Latest Submissions
The Clarion House
Hand built on a hillside, people’s Pendle palace. Place for Edwardian evangelists. Shuttered stronghold. Reticent revolutionaries. Local liberals and a Socialist choral choir, whose crescendo makes Clitheroe club cyclists cleats clink, as they dance on wooden table tops and tile floor. Night Jays jig in a tempest of temperance and Marston Moor mercenaries march to the beat of a Burnley barbershop quartet singing 'Here Comes the Sun' ...
Rebels
Mangan poured the whiskey MacGowan held my legs Behan laughed and poured another, I laughed and poured it down! It was a night like any other The whiskey did a job on me. Where’s me whiskey for the night? Where’s me whiskey to keep it right? Drunk to hell I tried to rise. But MacGowan still held my legs. Oh the whiskey did a job on me. Where’s me whiskey for the night? I looked ...
Beamo’s Gold part 19
Beamo and Tee deal with an entity menacing the camp ...
The Dai Lama’s Dilemma
This was part of the "IS" series and comes after the Buddha's Reply. ...
about an owl
about an owl my body aches, I'm sore, my knees are chafing raw trousers hang heavy from last night's storm I'm far from home on a quaggy pathway and it's sunrise I prop my punctured bike against a hedge, my elbows on a five-bar gate wondering, at the majestic patchwork of fields of furrows stretching to a distant Stone Age barrow and beyond from nowhere an apparition - fulgent ...
Panama Barrio.
One of many occasions I visited Panama, either end... Panama City or Christobel. It was always the same, dangerous and exciting ...
moving story
moving story mum rolled up the kitchen oil-cloth on the morning we moved out and found a photograph, dad, me, and baby Cissie at the Dove Row, Hackney Coronation street party (Cissie died later of the scarlet fever) dad whispered as mum went to lock the door ‘there’s nothing left to nick no more’ mum sighed inside to stand and breathe the theft-proof mist of memories she came out with ...
Eating Out
an ekphrastic poem inspired by Edward Hopper's painting "Nighthawks" ...
Shipping the waste
The West is dumping its waste on the rest of the world. The unsinkable is sailing close to the wind while on the other sides, the poor cousins are taken for a ride, their burden of garbage and debris, warming up, like an iceberg ...
Lina makes a telephone call
About my niece Lina, when she was nearly two ...
Bridge of Sighs
Bridge of Sighs, Ponte Dei Sospiri, is a bridge in Venice, Italy that spans the narrow canal(Rio di Palazzo) between the Doge’s Palace and the prisons. The enclosed passageway was so called from the “sighs” of the prisoners who passed over it. https://www.ashmolean.org/ennui ...
Feeling is the universe
There's no painting that takes me there, texts fired me long ago, I get attached to the strings for nothing, all paraphernalia fail, I’m inevitably thwarted to experience, witness the prescribed romance, angst of time and space. The brush, the pen, the rhyme, the rhythm morass me in an abyss of unreal compositions, useless jewels. I close my eyes, with newfangled wings I feel the early clouds in the sky, the news of sunrise through my ...
Sisyphus
Sisyphus Sometimes it feels like us. Sometimes it feels like Sisyphus. Zeus at our backs urging As we push. That giant rock Born to mock As we push like poor Begotten sisyphus. Lost in the depths Of brutal Hades Pushing and pushing To the top. And down the rock comes Rolling past With a fiery blast That damned rock of Sisyphus. He was king of Corinth Who cheated death One time. Two times. But his ...
hiraeth (free form)
I wrote a tanka version and thought to re-do it, impromptu, free of tanka syllable restrictions ...
Tie a bow that strangles
This tree felled for no reason. These lights bring darkness. This lunch sickening. These people ghosts to me. This short day made shorter. These singers silenced. This virus of inhumane computers. These celebrities should be tortured on television. This coin in a pudding for you to choke on. These twelve days too many ...