Sending positivity your way, there’s always a glimmer of optimism waiting on the horizon, just be patient. You can find beauty in the darkest of places x
Comment is about 26 (blog)
Original item by Damon Blackery
MC.,
thank you for a very perceptive comment to this poem. You rightly highlight that culling is not confined to a species of animal but a human practice also. Thank you for this.
Keith
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Colin I can't and Albert I'm 23 now I'm far from a teen. Anya Thank you and I'm sorry your having a shit day. ?
Comment is about 26 (blog)
Original item by Damon Blackery
Thank you Hannah - the world has changed radically since those days. School was more regimented in the fifties, and small rituals to be observed. We had to wax our desks every Friday! What I didn't mention was free standing blackboards with the groove for chalks and eraser, which was often thrown at us in temper.
Yes Brian, the sting of the birch on the hand - " jolly batey " as Peter Cook said to Dudley. At my secondary school it was customary on Fridays to receive strokes from the teacher (and the cane.)
Many thanks Anya. A glorious past (I don't think).
Yes Keith, I remember when us kids had our own Union Jacks for school. I actually had football shorts made by my Mum out of blackout curtaining, kept after the war.
Didn't endear me to the PT teacher. Do you recall as I do when older kids used to add iron sulphide(I think it was) to inkwells to give off that farty smell?
Ah! John. Bloody awful implements - and they were supplied to the GPO too I remember. Seems very Dickensian now. We were expected to write in copper plate as well!
Thanks for the comparative update Col. Your comment reminds me of "Please Sir" with John Alderton and of course Deryck Guyler as the janitor, wonderful. You're right, there were some sadists in charge, bangers of heads and the like.
Mark, thanks for the reminiscences, each one a gem to the sufferer or the enlightened. One troublesome lad drew a cartoon of the teacher with jug ears on his palm, leaving it for him to see, with the name underneath . when asked "what's that?" the boy said " a monkey sir."
He was lifted bodily out of the room .
Nice to get all your responses ! Ray
Comment is about SCHOOL DESKS (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Thankyou eve it was my 51 year old son who wrote this poem he suffers from depression and I have finally got him to write things down it has made him think about different things it was lovely you commented on it thankyou again love Wendy x
Comment is about HUMANITY (blog)
Original item by Wendy Higson
A perplexing topic in this modern world of ours - in which
"emerging" countries seem to be ravaged by over-population and diseases which then decimate human
numbers, to which we are asked to send "aid". Odd - but
perhaps part of the conundrum of the human existence
that has dominion over every other life form: to effect
rescue or extinction according to chance or circumstance.
The likes of Stalin, Hitler and Pol-Pot provided their own
methods of approaching the human existence situation
and yet with all the millions that perished as a result of
their inhumanity, the problem of over-population is even
now a cause for ongoing concern.
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Come fly with me
Let's fly...let's fly away...
I relished these lines, having spent some weird minutes
rescuing some that had been careless enough to nosy too close to the coffee in my cup and were frantically fluttering
around like non-swimmers at the local pool. Life in all its amazing varieties sometimes instigates unexpected
responses - hard to explain when these involve the "pests"
around us that we would probably be swatting out of our
way in other circumstances.
Comment is about Fly (blog)
Original item by Tom Harding
Movie moguls speak of giving a production the "green light"
and I'm giving this the "blue light"!! Hee-haw...hee-haw....
Comment is about A free lift home (blog)
Original item by hugh
<Deleted User> (18980)
Thu 10th May 2018 12:28
Very good, i was thinking this was going down a different path and enjoyed the funny twist at the end!
Thanks
Stu
Comment is about A free lift home (blog)
Original item by hugh
Thanks for the feedback Ray - I started with one idea in mind for structure then it kind of evolved into what is here now, it's a bit all over the place i guess. And i agree, people / need to was a bit of a stretch!
Thanks for taking the time to comment, Cheers!
Comment is about Life (blog)
Original item by Stuart Bright
Thanks Robert, glad you liked the poem!
Comment is about Robert William Black (poet profile)
Original item by Robert William Black
Darren and Anya,
thank you for your comments.
