Mark Wyatt now lives in the UK after teaching in South and South-East Asia and the Middle East: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8647-8280. His pattern poetry has appeared since 2024 in various magazines, including Antifa Lit Journal, Artemis Journal, Ballast, Borderless, Clockwise Cat, Cosmic Daffodil, Dust Poetry, Exterminating Angel, Full Bleed, Greyhound Journal, Hyperbolic Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Libre, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Moss Puppy Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, Osmosis, The Paper, The Plentitudes, Radon Journal, Re-Mediate, Shift, Sontag Mag, Streetcake Magazine, Talking About Strawberries All Of The Time, Tap Into Poetry, Tupelo Quarterly, and Typo. Two of his poems have recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
………………………………………………………………………… Shirt of Nessus
Living the dream. That
is what it should have been for a kid
from the favelas, who’d played football barefoot
without a ball, using a sock stuffed with rags, tied
together with string, but had hungrily dreamed, all while
labouring in a sweatshop, cleaning boots, training in stifling
heat and pouring rain, falling down, getting up, persevering
through rejection. Finally, success: selection for a local
team, goals galore, scouts, agents, feverish speculation
mounting in the press. Microphones, cameras jostling
with wide eyes, a media feeding frenzy, then
an alien babble of training ground
egos, living in a hospital-sterile
hotel bubble, inner voice pleading
‘stay humble, no pressure’ even in
a throaty stadium’s intense white-
hot cauldron. Coming on cold for a
few anxious seconds, before a make
or break moment in slo mo that was
destined to haunt as a horror show
souring dreams. Welcoming applause
become poisonous jeers. Trolls out
in force. Home supporters taunting
with monkey gestures, hurled abuse
that home was in the trees, banana
skins cunningly placed as traps to
trip and induce red mist. And that
was while I was wearing the shirt,
playing for their team! That shirt
got to feel like a prison uniform,
heavy with raw flesh under a slave
owner’s whip. We can’t all be like
Pele but surely I deserved respect
© Mark Wyatt
Cypress
I
found
the kind
of tranquil
spot where I
could reflect at
leisure: plateau-high,
catching a summer breeze,
with these panoramic views
of forested hills. Once, a
melodious bard had loved the place,
then carpeted with grass, gathering
a spellbound audience of gravitating
trees: poplars, Eurasian and Italian
oaks, ash, beech, hazel, laurel and
linden trees, even maples, myrtles,
willows, elms and tamarisks, together
with ivy, vines, wild strawberries and
raspberries, all there to be enchanted.
Some of the flora decided to stay after
the party had finished, attracting bees,
nightingales, woodpeckers and squirrels,
indeed all manner of birds, insects and
small mammals (but I’m afraid that I’m no
David Attenborough and can’t go into too
much detail). Of special note was my pet
faun (for I was then an innocent child like
Rupert Brooke heroically unaware of impending
death when blood would drain and limbs turn
green), which led a pampered life until it
was accidentally sacrificed like soldiers
at the Somme. Waved off at the station into
war, these soldiers’ necks had been adorned
with silver amulets and garlands of fresh
flowers, just like my faun (compare Ovid
with Wilfred Owen). And when they all
died, I was given a mission in this
afterlife: to stand guard and
mourn, consoling. Live
your life with
love! Enjoy it
while you can!
© Mark Wyatt
………………………………………………………………………………….No fool
Don’t laugh at
my ears. Taken out of
context, they might seem large
but imagine life in the Somali desert
feeding on tufts of scrubby grass. A lion
might attack at any time; a braying family
member may call from shrublands afar. It can
be stiflingly hot and having super-sized ears
also helps us to self- regulate the temperature
of circulating blood. So, the big ears are all
good. Yet, when Midas was given an ass’s ears
he was ridiculed as a figure of fun, not that
he had done anything particularly to deserve
such a gift. Refusing to be silenced, he had
spoken up; he preferred rustic panpipes over
the music of an ornate lyre. Why should he
not? Let’s celebrate the pastoral! 5,000
years ago, donkeys and pharaohs could
be entombed side by side, so highly
were we prized. But when we left
Africa, we were stigmatized. Brave
enough to investigate danger, rather
than turn tail like horses and run, we
were labelled slow and dumb. Midas had the
chance to champion our cause, to restore our
pride, to seize the gift of ears as a kind of
honorary doctorate that might legitimize our
efforts to celebrate the rhythms and speech
of country life. Instead, he hid his ears
in a dunce’s cap, feeling shy. Thus, our
rallying cry ‘Donkeys led by donkeys’
that might have changed the narrative
never caught on.
© Mark Wyatt