Poetry Blog by Tim Ellis
Tags from last 12 months
No Deal
Where does the buck stop when a backstop blocks the options in a break-up?
Haystack Haircut got the top slot,
guns the juggernaut
plum at the cliff-top.
Metal on metal, the brake shoes squeal.
An utter nut-job’s at the wheel,
no air-bag and no seat belts.
It’s
No Deal.
The new Prime Minister Boris Johnson
says the EU’s spouting nonsense,
digging in their ...
Tuesday 6th August 2019 4:43 pm
Dry January
I came to in a sickbed on January the 1st,
bowels on fire, tongue and tonsils stinking,
jackhammers splitting my skull. It was the worst
hangover on record in all history of drinking.
That agony was nothing to my suffering now
for in a fit of penance, a superfluity
of over reaction, I swore a solemn vow
that the year will kick off with a dry January.
Dry January!...
Tuesday 15th January 2019 2:14 pm
One sandwich short
he's one sandwich short of a picnic
he's two cards shy of a deck
he’s lost in the woods
he’ll never come good
he’s burnt out, a gibbering wreck
he's mostly away with the fairies
his ship is on the rocks
his nerves are shot
the man is not
the sharpest tool in the box
they say that he's not the full shilling
and he's got no gas in the tank
he's no flipping use
he's got a s...
Saturday 3rd November 2018 5:40 pm
Nothing else matters
Every single day I get a torrent in my inbox:
online communities that crave my support
with a signature, a letter, a donation to unlock
a Saudi prison cell; save turtles; alert
a smug politician to the suffering of the needy;
grant safe asylum to desperate refugees;
liberate wealth from the clutches of the greedy;
or restrict global warming to one point five degrees.
I wann...
Thursday 18th October 2018 1:28 pm
Guisecliff Crag, August
Where the fragrant heather moorland borders
wildwood, by the crags above the river,
the harebells and last fading heads of clover
nod themselves to sleep in drowsy August.
The ling is now full-on and tightly ordered
spikes of tiny flowers blanket over
the landscape like an Emperor’s purple toga
swathed across the heights, but thrice more gorgeous.
The fated grouse may look ...
Saturday 18th August 2018 10:31 am
100 Reasons to Plant a Tree
Add them up and there must be
one hundred reasons to plant a tree:
The buds of May inlaid with dew. 1
The verdure of the summer leaves. 2
Winter twigs -a filigree 3
against the sky’s gunmetal hue.
Refreshing shade when days are hot, 4
and autumn colours -red and gold. 5
Rot down leaves to make leafmould 6
and mulch it rou...
Saturday 13th January 2018 1:40 pm
Accidents Will Happen
For all the aging punks . With apologies to Elvis Costello.
Oh I just don't know where to begin:
we don't want it forever
so it's now or never.
We should keep them hanging on
till the investors have gone
and make sure they can’t get in
without a police chaperone.
chorus:
Because accidents will happen
if we let the frackers win
and we’ll all be the vi...
Wednesday 29th November 2017 12:27 pm
Yesterday
Yesterday
all my troubles seemed so far away
then Third Energy came to say
that my house sits on Bowland Shale.
Suddenly
mine’s not half the house it used to be.
There's an earthquake rolling under me
triggered by Third Energy.
How they messed up so
I don’t know
they did not say.
They did something wrong
now a pong
comes from the mains.
...
Saturday 4th November 2017 11:52 am
Where Are The Skydancers?
I set off on a ramble through the Forest of Bowland
binoculars at the ready, a bird book to hand.
I hope to see some species that don't breed in the lowlands,
hen harriers and short eared owls, quartering the land.
My list has pipits, crows and jackdaws,
grouse in surplus but no raptors.
I tick off golden plover, curlew and wheatear
but where are the skydancers?
THEY'RE ...
Saturday 5th August 2017 10:48 am
Mercedes Benz
with apologies to Janis Joplin
Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
Ma friends are all truck drivers ah must make amends
by blowin' clouds of black smoke from ma supercharged back end.
Oh Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
Oh Lord won't you fiddle me the exhaust test readin's down
so ah can poison ma neighbors as ah drive around,
belchin' nitrous oxide all a...
Wednesday 19th July 2017 12:30 pm
The End of May
June will be the end of May!
The 9th will be a celebration day.
We'll dance in the streets of the whole U.K.
Let's make June the end of May!
