When people see a spectacular dancer,
They say, “Oh, that’s poetry in motion!”

And then they might see a moving painting,
And say, “That painting says it all—It’s like a poem!”

And good musicians are just considered poets.
I mean, Bob Dylan won a God-damned Nobel Prize
In literature, didn’t he?

But it doesn’t stop there. I’ve heard motorcycle
Races described at “pure poetry in action...

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No, it’s true, April does not

Arrive as a grim reaper

Coming to take souls

Off to underground rivers

In the waste land

Or anything like that.

On first glance, April

Is a reprieve, new life

Is in abundance, and

We step out and look up

For the first time in awhile.

Now we can rouse ourselves.

Lift ourselves from bed

And go out into the world.

Daffodils,...

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The poetry is pretty perhaps,

And some may appreciate the aesthetics

While being put off by the messiness

Of the content, preferring a tidy theme.

And maybe you could clean it up

A bit to avoid making the prigs uncomfortable.

Say something about flowers by the seaside,

For example, and let us forget people have sex.

And let’s forget about messy conflict

In relationships,...

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I’ve always supported freedom and equality

I wanted minorities to have equal opportunity.

I believed in promoting a liberal social order,

Showing non-aggression and peace at the border.

I wanted to teach the world to live in perfect harmony,

So that our new Utopia would all be down to me,

But my kids are proper communists,

They want to overthrow the state.

They will give ev...

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An explosion beyond comprehension sent all

The ingredients of the cosmos careening through the void.

Light, matter, and energy diffused chaotically,

Taking billions of years (as we now know them)

To fall into some kind of order, to establish

Some vaguely predictable interactions of

Cosmic proportion. Somehow, trillions of

Particles began to cooperate to form

Molecules of ca...

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What if the hyperreal really isn’t real,

And the news never happened?

Our perceptions are just pixels, photons,

Bits and bytes scattered on a screen.

Gods and monsters both just

Misapprehensions of a troubled mind.

But whose mind is responsible for

The anxiety provoking representation?

Surely some eternal consciousness

Has not conspired to create in y...

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It’s best to sneak up on the reader.

Change the meter,

Change the rhyme,

Change the tone,

Or change the subject.

Try to do something unexpected,

Like confessing a crime

Or secret perversion,

Even in a

Short poem.

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A traffic jam that spans an entire epoch

Is followed by daily punishments of

Dreary Sisyphean meanderings,

Followed by even more traffic

In sweltering heat and sticky humidity.

With all energy drained from

Lungs, limbs, and mind,

He shuffles into his house

Seeking only relief and brief reprieve.

As he unbuttons his soaked shirt,

“Do me,” assaults his ears

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It seemed you never put down your club

With the handle wrapped in cloth tape.

You patrolled the hallways, playground, and athletic fields

Like a sadistic southern sheriff overseeing slaves.

You thought “abuse of authority” was your job description

As you terrorised children with the constant threat of violence.

Each look, each word, each step you deemed unacceptable

Was met wi...

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I am hosting an online open mic using Zoom.us conferencing software beginning at 7 pm (UK time) on 1 July 2018. We will use Zoom.us teleconferencing software (meeting ID 260-756-986) and take turns reading our poems out as you would in a physical open mic. With luck, we will have a few poets from Britain and a few from the US as well. If people join from other countries, that is even better, but t...

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I'm putting together a poetry trail for the New Mills Festival. The festival begins 14 September and runs for three weeks. Poem will appear in shop windows throughout the town. We will have a round-robin poetry reading for participants on 26 September 2018 at The Butterfly House at the Torrs. The deadline for submissions is the end of May, but I'm accepting poems as I go, so it is best to get them...

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