Old Geoffrey was cremated there today,

But weeping wasn’t wanted, and was checked.

The minister kept chins up, though we prayed

With chins down, dictated by etiquette.

Where were my flowers? I was quite upset

They weren’t delivered. Geoffrey was let down;

Some incompetent floral bureaucrat

Ignored instructions from Manchester town

With respect to our bouquet. His renown,

However, undimi...

Read and leave comments (1)

We escape to the forests on wild dewy days
A glimpse of light through the trees...and the haze....
The moisture contains such a sweet fragrant smell
And I listen while my lover says
"This is our home now, we'll live here alone
Just like lovers in stories of old...
We'll hunt for our food and I'll go and cut wood
For a fire when the days become cold..."

The summers' goodbye turns the leaves gold and dry
Th...

Read and leave comments (3)

 

Scared to sleep,

 I’m afraid I may stop breathing

Scared to sleep,

 afraid someone next to me may stop breathin’

When I’m finally asleep

 I’m paralysed

Try to call out for help,

but I’m asleep,

 you can’t hear my cries

Eyes are open. I’m awake

Have I been asleep at all, was it a dream or real?

 

I can already feel Monday morning blues getting closer to me,

Creeping like a ghost I ...

Read and leave comments (1)

Crossroads

 

A droning voice directs the road ahead

Small screen

No people

All life safely hidden

From sight

Behind flat lines curves and corners

While driving between dimensions we travel

Through parallel roads to parallel worlds

Rushing into stagnation

Debris in a drain

Backing up

Spewing up

Gushing damnation

On an axle of ever

Growing commitment driven conquests

Hands steeri...

Read and leave comments (3)

The royal we 

We craft
We build
We bleed
We heal
We toil
We sow seeds in the soil

We love
We hurt
We blurt out words that steal

 
We bless
We curse
We fill our purse

We give
We receive
We believe
We doubt
We can’t find a way out.

We think
We reason
We count
We can’t find the right amount

 
W...

Read and leave comments (0)

Smile!
You got chilli sauce on your face
Smile!, you like to embrace
a bit o donnas meat and chips
and easy on the hips
yeah baby, donner meat!
Sliced tomato fell on your feet
You trod it in drunk
Bad kebab
went and sunk
9 pints of lager
Head butted a tree trunk
 danced a funk
and topped it off with a bad kebab

what a night

Chemical Alis in the meat-house
carving up the wood-louse
ready for the lager louts
he found...

Read and leave comments (2)

 

The world was better without Miss Prune.

All who met her despised her soon.

She ate slugs for breakfast

and more for tea

then sicked on the table disgustingly.

Ermintrude Prune, Ermintrude Prune

horrible, horrible, Ermintrude Prune.

She painted her kitten

in luminous red

then chased it all over

her grandmother's bed.

Poor kitty was startled,

but what was still worse

her granny ...

Read and leave comments (0)

this is really new and very unfinished- if anyone has the time or inclination to offer me any criticism it'd be really really appreciated! specifically what you think about using internal rhyming- if its too clumsy, if it helps the poem to communicate at all, or if its just rubbish!! ok thanks, sally xx

 

The Butcher’s Wife

 

What can I do for you mate?

you ask, and my arms ache

to pull up t...

Read and leave comments (3)

Verses on Economics

I
The workers pain is for the employers gain
As to do his work de does strive
Who from the harvest gets barely a grain
Enough just to let him survive
 The employer merely for sitting and for work setting
And investing money, thereby risking all
The weight of the profit he is getting
To lose as much should the venture fall.

II

Is this right that this is so?
That this state of t...

Read and leave comments (1)

I am flexible

Try to bend me

And I will spring right back.

I am child-like, with surprising

Facial expressions: With curly soft

Locks.

I am honest to the core; no rotten fruit

Lies within these fleshy walls.

I am free: Free to roam this land -

Hands transparent to the sun

I am.

 

By Belinda Johnston

Read and leave comments (0)

Here in myself I find me lost
As I fragment inside the core 
These tiny scatterings of shell
Are spilling out onto the floor

I do believe I’m breaking up
This I was sure I’d never do
My channel’s unidentified
No frequency is getting through

For this day brings me no agenda 
With lack of speech and empty head
All conversations disengaged 
A loss of life the soul has bled

I am autumnal to the touch
With much aba...

