The middle of the night.

A word comes,

A phrase, a verse,

The first hint of a rhyme.

All, in the midst

Of sleep and time,

Are lost.

At no apparent cost.

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My enemy lives over there:

In the house across the road.

Not long ago, I knew him well;

But no longer. Sad, really.

He and his son helped me lift

That big oak dining table

On to our garden terrace.

What a job! And what a night

We had, of fun and frolics.

Now times, like looks, have hardened,

And yet, once, we were firm friends.

Then they came and built that fence.

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I wrote these lines of love, my dear,

Before the cold days of the war.

When you were near, so near, my dear;

When I was close, so close, to here,

And no one knew what lay in store.

Now all these lines have chilled, my dear,

Though love remains, strong as before.

Now you are far, so far, my dear,

While I am shivering with fear;

And all we can expect is more.

...

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Fred Bunting, TV gardener, retired,

Confessed to the world that he had sired

Three sons and a daughter, handsomely aged,

With Mavis Malarky, alluring, unwaged.

Fred ran a farm shop while still on our screens,

Where Mavis would pop by each day for greens.

They say Fred was smitten the first time they met,

And soon their encounters were steamy and wet.

Friends notic...

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It is through events and at gatherings

That the meaning of time is understood.

As we pack together in a huddle,

Time passes us by and yet it connects

And joins us as one, like links in a chain,

When we combine, as indistinct as rain.

Sixty years ago, I was in a crowd,

Some of whom were there sixty years before;

This summer I see some with years ahead.

This cycle con...

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He liked a little giggle,

To ease his nagging pain;

He giggled at the Middle East,

He giggled at Ukraine.

He giggled at the climate’s pranks,

And at the unemployed;

He giggled at inflation,

At communities destroyed.

He giggled at the experts,

Predicting doom and gloom;

He giggled at the warheads,

Directed at his room.

He giggled at the cinders

...

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This is the age of the porky;

This is the age of the lie.

Big men who wield power

No longer even try

To utter one word

Which might just be true.

They know they don’t need to;

They’re laughing at you.

They’re laughing at you

Because you lap it up,

As if you read tea leaves

In their plastic cup.

They make up the numbers,

They make up the quotes,

They’re...

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Johnny Exit scarpered

Through the once impregnable door:

Shut now. Well bolted.

Though people still knock.

That was fifty years ago;

He drove a Vauxhall in his vest

On days of melting tarmac,

When sizzled cash was king.

The sightings continue:

In supermarkets, like Elvis,

Or just last week, in town,

Knocked down by a motorbike.

The file festers, w...

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I watch the old men

Who run the world’s show;

With tails in the air,

They try this and that.

With bully-boy flab,

A conscience unpricked,

Their memory slack,

Their puny goods limp,

They slaughter at will,

Kick out at the cat;

They burp and they lark,

In packs at the swill.

I hanker for youth

To take its turn still.

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We all remember the old West:

The double-doored saloon,

The stone-faced marshal

Nonchalantly polishing his star,

The light relief of card sharks,

The men of few words,

The rough drinks, slung along the bar,

The menace of a parched cactus,

And you, the dogsbody,

Cleaning up the mess

Once the gunfighter has gone.

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I think that the artist got it spot on.

This is man at his most basic:

Trapped in the eternal tunnel,

With no beginning, no end, no escape,

Vulnerable like never before.

The place is a shelter, of course,

But could easily be a slaughterhouse,

Fried in fat if the walls don’t hold.

Try to imagine the pitch dark.

Just how has humanity come to this?

Cowerin...

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The metal’s falling

From the sky, like rain.

A warped ambition

Terrifies Ukraine,

As someone, somewhere,

Swells up with disdain,

While his practised sneer

Dishes out the pain.

And the world knows well

That he won’t explain,

But that, sure as hell,

He’ll be back again.

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Not long ago, you’d be thought eccentric,

If you chose to buy a full electric,

But internal combustion’s had its day;

That’s what the men in the showrooms now say.

It cruises at speed, with no CO2,

For years after purchase it runs like new;

And plugging it in is no longer naff,

As you relax in the motorway caff.