When she came no one expected
she'd hit us with a rock hard Brexit,
so show the lady to the exit.
Let's make June the end of May!
June will be the end of May!
We'll halt the NHS decay
and give the nurses proper pay.
...
Tuesday 30th May 2017 1:26 pm
The Happiest Place
I scan the paper and I'm smitten
by a headline: someone's written
"The happiest place to live in Britain
is here in Harrogate."
I sip my fresh brewed Yorkshire Tea,
gaze at the Stray where glorious trees
ripple sedately in the breeze
and I wonder "What's so great?"
Every town surely has beds filled with flowers,
a grand Turkish Bath with a dome and towers,
mineral springs and clean w...
Tuesday 18th April 2017 12:50 pm
A Call To Peace
Let's unite in peace and make a plan:
a wily plan of mutual respect
to counteract the hatred in this man.
Let's do everything he won't expect!
We won't let goads and bigotry divide us
- let's evoke what World War II has taught us.
Don't let's patronise - let women guide us
when he slights our mothers, sisters, daughters.
And when he flays the vulnerable with derision
let's answer bac...
Friday 3rd February 2017 3:36 pm
President Trump has control of the nuclear trigger
They're building a wall on the border.
They question which God you revere.
The military men have their orders
to weed out the liberals and queers.
The nation is ravaged with violence.
His critics are seeking asylum.
The U.S. lies in ruin - go figure
why the wider world is gripped with fear:
President Trump has control of the nuclear trigger.
He's ripped up the free trade agreements...
Sunday 30th October 2016 8:39 am
Why Do Poets Like Autumn?
For Andy Humphrey, with respect.
Because there's poignant glory in decay.
Because each burst of light may be the last.
Because the rusting hasp on dwindling days
grants access to new treasures from the past.
Because of gold and rubies on the boughs.
Because the bitter apple crop has sweetened.
Because we broke our backs in June but now
the leeks we broke our backs for may be eaten...
Friday 21st October 2016 4:11 pm
Let the Bone-Fire Burn!
I'm speaking and performing some poems tomorrow in Manchester after a march as part of both the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos, and 100 Thousand Poets for Change. If you'd like to take part we're assembling in All Saints Park, Manchester at 11.30am. Or look on the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos website, and there may be something going on in a city near where you are. I've written th...
Friday 23rd September 2016 10:45 am
A Message to the New Government
The nation needs renewables now!
The nation needs renewables now!
As Once-great Britain takes a bow
and we leave the stage of the European Union,
the quintessential issue's the quandary how
we accommodate the suck of an economy consuming
two thousand million megawatt hours
of climate wrecking energy by the year
when there's finite reserves of fossil fuel power.
I spurn the allegation ...
Thursday 11th August 2016 1:07 pm
Last Night
Last night was more than anyone could bear.
Last night they plunged a dagger into Yorkshire,
approving plans to poison land, to fracture
the ground beneath our feet, to choke the air.
Four thousand people sent in their objections.
A hundred speakers warned what could occur.
But seven County Councillors didn't care
and kicked North Yorkshire in the wrong direction:
a course that leads ...
Tuesday 24th May 2016 1:23 pm
Following the Money
From the North Sea, wild and grey
the horde bore down on Scarborough Bay.
I overheard one of them say
"We're following the money."
Like a Viking raiding force
they'd moved their enterprise onshore
to probe beneath the Yorkshire moors
for oil and gas and money.
A mighty fleet of high power cars
overran the Scarborough Spa.
I heard them, wassailing at the bar
thirsty for the money.
Sunday 15th May 2016 6:33 pm
A poem for Ashraf Fayadh
Saudi courts, your rule of fear is finished
- the sentence on this poet negates your faith.
Your hollow incantation "God Is Great"
is plainly false if God can be diminished
by lines of verse. Should murder be admonished
to Ashraf Fayadh, forevermore his fate
will hold as evidence that you're afraid
of poetry. Frankly I'm astonished:
astonished that a land so steeped in culture,
in li...
Friday 15th January 2016 5:57 pm
God The Banana on Harrogate Alternative Radio
You can listen to me reading the first hour of my epic sonnet-novel "God The Banana" on this internet radio show. It's in 3 sections interspersed with some very good music. Enjoy!
https://m.mixcloud.com/HarrogateAlternativeRadio/artapes-presents-3/
Saturday 9th January 2016 6:23 pm
Lagoons of sadness
Cracked mud. Black trees. Dead grasslands.