Read and leave comments (8)

Punk's Not Dead!

 

Times were hard

it's 1976,

Labour's Britain

smashed to bits,

what no jobs?

my hopes are sunk,

I know mum

I'll become a punk!

 

Hippies are out

we need something new,

garagebands

and sniffin' glue,

no Elvis, Beatles

or the Rolling Stones,

so long boys

here's the Ramones!

 

One, two, three, four

...

Read and leave comments (5)

If there were heroes,  
their lives would be saved.  
No more tragedies would exist,  
if there were heroes.  
But the ones today  
are few,  
and some have not found  
the strength yet  
to come and save us. 
And we still wait  
for the day  
when there  
are heroes  
once again.  
 
Clouds Over Sky 
by, Melissa R. Mendelson

Read and leave comments (3)

Dropping the Mask

Dead Good Poets Society Wed 15 April 2008

The performances of Rosie Lugosi and Chloe Poems have generally left me feeling in much the same way as young children often feel about circus clowns. Well not quite hysterical jibbering terror, but a sense of wondering if there’s a victim involved in this edgy cabaret and could it be me. Cruel intelligence and a mask coupled with mate...

Read and leave comments (2)

 

My family have finally fallen to sleep

I hear the gentle snoring and sleep chatter

Waiting for me on the end of my bed sits sleep

I turn my head to look at my wife and smile

Reclined, my eye lids heavily open and shut  

Thought stones skim the ripples of conscious mind

Dropping off words and phrases along its path

Damsel flies skip on the waters surface

Each collects a letter, w...

Read and leave comments (2)

a poet can write about a pebble and make a page of it
he'll tell you all about the texture, and any lumps or bits
he'll tell you how it feels to touch, and smell and see and taste
but by writing much about a pebble, an hour of time he wastes

time that could be productive, time that could be used
not time spent in tune with a pebble, time that's been abused

he'll tell you how the pebble came to be in...

Read and leave comments (2)

Had an exceptionally wonderful Poetry Now Festival, if anyone is interested, even if you aren't it was still a success.  A very different experience to other festivals I've done.  I was on a bill, it was in a theatre, I was required to attend a sound-check ½ an hour before my performance.

Myself and George Szirtes read to around 300 extremely well-behaved 8-11 year olds who asked questions and were...

Read and leave comments (0)

He asks to speak to Madam Butterfly,

they say ‘she doesn’t sing here anymore --

she upped and left for Switzerland last May

and we don’t know if she’ll be coming home’.

He thanks them very much--hangs up the phone.

 

Science hit its stride that very year

and in the Fall she sauntered to his door.

 

Read and leave comments (0)

The room is too warm, he lies there,
In his bed in the center.
Death hangs above, his loyal mistress,
Come back to kill his pains with love.

 
Hot sweat forms, it slides off his face,
As he works into heat.
The sheets are stifling, they hit the floor,
He lies naked, bare before mistress.

 
His breaths come faster as he enters,
The arms of those beside him.
Breathing in the sweet cherished air,
From life an...

Read and leave comments (0)

Someone once said "good poetry requires no explanatory notes" so here are mine for the poem that follows...

It describes a short walk along the coast of South Wales near to Swansea. The previous weekend Roger McGough had given a reading as part of the Dylan Thomas Festival in Laughan, a bit further down the peninsular. For those who don't already know that neck of the woods, the massive steelwork...

Read and leave comments (0)

This is just to let you know that the 'We Are Poets!' anthology of children's poetry is now available to borrow from Warrington libraries, so if you use those libraries, please check it out. Feedback is always welcome, and let's be realistic here, I'm hoping that the libraries will order more copies if the book proves popular! So, please borrow a copy and read it aloud with your children.

The bo...

Read and leave comments (1)

This language is floating

in the eye 

waiting for the flourish

in the spindrift 

the barb of letters

grated from alphabets

feasting on asparations

mocking our betterselves

to build a temple of words

in the mind

along the rain roads and dirt skies

watching the melancholy of shadows

window tree of summers blossom

rook and crow talk like men

in the dislocation between

thought and objec...

Read and leave comments (0)