The circle won't be squared

The edge is not single

Punches are pulled

Layers multiply

Angles are multi-faceted

Facets are many-angled.

Wheels contain wheels

One boobytrapped thing leads to another.

Turns are twisted.

Twists are turned.

Plots thicken

Games are played.

There are ambushes as

memories materialise and pain persists.

Curve b...

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Horizontal hail hood-hammering

Pellet pinging, kag rattling,

Wind-chilled skin grim-flaying.

Comedy of urination

'gainst neat dry stone wall,

uncomprehending sheep watching

fumbling in six layers of clothing

with frozen fingers and a man-wobbling wind,

to whisk away the water spray

where it will.

Bilberry and heather.

Grousing gro...

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Dad.

Slack-skinned, sofa-pinned giant.

Hunched, pasty-faced, wasted.

At the heart of that Christmas,

but on the edge.

Saying little, watching all,

Soaking in life and love,

as Death stalked him.

The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The voice that filled theatres

now painfully weak.

But he got his line out.

Almost falsetto

Eight Maids a milking.

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people make choices

choices have consequences

people live with them

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The itch itches,

a thousand little mind-witches,

chafing and thirsting,

bursting,

craving,

pacing the paving,

longing to scratch,

to match

inner to outer.

A mouse in the house.

A louse.

A hundred mice,

a thousand lice.

Fickle peace,

tickle ruined,

the goad

to take the road,

tiny, mini, gremlinny nibbling,

quibbling.

...

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Is anything more fun

than a pillow fight?

Childlike, innocent, fresh, simple,

always ending in laughter,

sometimes in clouds of feathers

and parental protests.

You love the one you 'hurt'.

You laugh till nearly sick,

glad to be alive,

overflowing with mischief and glee.

Few things more painful

than the hissed venom of the 'grown-up' fight

ly...

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At war with war

in love with love

cheerfully suspicious

of crap from above.

Believing in peace

Chasing the vibe

Turning on, dropping out

becoming a new tribe.

Changing the world

and how things run

by blowing your mind

and having fun

No status or suits

they wanted unity.

To hell with respectability

it's about communit...

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Traveling by night, to regain the tribe.

Infinite, invisible walls

misdirect

impede

impossible to skirt.

Our friend,

from our tents, we sense

your distress

We long for you to fill the empty place.

We pray your nurikabe

materialise

so your eyes

may know them.

We pray strength for you

to demolish the walls.

We will lend ours.

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You have to use words

but words cannot capture God

You have to use words

but words cannot capture

You have to use words

but words cannot

You have to use words

but words

You have to use words

but

You have to use words

You have to

You

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Seeking fish,

snowy egrets stalk the shallows,

white as the far snowy Sierra Nevada summits.

The breakers battering Pacific Valley Bluff

are as white as the comical prize chef's hat of the chili cook-out winner,

worn with pride and good humour.

He is white.

White, one of the race that is fading,

losing the wave,

the white surf wave .

Brown for the s...

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feels unreal, really

it really does feel unreal.

Feels unreally real.

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cave-crouching morning, sun-ignoring,

bright clean screen preferring.

Figments and windmills.

Wearing no socks today,

- the lawn speaks and invites

through skin, naked uncaged foot fondles grass

naked uncaged mind fondles life

engages, plays, resonates, re-tunes

eats plum from twig

biting raw living sweet flesh

red juice runs like blood down chin.

Wi...

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Camped by the line

you don't notice the trains.

Jousting with words

you don't notice their brains

            or feel for their souls

The radio's on

you hear the sounds

They push your buttons

you give a few pounds.

            The bed is warm.

Promised yourself

you would be alert

Paid fifty quid

for this bargain shirt.

        ...

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Hello all

The walks planned for August 21st around Hebden Bridge are advertised in the News section.

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=22070

This is by way of encouragement (or perhaps warning). The hope is that participants will take the opportunity to read out their favourite rural poetry at stopping points. So, if you want to take part, let me know (eit...

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Men

Macho Reluctant

Hiding Submerging Suppressing

Sadness     Joy   Failure      Celebration

Feeling   Crying   Weeping

Liberated Emotional

 Tears

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You have seen broken, burning men

pulled from broken burning planes.

You have watched as bombers turn into fiery, flaming torches,

Lighting up the night, falling, falling, falling,

full of your friends,

so frightening.

You have seen the wrecked corpses

in wrecked machines.

You have prayed as a dozen searchlights catch you naked in their beam

as the flak cree...

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Walking in the Welsh hills,

This is really very pleasant,

With Jamal, Azizi, Ali.

Oh no, they've caught a pheasant.

They did it with their bare hands

Got to admit they're quick.

Surrounded it, then closed in -

a bloody clever trick.

These poor guys are destitute.

They're looking at a dinner

The government keeps them starving.

They're hun...

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The burly jock smiles gap-toothed down

unshaved, yellow-jacketed, leather-gloved

at the three wee men

eagerly clustered by the garden gate.

"Hellooo"

"Hellooo"

Complete, beaming, mutual approval.

He sweats the bin away,

their rapt admiration blessing his back,

returns the bin,

returns the warmth.

