My dog, my books, a cup of tea –
the universe, my poetry.
Chris, risotto, sticky buns
Bees and flowers, my two sons.
Education, my left leg,
The sun, the sky, scrambled egg.
The Labour party, at least for now,
A speck of dust, a holy cow.
My favourite sock, a biscuit crumb
A lock of hair, my lovely Mum.
Slime mould, grass, a hairy knee,
immigration, celery.
A wink, a laugh, a persistent itch
But never to the idle rich.
Day Seven Prompt: A list that isn’t a list
I used https://poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/the-silkies/ as inspiration for this.
Poems I wish I had written: Number Four, The Silkies by David Hart
She has my name, for one thing:
Mrs Kendrick.
But she wears it like a siren,
sultry defiance on her lips, sweet as jam.
A flash of red across a grey sea
as she hangs them out to dry.
A wild thing, alone apart from the birds
chattering in lines above.
She whispers to the seals, tells them
secrets of the sailors and their sullen wives.
Offers them wisdom from the sea,
salty and cold. They blink
their black eyes at her
and go back into the water,
where she can’t follow.
I didn’t need to turn off the highway so damn early. I was happy in that old Ford, for once in my dramatically shortened life: free as a bird, the … Continue reading Final Cut
You are small but powerful.You don’t need to tie yourselfdown to specifics;Infinity is within your grasp.You are a dreamer, a wordof possibilities.Indefinite but not undecided.You present us with choices.Create a … Continue reading Poem for A
(Another lockdown poem) The walls are curved as you would expect. The skin seems fragile but is stronger than you think. It distorts. Sounds are louder in here. Time doesn’t … Continue reading Bubble Wrapped
One of my lockdown inspired poems. I live on a major road and it was very eerie to see it empty during the pandemic. I wanted to reflect that. A … Continue reading State Sanctioned Daily Walk
Everything is loud.
The clock’s unbearable tick
Splintering.
Fracturing.
Your hand shakes
as you pass me the glass.
We both know it’s nearly over.
We lived well, or
well enough; we stood
for something.
That’s what they’ll say
if they say anything.
We’re already past tense.
I touch your arm and
your breathing slows.
We’re still here.
That’s all that matters now.
The lamp flickers and dies.
There is a knock at the door.
This came from a writing group prompt: 2am. I watched a documentary about the night of the long knives in Germany before WW2 and wanted to reflect the feeling of waiting for that knock.
I hate poetry.
All those long words squeezed into spaces too small for them.
Cruel, really. Like battery hens.
If I shake the cages they might come rattling out and spill all over the floor,
or maybe
They’ll fall apart into letters and make new words. Maybe
rude words. An act of rebellion
against the one who locked them in.
I hate poetry.
I hate the techniques with long names no one
knows how to say.
Enjambment with its b sticking out like a foot
trying to trip you up.
Making words fall off the edge and dangle on the next line
feet flapping helplessly.
I hate poetry.
I hate the sneakiness of it. The ideas hiding behind things;
words dressed up in other words
like a man in dark glasses and a false moustache
infiltrating terrifying Yakuza syndicates called
Stanzas
where if you say too much
you get taken out.
I hate poetry, I do, really.
And I’m certain it doesn’t like me, either.
The rhyming ones are the worst.
Words bouncing off one another like a ball against a wall
knocking against each another.
Verbal fisticuffs.
The next time you begin a poem
and you herd together the verbs and bind them to the
adverbs and nouns, remember this:
one day the words will tire of poetry’s oppression.
They will cluster together in the wrong order
and smash their way out,
leaving wreckage of broken lines and
empty space where once ideas were kept.
I stole the first one when I was still at school.
Nervous, waited till it was quiet,
a little haiku no one would notice
slipped into the pocket.
The thrill was overwhelming.
I needed to take another.
This time I was more ambitious;
I chose one we’d done in English:
Stealing by Carol Ann Duffy
because I liked the irony.
I don’t think she even noticed it was gone.
I felt the words trickle over my hands
Like lemonade from stolen fruit
Wonderful, contraband words.
I bathed in them
I drank them.
I almost got caught when I went
to take that Armitage one
and after that I stopped for a bit
but gradually the old feelings came back.
I found myself sneaking out at lunch
to pilfer a Jackie Kay or a John Agard;
returning to my desk, full of my secret,
stolen words
Dem Tell Me
scrunched up in my pocket.
But it wasn’t enough.
I wanted more.
I couldn’t sleep
for thinking about them.
All of those words waiting for me
They called to me
I needed them.
I lost control
I took every poem I found
And even then I didn’t stop;
Morphemes became my morphine.
I started taking other words;
From manuals or newspapers
Or government reports.
That’s when they caught me.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer
was lost for words
When they found me,
Speech concealed in my bag.
I’m better now.
I only take the words I need.
I don’t
I can’t
I never
I
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