This mellow season wrought of change

Turns a fragile moment on its potter’s wheel

Pale sunshine clasping the ripple of leaves

The gallop of muscular cumulous

Migratory flights of wintering exiles

Summoned by generations of calling

Polished light and liminal shadows

Rise perfect from eloquent spinning

Finish the form with satisfied fingers

Sweep spu...

Read and leave comments (2)

I: Order

Spruce features sculpted through the burnished years

with metronome concision; ancestral tones

refined in leafy schools, the polished enclaves made

to replicate advantage life on shining life,

the bright unstated goal to which all efforts tend.

At one with old cathedrals, abbeys, Inns of Court

and sybaritic garments trimmed with golden braid;

despite their blood...

Read and leave comments (1)

It strode across a century, enduring wars,

The shifts of fashion and the scorns of time,

A post-war enclave of a simpler age; but

Not the gulf of Covid, short but absolute.

Once, summer evenings in this noon-cool hall

Filled hours with ice-cream, raffles and applause

As year-worn boards upheld performances

And eager actors tried their ways with words

And chill Oct...

Read and leave comments (3)

Anchors away

These islands must move

Sever all ties and drift

Across widening waters

Legal, commercial, historic

Chains wrench apart

Snap and drop soundless

Into deepening tides

Aloof and unbonded

Washed out to sea

This Ghost Ship nation

Drifting to nowhere.

Read and leave comments (1)

Neither cold night nor seasonal change

on the turning Earth dismays or hampers them

Veterans of words hold fast in all weathers

Never retreating, ever writing victories

Impassioned by an urgent inner voice

They hold fast to their poetic purpose

Drawing strength from years, they fight on

Never dimmed or surrendering to silence.

Read and leave comments (6)

His hand and eyes he lent to us

For almost five and forty years,

He gave us childhood, hope and truth

And visions of our darkest fears

Exotic heroes, distant times

And swirling planets far away -

He coloured thoughts and drew our dreams

And showed to us another day

He honed his subtle craft like steel

Eschewing easy, common things

And shaped through art our ...

Read and leave comments (5)

Bare minimum defence from ice age gales

Black frozen sabre-toothed nights

Hard scratching twigs, unwanted gazes

And chilly waters.

Sheer primitive offence for snared rabbits,

Wild hungry wolves and bears;

Vague weighty threat for rivals, offspring

And difficult women.

Read and leave comments (0)

Wild reassembled words fly spinning everywhere, -

Tossed thoughts relinquish a lifetime’s memories;

A distant lighthouse, leagues from here or anywhere, -

A florid ego drenched in half tautologies;

Where does he tarry now, who never came on time

To share his tangled thoughts and parodies of rhyme?

Read and leave comments (2)

Whether it was going to an all boys' school,

Growing up in a religious subculture,

Having parents that didn't let you develop

Or provided no template for living

Say you are one of those guys that missed out

On intimacy in your teenage years

How do you ever recover?

Laying in bed lonely for all those nights.

Not even having dates with girls your age.

No girlfriend.
...

Read and leave comments (7)

Sneaking out at night to lie with your virgin girlfriend under the stars.

Seeing her face in the crowd at your High School football game.

Having a huge group of jock friends.

You never experienced any of that.

It's over. You lost at life.

Time to man up and become a provider.

Time to downsize and save for retirement.

Time to Gillette shave your face and become...

Read and leave comments (4)

DOGS

YOU FUCKING STUPID PIECE OF SHIT

WOMEN VIEW ALL MEN AS DOGS AND PUPPIES TO PLAY WITH

AT LEAST REALLY GOOD LOOKING WOMEN


DONT YOU FUCKING SEE THAT THEY NEVER TREAT MEN SERIOUSLY YOU FAGGOT?

ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND? YOU GOT 1/100th OF THEIR SEXUAL POWER

YOU LOST YOU FAGGOT

YOU FUCKING LOST

WE ALL LOST



UNLESS HE'S A SERIAL KILLER OR A GURU NO WOMAN NEVER

I REPEA...

