#ukpoetry
On the news
the language on the vehicles changed
from the ignored alphabets
to those we sort of got:
to ambulanza
then l’ambulance
to ambulance
to ambiwlans
to carbad-eiridinn
to otharcharr
to ours
Apr 8, 2021
Apr 8, 2021 at 5:21 PM UTC
We were once well acquainted
with the wee small hours
adept at navigating neon jungles
and the deeps of kitchen philosophies
entwined with kebabs and illicit frissons,
in vino veritas conspiracies
that took weeks to unpick and apologise for
but passed
Now, if seen, those hours hold different snags,
surrounding plants are far less exotic
but familiar brambles cut deep,
immutable truths roar
when the ***** doesn’t do the talking
and morning burrs not so easily dislodged
by a full English and a million teas
Apr 8, 2021
Apr 8, 2021 at 2:47 AM UTC
Next to me was this one
and her feet were never still
she twirled and span through contretemps
and likely always will
That one had intensity
but never said a word
from blackened fingered canvases
his voice could still be heard
These two stood in spotlights
and held everyone in thrall
performing other’s stories,
their own a quieted call
And the group raised up their voices
which entwined and fit so well
and the chorus spoke of everything
they’d never usually tell
These memories, these children,
who moved, who drew, who showed,
who sang unguarded clarity
while the emptiness bellowed
Used to have us allies
used to have us care,
now, become statistics
now, are never there
Nov 21, 2020
Nov 21, 2020 at 3:16 AM UTC
Sing me a song of now
to hear what it sounds like
Broken rhythms and discords
or a bitter battled harmony?
I have my feet to stomp
and will whistle and holler free
To reach ears, hidden and open
all shaped the same
Sep 26, 2020
Sep 26, 2020 at 11:50 AM UTC
What’s left lingers on me,
your smell on my fingers,
my hair, my chafed skin,
my well washed shirts
and I could wash
I could
I know
I never knew essential
meant impossible to be without
until the scent began to fade
Sep 13, 2020
Sep 13, 2020 at 9:03 AM UTC
The smell of you,
an impossibly intense run of ones and zeroes
converted to map your DNA
G A T T A C G A...
like everyone and no one
Forbidden skin folds, slickly hidden,
I carried with me
with some half lies that helped
keep everything off radar
‘til ready
Cottoning on to the lost in me
with fingers and caresses,
blessing a gleeful wink of grins
to an adulthood
that refused to begin,
and refuses still
Jul 21, 2020
Jul 21, 2020 at 2:03 PM UTC
Wet grass caps toes,
a long missed inconvenience,
each pace lifting
weight long loved
The dappled, leaf stopped light
tries to placate,
but you won’t stay
Like time and tide
you wipe your face clean
and disappear through trees
with no trail
Jul 19, 2020
Jul 19, 2020 at 5:40 AM UTC
I shot the breeze today
with crickets, beetles,
spiders and caterpillars,
we held a moot.
Each representative, a voice:
words in the clamour
to be heard
In these lands of
many common grasses,
breeze told anecdotes,
arachnid needs
and insect calls for attention
often get ignored
Stopping to sit,
look through clutches of eyes,
sing with rattled wings
and chew cud,
can help retune the din
to be cleanly heard
Jul 18, 2020
Jul 18, 2020 at 8:29 AM UTC
The bittersweet blast
of ending another
another one.
Weird, unnatural, irrational.
Mixing maudlin with
the electric buzz of new beginnings,
we will drink and sleep,
cheap grins on our faces
‘til we’re adrift in three week’s time.
These days and friends are mine.
Jul 17, 2020
Jul 17, 2020 at 4:26 AM UTC
Bewildered by the difference,
the vast, unknown shape of it all
Not moments before,
ensconced in familiar tangles,
routinely fed and tended by parents
who flared and chattered
at the merest prospect of a threat,
met only by bolshy robins
who scoffed at fear
and tumbles of sparrows
who hid in each other
This necessary, Hail Mary leap
sees me petrified
grounded at the foot
of an adulthood full of flight,
song and the weight of freedom
if I can just get through
these cat clawed days and nights
Jul 15, 2020
Jul 15, 2020 at 10:48 AM UTC
A green myth
to explain away why things
just aren’t quite right
and the briar patch of ages
twists in verdant sinister ways
The familiar snag and scratch
bleeds differently
and won’t be soothed the same
so welts scar visible
and tell tales
New normals are bandied about
with as much thought
as the path that led here
and the beatification of old normal
is sealed
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 7:00 AM UTC
A hand cast the jigsaw pieces
of my redemption wide
and I walk to find them
Gapped puzzle patches showing
a veneer beneath, of reasonable quality,
are nonetheless an irritant
The late game phase
I assumed would be easier
has not especially yielded fruit
Still reliant on chanced epiphanies
this approach lacks the efficiency
my bald head and white whiskers
belie
Jul 11, 2020
Jul 11, 2020 at 6:48 AM UTC
I got bitten by a spider,
but this is England.
A certain arachnid
politeness is expected,
holding back on venom,
for example,
or moving at a predictable, parochial pace
and arranging eyes, legs and hairs
to not offend.
Hanging out in bedside sleeves
so an early morning stumble
is accompanied by slow burning
pin ******
leaving mild swelling and discomfort
is just not cricket.
Don’t get me started on
those chirruping buffoons.
