The August Selected Poet is Ashby McGowan

Please feel free to email Ashby at: gw10mcgowanashby@glow.ea.glasgow.sch.uk

WHEN PEOPLE DISAGREE

When people disagree, we communicate
We can use words
Or we can use weapons
Adjectives and nouns
Or missiles and bullets
How do you communicate?

Words can be happy, sad, nasty, nice, or neutral
They can be said in anger or in love
But weapons are always bad
How do you communicate?                              

When I wear a white poppy
I communicate,
Peace

THE WIND

The wind does not exist to do your bidding,
Throw a kite into my arms and I will tear it to shreds

I am in the lungs of the stumbling climber, gasping for breath on the Goatfell ridge,
Below the far wide sky,
Above the endless sea.

I am the rhythm in the Poet’s voice,
As he struggles to control the overflowing words,
And phrases,
And twists,
And turns
But I can also be found in the harsh words of a scorned lover, as they threaten revenge.
At weekends, I am in your stuttered obscenities as you reach a state of ecstasy, trembling in her bangle covered arms

During 1994, I could be found in the breath of a Rwandan child, crying out at the grave of its Mother,
“Why did you leave me alone?”
Oh, I am many things.

Sometimes, I am the angry wind that fights with the rain in the black of night,
And, quite often, you tell me that I exist merely to steal the tiles from your roof, again
At dawn, I am the soft wind that raises the Fulmar’s wing above the rising, breaking wave
And, after years of struggle, I am the breath of enlightenment that issues from the nose of the meditator as he sits in Satori.

And I will be in your mouth-hot and stale-on the day you die,
But you…[Laughs]
You will not remember that

WHILE WRITING A POEM

My head drops back
Eyes penetrate the cloudless sky
A word falls out of my brain,
Just misses my mouth,
To splash on the empty page
Spreading as an ink stain
It moves through fields of cornflowers.

Swallows race across the sky,
Open mouthed
Feeding on one color only.

A group of Scots Pine are deeper tinted in the haze of distance.
And beyond that, far beyond, the sea.

When the dark comes,
Vega rises in the cold
Eastern sky.

Ashby McGowan lives in Glasgow (Scotland) and loves poetry and short stories. He is a Buddhist and a vegan. He campaigns for human and animal rights.

His multi-voice poetry can be found HERE