His day has been made fragrant.

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Sole to sole. Blissful

Our feet and eyes touch in love

Soul to soul. Blissful.

Warning – this poem contains “foma”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokononism

For 40 years I've been fascinated by CAT'S CRADLE, a novel by Kurt Vonnegut. Even though I disagree with his main conclusion it is immensely provocative (and amusing). In Cat's Cradle, the supreme act of worsh...

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It may sound corny but I love you

I want to feel and heal your soul

Every bone in my body wants you

Size 10 is perfect

My feelings are big

You've heard of arch-enemies – I'm your arch-friend

I know I have a tendon-cy to exaggerate

but there's little doubt in my mind

we would have a ball together.

I want to take sole possession of you

nibble your toes

...

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May's ESCAPE competition received 27 entries. Remarkably, 15 of these received votes. It was astonishing to me how varied people's preferences are. It's an encouragement to all of us – there is almost certainly someone out there who likes our poetry, even if others don't. We're all different.

Taking both first and second choices into account, four poems had the equal highest num...

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There is just over one more day to vote for Escape poems - the details are at

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=21245

The response has been surprisingly slow, particularly from those who've entered. Some people have hinted that reading 26 poems is a bit much. In that sense the competition may be a victim of its own success.

Be that as it may, voting closes...

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There’s a path near his home

curves this way and that

across the rough ground.

Logically it should be straight.

But people have made it that way.

There is a path near his heart,

which curves that way and this

across rough ground.

No doubt it should be straight.

But people have made it that way.

There’s a path in his life,

which is beyond a...

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Thank you everyone for your entries in the ESCAPE competition which ran during May. They encompass an extraordinary breadth of experience, from pleasure and beauty to sadness and suffering. To read them has been a privilege, albeit sometimes a painful one. The way we turn life into words never ceases to amaze me.

This is an invitation to vote in the competition. The poems are as liste...

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The cynic's narrative is familiar,

the familiar disdainful script slips easily

off the acid tongue which lurks

behind the curled lip.

The familiar bored tone,

The familiar raised eyebrow and tired contemptuous amusement,

the familiar unspoken conspiracy of superiority,

the familiar stale charm and shallow cheer,

the familiarity of 2011's world spirit.

H...

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Atoms abound

They get around.

In your body reside

Atoms which were once inside

Aristotle

Bronte (Charlotte, Emily and Ann)

Curie (Marie and Pierre)

Dietrich

Eliot

Fonteyn

Genghis Khan (and Gandhi)

Henry the Eighth (and the other seven)

Ivan the Terrible

Jesus

Kennedies (John, Robert, Edward....)

Lauder (and Lauda)

Marilyn Monroe

...

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No wind blowing

nary a breeze,

no unease,

influence-empty,

voices stilled.

Dead calm.

Phone off the hook

Emotion off-line.

Analysis.

Paralysis?

Go deep, make a leap.

“Action breaks the circle of the given.”

Was it free?

Did I choose?

Who is me?

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The moon beam bounces off her beautiful bum

as she does what has to be done

bent outside the tent

naturally.

She sees me

and a star twinkles in her eye

to match the million in the sky,

blinding me with her light

she sends projectile loving.

That'll teach you, she says.

Aye, it's one lesson after another

from this liquid woman.

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First blogged this 26th April, but it should probably sit in this month's blogs as well as a reminder.

Rules

The theme is ESCAPE. The poem, or poems, have to have something, however tenuo...

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Thank you for dying

so dramatically and suddenly.

Our archaeologists and tourists

appreciate it, appreciate

your frescoes and fountains,

brothels and bakeries,

your eerie, grey corpses.

Even Pink Floyd are grateful.

Your emperor was no help.

If here, he too

would be a doom-faced corpse

as you are now.

Corpse-town Pompeii,

Vulcan's pla...

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The invaders

SHOUT

constantly,

cause mayhem,

pocket barbarians,

overwhelming defence,

maintain barrage

CHARGE

onto my lap,

demanding the reading of books

and my shredded brain obliges.

They laugh

They cry

They bang

They throw

They rough

They tumble

They fall

They rise

They devour life

age two, three and four,

...

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Two candles.

Two candlesticks.

One, a dull green sea-floor bottle,

a scuba-diving find,

The candle of freedom.

The other of mellow olive wood,

carved, gracious, twisted, spiral,

bought in Bethlehem,

the candle of faith.

The candle of freedom wouldn't light tonight.

Many attempts, several matches, one result.

It lit, though, from the candle of fait...

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Why were there witches?

Why, what were they to do,

widows and virgins, women deprived

of the love of men by the death of men?

Those warriors with their wars,

always a'killing of each other,

leaving the grieving, the surviving

and the loneliness to women.

No bigamy or polygamy.

The hunger for family

cries on village edge.

How were these starvelin...

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Leave home eight fifty five arrive nine twenty six

Leave home eight fifty six arrive nine twenty seven

Leave home eight fifty seven arrive nine twenty eight

Leave home eight fifty eight arrive nine twenty nine

Leave home eight fifty nine arrive nine thirty

Leave home nine o'clock die in head-on smash

Leave home one minute past nine arrive ten thirty two

Delayed...

