Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
In the narrowest of lanes
I found the sweet shop.

Behind dusty crumbling glasses
dozed the old keeper
smelling of sugar, milk and sweat
over fossils of Paleolithic sweets
on a time machine from the century
he never was
to a millennium he doesn't bother about
clinging onto clay by pottery
not succumbing to synthetic
counting not on android
but accounting on parchment
with the art of finger's arithmetic
most intricately scribbled with pencil
announcing progress is a trouble
not designed for the simple
and contentment has no more nitty-gritty
than price and quantity.

Over his head
spiders worked and reworked
from the ceiling to the glass
as have been doing
since Carboniferous.
 Feb 2017 David Ehrgott
Pax
I'll leave my
Heart here
crying for
something.
The man at the studio doesn't like us

we aren't pretty as the teens
not dazzling like the newly weds
our faces are pretty grim
smiles are once a river
foreheads dry riverbeds
eyes hold no commotion
but he does it for money
and winds up quick.

We walk to the river
where under the grey February sky
she plays with our reflections
babbling and breaking us
into unreadable pieces.
February 16, 2.30 pm
 Feb 2017 David Ehrgott
Gidgette
When we were young,
Before broken by age
We danced our grand pas de deux,
Upon life's stage
Our plie's were graceful
Many grand pas, we danced
And I, never knowing,
A solo I chanced
I thought I'd always,
Be your danseus
I'd hoped for no other ballerina,
You'd have a use
You did glissade
Into my heart
But I see I've danced solo,
From the start
Pas de waltz en tournant, alone
My dance now
Since your grand jete, from my side
This ballerina, will take her bow
And for the final time,
The curtain closes
But for this ballerina,
There are
No roses
 Feb 2017 David Ehrgott
Gaffer
Dolly
 Feb 2017 David Ehrgott
Gaffer
Death surrounded her
Bombs falling captured the stories inside her head
Real life tears fell over blood-soaked mornings
Screams pierced right into the reality she called life
Friends, limbs missing made her look abnormal
Laughter left the country vowing never to return
She watched the burning figure running towards her
Collapsing before her, pleading for death
But death didn’t want him that day
He wasn’t one of the fortunate ones
She climbed into the basement seeking solace
Clutching the doll who like herself seemed to have survived in one piece
But something wasn’t right
Dolly was living a lie
She pulled one arm and one leg off
Dolly smiled
And the world became normal again.
 Feb 2017 David Ehrgott
Fay Slimm
Difference.

Praise for all variation,
that diversified play of colour and shape
which takes away sameness
and paints nature with sheer tessilation.
Hooray for the patchwork
of harlequin stripes in that mackerel sky
or those chequered blotches
embroidered on coats of every dalmatian.
Applause for the hues
shot through peacocks and each rainbow,
those pied streaks in ponies,
marbling of stone, the frets in wide bands
on speckled trout, braided
tattoos over the backs of zebras and tigers
flecked with a motely
collection of artistically peppered mosaics.
Smiles for tri-colours
in butterflies and pibald frogs just made
to reflect luminous wet.
For kaleidoscope difference let praise be
and for all crazed iridescence
seen in the glorious abundance of nature.
A tribute to G.M. Hopkins the poet who lived a monastic life and died in his late twenties.
Next page