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Tags from last 12 months

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UNHINGED

What we love lives:
plastic does not live,
nor does metal commit 
plastic terrorism,
metal does not live.

Y’know skin lives
eyes live,
thoughts live
music lives,
living 
teaches us to live
more fully.

Quantum mechanics has a half-life
Iike dark stars; 
I love the atoms our bodies are composed of;
black holes live
and challenge our stupid linear view
of time and space

You ca...

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MELT DOWN

Grab a job lot of high definition TVs
great pictures for you, great movies for me,
so many facilities here for our jiffy-jolly fun.
pity the hoi-polloi, the patois-speaking scum.

Four vibrant ghosts came singing here today
rounded up by cops, they sought to blow their blues away,
said amen to the cops' flat soft  purr-burr-drawl
telling black kids ‘you ain’t wanted round here, not wan...

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The girl with the glorious soul

         Jeremy McKnight on Unsplash

Smiling through tears, a shape-shifting delight,
she mumbles her prayers, turns out the light.
Her dreams are protected, by what she believes,
with the rising at dawn, and the turning of leaves.

Artists paint her aura a deep periwinkle blue,
musicians litter their scores with minor chords
dedicated to her too: in crying songs,
distant laments and au...

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UNDER WHITESPREAD WINGS

 

in the depths of my daily abyss,
obsessive thoughts, songs & stories,
coil and twist into words, selfish and cruel,
in the wise fool’s daily darkness, I finally find my feet:
a mere nothing is never incomplete;
curdled thoughts, merge and entwine,
in my restless mind, where shadows define a merry nothing;
amidst this chaos, a spasmodic light gleams,
a harvest moon, a friendly old lu...

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The bridge of sighs

Living life alone
requires a sincerity of tone
a daunting prospect,
with no perks, it's a matter of destiny,
no opinions or preferences required
just sitting for hours by open fires
a  blissful state of solitude
with many blemishes
sincerity can be overwhelming,
bouncing words around my head,
listening closely to them instead
you're a long-time dead;
rely on your own judgment,
tim...

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SMALL HOLDER

 

— “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

― D.H. Lawrence,

Such a precise blooming of spring flowers,
sitting and thinking for hours and hours.
My great aunt owned land, married a German POW,
did what she had to do on Pickmere lake
and the old pear trees we robbed, all those cats,
I ...

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L'après-midi d'vn favne - after Stéphane Mallarmé

scintillating flowers  closely cut
in hollow reeds,
a talent on show, a distant glow:
of green gold flickers on an animal wildness
of whiteness, as a prelude to virginity
uilleann pipes play softly
whosh! above a flight of swans,
naiads and nymphs cower
at this tawny hour, 
at a hymnal of infected poetry, a  primal fever
cradled in evocative text,
squeezing words into an enchanting ...

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Tongue-tied at the sea-side

 

I often don't know what to say next
when folk are talking of babies or sex
Isn't life complex at the sea-side?

Phattic communion, a rambling drone,
dad on his deck chair, thinks it's a throne, 
phalllic communion, a roundhead drone,
alone on the beach.

Family out of reach
for fortunate fumbles, a wind-swept beach,
sand in her smalls, she's just out of reach,
Aint life a bitc...

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WHISPERS

 

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda

In realms of mythic, deep-stoned lore,
excavated memories pass us by, once more,
flimsy whispers graze the mind,
from depths of memory, Ah! treasure-find.

Like shadows of rare-forgotten time,
the dead are kept alive in rhyme,
a daily battle is waged within the blood
forensics of the soul, Noah before the flood.

Visc...

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The metaphysical

Airy valedictions cannot span this bridge in time
what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is very definitely mine.
we both can hear the quiet roar of our own new found land
as time drifts to a stop and as we focus near and far
we no longer stand amazed at the hollow rancour of public life
and have no more time for the mere indulgences of strife.
we look too much upon these empty places, the sands
...

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Sadness

 

“Sadness is caused by intelligence, the more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn’t understand them.” – Charles Bukowski

 

“A true poet, Bukowski, he tells me what I’ve always known, but never heard before.” — John E Marks

https://youtu.be/0P5jV4lHHR0

 

 

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An adamantine blue

Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun."
- Sylvia Plath -From the poem "Doom of the Exiles", written 16 April 1954

 

Forget me not blue
blue as an Alaskan blueberry
that blue I was.

