other water buffalo, who pretended to be men, who I thought were obvious loons. Even though I had told him many times I was a descendant of the ancient tribe of Turtlemen he often confused me for a tortoise. I hadn’t the tenderness to tell him the difference. His thoughts were two-minute songs by blond water nymphs bouncing on television. Of his, I yearned for a singular composed thought. On Saturday afternoons he would splash-dive into a murky lagoon beside the motorway from a cloudless sky. Holding his breath ballooned he’d twist and turn underwater, smear his feathers in grit churned up from a soft bottom. Returning, his head would rear out with a popping bellow, arching proudly his golden bowed horns that were conduits of the divine. After this ritual exhaustive pleading, onto the bankside he would come beside me dripping under a temperate sun and smile as if he had found a chorus, of which he wasn’t allowed to share the melody. Beside the motorway’s eternal din staring up at a fading sun, I knew we were weary. We thought we were sound. Pretending to be wet.

Andra Simons by Criativo Joao Read more of Andra’s fantastic work at http://andrasimons.wordpress.com/

SCENE: Two males walk along a path that leads from the tube station at the edge of the Centre of Islington to Highbury Village. On either side of the path are fields. The damp green back of an English Atlas holding up the aspirations of the middle. The compromised class.

FATHER:(walking in time. in silence)

13 YEAR OLD:(walking in time. in silence)

FATHER:(sighs)

13 YEAR OLD:(looks up at his father. holds tenderly to his father’s elbow)

FATHER:(walks out of time. not in silence)

13 YEAR OLD: I always lose count of all the leaves that fall.

FATHER: Too many shades.

(walking. time.)

Silence.

13 YEAR OLD:(as a gentle lover he holds to his fathers elbow. Steps in time.).

The End

AN

DR

A S

IMO

NS

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SCENE: A late hour on a humid October night. Two figures wander on a sand trail beyond their porch to walk-away supper, the woman opens her black moon mouth to let go of hymns and moths, the boy finds light, silver dew drops on a pink petal.

BROWN BABY BOY:When I came out did you cry?

YELLA MOMMA:I’m a bottle dahlin’, a soda bottle.

BROWN BABY BOY:Did you pop?

They giggle.

YELLA MOMMA:I fizzed and spilled. Spilled and Fizzed.

Filled with sugar water and dye.

BROWN BABY BOY:Did I hurt?

YELLA MOMMA:You only hurt when I love you this much dahlin’.

When I love you this much…

Singing frogs drown out her prayer.

BROWN BABY BOY:I’m a bottle too momma. Will I break?

YELLA MOMMA:Now why would you think that?

BROWN BABY BOY:‘Cuz I feel like crackin’ when you go and filled up when you’re home and empty when I sleep

and when you turn your back to cook, I’m forgotten.

YELLA MOMMA:One day you’ll be forgotten and empty. But you won’t crack. You won’t crack. You won’t…

They both follow the path of scattered stars

The End1.

SCENE: Spring has arrived in her blooming red dress; she sits on a damp wooden bench at the edge of the garden. She watches with keen interest two figures that enter the garden with a basket and a bottle.

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:My womb has dropt off de tree.

BIG BLACK MOMMA:Before it rots, I’ll dry its skin in de oven and make tea of it, I’ll boil its flesh wit sugah an’ make a lovely compote with spoonfuls an’ spoonfuls of clottet cream.

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:Can I bring my frien’s over fer some after we done playin’ in de yard?

BIG BLACK MOMMA:Na.

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:But why?

BIG BLACK MOMMA:I promised Unca Buck that he would first taste of dis season’s batch

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:But it’s mine.

she cries little black tears

BIG BLACK MOMMA:My sweet mango chil’, you will learn nothin’ is yours to keep.

you watch ev’rythin’ and ev’ryone take root, gorgeous blossom and come almos’ to burst under de sun… an’ if it survives de fall. You leave it fo’them to peel an’ toss

de seed.

(LITTLE BLACK GIRL looks out at the future just past spring breaking out of the soil)

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:who’s dat woman watchin’ us over there?

BIG BLACK WOMAN:Take a hard hard look at her. If yer womb don’t plump an’ drop.

If de men don’t slice an’ suck from de stone, you grow into her an’ her ain’t wha’ you want to smell like come April. You hear me?