Keith
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
<Deleted User> (19421)
Thu 10th May 2018 08:24
<Deleted User> (13762)
Thu 10th May 2018 08:11
killer last line Tom and brill poem all round - just don't let anyone catch you talking to the flies...
lovely story Ray - I hope it buzzed off a happy and busy bee. We need every one of them.
it's just too easy to extinguish life - frighteningly so.
Comment is about Fly (blog)
Original item by Tom Harding
<Deleted User> (13762)
Thu 10th May 2018 07:59
wish it was that easy but thank you for liking. ?
Comment is about 26 (blog)
Original item by Damon Blackery
Thank you very much Keith, yes, simplicity is what I was after...
Comment is about Winter wish (blog)
Original item by Xoanxo
Thank you Suki, Anya and Wood!
@Wood I see what you mean but I must admit that there is no comparison...Les Choristes piece is absolutely beautiful...
Comment is about Tick Tock (blog)
Original item by Xoanxo
Hannah,
thank you for this thoughtful comment. It is much appreciated.
Keith
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
<Deleted User> (18118)
Wed 9th May 2018 22:51
This is a powerful statement and it seems there is always something to threaten us, wars, weather, food shortages, disease.
Somehow the human race is never content with itself.
Thought provoking.
Hannah
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
<Deleted User> (18118)
Wed 9th May 2018 22:35
Nostalgia, yes an unique kind of emotion, very strong in summer I agree.
I enjoyed reading this.
Hannah
Comment is about About Last Summer (blog)
Original item by aparajita das
Fascinating how you have seemingly shrunk into the mind of a fly to appreciate the life it lives in the moment. Clever writing, ruminative contemplative,and considered. A touch of Larkin I think. I disentangled a bee from a spider attack recently; in a second it was gummed up, and I spent ages trying to free one wing and a back leg. I think he recovered with some sugary spooned water and a good rest.
Nice one Tom.
Comment is about Fly (blog)
Original item by Tom Harding
Thanks for your observations Ray, welcomed as always. I think perhaps you are right with some of the people we see around us. So many of them are living in their own internal worlds. but then I realise as I say this so are almost everybody else to varying degrees.
Thanks again Ray
Martin
Comment is about Hard lines (blog)
Original item by Martin Elder
HI Hazel, I came back to this, and it feels now as if you may be stalemated by the comments. I think Frances has it right. The message is clear, but the separation may be more of a divorce. I think the last verse is excellent.
Ray
Comment is about Drawn by Dragons (blog)
Original item by Hazel ettridge
Oops yes thanks Colin- I uploaded from my phone on a train so was a bit distracted!
Comment is about Fly (blog)
Original item by Tom Harding
<Deleted User> (13762)
Wed 9th May 2018 19:24
I should do it more often and demand commission ?
Comment is about FILM NOIR (blog)
Original item by ray pool
<Deleted User> (13762)
Wed 9th May 2018 19:21
<Deleted User> (18980)
Wed 9th May 2018 19:13
Sorry Trev I haven't the attention span to read your offering. It's not you, it's me.
Comment is about 2018 Once more Trev's on his annual Texas Tour Pt 3 Austin (blog)
Original item by Trev the Road Poet
Loved this one and its reflection on the general by using the particular. Letting go eh? It's a bugger. Thanks Joe.
Comment is about Killing the Piano (blog)
Original item by Joe Williams
Welcome Frances , I,m so glad you dropped by. I was pleased with this offering - it was to be in an anthology, but a poem about Psycho was chosen instead ! (Posted here by the way). I just checked Wim Wenders . Obviously a good choice for your studies. I added the last verse on Colin's prompt for more!
Thanks so much, appreciated.
Ray
Comment is about FILM NOIR (blog)
Original item by ray pool
It seems likely that this "show-biz" style we are subjected
to nowadays has its basis in the need to fill the 24 hour
global news format that exists - and the media's love of
feeling somehow equal in public importance to the stories
they relate and the people (mainly politicians for the power
surge they generate and can feel part of) that they interview so aggressively.
My own gripe is the way we have to endure a totally separate studio set-up and presenter to tell us about
sporting items. WHY can't this be tacked on to the news
programme and save all the flummery and added expense?
