for Salman Rushdie

Tonight there’s no good news:

the Earth’s on fire; a writer has been butchered

for gifting us fiction twinkling with esprit;

détente between the West and East is ruptured;

the needy bear their hardship like a bruise.

Heating up but thinking most of me

I step out to the porch,

to where my beer reposes keeping cool,

glance up and snaggle abstra...

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A poem generated from random words over the course of April. See comment below for full details of how I wrote  it.

A chilly April morning. Lazy lambs 

couch lifeless in the fields like balled up fists 

in woolly mitts. I need no diagram

to clarify the Spring: the tousled strips

of trees beside the river view an uproarious 

theatre of water, the riot of the weir and lak...

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Harrogate 21/3/22

It’s when I see the kites

a family are flying on the Stray

and notice how they glint in blue and gold

belatedly I catch on, how today

the bichrome of the flag of the Ukraine

has never been completely out of sight:

I’ve seen its vivid tones unrolled

not just where you’d expect:

flourished on the apex of a pole;

sellotaped to windows or on do...

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