Read and leave comments (2)

Frankie and Johnny, post-War adventurers

Will go where programmed masses never dared before;

'Man, we're gonna do it! Let's live with resolution;

'In fifty years there's nothing anymore.'

Read and leave comments (0)

Heavy bourgeois stone

Composed of music, Pop Art

Cult of youth, sexual reform

Love rhetoric

Hides darker truth of

Racist chants, stiff-armed salutes

Gas mimed through hissing teeth

Bananas hurled from terraces

At startled, spittle-slicked forwards

Boys raped in children’s homes

Voiceless class

Prey for the Great and Good

Gagged tight for decades

Read and leave comments (1)

Outside a warm room

In some middle-class place

Tramps starve

Children drown

Economies crumble

Nations arm

Wars rage

Powers fall

People mourn

Debts mount

Rapists prowl

Fools pray

Cars crash

Victims weep

Wounds bleed

Madmen rage

The kettle clicks.

A steaming latte

Warms contented lips.

Read and leave comments (2)

Withdraw consent             Let names die

Watch grass grow             Unplug connections

Miss dates                        Release beasts

Drop burdens                    Fuck whores

Tear up ballots                  Ignore pleas

Shun duty                        Waste talent

Get drunk                         Get high          

Forget things                    Go your own way  ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Eliminate bad displays, old gems and useless information.

Remove archaic paintings, drench them in petrol and set the pile alight.

Place modern art by living hands on every wall, in every space.

Add iMacs, PCs, laptops and wireless transmitters to facilitate global engagement.

Drive underclass offspring from the gardens and racists from the coffee-tables.

Sp...

Read and leave comments (0)

Birdsong filled the deeps of summer. The blue sky rang with shrill excitement as golden sunshine flashed off the murky water. Many emotions filled him - nostalgia for the days before pollution, regret for the river as it was. He inhaled the unmistakable scent of damp sand, sharp and sultry. He picked up a round grey stone, remembering voices from his youth, and skimmed it over the water. Presently...

Read and leave comments (1)

Royal Flush:

Kensington

Prep School

Eton College

Oxford University

Prime Minister.

Busted flush:

Brinnington

Somewhere

Somewhere else

Stockport Jobclub

Heroin.

Read and leave comments (4)

Are we just too lazy to stir,

toil and breed?

Too fey to strive for life,

our own and others'?

I guess we are.

So why knock immigrants?

Who else will clean our incontinent beds

when we are old and sad?

Read and leave comments (3)

Will lurks somewhere

in all our indecision.

A will too weak to stir

our flesh to action.

A will enfeebled

by the trials of youth.

A will deformed

by dirty songs and dreary.

What will steel the will

this world has robbed us of?

We need a war

to steel the will again.

Read and leave comments (1)

Years flow by

unpinned by indecision;

to study or not;

women or not;

work or not;

conformity or not;

drugs or not;

to bother or not;

suicide or not.

Read and leave comments (1)

Here meet the rivers.

Goyt and Tame entwine

like destined lovers.

Here beneath

classless sixties concrete

the Mersey rises.

No one sees

this source of songs,

legends,

life itself.

We hid the source

and gave our river

to the scousers.

Read and leave comments (3)

Pass down the road where traffic never sleeps

And find, perchance, a building on your right:

A scottish bank, as white as dirty snow.

Turn down the quiet road that runs beside,

Through leafy arbours and their dappled shades

And taste the gentle aura of this place:

A breeze serene, a blush of deeper peace.

And then the railway leaps across our path;

A gleaming scr...

Read and leave comments (3)

Plebeian culture wanders out and proud –

The cult of drugs; discordant music jams;

Moronic rap and savage hip-hop ‘slams’:

Unchecked emotion snarled in hate aloud.

Now I, for one, take quite another view

and give plebeian culture not a glance;

mere childish chaff born of unhappy chance,

a savage skit to which scant praise is due.

But why is it esteemed, and...

