Jack's Fancy
Jack’s fancy was a bungalow,
Nestled quietly near the woods;
A garden and a patio,
A place to store his worldly goods.
A haven close to nature’s heart,
Where he could ponder and could rest;
A spot for music and for art,
And all the things he liked the best.
But pleasure soon began to wane,
As viral traffic pounded past,
And noise from each approaching plane
...Tuesday 1st April 2025 9:09 am
Detritus
The odd small child has copped it,
A writer here, a pensioner,
And, just around the corner,
An engineer.
It’s the same old detritus of war;
Keep moving now,
There’s nothing to see,
Nothing to fear.
The single mum with stumps for legs
Has made somebody’s day,
Just like the school and hospital,
Each with rooves blown away.
More detritus, but life goes on...
Friday 28th March 2025 9:33 am
Dotted Line
‘Your country needs you!’
Came the breathless whine,
As we put our names
On the dotted line.
Everyone went;
We all joined the queue.
No questions were asked.
None of us knew
About proper war;
We weren’t playing games:
Grenades in an ambush,
A tank crew in flames.
Although we were told
That problems were shared,
It soon became clear
That ...
Sunday 23rd March 2025 8:50 am
The Player
By day he played the markets;
At night he played the fool.
In youth he would play truant,
To get away from school.
In common with those round him,
In life he played a part:
A tragic, gilded aesthete
Who suffered for his art,
The tough, self-made financier,
Who played for all they’re worth
The hapless types endowed with
A silver spoon from birth,
...
Thursday 20th March 2025 6:41 am
Fawn, Lick and Grovel
Fawn, Lick and Grovel’s advice has come in:
Turn the other cheek, take it on the chin.
It’s should be simple to sit there and grin,
While he spills all his gibberish and bile
(In other circumstances, you might smile).
You have to be his stooge and feel his smack,
And grit your teeth as you’re stabbed in the back.
A handshake with the king, or fulsome praise,
May push humili...
Saturday 15th March 2025 5:09 pm
Upside Down
While standing on my hands,
Or balanced on my head,
I’m looking at the world from upside down.
I’m cartwheeling at play,
In my inverted way;
A raving king addicted to his crown.
I’m hanging from the ceiling –
A strangely bracing feeling –
Suspended in the void just like a bat.
Revolving through one-eighty –
My bottom end quite weighty –
My view of Ea...
Tuesday 11th March 2025 5:03 pm
Kryvyi Rih
Civilians lie, annoyingly dead,
Innocent prey of the enemy’s sport,
While wannabe gods in Washington cry:
‘You losers! We told you. It's all your fault.’
Others in Ukraine, spared till now, await
A shabby, hardly necessary fate,
And wriggle in the web where they are caught.
Friday 7th March 2025 6:04 am
The Vineyard
A cemetery, you may think, but
No bodies lie beneath, just roots;
No unattested arms remain,
No pairs of sweaty, unclaimed boots.
Quite soon there will be vines and grapes,
And then the succulence of wine;
No trace of blown-off body parts,
Detached by shell shot or by mine.
The volunteers who tend the place
Sense no souls planted underground;
They prune and ...
Tuesday 4th March 2025 8:47 am
Oval Office
There are no allies any more,
No friends, no foes,
No right, no wrong,
No good, no bad;
Just bully boys who'll take you
For everything you had.
Saturday 1st March 2025 9:00 am
Time Lapse
A soothing spectacle on screen:
A desertscape in lapsing time,
Where scenery - cactus, rocks, sand -
Never changes. The clocks tick on.
Though days flash by, time seems to freeze;
Sunrise repeats like gunfire.
Life seems eternal, unchanging,
The only obstacle being
Our usual human wear and tear.
Beyond, stormy seas of nonsense
Batter the crippled innocence
Of ...
Thursday 27th February 2025 4:36 pm
Spare Change
They no longer carry coins.
They have wads of notes to spare,
But their instinct is to throw crumbs,
Or bits of half-eaten sandwiches.
They tell you to perform
One of those cute local dances,
Or to sing ‘Streets of London’,
Or playing a tune on the violin.