Vast lagoons reduced to puddles.
Jungle Babblers scuff beside the pathways.
A few ducks dabble.
But I remember Bharatpur before,
in ‘89 - the wetlands shimmering.
A haunt of Sarus Crane and Painted Stork
where duck counts peaked in millions,
and how a young man stood here once, bedazzled
by dancing cranes and divin...
Thursday 17th December 2015 8:51 pm
Tom's last poem
I’m sheltering in the hole made by a tree
which must have been knocked down sometime today.
Its torn-up roots are angled over me,
keeping off the force-ten gale’s melee.
It’s sixteen weeks now since my gruesome sighting
-a de-horned unicorn with pecked-out eyes
beside a road. The poems I was writing
I printed off and posted for a prize,
and now I rove and doss down in the dark
be...
Wednesday 16th December 2015 12:45 pm
Rhino swansong
Stuff yourselves you rakish apes, carousing,
smashed on greenhouse gases, with your gross
physiques ensconced on barstools turned from trees
that we’d depended on for shade and browsing.
You looked on us as merchandise. A horn.
Mindless hulks. You gunned us down, despising
I rhinos for existing whilst espousing
reverence for the fabled unicorn.
Mince us up! We’d make your quart...
Tuesday 15th December 2015 3:29 pm
Access weekend
iPod plugged, young Victor’s
muttered not a word since my divorce.
Grace is up front. She carps,
“Dad, why d’you drive this Chelsea Tractor?”
Thinks she’s going to save the world of course
since reading a bit of ecology for GCSE.
I hang a left and bark,
“You think I never cared? You’ll see!”
My big Land Cruiser cruises
country lanes through blizzards of thistle-down.
The car-...
Sunday 13th December 2015 10:35 pm
Noah was a modern man
When oceans rose and ice-caps ran
like rain, Old Noah made a plan.
-a cunning plan you’d marvel at
which could’ve saved the world, save that
Noah was a modern man.
His ark’s small size compelled a ban
on lions and tigers. Of that clan
he rescued just his pussy-cat,
when oceans rose.
And when the global flush began,
Old Noah was nature’s daftest fan.
He gave deck-space to ...
Friday 11th December 2015 9:00 pm
Bigfoot
I’ve left my clomping prints on every shore
since Africa was Eden in my youth.
The sand will bear my dent for evermore.
I chewed-up gum-trees with my baby jaw
and bit the dry red heart with my first tooth.
I’ve left my clomping prints on every shore.
Europe roused my growing thirst for war.
Her spirit fired me up, one hundred proof.
The sand will bear my dent for evermore.
...
Thursday 10th December 2015 10:17 am
The frog maker
There’s gift-stalls galore outside the wild and hilly
Monteverde Forest. I buy a saffron
amphibian, sculpted in glass, from the guy that crafts them.
“What species is it?” I ask. His smile goes chilly.
“Is Golden Toad. He no more around.”
He knew them as a boy and recounts the thrilling
jackpot glitter of frogs in the fern-leaf frilly
puddles of April that made their spawning ...
Tuesday 8th December 2015 1:00 pm
END OF HISTORY SALE!
FINAL DAYS! TOTAL CLEARANCE!!
The END OF HISTORY SALE is Now On!!!
Buy this planet! *slightly damaged
When it’s gone it’s gone.
It’s a massive, one-off sale sensation.
Conservation? Don’t be conned!
We’ve got the whole world for exploitation!
When it’s gone it’s gone.
Buy this beautiful hardwood foot-rest!
Timber sourced from the Amazon:
the world’s grea...
Saturday 5th December 2015 8:27 pm
One hundred reasons to plant a tree
Add them up and there must be
one hundred reasons to plant a tree:
The buds of May inlaid with dew. 1
The verdure of the summer leaves. 2
Winter twigs -a filigree 3
against the sky’s gunmetal hue.
Refreshing shade when days are hot, 4
and autumn colours -red and gold. 5
Rot down leaves to make leafmould 6
and mulch it rou...
Wednesday 2nd December 2015 8:57 pm
This bird
Look at this thing, this gruesome thing, this shake-off from the slick.
A car mechanic’s rag, a bag of bile, a doodling hand that drags
a biro clot of crudeness up the beach.
