Hi these are a few of my poem's that I am looking to get published. Has anyone any ideas of good literary magazine's website's and so on that publish. Also was looking for general feedback on the content of the prose, how it flow's and so on. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks


Forget

Shedding skin, scales, teeth and nails
Burning clothes in sulphur vat‘s, and never looking back
When your past is like a knife that can cut and scratch
And your memories blow down the boulevard off the beaten track

You’ll say, I was made for something better
I was made for something pure
For something untouched and beautiful
As your friends walk out the door

So sally as you chase down the alley
and sing your sweet, sweet song
Think off me regular and often
and forget that I am gone…

John Tonner


Psycho Analysis

As I walked down the corridors and halls
I met a man, well a boy really
who talked of repressed feelings and taboo intentions
So one day I killed Oedipus
I didn’t agree with his politics
And I thought it was the ultimate irony
being that I wrote for psychology weekly
Really I should have tried to sell him a sub_script_ion!
And of course, I’d heard of Oedipus and Sigmund
but found their motivates _base_ and crass
I dunno their was something Nazi in their outlook
and the faculty didn’t like that.

By John Tonner

We’re All Free

It was love, it was hate
It was something that no-one could compensate
It was up, it was down
It was something that was once found
It was pure, it was gold
It was clean, and it was bold

Yet they’ll say “You never loved! or shared with another someone you dug”

And carry their hearts in cages
And talk about their great experiences and phases
For to love another is to give without bother
To sacrifice without honour
Saved from a life of horror

And we all love
And we’re all free
And we sold the world, for pennies, for free
“It’s different, it’s nice, it’s vacuous think twice”
I’ll bet on my soul, the key’s to my soul
And take from the cradle my kingdom, my all…..

By John Tonner


Shift Pattern


And so I saw them work the factories,
and warehouses, and theatres of death
their luminous fingers broken, and bodies
bent and repressed
the shift pattern from Thursday to Sunday
the never-ending grime, the unfulfilled lives and promises
the spirit that couldn’t decline

Everyday a mini-suicide, a 1000 day war or march
A question without an answer, a fire without a match
And in here there’s no noble savages, or prophets, or great men
No philosophers or pioneers
just Jesus son and men
And I am one of many, not special or rich
just one that’s seen something better, that longs and pains to switch

But he saw me walk the floor, with my arrogance and delusion
Observing from his golden bars, my ignorance and illusion
“What make’s you think you’ll escape this place?”
‘What make’s you think you’re different?”
I’ve seen hundreds and many, that thought they had
the answers and plenty….
And with the entropy of my youth,
battered and receded
I walk this lonely floor
disused and unneeded
And from those golden bars, that man since long deceased
another took his place, and continued said disease

By John Tonner

Ok thanks a lot will check those _link_s out properly when I get the chance. Most of the magazines are American, but hopefully will be cool with submissions from a Scottish writer. Anyway here's another poem which is in a quite dark/grunge influenced _style_:


Flows To The River, Flows To The Sea


I want to commit beautiful violence
I want to spread your blood over the walls
In the centre of my God Shaped Hole
a cancer grows and grows

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” you plead
When all I can think of is fuck, fuck, FUCK OFF
STOP,
STOP the radio noise in my head
STOP the day’s that run into one
STOP the stream that flows to the river, that bursts the dam to the sea
STOP the leaves that fall like ashen, and disintegrate like dream’s

Yet on a beautiful New Hampshire morning
Or the middle of a Scottish Sea
This plague, this legion, this curse is taken away
Taken today, taken away, taken today, taken away
And when you become one, forget, forget it all
Get restrung, re-stung, you’ve sung, you’ve sung

Tonjohner