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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 ...
/ / Poetry / No Comments on Rebels

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 ...