LOST IN TRANSLATION

It didn’t hurt if he stayed alert,

and kept on top of the pain.

Some days were better than others,

but I never heard him complain.

When asked why he went, he’d just say,

‘someone had to’.

But I’m not sure if he’d do it again.

So, what do you see when you look at me?

I’m curious to know. Is it someone whose father

fought for this countr...

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There's a rainbow slowly fading, where hero's once took a bow.

All that applause through open doors are an illusion to me now.

The young must live with guilt they don’t recognise,

Immune from all the consequence of blame

Road signs have been turned around the other way,

While the old can barely harmonise their pain.

Schools are testing theories not yet proven,

Administere...

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Who was it killed George Floyd?

Not I said the cop, I’m just employed

to do a job, and felt annoyed that

just because he used his weight

to crush his windpipe and suffocate him

on the street in broad daylight, while 3 more officers

held him down, like in so many other towns.

I only acted in self-defence,

to keep the white folk from attack, he just happens to be black.

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WE HAVE CREATION IN OUR HANDS

AND DON’T KMOW HOW TO USE IT

BEAUTY LIES WITHIN OUR GRASP

YET FEAR WE MAY ABUSE IT

WE HAVE THE WORLD WITHIN OURSELVES

YET WATCH IT SLIP AWAY

LIKE JEWELS THAT SPARKLE IN MORNING DEW

THEN DISAPPEAR WHEN THE SUN BREAKS THROUGH

SOMETIMES I THINK LIFES JUST A DREAM

A FLIGHT OF FANTASY

IF YOU BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT TO BELIEVE

YOU CAN BE ...

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[For Rick Sanders / a.k.a. WILLIS the POET]

It’s time to make a brand-new start,

And I don’t mean just the prose.

What I need is style over substance,                                                      

So I thought I’d start with a change of clothes.

I’ve worn some dodgy gear in the past,

But I need something built to last.

So I’m taking a tip from my main m...

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Extolled, derided, feared, divided, sought, lost, and gained!

Work separates and unites us; finds us whether

We are able. Puts food on an empty table.

You may pretend to be just looking,

Relaxing in the garden or facing the other way.

But work has something else to say.

Simmering in the background on a low heat,

Or smirking smugly from a sloping shelf

That ...

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I’m looking through my Father’s eyes

as a cloud white curtain lifts.

Coal-fired smoke curls upward,

the street stands silent witness.

‘Salt of the earth’ pillars of stone identical to each,

light ghostly chorus as if to say,

'there’ll be no changes here today'.

A dismal dawn squints down on those

who long to abandon ship.

While others to their fate resign,

...

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People ringing up, others calling round

Late night visits everybody’s underground.

Negative responses to positive thought

             'I could sort it all out if I had a little snort.’

Go out on the make...

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We had the best of it, he says, raising his glass,

As if in some salute to the past.

We meet on occasion, as old school friends do,

Remembering when we used to drink under-age.

Well past that stage now, our sense of

Boyhood bonhomie still tangible.

Our conversation is like leafing through a book

With chapters missing. How else to explain

What became of all that dista...

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THE BEAUTIFUL GAME / 1966            

When I was Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, it seemed everyone knew my name.

From the back streets of Botafogo to West Midlands housing estate,

we played the beautiful game. In the shadow of electricity pylon,

its arms outstretched in pose of Christ at Corcovado. The Maracanã transposed

from Rio de Janeiro; streetlight illuminating our s...

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She didn’t follow the advice scrawled on the door.

GO HOME – IMMIGRANTS OUT!

Letters lingering down the corridor.

A late-night shift, the lift broken and fouled.

Her bag, full of nursing studies,

Weighed more than she did.

Working hard to do her job, still just a kid.

The Marker-pen in a tattooed hand

Suggested he had been doing his.

They didn’t speak, so he ...

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The daily landscape changes

With scholastic intent,

As myriad masses make their way

Through streets aroused from summers break.

Now wide awake, and drenched in dew,

Autumn term begins.

Mornings populated by procession

Of those now proudly in possession

Of shiny new uniforms.

Worn by children, some of whom,

Summer somehow forgot to nurture,

Seeming too small...

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Dear Imogen,

Be of good cheer,

it’s not the North that’s grim.

It’s just perfidious Albion

that causes such precipitation.

When you were born

the stars aligned and

in conjunction with the sun,

seduced the Jet Stream’s aerial flight,

‘Till North and South shone as one.

Imagine then a sunny day,

when fields of daffodils hold sway,

and Bluebells form a w...

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Out here on the coast I can taste bountiful

pleasures from The Garden of England;

the juice of luscious fruit drips from my lips,

as rolling Downs determine distance between

far horizons and rolling sea.

The ‘Pearl of Kent’, lustrous still, with oyster

beds exposed at low tide; few boats remain

of a fishing trade capsized. 

And I look  to where people speak in a forei...

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I live where the best of poetry exists between the lines.

The place is full of corpses decomposing in drawers

and other half-forgotten places.

I go back every now and then; dig them up and ask

if they have anything new to say, or did our conversation

finish long ago.

I sift through the remains of lost loves and dreams,

long abandoned to their fate; looking for ...

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Yes

and I have ideas

of buying a mirror

so that I can

sit opposite

and see myself.

I could

keep it in my

pocket

and take quick looks

wherever

I was

and

know it was me

being myself

and not me

being

someone else.

At least then

your mistakes

are your own.

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Act. 1.

