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ryn  Jul 2015
Derelict
ryn Jul 2015
I am but willing prey to the wiles of the full grown moon.
She guards the night sky...
While I patrol these grounds...
Grieving over the seconds that have gone too soon.

I am a vessel... all emptied and barren.
what once was full,
now echoes faint
the glories of yesteryears.
Afloat still, adrift upon the currents... aimless and sullen.

I am a ghost... haunting no one but my own.
Immortalised...
Anchored...
to a body of mist and haze...
Occupying this space where worthy wind had once blown...

I am a beggar offering nothing but my open palms.
Hope etched tight
into my knackered knuckles
and calloused digits.
Please... take them in yours...
soothe them...
grant me your touch, your coveted balm.
Poetic T  Jun 2015
Tug Of War
Poetic T Jun 2015
Spank it, **** it,pull it hard, call it a Name,
Make it hard, just us those palm muscles
That have been working over time on this
Single person and their knackered hand.

****** it, shout at it, **** this doesn't usually
Happen, dam why are you not going hard.

Put **** on it make it wet, like in a *****
Just imagine two wet lips legs nicely spread
Apart, just  pam and her five sisters and a
Lonely curved palm.

Use your imagination so it,ll stay hopefully
Hard, my god my hands going dead this is
To much like hard work.

Tug in silence or moan out loud, over a magazine
Or over **** on TV, sound turned down don't
Want other to know, what ever floats the boat just
To get to that point that you need to ooze it all out.

But for the love of god make sure your door is locked,
To have your mother or wife walk in saying,

"WHAT THE ****,

You'll be limp in a second, and lost for a good excuse.
Of why you got ****, toilet roll and hand spanking
While shouting filthy ***** words out.
ryn  Sep 2014
Absolution
ryn Sep 2014
These hands have clawed with blind eyes
Chipped nails on fingers working on knots and ties

Fingers that recklessly point to reproaches and blames
Never to self, righteousness through arrogant claims

Now aware, these palms have covered my face in contempt
For they've partook in activities; indulgent and unkempt

Rubbed skin raw on life's coarse sandpaper
Ever searching for the coming of the unanticipated saviour

Broken flesh hopeful for newly formed skin
Like tattered souls pleading for absolution of sin

Only skin deep but unfavourable experiences do fester
Expecting the proverbial infection to blow over

Here they are, held unclenched and riddled with pocks
Weathered and sore from time's infinite mocks

Maybe thereafter, will be awaited healing
Perhaps soon after, I will be forgiving

See now... Hands faced up, parted as halves
Asking not for alms but instead your acceptance as salve

Take into yours, these knackered, gnarled up palms
Let your porcelain-like touch relieve like life reforming balm
Chris Slade Dec 2018
(A Tribute to Ted Slade - poet, 1937-2004)

This new friendship. This journey on which we were just setting out.

How will we work it now you've...well...gone?

It was going so well. That's the way I saw it anyhow.

It had only been a year - we two - back in each other's circle...

Same planet - different orbit. Though I'll never know now what your thoughts might have been..



This 52 year gap in our 'acquaintance', for that's all you'd ever say it was
,
it closed at dad's (your Uncle Bud's) funeral - as he leapt 'on-flame' to the ether.

He didn't half want to go..."Why don't they just let me slip away?"
And then it was you I wanted to know amongst those finger buffet scoffers.

Those ribboned aces never knew that Bud just kick-started their Lancasters and 'Spits' at Leconfield and Liberia.



Bud's morphine muted passing proved positive, and thankfully at last - 

(he might remember now) - he helped kick-start too this belated kinship between us.

Jack would have been pleased about that...(Bud too I know)

"a good trade" he'd have called it. "I'm knackered anyway".

I was always curious about our respective dads - they only ever sent Christmas cards...no letters. No love.



Bud gave me a book  before he swapped "heaven's hopper" for the "take & bake".

"Eer-yar" he wheezed...this is more up your street than mine..."

"Yer what?..."Poetry?...No... I can't make head nor tail of it. Like Shakespeare...Where's me glasses?"

and, with that ,the "Last Arm Pointing" welded that closing gap between us tight shut.

I read 'Mystery Tour' to Bud...about Jack's 'motorised passing' and he cried. So, it was up his street. after all.



Your words filled me in on distant memories...made solid.
Missing chunks I'd seen but never written down
.
Of Withernsea and its winter isolation

of Jack, his life - and how it intertwined with yours.

I've not found too much yet about Phyllis. Is there a darker story there? Who'll tell me now?



Your final work, tireless as ever, from your New Malden 'crow's nest'...

was steering your second collection to print...and then...