Green credentials are part of its appeal;

You’re an eco-war...

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‘Savoury stuff. That’s the ticket,’

Said my friend in the canteen queue.

Naturally more circumspect,

I asked ‘Is that potato real?’

‘You’re joking,’ quipped Young Doris

(Old Doris was doing desserts),

And piled the slop up on my plate.

Those lunches hit you where it hurts.

Finding a table, we sat down,

With colleagues in old overalls,

Who talked of hangings and o...

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Twenty dead so far……..

I wonder if they get an extra mark

For killing kids or snuffing babies out?

On their twisted scale of staff incentives,

Perhaps their bonus swells at all such scalps;

Perhaps their backs are slapped at each week’s end.

They say that talks for peace are well on track,

But we see little sign of it round here.

We feel the foul, malignant breath of b...

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Jack’s fancy was a bungalow,

Nestled quietly near the woods;

A garden and a patio,

A place to store his worldly goods.

A haven close to nature’s heart,

Where he could ponder and could rest;

A spot for music and for art,

And all the things he liked the best.

But pleasure soon began to wane,

As viral traffic pounded past,

And noise from each approaching plane

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The odd small child has copped it,

A writer here, a pensioner,

And, just around the corner,

An engineer.

It’s the same old detritus of war;

Keep moving now,

There’s nothing to see,

Nothing to fear.

The single mum with stumps for legs

Has made somebody’s day,

Just like the school and hospital,

Each with rooves blown away.

More detritus, but life goes on...

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‘Your country needs you!’

Came the breathless whine,

As we put our names

On the dotted line.

Everyone went;

We all joined the queue.

No questions were asked.

None of us knew

About proper war;

We weren’t playing games:

Grenades in an ambush,

A tank crew in flames.

Although we were told

That problems were shared,

It soon became clear

That ...

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By day he played the markets;

At night he played the fool.

In youth he would play truant,

To get away from school.

In common with those round him,

In life he played a part:

A tragic, gilded aesthete

Who suffered for his art,

The tough, self-made financier,

Who played for all they’re worth

The hapless types endowed with

A silver spoon from birth,

...

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Fawn, Lick and Grovel’s advice has come in:

Turn the other cheek, take it on the chin.

It’s should be simple to sit there and grin,

While he spills all his gibberish and bile

(In other circumstances, you might smile).

You have to be his stooge and feel his smack,

And grit your teeth as you’re stabbed in the back.

A handshake with the king, or fulsome praise,

May push humili...

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While standing on my hands,

Or balanced on my head,

I’m looking at the world from upside down.

I’m cartwheeling at play,

In my inverted way;

A raving king addicted to his crown.

I’m hanging from the ceiling –

A strangely bracing feeling –

Suspended in the void just like a bat.

Revolving through one-eighty –

My bottom end quite weighty –

My view of Ea...

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Civilians lie, annoyingly dead,

Innocent prey of the enemy’s sport,

While wannabe gods in Washington cry:

‘You losers! We told you. It's all your fault.’

Others in Ukraine, spared till now, await

A shabby, hardly necessary fate,

And wriggle in the web where they are caught.

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A cemetery, you may think, but

No bodies lie beneath, just roots;

No unattested arms remain,

No pairs of sweaty, unclaimed boots.

Quite soon there will be vines and grapes,

And then the succulence of wine;

No trace of blown-off body parts,

Detached by shell shot or by mine.

The volunteers who tend the place

Sense no souls planted underground;

They prune and ...

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There are no allies any more,

No friends, no foes,

No right, no wrong,

No good, no bad;

Just bully boys who'll take you

For everything you had.

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A soothing spectacle on screen:

A desertscape in lapsing time,

Where scenery - cactus, rocks, sand -

Never changes. The clocks tick on.

Though days flash by, time seems to freeze;

Sunrise repeats like gunfire.

Life seems eternal, unchanging,

The only obstacle being

Our usual human wear and tear.

Beyond, stormy seas of nonsense

Batter the crippled innocence

Of ...

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They no longer carry coins.

They have wads of notes to spare,

But their instinct is to throw crumbs,

Or bits of half-eaten sandwiches.