This foul-up. This bird. This broken component of our world.
Then look at that: a flesh gorged kite, circling
while cluster bombs slake a starving nation’s soil.
America’s pin puckered vein, the fight for th...
Tuesday 1st December 2015 12:55 pm
C-R-A-P World Holidays
I’m looking for a holiday.
I’m surfing on the internet.
I want a little getaway,
a place I haven’t been yet.
I hit on this site
-‘s got lovely colour photos,
the prices are all right,
there’s lotsa countries you can go.
It’s called: Culturerelaxationandadventurepackageworld.com. Culturerelaxationandadventurepackageworld.com
That’s C-R-A-P-World dot com.
C-R-A-P
CRAP WORLD! CR...
Tuesday 24th November 2015 12:56 pm
No Warning
Chipper people, old and young,
making the most of the evening sun,
sucking death into their lungs
beneath a high street awning:
Formerly sociable, carousers and clubbers
but outcast now, they croon one another
with raucous gurgles of bronchial slobber
and carcinomas forming.
A message made to catch the eye
is emblazoned on the packet’s side:
“Cigarettes gonna make you die!”
but t...
Saturday 21st November 2015 10:49 am
Fracking Hell!
North Yorkshire was a green and pleasant county
with rolling hills and cricket on the green,
and tourists by the score
would come to see the moors,
historic sites and charming rural scenes.
And when they'd had their fill of nature's bounty
they'd spend their cash at tearooms and hotels.
But then some gas was found
two miles beneath the ground;
now Yorkshire has become a
Frack...
Thursday 19th November 2015 12:58 pm
Speak The Unspeakable
Speak The Unspeakable
Hi, I'm called Tim.
I’m writing this today
to make you all uncomfortable,
to rock your peace of mind.
I'm here to shock you,
here to mock your carbon hungry ways.
Expect no civil platitudes,
no reassuring lies.
I'm here to whack your attitudes,
dynamite your lassitude.
At times I'll be a little rude
- it's all for your own good!
...Monday 16th November 2015 9:56 pm
How To Be A Denier
Claim yourself to be a fount of knowledge.
Claim that every scientist's a liar.
If you've done a course at any college
you can be a certified denier.
Gather up those inconvenient facts
and twist them like they're bendy bits of wire.
Disseminating data needs great tact
but any fool can thrive as a denier.
Lobby for a mega corporation
to push emission targets ever higher.
Easy work, ...
Tuesday 20th October 2015 3:59 pm
Six Degrees
At one degree the western plains
of the US will be starved of rain,
Bankrupted farmers will pack up and flee
as desert restakes its claim.
There'll be no ice cap on the Arctic,
we'll lose the rivers of Kilimanjaro,
and frost that keeps the Alps secure
won't do it any more.
The Barrier Reef will bleach and die,
mountain animals will reach the sky
chasing the cool, and those that can't f...
Saturday 17th October 2015 1:30 pm
God The Banana
I've now published my epic verse-novel God The Banana. It's available in print on Amazon & on Kindle at http://www.amazon.co.uk/God-The-Banana-Tim-Ellis/dp/150317428X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1417545504&sr=1-2
I posted the first two of the 437-sonnet story here a few weeks ago. This is how it continues:
Many thousand sticks of incense smoulder
blueing the gloomy hall within t...
Tuesday 2nd December 2014 6:58 pm
The Prophet Of Amanga
I've published a new ebook, and you can get it for free at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/489438
It's the first part of a trilogy called God The Banana, an epic verse-novel written as a sequence of 437 sonnets. Here's the first one:
Picture a diamond spinning against the dark,
flinging back the brilliance of a sun.
Move a little closer - you’ll be stunned
how lakes and oceans ...
Wednesday 5th November 2014 8:48 am
A new video
I've made this great new video of the title poem of my free ebook.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lItDO6AmUsc
Saturday 25th January 2014 8:49 am
Ellisian Fields
Although we stare until our eyes go fuzzy
nothing stirs, no whisker, not a nostril.
The pond has want of life but we live hopeful:
the fringing sedge is dense, the water scuzzy
and these impediments can well excuse the
absence of movement. At least we have a photo,
a snap displaying capybara profiles,
unmistakable if somewhat muzzy.
A quarter hour ago the pair revealed
their forms i...
Monday 16th December 2013 11:09 am
Poem for Nelson Mandela.