BBC please note!
Comment is about This Is The News (blog)
Original item by Ian Whiteley
Well written and well read - and I agree with Suki about
a reading and Brian about the language.
Now THIS deserves to be "Poem of the Week"!!
Comment is about SUBVERSIVE VERSE (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
My school years came back with these evocative lines....
crossing educational and geographical boundaries - from a
private school on the coast where my mother was the
matron, to a "high school" run by the lady who gave it its
name, to a (thankfully!) passing acquaintance with a
village school (where ink pots, tiny desks and copy book writing return to haunt me) - and finally my luck entering
a grammar school in a fondly remembered rural part of west Wiltshire.
Some teachers remain - for good or bad - in the memory,
not least one who would descend on us, arms flailing
like a demented windmill, at some imagined lack of attention or juvenile misbehaviour. It was my habit of
drawing pert female breasts in the margin of an exercise
book that led to my own near-miss from his
attention...mainly because he was too busy passing by
under his self-propulsion to see what I'd been creating
in my pre-pubescent artistic leanings.
Comment is about SCHOOL DESKS (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Colin, Hazel and Brian,
Thank you for your comments as they are much appreciated.
Keith
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Hello Brian, Thanks, I´ll send you a list.Keith
Comment is about The Cull (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
It is the selfish passing indulgence of the flesh that often
produces these sad cases, the product of inadequate
adults who cannot or will not cope with the results of their
actions. The system is also obliged to cope with the sad
instances of orphaned children and those who work with
them have a daily drain on their own emotional status,
with all that is demanded of them by these deprived and emotionally damaged kids seeking instinctively to fill the
gap left by absent parental love and guidance. The fact
remains that this situation has been present in human society for millennia and will undoubtedly continue.
We can only do what we can do to help these victims of
fate. failure and chance to obtain some sense of worth
- and a future that benefits them and society.
Comment is about Movement Of Children In Care (blog)
Original item by Wendy Higson
Thanks Andy I like the short and sharp!
Comment is about Only Scratching the Surface (blog)
Original item by Nigel Astell
I wouldn't have the balls, Suki, being as I am something of a shrinking violet.
Comment is about SUBVERSIVE VERSE (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Hi Frances,
Wow thanks for the nice comments. Glad you liked it. It's been a troublesome poem, not the easiest and needed a ton of sporadic tinkering.
Comment is about AIR IN THE MORNING (blog)
Original item by john short
thanks you for commenting on 'this is the news' Wendy.
I'm pleased you liked it and appreciate you taking the time to comment
Ian
Comment is about Wendy Higson (poet profile)
Original item by Wendy Higson
Cheers all!
I haven't read Auto de Fe. Another book to go on my "to read" list. Thanks for your time and feedback.Time will tell if the Iran situation will devolve. I hope not.
Suki
Comment is about I Am The Worms (blog)
Original item by Suki Spangles
Superb delivery, and nice backing track too!
Suki
Comment is about Tick Tock (blog)
Original item by Xoanxo
Hi there John,
Next time you are at this venue, read out this poem. You probably won't be thanked for it, but it will be worth it.
Cheers,
Suki
Comment is about SUBVERSIVE VERSE (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
<Deleted User> (13762)
Wed 9th May 2018 10:38
I only ever wanted to escape - especially those foul-breathed teachers in ancient jackets that dozed and picked their nose through mindlessly dull lessons. They should have been put out to pasture years ago. Oh the joys of state comprehensive education in the 70's! I'm afraid I have no affection or nostalgia for my later school years Ray but I accept others will. Sadly, despite all our new technologies and the removal of the aforementioned bores, state education remains pretty shite. I best be careful, I feel I'm slipping into angry rant mode this morning! Best wishes. Col.
and oh, they were such bullies some of them...'teachers'
Comment is about SCHOOL DESKS (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Frances, I think you're right. The preamble was just an attempt to explain.
Comment is about Drawn by Dragons (blog)
Original item by Hazel ettridge
Connie Walter
Thu 10th May 2018 22:17
Gave me goosebumps.. x
Comment is about Apologies are never on time (blog)
Original item by Cesca