They tell you to perform

One of those cute local dances,

Or to sing ‘Streets of London’,

Or playing a tune on the violin.

Or better still, sit up and beg,

Say how goddam grateful you are,

And hand over anything you’ve got,

Explainin...

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Sitting on the train,

Neat houses flash by.

But life is not neat,

Though houses may be.

Behind those neat walls

Lurk furious hearts,

Unleashed as soon as

The train disappears.

These airtight dramas

Lie far from our minds.

We keep our heads down.

Our neat lives go on.

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The Sunshine Boys are chatting on the phone;

They claim that they are both concerned with peace.

But one of them is raining down his bombs,

While body counts on both sides still increase.

The other one appears not to remember

Who started this barbaric slice of hell;

He treats the culprit as a valued partner

And seems to have been captured by his spell.

The victims...

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A tingling, a taste of the past.

Before it started. Before time.

Such memories would have been nice.

Though winter packed a punch that year,

Us two, wrapped up in desire,

Barely remarked the snow and ice.

For we, young and unbreakable,

Took slippery falls in our stride

And bought up love at any price.

Until the day they came.

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A time will come when we forgive,

Though that time is not yet;

But even when forgiveness comes,

None of us will forget.

We won’t forget the agony,

The sadness and the waste;

We won’t forget the insults hurled

With puerile lack of taste.

We won’t forget our cities wrecked,

Our soldiers blown to bits;

We won’t forget the fearful nights,

The lethal missile h...

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Let bulldozers rip,

Get spades in the ground,

Turn on the taps

In city and town.

Rules on the bonfire,

Planes in the air,

Bricked-up banality,

The fun of the fair.

And, all of a sudden,

The climate’s nowhere.

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Now that the weeks and days and months fly by,

Propelling us still faster to our end,

The needed action is to hold up time,

To slacken off, or better still, suspend

Its uncouth march into the wild beyond

And celebrate its capture as its bond.

But if time should comply, what must we do?

Display ourselves and prance around a pole,

Or willingly obey a quiet void?

Time,...

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Simon Grimes

Sought warmer climes

To cover up

Outrageous crimes.

Meanwhile, the wondrous wunderkind

Cooked a rabbit that he had skinned,

And then used daring to escape

By running flat out like the wind.

As the bise chilled the strollers by the lake,

A cheating couple rose up from their bed,

And pushed their way through carnivals of crowds

Towards the snow...

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The march of time has done for one good man;

America has opted for a fool,

But once they suffer four years at his school,

They’ll spit out their disgust, because they can.

Societies will dabble with the dark

Until the day the scales fall from their eyes,

When, faced with routine bigotry and lies,

They understand this is no campaign lark.

Then honesty and decency p...

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It’s been the hottest ever year;

The one point five is broken.

But in society round here,

These words are never spoken.

There’s still time for a reset,

Through measures tough or token;

The greenhouse levels climb, and yet,

These words are never spoken.

The glaciers will melt away,

And fires taunt the ocean,

But in the workplace or at play,

These words are...

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On winter days, with frosted breath,

We wander to the warm, great hall

To see this sacred scene once more.

A mother mourns her perished son,

As mothers do across the world,

While washed-up men, most often old,

Pick off the innocent for sport.

Grouped women, tethered in their grief,

Mop up the personal effects,

Doused in their humid, sodden tears.

Soon, beyond anger, b...

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The kiddie-giggling boy-men types,

Who shape our tastes and fuel our gripes,

Are like a zebra with no stripes.

Their views today are painted on;

Those of the past are long, long gone.

They rule the culture like machines,

And serve up, bite-sized, on our screens,

An option menu for our dreams.

The bad ones will be swept away;

Nice shall prevail day after day.

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There but for the grace of God, I thought,

As he rose from his place on the pavement

And stumbled to the shelter for some soup.

Fifty, probably, but looked ten years more.

Unshaven, stinks, frankly, but still too proud

To ask for a bath. How did he get here?

Not long ago, he had a job, a spouse;

Then both disappeared and his home with them.

‘Bloody fool,’ he mumbled, ‘no di...

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