Endurance is a flower
a bulb in winter’s depth
a rare-repeated wonder:
a sin w...

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The unforeseen

awe struck by the blooming of buds,
a poem born in a far-off land,
of rolling death and unghosted space,
the mind’s asylum, a boundless place;
fulsome clouds of dreams untold,
sunshine weaves its threads of gold,
daydreams dance in twilight’s gleam,
eclipsing reality’s dull esteem;
death squats — a bittersweet fate
demons blast —  at sanity’s gate
scattered moonbeams hesitate
merely hum...

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THROWING COINS

Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash

 

she flies on high,
hoarding kites in the howling sky,
a dance of death in space’s grace,
ignoring imagination’s rolling embrace
she lingers in fulsome clouds and beams
of light that fuel the daydreams of our schemes;
dementia’s breath, a fleeting wraith,
slowly haunts impotent imagination’s faithless faith
wisps of poetry loom far and wide
mere ...

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EXPLANATION LATER

Photo by Tatiana Colhoun on Unsplash

Sitting and drinking about how I feel
Realising, fully, stupidities are real;
Clichéd clap-trap envelopes the airwaves:
Subtlety denied, charisma crucified. 
Virtue-signalling flayed. 
Contradictions unrecognized. Yes!
Can I believe two mutually exclusive
Events occur at the same moment, 
Indifferent decades, indifferent continents?
Off course, ...

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AUSTERITY

 “What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.” Charles Bukowski.

What’s this area got?
Not a lot of jobs, or prospects, or money
There’s no des-res for burnt out
City execs round here
Nothing for the well-heeled retirees. .
But there is plenty of poverty, and plenty of fear.
Look around, you’ll see:
No antique shoppes, just second hand...

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THE MAGNIFICENT MOORS

Photo by Austin Gardner on Unsplash

 

Catholic priests crucified
on Good Friday in Mosul,
children blown to bits in Gaza

In Lahore’s Shalimar Gardens see
a piece of pink heaven on this bloodyearth.
built by the Mughals to celebrate God
in marbled, mosaic mosques:

Wats celebrate the Buddhists,
temples the Hindus,
the Sufi saints moved into the future
keeping their close hold ont...

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SOMETHING MISSING

There's an absence that appals:
closed doors, night sweats, white walls.

Is it the thing we first forget
which will eventually beget
this cringeing in the night
this too-familiar fright?

Or is it just the neurons as they play,
at hide and seek, all night, all day,
which makes us stare forever
at that place that's out of reach,
alone, bereft of speech?

Or is the child within us sti...

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THE SPEECH OF ANGELS

 

“Without music, life would be a mistake” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

A waterfall of notes, rising and falling,
Splashing into mind, heart, soul.
Music will never grow old.

Arpeggio series of broken notes rising, descending
Into and out of order. Plunging into minor keys, rising into waves of luminosity.

Notes that compose a chord played or sung in a rising or descending order,
To c...

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Eloquent Graffiti

It was an ordinary, wet north Manchester night
of solid rain, unremittingly wet and cold.
when, suddenly, all the rivers, in all the world, stopped flowing
and all the summer colours leached away and never returned
and the wind it got so cold and stings like hell
and then the sky descends into the air
....and you’re not there.

The blackness is deep, deep and remains everywhere
and st...

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Eulogy for Pete

EULOGY

Inspired by "Portrait of  my Dead Brother" by Salvador Dali 

I remember the shyness locked in your sweet brown eyes
I remember how you'd touch my arm when you were too weak to speak
I remember your bravery and stoicism when in pain
I remember how you'd wink to me - meaning 'hello brother, about time!'

And though your illness took so much from you, you'd never complain
But oh! h...

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A SONNET FOR A JACOBITE

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Your vernacular usage privileged as the only discourse
Suited to the now compulsory affirmation of mediocrity call’d.
Democracy. No aristocracies of thought allowed to .
Gather it to a greatness: like the ooze of oil. Toil. Toil.
Endless gold and land form the sinews of the coming war you say,
Let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law, you sa...