Do you remember way back when, it was always him and you

You wore a dress of Organza that the world could see straight through

But he saw more than shape and form; he saw the inner you

A girl / child in a woman’s body, shining like a star

He should have known when she said come, she’d take him much too far

Far away from the boy he was to the man he would become

Fu...

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It’s harder than you think to disappear,

to lose yourself then reappear, with no trace of why

or what went before.

You can get lulled into a false sense of security,

become blasé about the little things.

Like never answering the phone when it rings.

There was a shotgun in the cellar, wrapped in hessian sack,

I took it out a while ago, intending to put it back.

When we ...

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Shadows drifting

silently shifting

announce the day

come what may

Vows all broken

words unspoken

a slim gold ring

a wedding token

Lies dicarded 

on the floor

remnant from 

the night before

Love is dying

she is crying

i am lying

in shadows

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TO THOSE ABOUT TO LIE, AND THOSE WHO SALUTE YOU,

NEVER HAS SO MUCH, BEEN STOLEN FROM SO MANY,

BY SO FEW.

THE LIBERAL COMMENTARIAT KNOWS A THING OR TWO

ABOUT THAT. ET TU BRUTE? ET TU?

I’M WATCHING LATE NIGHT TELEVISION,

WITH THE RADICALS CALLING THE SHOTS.

THEY’RE REVIEWING WEST-END MUSICALS,

WHILE THE WORLD’S DOWNTRODDEN ROTS.

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF ‘CAUSE CELEBRE...

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In the land of Mordor, where the furnaces roared,

And the grass was blasted black,

You can stand on a hill that looks out to the Urals,

Toward Tolstoy and Pasternak.

Ghosts of industry haunt the museums,

And the town shuts down after dark.

Where numb was the colour of the afternoon sky,

And at ni...

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IMOGEN – 10 months old

I stand with my back to the sink

While your grandmother rummages

In cupboards below. Gazing up,

She meets your expectant face

Seemingly suspended in mid air.

You are bent almost backwards;

Determined to know what world of wonder

Exists on those shelves.

I fear to move, so like a little bird you were,

Nestling into the crook of my neck,

R...

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THE HOLY CHURCH OF NATURE

I sit in the holy church of nature,

Listening to the incantations of

A choir of Sycamore leaves rustling

In pitch perfect harmony;

Fading to whispers as the sermon begins.

The Sunlit ceiling of mosaic cloud

Sprinkles light rain of holy water,

Baptising my boots in the

Living stream of consciousness

That trickles through the aisles of 

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LETS ALL GO BACK TO THE 50’s

Come with me to the 50’s, when

Men were truly men. The

Beer was cheap and fags cost pennies.

You knew where you were back then.

Let’s all go back to the 50’s, when

Women all sat in the Snug. And

Knew their place when they got home, while

Men gave their forelock a tug.

We weren’t really poor in the 50’s, we

Were all in...

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POETRY NIGHT

So I get up when I hear my name,

A surreal sound I don’t recognise.

Should I be here? I ask myself, thinking,

‘I should have come in disguise’.

What happens when I get to the mic’?

I then realise

There’s sweat pouring down my face.

I feel like I should run.

The panic subsides and I hear applause,

Glad I decided to come.

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PERMISSION TO SPEAK

Words whither on the tongue

the next step separates the strong from the weak.

To verbalise that which is forbidden

i form the air to speak.

Against the will of others

who deny me my own name.

We are all refugees now

looking for someone to blame.

Voices whisper on the telephone line

of secrets written on a page.

That speaks of cru...

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I was fourteen years old when I heard on the radio that

‘Johnny was in the basement, mixing up the medicine’.

The recipe for whatever this revolutionary potion was,

must exist somewhere, so I made it my business to find out.

Various listening’s divulged snippets of information which,

over a period of several weeks, I was able

to decipher, comparing notes with fellow dis...

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WORK IN PROGRESS…………

Something there is about work; that

Tendency to exert muscular power or

Subtle application, and in the process

Exercise body and mind. To appreciate

That instinct to make or mend, and in doing so,

Comprehend the nature of things.

Give me a tool to shape and bend

Material to the intended outcome of its endeavour.

To describe with ...

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IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE                                                                                                          

It’s hard to believe I’m redundant,

My productive worth measured by age.

My best before date now expired,

In reality I’m now retired.

I heard my name mentioned,

Then saw it on a list.

Pinned to the wall,

Next to the toilet,

At the en...

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I DREAM IN POETRY

When day is done, and night time comes,

thoughts, disjointed, anointed with visions

appear from I don’t know where.

But there’s the rub,

when muse is sought In light of day,

I find little to convey.

Yet, when bed beckons, ablutions disposed,

fractured prose finds me unexpectedly, as

evening recollection of rigged election

competes with min...

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When, in some distant time; no, I don’t mean

Those halcyon days of summer, when you are busy

In a world adults cannot enter. Or splashing on shorelines

Held tightly by the eternal bond of mother and father.

Or else falling in long grass grown taller than your head,

While running so fast, you were a blur to others.

You grew so quickly, so they said

             No, I ...

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‘I could ate a bull,

Then cry for his ‘orns.

I’m bloody clammed’, she said.

‘The shillin’s gone so we cor cook,

An’ the babby still ay fed’.

I used to be as big as a bonk ‘oss,

Now I’m as thin as a rake.

‘e said e’d tek me out to dinner,

The bloody lyin’ face-ache’.

‘e took me up the ‘ways instead,

To buy a bag o’ suck’.

‘e said ate that, yo’ll soon ...

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