John Edward Smallshaw

Mar 8

Agnes de Lods

My kingdom is built with
words, signs, powerful speeches,
sinister sentences, unspoken spells.

When you utter the first word,
you trace or carve a symbol in the air,
you are mine and mine alone.

Rationalizing, defending, and denying—
You detach, wrapping in theories
convincing yourself
that you possess a unique power.

You tear up your contracts,
scribbling dissonant manifestos.
You bite into my subtle meanings,
shouting at me in frustration.

I am the one who is—
the Realm of Ever-Shifting Elements.

When you return to me exposed,
opaque to others,
I am safe and dangerous—
I am your freedom
within endless captivity.

" Il n'y a pas de hors-texte." - "There is nothing outside the text"
Jacques Derrida "Of Grammatology"

#dominionoflanguage

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 8

Looking up

However bad things get
they could get worse,
you could be reading rhyming verse.

Down on your knees Mephistopheles
and beg for your life.

Where did that bomb come from?
Faust?
Proust?
I jest
they joust.

it's all Medieval
or Evel Knievel
it's
all just a stunt.

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 8

Up with the sharks that ate all the larks.

Saturday glee
so
how is it that we
are not smiling?

piling into the underground
only the tube rumbles
and
we make no sound.

Of course, we have to work
to pay our forty per cent in taxes
so
those lazy sods in Whitehall
can shirk.

I can't wait for the horse
so
I rock to and fro by myself

and what?
they'll come to lock me away?

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 6

#10word winner.

Finally

I am bigger
than the triggers
that trigger me.

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 6

Might have..

We could have kissed
but
I missed that boat.

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 5

Is there life on where?

If we ever get to the stars
and if anyone ever lives on Mars
it'll be a miracle

pipe dreams and cleaners
seen us trying in the dyeing
of the tapestries and
wove us into the woke.

So much in the news
Putin shootin' from the hip
Trump giving sane people the pip
and..
..and then
I slip into my subconscious
which is dangerous
even for me.

John Edward Smallshaw Mar 5

Memory milling

We used to play rounders at school and it always struck me as odd that the pitch we played on was square,
or maybe I was odd, 'not plumbed in' as the saying went,
Susan would say, 'not wired to the mains'
sadly
Sue's no longer here,
she's practising her ballet somewhere beyond the stars.

I spent too much time thinking about how much time dragged its feet when it wanted to and too little time thinking about how little time there was.