I expect everybody’s read enough Nelson Mandela poems by now, but here’s mine anyway...
“What’s it got to do with us?” refrained
my father when his boys
spurned the bottle of Cape Red plonk
he’d serve with Sunday roast. Despite how it stained,
he’d never grasp our umbrage at his choice,
but Nelson’s cell was like a sunken rock
to which our teenage optimism was chained.
There se...
Friday 6th December 2013 10:19 pm
New poetry video
Here's an updated version of my promo video for my e-book. It's only a couple of minutes long - why not give it a viewing and award it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down? I'm selling the book to raise money for rhino conservation.
http://youtu.be/4WCmD3HUQHM
Monday 12th August 2013 8:40 am
On The Verge is on Kindle
Great news! I've re-published my e-book On The Verge on Amazon, so you can now buy it direct from the Kindle store. As before, all profits go towards saving the Black Rhino. It's still available on Smashwords, and from all the e-book retailers I know of. Enjoy!
Wednesday 31st July 2013 3:54 pm
Half-price book!
I am giving fellow write out loud members an opportunity to buy my e-book On The Verge at half price. Just enter this voucher code: SP58T on the Smashwords checkout page.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/317217
I am donating all my profits from sales of this book to a rhino conservation charity.
Monday 15th July 2013 8:02 pm
The Spirit of the Road
This is the first poem in my new e-book On The Verge, which I am selling to raise money for a Black Rhino conservation project in Africa. You can buy the book for under £2 here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/317217 and it can then be downloaded onto just about any computer, smart-phone, tablet or e-reader.
The Spirit of the Road.
Everything’s got a soul you know.
The...
Thursday 30th May 2013 10:07 pm
El condor no pasa.
El condor no pasa.
Dawn was a slobber drooled from fangs of giants.
We willed the canyon clogging mist to shift.
The Colca River roiled beneath the silence,
muffed in cloud. Snow-caps snarled. We got shoved
about by tour groups, guffawing and looking miffed
to see no condors. Us, we found some plusses,
hummingbirds, sierra finch, Andean swift,
...
Friday 26th August 2011 10:03 pm
A gardener reminisces.
A gardener reminisces.
A long-ago morning, bright but biting cold,
I forked a client's border. A sheen of frost
had silenced the robins, silvered the cobwebs and glossed
a gorgeous Norway Maple's veils of gold.
One by one she dropped her leaves and tossed
playfully some of the sparkliest at my head,
laid the rest around me as a bed
and unabashed lolled ...
Thursday 11th November 2010 5:51 pm
Gringo on the Chickenbus.
This is a plug for my Fringe show at the Ilkley Literature Festival. It's called Gringo on the Chickenbus (ignore what the ILF has published in their program - they're idiots!), and it's at the Ilkley Playhouse on Tuesday 6th October , 9pm. Admission free. Look on the gig guide for a map.
It's a one-man show, mostly poetry with a lot of bouncing about and a song thrown in, and some lovely...
Friday 18th September 2009 10:29 pm
European Capital of wot?
Pier Head meets Manhattan: very strange.
It's not my student sphere, this Liverpool.
Only The Swan in Wood Street stays unchanged:
a haven for the chronically uncool.
A quarter century dies inside the door.
My nostrils drink a familiar Dettol whiff.
Same bikes outside, same sticky plank floor,
long hair, strong ale, thundering Metal riffs.
My crowd didn't do opera with the toffs...
Thursday 15th January 2009 12:09 pm
Recent Comments
M.C. Newberry on No Deal (Wed, 7 Aug 2019 04:27 pm)
Don Matthews on No Deal (Wed, 7 Aug 2019 08:27 am)
Tim Ellis on No Deal (Wed, 7 Aug 2019 07:14 am)
Brian Maryon on No Deal (Tue, 6 Aug 2019 05:45 pm)
Tim Ellis on Nothing else matters (Wed, 23 Jan 2019 02:50 pm)
Tim Ellis on Dry January (Wed, 16 Jan 2019 02:47 pm)
lisa donohoe on Dry January (Tue, 15 Jan 2019 04:53 pm)
Don Matthews on Dry January (Tue, 15 Jan 2019 02:55 pm)
Tim Ellis on One sandwich short (Tue, 6 Nov 2018 10:40 pm)
jennifer Malden on One sandwich short (Mon, 5 Nov 2018 06:18 pm)