Your literally-literal Mugs and Sweats - flying off the shelves of a California warehouse.

Disabled? Pah!  Why should they ever know the what & why behind the who and when?

Your 'disability'...would only 'publicly' let you down if your trike sustained a puncture in Richmond Park.



"Hi Cuz...Where do I go to get mugs and sweat shirts printed?"

And then, whilst I was looking through directories & old invoices,

you whizzed across the earth on the wings of your laser guided mouse.

By the time I'd got the phone numbers of long distance, half remembered contacts -

you had designs submitted, distribution and royalty deals sorted and were planning the next big thing.



Your freehold on the planet was the web...your very own super-short cut.

Who needs invalid cars when you can 'fly digital'?

You were a lover of the dub-dub-dub which loved you back in floods.

Now, even when your body has deserted you - it still throws us pages and pages - of you - and about you.

The Noddy Holders and Wes the Western Gun-slinger, pale by comparison, they'd envy your PR knack.



Instead of trying to phone, (these heavenly BT - or is it ET-connections often end in wrong numbers)...

and, because a lot of the time talking took it out of you, I'll keep writing like I did before.

Replies would be good. But I often used to write out of turn anyway.

So yes, things could get a bit one sided...forgive me if I 'go on', and... you don't!

But I'll keep writing to Ted@poetrykit.org and read the answers in your books and old e-mails of the family's past.



Cheers Ted...Lots of love Chris (Cuz) Slade.
Ted Slade was a published poet with (for a sufferer of severe kyphoscoliosis) a stellar career. Only started school at age 12... Qualified for Uni at 16. A metalurgist at Filingdales after graduation (so, a real 'propellor head')... He switched to Head of Marketing for the Portuguese Tourist Authority (as you do)...An Atheist and Communist, his last job before dedicating to poetry was as PC Network specialist at Kingston University...On retirement he turned his attention full time to Poetry and founded www.poetrykit.org We lost touch big-time and only met again in our 60s (mental) and found we had so much in common... except I was and never will be a propellor head!
Lara  Oct 2017
Moon
Lara Oct 2017
I lie awake.
The half moon,
whose soft white shine
invades my room
and makes the tears that rest on my cheeks sparkle;
illuminates half of my face
so that the moon and I
can become a whole.

Only me
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside goes the party-goer
-knackered and filled with a portion of fresh memories
that won't be found in the morning-
to his rest.

Only he
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside stumbles the drunkard
-with repressed thoughts and events
that he couldn't erase out of his memory by a bottle-
to his end.

Only he
and the silence of 2 A.M.

Outside staggers the broken one
-with blood that’s drowning in wine and as red as the lips of the woman he tries to forget-
to his death.

Only he
and the silence of 2 AM.
L.T.
Jimmy silker Sep 12
Pulling lumps
Out of my neck
Like a knackered
Teddy bear
In the teeth
Of a puppy.
HEART-SHIP

About me, I swear down.
I'll tell thee of treks – how I in radged-days
put up with fretted-time,
sought abode and still do, get bitter ***-care,
in us heart-ship, scary waves’ rolling,
where narrow neet-ogle
often kept us at heart-ship’s stem
when it scurries by cliffs.

Us feet clammed by cold,
bound by frost’s frozen cold steel,
where those frets sighed
marfin about heart;
clemmed within ripped
mind of sea-knackered.

2.  CARE-BEGGARED

Town lads have it soft, dunt know nowt
as how us, care-beggared, ice-scratched sea dwellers wintered in exile,
swayed from mates and kin,
rigged with rime-crystals.
Hail stones bounced off our decks.
I heard nowt there but sea’s groan,
ice-flecked seas furrow. Heard at times summat like swan’s. And made glad by gannet’s and curlew's clamour,
for homely laughter,
gull-shriek for bitter ale.
Hail beat up stone-cliffs, where feathered
spray nattered to them; often eagles dew-feathered screamed.
No mates sheltered us,
or made us feel minded.

Town folk dunt credit it,
complacent with blessings
and few baleful journeys –
proud and wine-sozzled, how I, knackered,
often on sea-snickets had to abide.
Night-shadow snuffed us out;
snow fell from the north;
rime bound soil; hail felled earth
coldest of corns. So, now, thoughts
mither my heart, that I the deep sea,
salt-waves, should fetch myself on.

3. NOR

Salt yearn moves us gently.
Desire is a gust catcher.
Heart-ship bobs in its harbour,
as it pitches and yaws
to stranger islands.
Refugees homeland seek.
Though embarking, the reckless, skilful, youthful, brave,
do not know what life has in store.
Nor my hands on harp or on coin,
on lasses limbs delight,
nor on owt save wayward water.


