Submission, and a couple of thoughts about it

The last couple of (admittedly intermittent) posts have consisted of poems rescued from old journals,that I wasn't sure had a home anywhere else.To be completely frank, I'm a rubbish submitter anyway. The ones I think are good are always the ones that get knocked back (and the ones that I was umminng and ahhing about seems to get in). I have started sending workout again, but it's a slow process, I remarked in conversation with another writer not so long ago that when Stride shut up shop I thought well that's me buggered then.

This is a combination of laziness and actually wanting to do due diligence on my part, you need to invest time inn reading journals, see what they're like,and time's always a scarce commodity with me, but I'm getting there.What I need is some sort of poetry broker, to whom I can send stuff en bloc and they can then chuck it out to where it's likeliest to get a warm reception. In the meantime, here are a couple of others I found while trawling the archives. Reading them,you can see why they probably wouldn't find a home in the same place (except here!)

Lost dates, beyond the sea wall

I’m outside the scabbed-over profanity

I’m beyond the concrete future

I live above the obvious weakness

I’ve left the brief noises

I am slaked, full, elsewhere

I don’t live in the present, I went nowhere

I’ve died for peace

I live without a thriving movement, not part of it

Skipping over the tops of flower, skating

Over the corpses of plants

Hiding in dead volcanoes

Building the temples

This perfect hell

It’s better than sany paradise

I’m away from my scars

I’m staying where I am

Lulled by peace

Still water

Corked dust

The land tethered right here

Sucked in my brackish skin

My slices of silence

My overt minerals

 

So I live outside a tiny idea

And rarely stay inside

Formby beach

 

It’s blowing a hoolie, a westerly

punctuates the wave tops

and we’re walking back to the car, treading

the fallen pine needles further into the soil

tamping the dirt down deeper

 

it was a circular argument

one of the old classics

and there’s nothing to be gained

from going over it again so we walk

in our respective silences

the pines groaning to themselves

holding themselves tight

 

we thought there’d be

a break in the weather, before

a sudden gout of sun

watching Sanderlings skitter

through the backwash

 

a hint of the afternoon

trying to sort itself out

turn things around

 

one of the birds mistimed its run

and disappeared beneath the foam

end over end

 

and we both said, in a rush

this is getting us nowhere

let’s just leave it

 

and we walk back

in our discrete versions of events

and the needles become the earth

and we’re not fighting

which is progress, of a sort