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TICK-TOCK

Tick-a-Tock-Tick
The sounds of the day
Clownishly fooling
But won’t go away -
There's a nightmare to follow
This minor delay.
Yes, it’s tick-a-tock-ticking
We’re all going away.
For the old witch is flying - 
to the edge of the moon 
and the war is beginning
So it’s boom, brother, boom!
Starlight is a-raging -
it's all over so soon -
but now it's recorded on bloody old Zoom....
So e...

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There is a light that never goes out

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

I do not drink,
But I am living under this mountain
That might crush the life out of me
Any time, any day,
So, I drink anyway.

This charming man says:
Too much grandiosity
Dims the soul
Makes us old.

I hear the wise ones pleading, pleading when on fire,
So much screaming, as the flames they get higher:
Hebane, belladonna, mandrake, datura
All o...

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Ye Olde March Hare


I took ol’ snail upon a trip
Upon the live-long sea
Ol’ snail she is so silent,
More silent, still, than me.

We wander forward on the tides,
And wander back in time,
But all upon a Tuesday-drear
Ol’snail she speaks in rhyme.

With metaphors a-plenty,
Right on the cusp of time,
Ol’ snail become ye olde March Hare
And leaves us all behind.

https://youtu.be/pnJM_jC7j_4?si=c7BmF...

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Exculpaltory: for Dante Alighieri

Photo by Ignacio García on Unsplash

 

I think about your poetry everyday
Exculpaltory, vitriolic, only occasionally,
displaying a sort of empty cleverness,
rarely fulsome, written to impress a Medici, I guess,
Confessional in part, no better than it should be,
I learn from who exactly makes your grade 
and why, well, that’s a different story.

We all know money is involved
many coin...

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RESISTANCE

 
Arabic still spoken in Andalusian
villages after 400 years of the inquisition.
Muslim houses in Bosnian villages
with crosses on display
despite the threat of apostasy.
Morning fresh as one –
the Buddha knew–
the flowers of the valley,
the grasses of the plain,
shine with the unbidden light of heaven.
And nothing shall remain
strange i...

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Call it Dreamin'

I knew from the very beginning
that the sun would rise,
teaching me to cast my eyes to heaven.
Cloudy days are like sacrifices:
to compensate we had the green
and water worlds, tall trees and dappled sunlight.
Some would like the world to be clean again,
a pre-lapsarian garden of Eden. I would.

…….

I knew from the very beginning that my heart was tender
easily broken. I learnt ...

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The sea shell said

 

Ah, the beauty of language 
the power of imagination! 
From the depths of black holes 
to the soaring aspirations 
of the human spirit, 
our minds conjure and create
extraordinary visions of transcendence
the extraordinary ordinary. 
Like a ring of fire dancing 
with the mythical Phoenix, 
our thoughts ignite 
gleam like clouds parting 
to reveal sunshine on a tranquil sea:
abs...

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Hang on

No matter how we reinvent this writing malarkey
or, how, precisely, we feel about its sig-nif-icance,
there is a wondering within our hearts,
a hiding between the folds of our soul,
so much more than a mirror
mumbling at us, incessantly,
“there’s a story to be told,”
but all we hear is:
‘fear fear, fear terror, fear anguish.’
Untold stories circle within us
as we try to live, secretly.
...

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A winter blossoming

In this mild mid-winter of splintered selves
Trees blend into silhouttes; and I see the elves
Whose shadows transformed perceptions
For milleniums into creation. And all the world of
Getting and spending grinds to a halt,
For this one holy day. Death may be far away or near
At hand, we have no crystal balls. We must put
All our heart and soul into conveying the simplicity of love
To th...

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BEREFT

Some decisions:
reasonable, rational,
wipe out
sentimentality, lingering romance.
Time sends me spiralling back
leads me right back to a field
in high summer
in Cheshire, England
the road’s far enough away
to grant us silence
provisional, yes
passing, of course,
still silent, we share a look
Chris stares at me, as if deciding
something momentous,
I glance away from this man
I’v...

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ZIGGY!