4. UNWINTER

These woodlands unwinter too much with blossom,
give too much gold to villages, overbrighten meadows. World pushes on, all this urges us,
doom minded spirits to leave on flood-ways.
Heart-ship tugs at moorings.
Summer cuckoo's mournful call urges,
bodes sorrow, bitter in breast-hoard.
If tha blessed with comfort, how does tha know what some endure on tracks of exile?


5. WHALE-WEND

Heart-ship tugs at its harbour.
My imagination in mere-flood,
in whale plunge, wide in its turns
eager for seas vastness. Gannet yells
as whale-wends, spirit quickens over holm’s deep, irresistible delights of life are more
than this life that flits on land.
Illness, old age and aggression
wrests life away, bests breath.

6. PRAISE OF LIFE

Praise life. Before tha death
tha must climb mast against malice,
shun dodgy devils. Days stale,
earth’s grandeur beggared,
now no bosses, gold-givers gone,
glorious deeds done,
live out their doom.
Joys stale, weak rule this world,
live here afflicted. Glory humbled,
earth grows old, withers this November.
Old age fares over thee; tha bright face pale;
gray-haired, tha grieves over tha mates
given to the sod. Homeless tha flesh, then, when life is lost to thee, tha cannot sweet swallow nor sore feel, hand stir nor mind think.
Tha gold means nowt beside graves of tha mates, that proud deed will not go with thee,
gold is no help to a self full of itself.

7.   THE MEASURER

The world's craftsman is a Measurer
that turns the earth. Founder of fields
and sky. Only the foolish mess with it
and die unexpected. Tha must be humble.
The Measurer helps them be strong
as is minded in steer of their heart-ship
wise in tha decisions, clean in tha ways.
Anchor tha fire or be burned.
  Fate is stronger Measurer than any a tha thought.
Harbour is a life long in love of Earth,
hope int skies. Through all rough tides
and smooth trust in water and the sod.
I thrill at transliterating poems into Yorkshire vernacular.
onlylovepoetry Jun 2018
dinner Greenport-side, watching the shuffling ferries do
their sworn duty, a back ‘n forth wearisome toll,
while we sip a rose and a PBR, respectively and with respect

no enthusiasm afterward for anything but an early off to bed,
and slip into pj’s asap

me in my knackered wholly Hanes fundie knickers,
no thinking required
but she
retires, re-attires in a summery combo,
a gray sweat t-shirt and green and white
plaid pj pants

which she is unawares are my favorites
cause they lop off fifty years,
a teenage woman re-incarnate recreated
cause her figure now womanly full,
better than then

morning awake l, a disturbance of the peace,
recall a snuggling a wake up hug,
and her bottoms conspicuously
gone missing

over break fast I inquire
over yogurt and berries and a
smoked mozzarella omelette,
what happened to those plaid bottoms?
assuming I was innocent of any transgressions
as best I could recall

with a sheepish childlike grin,
that made look like she was twenty again,
to match the now yoga toned body,
she confesses:

forgot to tie the bowstrings
and they slipped down to my ankles

blessed and cursed I thought!

too much of a gentleman to take advantage,
AND my situational awareness was slipping badly,
but when a poem comes across,
ready and pre-writ,
I’m still young enough to grab aholt of it

and never let go


6/23/18
René Mutumé Mar 2014
I smoked. There was a good hand in the sky. It looked like a peach draped over tatty buildings. Hemisphere broken open at the end of a fist, and then at the end of an arrow shattering the pieces of night surrounding it, as the moon clouds shot, devouring it.

I flicked my cigarette down on the floor of the fly over instead of flicking it into the avalanche of cars below. Who knows what something as miniscule as a flying tab **** might make a person think. It would not be a fly. It would be a tab ****. It would be something that distracted a driver on the motorway, which they traced back to my finger flicking it.

It would be rude and imprecise, a car loses control and then flips over for a second, then paints the carriageway with ten multiples of itself flying and screaming. The driver flys inside the car. And I continued to cross the fly over. Outside the bookies at 10pm there is a dog looking up at me, his head tilts like he is asking me something, as he starts to follow me, leash dragging.

"Oi! Oi! Where the **** are you going?" A mouth from the ****** says, "Oh me, just down here." I reply, "I was talkin to the ******* dog you ******* mug." The gentleman added. The small white staffy was still looking up at me. Well, one of us is going to have to answer him, his tail said. "Oh ******* then." The mouth says changing back again into the building. "I guess we're going down there then." Schrödinger says, or 'Schrö', as he allows me to call him.

