FROM INSIDE THE GLASS

By

Tony Stringfellow.

PRESS RELEASE 16.03.26

‘From Inside the Glass’ is Tony Stringfellow’s fourth printed collection of poetry.

Tony always endeavours to strike a chord and give rise to some deep thoughts on the issues faced every day, whether personal, social or global, although he does like to punctuate his collections with some lighter reflections...

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So now that we’re well into spring

With birds all beginning to sing

From the depths of our brain

Cleansed by cold wintry rain

There pops up an ancestral thing

It’s St Patrick’s Day, and of course

The medics are all out in force

If they look within us

Our blood type is Guinness

And nary a sign of remorse

You’ll find on that day every year

We only will sup ...

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That Moment in Spring

Beneath the silver-speckled silken veil

of winter's end I'm wheedled in the gleam

to reckless deeds of make-believe. My dream

is lifted through an airy fairy tale

of swaying citrus-scented boughs of pine

preparing for Perséphone's debut,

when snowy trillium and bells of blue

will garnish her arboreal design.

As distant drumlike rumbling fr...

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However huge, the room feels small.
One man in a suit, on the carpet,
takes one stance then another.
Dim lit wooden panel surrounding.
Claustrophobic, the old fellow
comes to the window, and the realization.
He turns and speaks, gesturing,
"whoever these trappings serve
we are the small players."

Out there

People dress for the season
cruel days hustling them along.
Vote with t...

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Hand me your tears not somebody else

Lend me your smile for an hour

And day maybe two

Give me all of your sorrow

The words the feelings you cannot speak or express

The sorry’s that were never yours to give

Let me loose the bonds that bind and constrict

Remove from your ears the forked tongue of deceit

And I will let you have my shoulder to cry on

For as long as it takes

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(My debt is twofold; the one to John Prine's "Crazy as a Loon" and the other to Ricky Gervaise for his sketch about death)

You might think that I'm a loser I can't help what you see

That I'm bumping on the bottom Useless as can be;

Never destined to make much And you wouldn't be wrong
I'm just bumping on the bottom That's where I belong.

But through reincarnation As the good...

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I have come to like 

smaller things with

rounded corners,  

that fit the hand

and carry with ease, 

I like smooth surfaces,

not too heavy and

pebble cool, with

curves that please 

the thumb and make 

me smile,

I like a cello’s hum,

a poem with few words,

the smell and taste

of fruit on my fingers,

I have come to like

simple

© Graham R Sherwood 03/...

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I hope in my next lifetime we're strangers

Who are not connected by a red line

Who are not touching the same dirt

Since in this lifetime you have killed me

Suffocated me until I exhaled my last breath

A snake cracking the neck of a bunny

Seawater drowning a tulip

A butterfly caught in a spider's web

A fish gasping for air with a hook in its mouth

I feel as if i...

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Never hurt a diamond,
Just because it shines for you,
Pressure made it stronger,
It survived what you never knew!

Scratch it and remember —
Time has lessons still to send,
Diamonds cut through stone,
And the tables always turn in the end!

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Photo by Ari Spada on Unsplash

Come on
if not, cover his coffin,
Come on
if not, cover his coffin
my friend is dead!

……

To those who carry his coffin
there is a secret that is not in t...

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Ich wohne noch hier.

Nicht weil ich will.

Sondern weil ihr dachtet,

ihr könnt Realität löschen wie einen Chatverlauf.

Ihr habt mein Leben behandelt

wie ein Profilbild, das man austauscht,

wenn es nicht mehr zum Ego passt.

Kontrolle.

Manipulation.

Gaslighting mit Wohnzimmerbeleuchtung.

Und dann dieses Schauspiel:

„Warum bist du so kalt?“

Weil ...

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You hoped that I was dying?

You chose me for the time and

I know you weren’t silent.

I focused on your eyelids.

You told me this was private.

The motive wasn’t obvious.

You rose to change the climate.

Frozen, that’s how I am.

The rope was where we climbed it.

The slope to where your heart is.

I voted for your Highness.

My chosen piece of kindness.

Devoted to you...

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FOR TOO LONG

POOR LOVER AS I HAVE BEEN

IT SHAMES ME THAT DAY BY DAY

I INSENSIBLY AND WASTEFULLY GRADUALLY CREATED

THE DEATH OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN

A PERFECT LOVE AFFAIR

BUT WHEN IT CAME TO BE

THAT I HAD FINALLY FAILED THE ROMANTIC TEST OF TIME

WITNESSING OUR LOVES FALL FROM GRACE

ITS DROWNING IN THE DEPTHS OF MY UNCARING FOOLISHNESS

I FIND ...

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Fear is the Devil's Cocaine

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Mother of mine
Into this world you delivered me
Kicking screaming alive and free
I was your happiness pride and joy
The first born a bouncing boy
Along came a brother and sisters see 
Four children we were a family
Mother of mine

Mother of mine
You nurtured me as up I grew
Dried my tears and started me anew
You nursed me when I was poorly
Cuts and bruises were kissed better surely
Y...