In the Apple Market
your south London twang
accompanied the many undulations
of time

Your wild androgyny
mirrored the mirror
of yourself

Skimming off the water
of childhood,
like a dog shaking off rain

You lit up, spot-lighted,
an iridescence of sound
Ziggy!

Your songs were the water
I needed
your terse verse
spread underground
watering imaginations
music like a rainbow.

...

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THE LAST LONELY EAGLE

This city in the sky soars by me,
Charms and wonders, she rarely bores me,
Kites in her vibrant skies,
Before my lonesome eyes.

A mesmerizing sight for awestruck eyes.
The wind howls and dances passing me by
Whispering secrets in the suffocating night,
Yet gentle river Thames, flows without end.

Awe-full days and awful nights
Churches, trains, begin again man,
Symbols retreat,
S...

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EZEDI

Now the Turks have come
to continue the killing spree of Daesh
Sunni tribes and foreign Salafists
Conspire to slaughter the Ezedi, even in Lalish,

Our mouths expel a hidden heat
It is the soul of the Ezedi.
Never before has the sun
Filled us so full of tears

Though we have been persecuted
for over a thousand years
Since the killing-wind of Islam arrived
To steal our daughters, kill...

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Charity

Kicking down a back street
In foggy London town
My head up above the clouds

While on my brow’s, a frown.
My eyes observe the shining,
Rain splatters down the street,

A child is begging piteously.

Her head lies at my feet.
My rage at bare injustice,
Is a torrent in my veins,
The police are worse than useless,
No faith in them remains.

So I stand and ring St Mungo’s
Some charity...

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A continuing Gethsemane

an old olive oil press 
rusting at the bottom of a sandy garden
in this occupied territory.

children lying prostrate,
on the soil
murmuring.
about a weight, a burden, 
something heavy

we could not hear clearly,
what with all the muffled explosions
and such.

this man, this man, he screamed out
‘NOT AS I WILL BUT AS YOU WILL FATHER!’.
but there was no other man there, no fathe...

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HOLYHEAD

My friend killed himself
Far from where we grew up
In another country
In another century.
He died by means of a train
Dividing his body into two
Unsymmetrical parts.
There is an irony in this:
Chris had raised over a million
Pounds to preserve our steam 
Train heritage.
The nuts and bolts of his death
Were dealt with by the coroner.
I torture myself with questions.
I think of his fin...

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HEAR THE SILENCE

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." (King Lear, 4.1. 37–38)

Veils of disguise,
shield our eyes
from the nakba,
from the human wreckage

Journalists targeted
children ripped apart
people degraded
picked off by snipers
the cruelty virus of today
will have its way
will return magnified

Spit it out
signs and wonders
on this blood-soaked la...

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FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST

Photo by Flash Dantz on Unsplash

Oh, the vastness of emotions hid deep within,
The edgeless landscape where words cannot begin,
To echo the depths of each mood’s sway,
In the ebb and flow of life’s uncertain play.

Grief, a tingling numbness, so hard to define,
A heavy burden that weighs on my mind,
Its depths impossible to convey,
Its presence felt more strongly with each passing d...

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BODY ON A BEACH

There’s a body on a mid-winter beach, again:
Bloated by sea water, battered by waves,
The skin an indeterminate grey, the DNA
Gives it away: stomach distended, flesh declined,
Soul departed, a package of hope left behind,
With seaweed dancing from her open mouth
That once kissed another, a mother, a lover.
Spoke words of comfort to the dying, bereaved:
Religion indeterminate, nationali...

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Hunger games

The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. Luke 16:19-25

Take the earth’s resources from the poor.
rob them. They can’t fight back.
They have wives and children to feed.
yes boss. Sure will boss.

Let them do all the work, stretch
them on the rack of survival, grind them
and beat them and terrify and mistreat
them.

...

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CHILDREN

 

I used to carry three of the five up to bed
They’d say ‘Daddy, daddy, please stay’
But I would go away and work.

Suddenly we were semi-detached
They’d flown the nest, gone away,
And what I wouldn’t give

For one more day with them
When they were little and I was young:
Telling them stories, singing songs,
Getting along.

https://youtu.be/jvLtyyBRITo?si=NzLkYEFo4xQupgxH

 

...

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