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The barber and priest hear and know

The cabbie hears and sees – she knows.

The policeman picks up the pieces,

He knows, all too well he knows.

The tax inspector and debt collector.

They know.

The Childline worker listens and knows

The social worker knows and acts

The journalist knows the facts

he claims. Hmmm.

Fellow-prisoners know, but not mates

...

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No point pulling the curtains

No point making the bed

Waste of time picking up clothes

Futile cleaning his head.

He thinks today will be lost, will be compost

a day of maggots, twenty four hours of weevils

A shadow lies over it, doomed from the start

It's a day that doesn't rhyme.

Or scan.

There's no point, it's all out of joint.

S...

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Don't tell me what's in a sausage

or found under a toilet seat

I don't want to know what lives in my gut

I'd rather not know what I eat.

I don't want to hear

What inhabits my comb

Nor learn of creepy-crawlies

infesting my home.

Keep me ignorant

of what I'm breathing

or what down the plughole

might be seething.

They say there's millio...

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The poem was a friend,

the tried and trusted companion

of countless open-mics,

an anthology, blogs,

and three slams,

one a triumph.

He loved that poem,

loved the fact that others loved it too,

sometimes read it aloud

to himself,

caught himself,

as it lay on a table, touching it, patting it,

looking at the crumpled, much-traveled paper

with gen...

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Is there anything like a bath?

This wonderful, warm womb

in which the weary wash away what irks them

to the sound of small grunts of cosseted pleasure.

A throne!

A tub of splendour,

in which aching limbs can luxuriate

and from which tired minds may survey the world.

I'm not choosy,

don't need a jacuzzi.

Just soap and bubbles

to forget my...

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Above the green grass,
against the blue sky,
below the grey clouds,
two black crows
thuggishly mobbed another,
an albino,
chasing, harassing,
bully-banishing

"Leave him alone," I shouted
"Stupid birds, he's only another crow.
Can't you see the world is coloured?"

"You should talk", croaked a crow.
"Yeah, your lot do it", said the other.
"Maybe", I said, embarrass...

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The angel ushered him on.

Dense, impenetrable, jungle parted,

paths opened for the gleaming, smiling figure

with joyous eyes.

It did not seem real

His breath came in short pants.

The track rose steadily

It did not seem real.

A gaudy parrot flew clacking through the creepers above,

the jungle was vivid, vivid,

the angel eyes caught him and drew him

aga...

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The jungle edge stirs,

in light from moon,

fireflies, stars.

The small, neat man

stands in his ordered porch,

for a breath of air, before retiring.

Or so he said to himself,

not knowing his blood was speaking

hidden words.

Leaves rustle, monkeys chatter,

the sky clouds over.

Something is stirring out there,

something is stirring in here,

in th...

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Who am I?

I know that I do not know

who I am and

that is all I know

But this is jungle.

How did I know that,

but I do know

and this a tree,

this a body,

My Body!

nice body,

feels GOOD.

How'd it come?

don't know,

in the jungle

all I know is

this is all I know

I remember nothing

expect nothing

am nothing

I look ...

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From where did I get the notion

there's something wrong with emotion?

The human tribe runs on feelings,

and we starve if it's all just dealings.

So I reject staying remote,

I want to connect, want to emote.

Give myself permission to feel,

let myself love, be loved and be real.

A person is not just a book

to open and take a quick look.

Each one...

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One morning in his neat little cottage

at seven thirty, his usual time,

he was contentedly brushing his teeth

up and down, the recommended way,

the recommended number of times,

when he smelt smoke.

He opened the window

and looked across his perfect little garden.

And saw

The jungle on fire, fierce crackling,

choking smoke drifting ...

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In his pretty cottage

in his nice armchair,

he was sitting, sipping

afternoon tea from the china cup

with the red floral pattern,

when the room gloomed and darkened.

He placed the cup on the saucer

carefully,

rose, went to the window,

and stared past the chintz curtains

at a very large creature,

a wall of brown fur,

sitting on most of his previou...

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Again, that noise from the jungle.

He straightened in his garden,

that neat, square little patch

behind his smart, small cottage

with its chintz curtains,

and well-behaved, curling plume of smoke,

stared intently,

past the pristine bird table

at the lush foliage, starting

just beyond

his beautifully clipped privet hedge,

and asked himself

What w...

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Endlessly falling

Not feeling a parachute

Not seeing the ground

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Enticed, gazing through criss-cross fencing

at Preston Road station platform.

Ignoring the fierce, frightening through trains,

rushing past his feet,

and British Rail on the far tracks.

He watched the common red ones,

with flared carriage bottoms,

waited for the rare, pale red ones,

with oval end windows, and

the very rare brown ones,

with delicious slam...

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The dear, black and white dog sees the ball,

chases the ball,

all it sees is the ball, and

it does not see the deer, and

for that I am grateful.

For the two deer,

ghosting spirit-like through lovely trees

in this ordinary urban park.

For the dog still by my side,

not disappearing after bobbing white rumps.

I am grateful for it all.

Two minutes a...

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