Jun 30, 2020
Jun 30, 2020 at 1:36 PM UTC
The loud yawn of time
when you are held tight
is petrifying
An indifference to your captivity
as nature sees to normalcy
reveals our fleshy entropy
as nothing more than energy
to wax and wane
Beached pebbles
on an infinite shore
to pretend more is orange ignorance
There is solace, I guess
in acceptance,
but our primal, primate arrogance
prevents much
Jun 28, 2020
Jun 28, 2020 at 7:04 AM UTC
Let me sell you a fraction of truth
slanted to fit the froth-rage box
you live in
I’ll dress it in grave tones,
even implicate a scapegoat
so your priapic blast
has a focus
I’ll use fonts from Comic Sans
to Times New Roman
to ensure you bite the hook
When you look in our mirror
the hate will be palatable,
tasty,
wholesome
and as we gorge we’ll starve
Jun 27, 2020
Jun 27, 2020 at 6:08 AM UTC
The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours
Pause
For thought or effect,
the end’s the same
Played your hands in the game like always
But
The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours
And where did the vitriol get you,
old man?
To a better place?
Where fat white women sing your praise?
While at home your carbon copies
bust their lips
when the home team loses?
The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours
You waiting for something?
Applause for working a nine to five
and allowing a fraction
of your take home to be spent on living,
raising?
The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours
I’ll stand over you now
As you stood over me
Instead of raining blows
I’ll let the misery of your truth
Catch in your chest
and fight for the cause
The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours
Jun 25, 2020
Jun 25, 2020 at 12:37 PM UTC
Sometimes
Sundays suit fewer words
so thoughts can bed in
Even more so
with a gin and tonic
and a film
that plucks at memories
Jun 21, 2020
Jun 21, 2020 at 1:51 PM UTC
Take to the streets
and beat them with kindness,
club them with your decency,
ram home an ideology
to show that looking after our weakest
saves us all
hobble them with thumps
that scream
a little love goes a long way
that those that aren’t the same as you
in hue or shape or song,
if hearts are good,
belong in your world
cut them to the quick
with cameraderie
support and tolerance
destroy their unjust fears
and crush their tribalism
In cracking hard heads
the only death we’ll see
is a diseased past
which, unlike other countries
races or creeds,
needs to be lost and forgotten
Holding on to painful glories
costs more than the oxidised bronze
of an old man’s statue
Jun 20, 2020
Jun 20, 2020 at 7:16 AM UTC
Stand arboreally tall,
present a strength,
represent stability,
provide a safe place,
wide-branched sanctuary,
hold rooted principles,
speak truth to power,
til the hour you break and tumble,
your fingers thumbs
and your heart falling
numbed
senses bent, thoughts fraying,
tattered threads evasive,
the very idea of existence,
position,
self,
buckles
Far-sightedness retracts,
a fancy contra-zoom,
Hitchcockian,
eyes locked on your two feet,
tip-toes edged up
against your own precipice,
your own private void
We all feel this
sooner or later,
but its ridiculous melodrama
stills our tongues to tell,
til we’re left believing
we’re the only losers facing hell
To speak is strong,
to cry courageous,
to panic and dread next steps, next breaths,
is human
I pledge to listen, ask for the same
and beg that next time
we keep shooting the breeze
until the ledge fades
Jun 19, 2020
Jun 19, 2020 at 10:18 AM UTC
My free stumbling foot
disturbed your treetop dining
and you took flight,
vivid yellow talons
gripping a glut-plump
summer rat
in best of health if not for
inches of claw
****** through chest
I see that carrion
is not your only meal
as I’d believed,
discounting your size
as faux majesty
by a flamboyant opportunist
But now I see you better
and in proving to pick your battles,
know you more
Jun 16, 2020
Jun 16, 2020 at 2:51 PM UTC
Glimmers in the hinterlands
as I begin to settle
into reaching my Old Ben days.
So rage reshapes, tempers
and can be passed
to the compassionate and energised youth
Torch will still be borne
and saber swung
but I’ll pay in aches and pains
in coming days
and likely collapse to
sage blue spirit status
My anger slowly feels
like an elegant weapon
for a more civilised age
while the streets call
for the bluntness of a blaster
I’ve mastered thinking round and round
and missed chances to parry,
but my force will be added
to the great wave of change
This empire is dead
Jun 13, 2020
Jun 13, 2020 at 7:19 AM UTC
Sometimes words fall out
vehement, blood high,
incendiary,
meat thought chained
like sausage link
or metal hard train cars
yanked by emphatic engines
Other times the pool swirls
and breezes blow
oppositional
and as lungs slow labour
thoughts drift and slip from place
languid fingers trace ripples
that may mean nothing
The mind needs time to breathe
and holler equally
so we can feed and be fed
Jun 12, 2020
Jun 12, 2020 at 7:26 AM UTC
Exhausted
kneeling so grit is driven deep
and the sneer and shove
of those robed in a fake love
harries
The smug, paid for fists
of sanctioned thuggery
inflict blows that go beyond
contusion and haematoma
deep into a world soul,
and scar
Solutions are there
if we bring a whetstone
to the keen edge of care
and weaponise kindness
Because something that has
been a mess for generation upon generation
can’t be ignored to fester more
It is time to exercise rights
and excise
Jun 7, 2020
Jun 7, 2020 at 8:00 AM UTC
If you did, then you would
but you don’t, so you won’t,
to pretend otherwise
makes an *** out of you
and a corpse out of me
Jun 4, 2020
Jun 4, 2020 at 1:28 PM UTC