I light another cigarette as more arrows are fired from the sky, more like wet arrows now. "Well you'll need to pick up my leash mate; I don't want to look like a ******." Shrö says, "Ah sorry dude," I say picking it up as we continue to walk.

"Most of the people who talk to me are a little mad." The small staffy says. But why am I called Schrödinger? The staffy asks me. Ah come on, you don't get it? Well I do apologise but I am not that sharp on my quantum theory philosophy, and I am also a dog. Oh yes, I concede to him in my flat.  "Do you mind opening the door to your balcony pilgrim?" He asks me next.

"Sorry sir?" I ask him, "Well it either goes on your floor or I do it outside." He says. I open the door as he asks, and then lean against the frame as he takes a ****, and I watch him. He scrapes his hind legs on the concrete as if forgetting that it is concrete and not soil. You remind me a lot of love, I mention to him, smoking.

“You know what pilgrim? I think I prefer the name Otto Gross.” The staffy says looking up at the mixing night and I hatch open a new can pouring some into his bowl on the balcony. Cheers love. He says. He puts his two front paws on the meter high wall where my balcony overlooks a junk yard, and begins to speak.

“There is my lover! As screamed across sense and filled with conjoined gait, of my eye and hand, I am jealous of the city she walks in, by me, as I am half departed, myself, near a fox that gathers in ball, by me and is a better *****, than me, here, so I learn, from vermin, how to hide, how to fight, and how to re-appear. How to have humour, like theirs, and there unplanned joy-“

Woah “*******”, I’m spewing, a poet dog! A pile of dosh in the equilibrium! I rush back into my flat and grab a pencil and paper, shake a bit, take a sip, keep on listening, then nearly fall **** forwards returning to the balcony scribbling. And there’s a ****** dog talking.

“I trit-trot across roads with my last owner, winning jobs only within tasks of cemetery light, inside and on, the wall; so curled so, as I sleep outside, so sojourned within, grey dusk, car rivers- I spit! Not so far as giants can, just a piece of spittle, just shadow puppets dancing, just marionettes laughing-”
Schrödinger sang on my balcony beginning to howl, making the lid of the box open.

“To ******* the rain. To share within it, its fire, its knowable drench, of skin like hymn, that is so far penetrating, and mingled past flesh, opened and quakeless to the onslaught of lightening swans! The quickening fury, of several slow days, and lives, devouring the metronome of salutes, upon heart buildings coming down like tetrahedrons drawn by many hands, of dusk filth opening to the arrays of data goods and gods, and produced from the pockets of gibbous mooned skies, and I whisper to the tsunami: mood unhung, bellowing away from the dog fights, and unpainted streets, I seem: To be praying...”

Monday may come soon I doubted, watching the staffy speak.

“Planets growing teeth, in the stars and the junk-yarded iris, succour comes, and so do the sad journeying flies, flying in the mouth of many gales, as extremities to the planet’s engine, affordable, losses, condensed in- and danced solarlessly -in, dances of mortuary, and wedding sung precipice, the edge of a gale, happy to blow my face, away, just gust gust gust! And yes. I do pray a little, and past holocaust of saccharine tune, our shame is forgotten in the simple, rhythms, of a cup- a hand, a castle flock of gulls, landing in water.”

A dog wags its tail because it has just shat, his owner gone, bag ready below ****, I feel streets clean with loving owners hostile to the madness, of the furious dozen dozen flies- lobotomised drool, ready and alive enough, to laugh, and if you are knifeless, maybe a lil knackered, from work - - we might haul up: eternity, my love, and have a lil more, humour! In our sheets and face and sky, an take a **** holiday, right where you are stood or sat, walking, or resting.

And there are no gods, but the ones that let you see them creasing their soft cheeks and aging beside you, together, letting time die, parapets soak in the weather, and say: ‘hey’, here are my bones, there has been a lot of twisting done, but all they need, is yours.
Travis Frank Sep 2016
Just past the Rastafarian berry tree
Where bully beef boys tattooed their love’s names
On the tree’s outstretched arms,
A forgotten remnant lay
In relic and rot, its air choked with damp mildew and dust.

Not wishing to join Garvey’s gang
Or bow before Selassie’s seat,
I left Jah’s clenched jig hanging,
Allowed the inkers to indent incessantly,
Going solo into the house of rubble.

What a treasure!
From smudged, stale mascara,
The aged beauty’s heavy, dim eyes
Cast dim shadows on her rough, ***** neck
On which I now trod barefoot.

Her necklace of knackered newspapers
Hollered hoarsely through the overlying cardboard boxes,
Lowly lisping, ”Sovereign shed my lady once was
And shall forever more remain. Look not at her wilted skin –
Consider only this immortal necklace and live forever therein.”

— The End —