Read and leave comments (8)

We smelt the piles of rubbish in the street
and read by candles in the freezing dark,
we watched for Nazi skinheads in the park
and heard the moan of Britain's long defeat.
The old paternalism kept us down
in triple-binds of accent, race and creed;
and yet we thought we nurtured hope indeed,
though dreams of aspiration went unknown.
And then the old consensus passed away
with ...

Read and leave comments (3)

Out of the frame comes hollow art,

Fly as high as life will let you

One hug means all the world to me

Things aren't always what they seem,

Clothing as well as beauty can be skin deep.

Things tatter in dreams

Like soaked pieces of paper

A brave sun struggles to penetrate the clouds

Red stilettos on the pier

A deck chair with no pr...

Read and leave comments (2)

Fun by numbers; birds loom, weather threatens.

The naked jogger eyes the eagle's wings.

Walking on egg-shells

Breaks me up

Senses erotic with words

And the ghost of memory writes his name

You do it to make the story work.

Read and leave comments (1)

10 PM Saturday night.

Sunday morning.

On the path between the two.

- log Reference - 597 date 25th

101

Read and leave comments (1)

A sonnet drowns in love.

Patterns in Nature cling to crystal zones:

This singular look on your face

In this time and place,

Touching on the distance but never nearer the truth

Moving wedding poem gives weight to sentiments -

A wind of change blows through the trees

Holiday antics

Away from prying eyes

Of neighbours, parents and friends;

The yo...

Read and leave comments (2)

Pulse to pulse, drowning in feathers

Swept by tides of love all moonful midnight,

In the sea and sand having

A pint and potatoes with no salt,

Love is sweet whilst it travels

Close to each other and nature

Together we share time

And time in turn shares us

The pain of recognition bites

Like the rail tracks turning, turning…

Streaks ...

Read and leave comments (5)

Strong families keep the memory of the nest alive

Music and life lasts a lifetime,

And each cloud holds a smile

I’m cold and thinking about John Denver for a while

Listening to the tumbling words that spin

I’m on the asparagus spectrum

And what with where-withal and where-without we face

And poets, when called to hate,

Are drawn to hope and love...

Read and leave comments (3)

Tonight is the night

These boots are made for show

Written by an indignant hand,

More dignified than mine

Thin as wire, quick as fire

Quick as swallows backward in the night

A peacution freeze

In the midnight breeze

And to that wretched end,

We sold our souls

New beginnings, novel readings

Mindless mercies

You’r...

Read and leave comments (3)

The feast of Yule returns again

With glad and merry times;

The bells are ringing out for you

Their joyous, cheery chimes.

Read and leave comments (3)

RULES AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR ENTRY

Silver shadow,

Rue the falling sand

Come walk the nights with me

Poetic illness when growing,

Ageing,

Living and loving

Then laughing

The warmth of my love

Will keep you warm.

Read and leave comments (1)

Quick to temper,

Know you and me

Well.

Oh, child – open your eyes!

Stark, the herald angels pose

Clear night,

Cold,

Stark crescent moon

Stars bright like jewels

In dark,

Blue

Night.

What do you see?

Think of what you don’t see

To really understand me.

Read and leave comments (0)

Read and leave comments (4)

Read and leave comments (0)

Just a reminder about our Read Out Loud event tomorrow at Stockport Art Gallery in the fine creative setting of the Open Contemporary Art Exhibition. Non-regular attendees have to book a place via the Gallery (0161 474 4453). The event starts at 7.15 PM but attendees should try to arrive by 7.00 PM.

A microphone, laptop and projector will be provided for those wishing to provide a multimedi...

Read and leave comments (1)

Some fragments:

"The Pit is such a place, where peerless deeds

Are writ with potent wyrd, and heroes wild with passion

Stake all on their steel-resolve, certain of God's grace."

"You must have drained a dog ere daring that, you cur!"

Said Loco-Man - the leader, called the Lord of Pain.

"Now heed, who has not heard the hoary truth:

We fought a fearsome for...

Read and leave comments (1)