Bindweed Online 2021 is now launched! Since we (here in Northern Ireland/ the U.K.) are starting 2021 in another lockdown, there’s no better time than now to hunker down with some great poetry and fiction that you can enjoy anywhere in the world, whether you are in lockdown or not. New writing will be published every few days throughout the year, appearing on the Bindweed Magazine homepage and archived on the Issue 11 page. Submission Guidelines can be found there too for any writers and poets wishing to submit work. We read all year round and accept all genres and themes.
But the lees sounds so mucher the betterer, the best dregs
All hints of chocolate and rounded fruits
And, and Dionysius’s fashionable mask
Goldenly E.U. stars on blue smudge
Reassurance of highest quality
National Geographicca typico, besto in all the bloody mess
Vine bile, or grape tar, or agro syrup,
Or portable, potable, pissable heartburn
Unfastens the thinking and lays a body low
Two scoops of, no, Medicine to forget
Yeah, yeah, Medicine to forget
Read, in a mag, root o’ culture, bulwark of civilization
Like getting down on all fours to sip the waters of that, that
Mystical river, the one, you know
Which?
Medicine to forget
How it works, forget
But always remember who makes the stuff
Where and why for, and what they charging?
That’s a good Primitive.
Billion Euro Cheeseburger
(Page 9)
Billion Euro Cheeseburger, its coming soon,
whether through hyperinflation, hypergourmandation, avant-
garde arty stunting, or tax hole ‘sploitation, it is coming,
Billion Euro Cheeseburger,
laugh, don’t laugh, eyebrow arch, eyeball roll, same diff.:
a Billion Euro Cheeseburger’ll be served up, just the same,
‘But will you swallow it?’ will be the question claimed via
MEdia to be on everybody’s oft-spoken-for, static lips.
Billion Euro Cheeseburger, grab her by the buns and list off
every currency name securely deposited in your head, past
present, real and made up, blink and think of their symbols,
cos I can’t be bothered to do it for you anymore for I fear,
Billion Euro Cheeseburger, Happiness Hand Grenades and things
that make as much out of little sense as Grexit, stage left.
Eu-topia
(Page 16)
In my Eu-topia,
Bureaucrats would be promoted solely on the grounds,
Of honesty, personal honour and due diligence,
An army of friends and an armoury of credentials,
Following after school chums, death-gripping their coattails
Would be grounds for immediate dismissal,
Also, the highest pensions should go to those,
Who don’t make real money,
In their prime,
All right fine,
I’ll eat my Brussels sprouts and go to bed without dessert,
To have night terrors about nativist campaigners,
Because that’s really worked out so well in Europe’s past,
At midnight, I hold tight to my stuffed plush bear, Utopia,
A harmless fantasy, like Santa Claus when I was younger,
It helps keep me sane.
The Adversity of Diversity
(Page 7-8)
“I’ve got nothing against that sort of people. Not in general. Just the criminals who steal our jobs. You agree with me, sure enough.”
“Give us another beer, mate.”
“Right! Exactly. There you go. The facts are there if you open your eyes, listen to the radio. In the papers though, read carefully . . . But you know it’s about our way of life.”
“Fuck yeah, so who you putting your money on this Sunday?”
“That’s not betting. Rigged, all of it, a fix. This entire season money’s talked. That, that pretty boy can be brilliant to watch. I’ll grant you he’s in fine form, but I don’t like the dodgy look of him. Wouldn’t let my daughter near the likes of him. Made the boy take his poster down. Not a proper role model.”
“Too right. So, nice weather we’re having. Heard it won’t last past Monday, but the fuckers are wrong half the time.”
“My boss at work is one of them. But he’s alright. Most the time. Except when he pals up with his own, but the exception proves the rule, as they say, and they’re right. My dad said so, rest his bones. Never get that supervisor job. You watch. They don’t play fair, always a united front they put up. Take that stuck-up bitch next door. Like her ugly kids shit don’t smell.”
“You’re a laugh minute, sure enough, and you got a lot to say and that’s the truth. But leave the children out of it, eh? They can’t help it.”
“I do what’s best by my people and I tell it like it is. Said that to the magistrate too. Out of character, out of character, right, sorry. Bollocks! Damn sure they weren’t going have it their way with me. Not when they’re the ones that are out of character. No backbone, no values. Ah, but what can you do these days? You have to laugh.”
“Cheers, I’ll drink to that.”
“You’ll drink to anything, Pat, you crazy Irish bastard.”
“Give us a ciggie.”
“Fuck’s sake. Here.”
“Ta very much. You’re a prince of a man.”
“Oi! You over there. The fuck you looking at, cunts? That’s right. On yer way. Don’t eyeball me. Lived here my whole life.”
“Steady, man. Mind the heart condition. Boys probably didn’t mean anything by it. Leave it alone.”
“Everybody knows me as a decent bloke.”
“Uh-huh, that’s right.”
“I know how I’m voting, and you should do the same.”
“Can’t be arsed, things are the way they are, and I can’t change a thing.”
“Fuck off then.”
“Joking, joking. You have to have a laugh. Every day above ground is a good day.”
“Oh, well, alright then. But jokes apart, these goddamned asylum-seekers are colonizing this street. Christ, and what they make their women wear! It’s barbaric. I remember this neighborhood when it was the way it should be.”
“Say, where’s the bog, mate?”
“Through there and to the left. Just don’t piss all over the seat. The missus would fucking murder me. Crazy foreign bitch. You know that lot. They’re hot-blooded.”
Congratulations to Bindweed contributor, Charles Rammelkamp on his forthcoming poetry collection, Mortal Coil, now available for pre-order from his publisher, Claire Songbirds Publishing House. More information on how to order can be found at: https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/featured-authors/charles-rammelkamp/
Attention Bindweed contributors of yesteryear! As of January 2021, we are changing our ‘Free promotion for Indie Authors’ to ‘Free promotion for past contributors’. Essentially, what we intend to do is to give back to you, fabulous writers and poets, for choosing us as a home for your writing over the years.
So, if your work has appeared in one of our past issues (Issues 1-10, or Issue 11 as of January 2021) please send a link to buy/ link jpeg of your cover for your newly published or forthcoming poetry or short story collection or novel and we’ll give it a shout!
