My head
lays down over
the strong dynasty
your chest is.

I listen your heart,
arrhythmic,
reciting far away verses about
some kings without castles
nor titles.

Recklessly,
I fall asleep
inside the shelter
of your peaceful kingdom.

Your firmament applies me
a force, equal and opposite,
to the weight of my head,
full of semi precious stones
and keeps me
from falling.

Squint scurried.
From rooftop to rooftop,
He skipped and he flipped as he
Scrambled amongst the tiles,
The blur of slate was his domain,
As, through the haze of reckless speed,
The slowly revolving City
Did imprint upon his vision.
So that as his sly lids descended
Its outline he admired;
Its screaming centre he desired.

In the end even Squint cannot run forever.
So he will slow, and shade his eyes,
Catch his breath and gaze and sigh.

And when he’s had his fill of the sights and the smog.
Down he slides amongst the pipes
Of better folk; of harder folk,
Of those with Proper Names
Like ‘Welder’ and ‘Melder’
And ‘Roland’ and ‘Fairer’.
Names that came after a ‘Mr’,
A ‘Lord’ or a ‘Sister’.
Names that one Day he would have for his Own.
For in the Glass City, Names were always changin’ hands.

Squint.
Not much of a Name,
Even for one so young as he
It would seem he would deserve
A Name of much more worth
Than simple, humble ‘Squint’.

But Squint lived up to his Name.
He may look young and full of fun,
But crouch on a wall and you might just
Be appalled to see that not a moment after
Squint is left alone, his eyes will glitter.
And if any Man’s flesh could ever express such malicious scheming,
It was the writhing face of our humble Squint,
Once his eyeballs set to gleaming.

Write a Clerihew:
It’s easy to do.
Two rhyming couplets of any length:
Short and simple, that’s its strength.

Remember Johnny Giles
A player with all the wiles.
In midfield he did scheme:
For Leeds he was a dream.

Nicole Scherzinger,
What a messenger.
A Friend so loyal,
Regally royal.

Oh Nick Clegg,
Why did you have to beg
For a Tory-led Coalition,
Sending the Lib-Dems into Perdition?

(PS) All hail be to great Don Newton,
Always had a winning solution.
Played table tennis with flashing blade,
A Legend that will never fade.

Paul Butters

Preludium, or, *what has gone before:
A man makes his way, alone,
Through rocky ash and bluff,
His feet a mass of ****** scabs
His throat gruff with rust.
In his savage thirst he sees, delirious,
The City from whence he flees;
The City that stole his Name.

Furious! O righteous hate;
Bubbling! Consuming! Melding with his haze of pain:
Fickle Justice! Intangible Law! Humble Equity!
Alien words for an alien time
That has quickly descended to muck.

But we must leave this Nameless nomad
To his dark visages, for now.
Perhaps we shall return
To plough his tale and groan
To find him drowned in thirst;
In self-pity, the liquid fire.
For now- to the City, we are bound!
And the mind of one so fortunate, as to still call his Name his own.

Hobbling over rock and dust,
The Nameless winces with every weary step.
His soles scorched and torn
By the unaccustomed roughness underfoot
The jagged teeth of a prickly piping earth.

Alone he makes his way
With tiny treads towards the dying dusk.
Fatigue dragging at his limbs
Bowing his neck to leave eyes downcast
And unfocussed; seeing naught but blurs and
The swirling and swaying of the trembling past.

A city:
Grand buildings stretching as one toward the sky;
Great lions waking from their feast and basking
In the brilliance of noonday air.
The bustle of flesh coursing about their purpose
The tight press of bodies all around
And the chatter and the natter and the laughter and the anger.

And then the silence.
The fear and the glares.
The hunger
And a guilty aversion of one’s eyes.

The shattering of glass
The raising with fire and boot.
And the stealing of Names.

And now here he trudges.
With tiny treads and into naked night.

I love you like the apple
that transgresses from a tree.
It is pulled downward
and away
from calm familiarity.
Into the abyss of earth it crashes,
and is bruised.

And as the skin of all my mirth, will then decay
it shall infuse
with the origin of its origin
the birth by which its birthed,
and thus the end of its beginning,
and there forever stay.

So I shall count my loss as winning,
and ne'er again the two confuse.

We began solid rock
Just you and me
You loved me and i loved you too
We had an understanding
That when an object is in motion
It should continue on forever
We were in motion on and on
-------
Until that rule was broken
And we suddenly stopped moving
Gravity had interfered
And falling back we had returned
And i checked back on that rock
Not much solid it was as before
I thought i loved you
and you thought you loved me too
But to every action there is a reaction
Like every beginning has an end
Our relationship was still young
but had gradually disappeared
Like a ghost
That slowly    
f a d e d    
a   w  a  y
When it had accepted it didn't belong !

i stand in front of the Bath,
Taking a moment to enjoy the experience before it starts.

Stream rises from the Surface,
Like butterflies over a field
of fresh spring blossoms
It hovers, seductively inviting me in with a lazy sense if urgency.

In the corner, a lone Candle flickers in the rising Steam,
Lazily shining its Light
Like a Capetonian on a lazy summers evening sipping wine under the setting sun.

The Water,
blue from the bubblebath,
Smells like an orange, ancient, triangular spire in the early dawn of Time.

The hot Water receives my body
And awakens hibernating skin
From its cold, white winter's slumber.

The curious Water
Finds its way all over my skin
In every corner it can,
It crawls into
And caresses me softly

Slowly I relax,
As Sir Isaac Newton makes my bath colder
And as my skin and water temperatures equalise
I lose all sense of self

Held afloat by the mighty Water
I gaze at the white bubbles
As they dance on my chest
Popping and merging
Reflecting light and whispering
Until I finally fall asleep in blissful relaxation.