LITTLE BLACK GIRL:Yes. I hear hard Momma, I hear hard.

The EndAN

DR

A S

IMO

NS

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Return of the Selkie

My last love was found tucked in the pocket of an old Selkie from the bays of Scotland. Every so often he would miss the waters of Dundee and unwrap from under our bed a thrice-folded worn sealskin cloak, he would throw it around his slender shoulders, slide toward the tub and run the Thames through a tap. He’d slap and chuckle and clap his hands, lean to kiss me, tickle my lip with his white wet whiskers. On those evenings I could smell the aged sweet dried salt on his pelt and I’d touch his rolling ribs beneath it and pull him close. One morning with the larks laughter my beast grew thinner. As the sun perched herself on the Highbury shelf for the rising, while I typed poems out of recycled yesterdays, after almost half a century, a flickering light in his eyes heralded him back. He transformed on our kitchen floor with a thousand small tremors. Saturday 3:36pm, fixed with tubes and morphine, I turned my head away from him as a swimmer does reaching for air. Yet, in the immenseness between those light pulsed seconds my old Selkie dived and fiercely trembled free. Within that dark cerulean, the slowing of the hand through the wave, I failed to carry him to the ocean-side, to let him grow accustomed to the cold North Sea again. I wasn’t there to wail ‘swim swim’ to support him from under his belly as he kicked out toward the estuary. I wasn’t there to whisper our secrets into the ebb or whistle. Or whistle. Or whistle.

Image by ©The Gentleman Amateur

Psalm 30 (Thanksgiving): “The air has that air”

The air has that airof brass tacks knockedin trees: lost cat // fabricand trimmings sale postedback to back. As kidswe were warned that tackskilled the trees. This diseaseis your responsibility. AIDS/HIV,the last Yangtze river dolphin. With brass tacksand Playdoh, you half-baked this world, standingin the kitchen with blobs of itin your hair and your apron-stringstrailing, offering up a murky blue-green biscuit as if to sayIt wasn’t me. I only wanted to please.To please, toplease. I have bitten biscuits and unravellingpigtails and a gap-toothed smile that, five years on fromthis snapshot, an orthodontistwill tell me (age ten) is sexy.Thumbsucker, baby elephant,cancer victim. Newsflash: drum-tight bellies in the desert and that’s my fault, too, didn’t eatmy lunch at school and they all starved, all starved, all starved.That’s the taste of autumn for you: leafscuff and wasp-blown apples.Eat this New Year, rottento the core (God,but you have a way with metaphor).

SOPH

IE M

AYER

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Lemniscate

The King of Swords has me sleepless again. That trick with a knife. I’m not afraidhere, at the point of a pointless blade,of falling, flowing, melting. I’ve been shined before, I’ve been a silver cup all pouredinto: bowlgirl, tearshape. Been at the stave: against it, fenced and splintering. Savedcoins not of this realm; beat them out of swords, bought passage. No light but what I carry.But what you gave me. Oh, how we hurry through each other, paying coin of this and that, round o of the mouth, o of the moon. Not Blake’s ‘I want’ but Stevens: O bright, O bright. Palmed silver kiss, it fills the sleepless night.*The King of Swords unlocks his kiss, lip-bruised, at the last possible instant. Iceburnat the press of the blade. But I’m the turnof the scales, my legs Sheba-haired, tattooed(hey blue). Snow-licked skin could not be palerin this wolf season. Dead grass. Poverty.Pelt and ruff return at a run and free,under our fingers fleshed deep in her fur.Call it Arctic cold or any excuseto get close. Closer. Yes. As a mouthfulof each other’s words, breath, yes. What leaves us in a kiss is the kiss and all it saysof wonder, windows, eyelids; opening. Allthe falling. That tumbled lock. And: chorus.*The King of Swords cannot unpierce my heart. Dark of (not) the moon. Naked of my want.

MATTHEW PLUMBHappiness writes white.

Petal yellow, sunshine groover fluttering a nectar mission,the liquid soft shallows of air,herbage under a dew soother.I love your bugaloo schism,gradient, watery rhythm,the beautiful plight of flowers dedicated aplomb succumb,irrevocable brute powers,epiphany haze of showers,every right belonging to come,those who know binding nerve to numb.