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Poem 112 of 230:  FROM AN ECCLES FLAT - SPRING 2000

The bedroom window’s southerly views

    Contained allottees paying their dues -

All kinds of veg. brought to fruition,

    And youngsters receiving tuition;

Starlings and sparrows I’d often see -

    On a roof or a nearby tree;

And, in a distant poplar, perched high,

    The large twiggy nest of a magpie;

In sprin...

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Lying on the beach with her,
looking up at the night sky,

the rusted chrome bumper
on our car above in the lot

seemed farther away
than the stars in Orion’s belt.

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SHE: Poem 8 – “she doubts if i waited”

(circa ’85)

i sat by the mall’s neon fountain,

Walkman humming The Smiths,

mixtape cued for her arrival—

and she doubts if i waited.

i circled the pizza stall,

pepperoni grease on my thumb,

clock hands creeping

over the arcade— and

she doubts if i waited.

the quarter in my pocket buzzed,

primed for her Pac-M...

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Footsteps tread a deadly underworld,

My name is Melissa; dark syllabic wine my

            addiction of choice

Lyrical ecstasy exploding emotions

On a wet dark night the pyjama poets

            circle and talk of death to all men

You can never be truly free, unless

            trapped in a lift

Last time I went to Middlewood way, we got stuck

            ...

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Drunk on Poetry

I like the sound of villanelle she said.

Well, why not write a limerick instead

or something even simpler like an ode?

He knew she thought poetry was a load

of clever baloney for folk like him.

Free verse, quatrains, tercets even the whim

of couplets were too much. It all seemed a

mush of fancy words like terza rima.

Sod sonnet elegy or whim.

She ...

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My mama was from the mountains

My father was from the sky

My baby’s locked in jail now

And myself, I’m feeling shy

God bless the family

God bless this human race

Why’s all these people running?

What’re they trying to chase?

My sister she made the rivers

She dug em out I know

My brother he starts the Winters

He covers us with snow

My cousins and so...

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Life has shaped me.
Into what shape
I am unsure,
but without it
I would be
shapeless

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The pen that drags my hand across

the desert of the page,

knows neither joy nor sense of loss,

no calm or boundless rage...

it's just a tool of thought and dreams

to colour in the days,

to bind their rise and fall with seams

and mark the many ways

...in which there's no predestiny,

no gods or revelation,

no saving grace for you or me,

no end, no dest...

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With every thought

With every stride

No mater how far

Or difficult

to undetstand

Never give up

The earth turns

And turns

The Birds sing

And sing

Thin distant echoes of the past

Slide past into the future

Without a thought

Or presence of mind

Just wait

And wait

For you

To catch up

If you ever can

People are kind

People are ki...

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Die Hard, 1,2,3,4,5 – you stayed alive...

Picking off the bad guys

Such physical perfection in my eyes

Burning down buildings, sliding off planes

Packing your guns and your hand grenades

I could’ve been Helen to your John McClane

had the shoulder pads, the perm and the big 80s hair

the tremulous lip, the ‘don’t truck with me air’

All American hero in the land of the free

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Georgia gave me gonorrhoea,

    Clarissa gave me crabs;

Thrush I got from Tabatha,

    Or maybe it was Babs;

Susan gave me syphilis

    And Hannah HIV...

So if you start to feel unwell

    Blame them, my love, not me.

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I don't believe in God

Or something more after death

I don't believe in pearly white gates

Or the fiery pits underneath

But I do believe in the morning dew

And your smile on a sunny day

And the way you say my name

In the middle of the night

I believe in our tomorrow

Where we might wake up 

In a house of our own

FIlled with love and warmth

And if h...

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“Were you and Mr. Corbyn friends, Mr. Starmer?”

Optimistically asked a truth-seeking reporter:

but the North Wind it blew, so he huffed and he puffed,

and the South Wind it blew, as he thought it all through,

then the East Wind it blew, yes, that question was tough,

then the West Wind it blew; that decided the truth:

“Yes, of course we were”, croaked he with a cough.

Again, ...

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Once again, our thoughts turn to Auden,

Talking art in a Europe on the brink.

As springtime breaks, the bird of peace has flown;

The sick old men dispense the taste of death.

And Icarus? Nobody would care now

(Just as no one seemed concerned at the time);

An exhibitionist whose stunt went wrong.

While, on streets, a billion screens flicker

With dances of destruction th...

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LET THE JEWS WIN

BY JOHN TUCKER

POETRY COLLECTIONS FROM CHIPMUNKA BY JOHN TUCKER

Soundcloud Raid

The Sunset Child

Bre...

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Junco go home    Lorraine setttanni 

Even your plumage calls for winter’s return

The darkened skies of a long winter’s storm worn as a cloak over your snowy white skirt beckons for winter wonderland festivities to begin.

By now though, I long for Robin’s return.

Our harbinger of spring’s warmth.

Won’t  the folks near your summer home rejoice upon your return?

...

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‘He’s not Churchill’

Who knew?

But then the speaker isn’t Eisenhower

Isn’t Kennedy

Biden

Either of the Bushes

Isn’t Ford

Teddy Roosevelt

Isn’t Franklin D

Or Truman

Washington

Lincoln

Isn’t even Tricky Dicky

All these men had faults

Failings

A taste for war

Uncontained sexual appetites

A disregard for the law

One should have stuck to m...