Champion provost of pollen protocol,sun spun, sex spun, ardent agent,one freak, gorgeous droplet might be total,so fine, so frail a filamentminutely out of egg,body plump,soft as kiss,take, over beg,going loaded chrysalis.

No quotient of apathyload my happy.Indifferent, unhurried,life and I slide honeyed.

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Matthew Plumb Photographed by Rob Portus

Check out more of his work http://www.literaturewales.org/writers-of-wales/

i/140223/desc/plumb-matthew/And his great video-”Life as a Poet”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinJDOf3ZCw

Hey Lush…

you look like you sleep a deep one to bliss and my heart feels huge from feeling the spread,going to no sympathy in my bed.Sleep, when it comes, swallows me, the suspense of will you come back or be this difference I sit and watch, tubes, flits (how tears are fed), sometimes struggle, mostly serene, a thread anomaly glinting and gently tense…

and all my wow faith in all the colours nature throws and throws so sweetly slights me all the writhing insistent savage terms of take to create. We are with flowers our delicacy our humility,our soft open vibrance our shine of yearn.

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EW P

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Laura…

Laura, leaning through my window, flawlesshoney body into summer early.Somewhere else in her nature is Sunday,making me want to find a beach for us, get her back in her element, fearless.She likes wearing air – feline slinky,laying the morning cool all over me,purring pure at me, yum into cosmos.

True secrets we keep in little niches – no one goes in your mind – tunes bring them down, quiet places, a flavour, air mystique.Giving sweet as fragrant sun hot peaches,Laura, clear sheen pull of her peachy down,her little ocean she took me in sleep.

Through depths of height.

Something about night and honeysuckle,eloping mood sighs of supple verdure,the balm and thrill spill of nature sugar,how right, this time of night, sky is purple – little shimmer before each new sparkle,nature symmetry, nature manufacture.How deep the sea brings black into texture,divine real time and impulses simple.

Something about love of moving fathermystery gentle, myth in my system fable my action quietly core of core.Sensory harvest of summer nurture,the rhythm, having no real precision,has no after for me, from no before.

MAT

THEW

PLU

MB

Low water.

After water, only air is deeper,winnowing festoons of pinking wild rose.Pull of river her relentless keeper.

Surface so cold you think it might shatteropening irresistible to close.After water, only air is deeper.

We kept a common watch, no one saw her,a few were sure, her walking by the flow.Pull of river her relentless keeper.

Unusually, so close after winter,strange, in a way, the river run so low.After water, only air is deeper.

First of the year, in a way, the sweeter;smitten, frail petal she dropped in the tow.Pull of river her relentless keeper.

Here, river bide darkly. They deliver.Impossible gifts so hard to let go, after water, only air is deeper.Pull of river, her relentless keeper.

Lulled.

We hang in deep moments of historysurfacing through lover and family,the motion gently handling us tied and blind fold, the dawn holding our breath.

We accept. Let the living guessdying breeze touched of our pleading brothers.

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theA SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHY & POETRY EDITION

ISSUE #8 FALL 2012

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AUTUMN SHIFT

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theA SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPHY & POETRY EDITION AUTUMN

SHIFT

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AUTUMN SHIFT

I fell asleep in the lap of the sun but awoke alone to a haze,yearning heart, dusk eyedI searched everywhere for that body that had kept me so warm.But it was the autumn shift now

The sun had gone from mebut there was no alarm to raiseMy pleas for just another daywere heartfelt but still in vainthe time has come for chill and the rainIt is the autumn shift now. I hold tight the golden memories tie them to my chest less they wither and grey and leave me alone even more depressedI console myself with the fireworks in the treesFor it is the autumn shift now.

My sky sailor has departedbut I will wait as long as it takesto feel his warmth once again fall across on my face.

counting the stars till you return and making love to my dreamsBecause it is the autumn shift now.

Angel Ito

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AUTUMN RECONSTRUCTION/NIGHT SHIFT

Photographs by Jean Luc Urbanski

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sky bridge by Jean Luc Urbanski

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Night Towerby Jean Luc Urbanski

Hari Krishna Dancers Under Waterloo Bridgeby Jean Luc Urbanski

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Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.Rabindranath Tagore

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Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.Rabindranath Tagore

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“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”Robert Frost

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”Robert Frost

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