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If someone asks you for my name 
tell them that you don't remember it; 
it's enough for me what they say or believe,
perhaps they are all distracted 
in a world without love
 

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Art lovers rejoiced when a renowned artist arrived in the London borough of West Pealing,
hotfoot from a riotous Capetown.

But she was quite oblivious to this welcome, after meeting a young man called Jamie Kins in Hyde Park, who’d invited her for a boat ride on Serpentine lake.

She couldn’t stop laughing as he rowed into a duck, receiving a mouthful of beak – nearly uttering,
but managing...

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With eyes closed; I heard a whispered ‘goodnight’.

I knew my time had come, I no longer had to fight.

My hand was being held, I felt kisses on my cheek.

Above the sound of sobbing, I heard God softly speak.

Lights became radiant, like a dazzling unearthly sun.

It came to me calmly…my new life had just begun.

I had peacefully slipped away, forever free from pain.

God made his d...

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To admit

that i am so very glad you were born, you exist, you create art, you were adored once, too

does not weaken my barricades

they are made of shells and stone, whitewashed by the sea and do not fall easily

They teach

as does solitude, and celibacy, and planting a garden, sometimes sanity is in the eye of the beholder alone, we are all called to god in a different mann...

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She scrubs up well does my missus,

in her dungarees or black lace;

I experience what bliss is

when I gaze upon her face.

For although her hair is thinning

and several parts are growing fat,

there aren’t any other women

who can make me feel like that.

In her eyes the stars are swimming

without artificial gloss,

so I have to say no thank you to Kate Moss.

Since ...

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I walked toward home,
yet with every step I took,
the distance between home and me grew.

I had only recently understood
the meaning of the word fitoor,
so let me begin again

For me, fitoor and home were the same.

I searched for my fitoor
in the hope of finding them
the gaze, the laughter,
my comfort, my reassurance.

I walked toward it,
ran toward it,
even crawled.

But with ...

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Andrew Tate would hate you

for locking your body away.  

He believes that women should be 

raped and made prey, scream and not

heard, constantly available

to worship him on pedestals.

His pillars thick as tissue paper;

pyramids of tin.

What would Tate make of medieval mystic sisters

who write a revolutionary Jesus

is our Mother, God the Holy Daughter?

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They used to steal glass insulators
Alongside the railroads
Turned them into knives

Red knives
White knives
Blue knives

I follow their example
Stealing Georgetown blue flint
From outside the electric

Sick of red lies
White lies
Blue lies

Told to believe everything 
but our own
eyes

To ignore
your tax dollars 
extinguishing innocent life

Bombs falling in the darkness o...

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Plight of the Iguanas

These reptiles that thrive in the heat
Fall frigid and plop at our feet.
From branches they’re dropping,
And from rooftops they’re flopping,
But at least we’ll have something to eat!

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Injured mother in smoke falling debris blocks her vision

Dust clouds fill her lungs as she runs,he is hidden

Her baby is out there!

Gasping for air she's spluttering out his name

His cries are drowned out overpowered by shots screams and horror

Whilst rush and panic confuse her intuition

Scarce oxygen she's hoping and wishing

Praying for the return just recently miss...

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'Carlos, mi hermoso libro'

(Carlos, my beautiful book)

Every hello is an introduction                                                                      

Cada saludo es una introducción

Every laugh is a footnote
Cada risa es una nota al pie

Every question is a dedication                                                                    
Cada pregunta es una dedicatori...

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My soul bleeds 
And from solitude it weeps upon tattered paper 
For you 
Only you 
For I belong to no one else
My tears scream
Their echoes can be heard from the faint touch of a pen 
The earth falls silent 
I've become inaudible 

Yet no one hears quite like you. 

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Sunlight in their small hands,
rising beyond all brands.

Their courage goes on shining;
they were once growing wings.

Until a missile left their building crumbling,
burying, one by one, their dreams—
the wings that once were growing,
now scattered, fading.

Time refused to stop
as tears continued to drop.

Their parents were seeking
the scattered pieces of their morning.

The in...

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How brilliant is the light tonight

how brilliant is it

Flashes like meteors boom and bang

A festival of fireworks

Heading here and there  

How brilliant is the sky tonight

how brilliant is it

But some won’t see it

Others will  

A child points at a flashing light

And then they are in it

How deadly is the night tonight

How chillin...

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Soft shifting plume of gauzy gossamer white

Between  vigilant supervising cypress sentinels

Swirling sideways with the courteous breeze

Patterned by still partly russet boughs

flirting with the teasing sunlight

Now you have me, now you don't

Wafting above sparkling frosted fields

And through the newly plundered olives

Recently relieved of their precious burden

Not l...

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Don't be ashamed of who you are, 
From where you've come or by how far.
Don't be afraid to be yourself,
Or to hide your problems on the shelf.

Don't care about what others think. 
How much you climb. How much you sink.
And don't forget to tell your story. 
But don't cover yourself with too much glory.

Don't lead a life full of deceptions,
Or be too proud to make corrections.
Don't be...

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