Or better still, sit up and beg,
Say how goddam grateful you are,
And hand over anything you’ve got,
Explainin...
Sunday 23rd February 2025 7:39 am
Neat
Sitting on the train,
Neat houses flash by.
But life is not neat,
Though houses may be.
Behind those neat walls
Lurk furious hearts,
Unleashed as soon as
The train disappears.
These airtight dramas
Lie far from our minds.
We keep our heads down.
Our neat lives go on.
Tuesday 18th February 2025 6:31 pm
The Sunshine Boys
The Sunshine Boys are chatting on the phone;
They claim that they are both concerned with peace.
But one of them is raining down his bombs,
While body counts on both sides still increase.
The other one appears not to remember
Who started this barbaric slice of hell;
He treats the culprit as a valued partner
And seems to have been captured by his spell.
The victims...
Friday 14th February 2025 5:25 pm
The Day They Came
A tingling, a taste of the past.
Before it started. Before time.
Such memories would have been nice.
Though winter packed a punch that year,
Us two, wrapped up in desire,
Barely remarked the snow and ice.
For we, young and unbreakable,
Took slippery falls in our stride
And bought up love at any price.
Until the day they came.
Monday 10th February 2025 9:28 am
Forgive, Not Forget
A time will come when we forgive,
Though that time is not yet;
But even when forgiveness comes,
None of us will forget.
We won’t forget the agony,
The sadness and the waste;
We won’t forget the insults hurled
With puerile lack of taste.
We won’t forget our cities wrecked,
Our soldiers blown to bits;
We won’t forget the fearful nights,
The lethal missile h...
Thursday 6th February 2025 9:40 pm
Growth Agenda
Let bulldozers rip,
Get spades in the ground,
Turn on the taps
In city and town.
Rules on the bonfire,
Planes in the air,
Bricked-up banality,
The fun of the fair.
And, all of a sudden,
The climate’s nowhere.
Sunday 2nd February 2025 8:55 am
Single Speed
Now that the weeks and days and months fly by,
Propelling us still faster to our end,
The needed action is to hold up time,
To slacken off, or better still, suspend
Its uncouth march into the wild beyond
And celebrate its capture as its bond.
But if time should comply, what must we do?
Display ourselves and prance around a pole,
Or willingly obey a quiet void?
Time,...
Wednesday 29th January 2025 9:45 pm
Somewhere
Simon Grimes
Sought warmer climes
To cover up
Outrageous crimes.
Meanwhile, the wondrous wunderkind
Cooked a rabbit that he had skinned,
And then used daring to escape
By running flat out like the wind.
As the bise chilled the strollers by the lake,
A cheating couple rose up from their bed,
And pushed their way through carnivals of crowds
Towards the snow...
Saturday 25th January 2025 9:27 am
2028
The march of time has done for one good man;
America has opted for a fool,
But once they suffer four years at his school,
They’ll spit out their disgust, because they can.
Societies will dabble with the dark
Until the day the scales fall from their eyes,
When, faced with routine bigotry and lies,
They understand this is no campaign lark.
Then honesty and decency p...
Sunday 19th January 2025 5:18 pm
Climate Emergency!
It’s been the hottest ever year;
The one point five is broken.
But in society round here,
These words are never spoken.
There’s still time for a reset,
Through measures tough or token;
The greenhouse levels climb, and yet,
These words are never spoken.
The glaciers will melt away,
And fires taunt the ocean,
But in the workplace or at play,
These words are...
Tuesday 14th January 2025 7:40 am
Le Grisou
On winter days, with frosted breath,
We wander to the warm, great hall
To see this sacred scene once more.
A mother mourns her perished son,
As mothers do across the world,
While washed-up men, most often old,
Pick off the innocent for sport.
Grouped women, tethered in their grief,
Mop up the personal effects,
Doused in their humid, sodden tears.
Soon, beyond anger, b...
Saturday 11th January 2025 9:34 am
Men and Boys
The kiddie-giggling boy-men types,
Who shape our tastes and fuel our gripes,
Are like a zebra with no stripes.
Their views today are painted on;
Those of the past are long, long gone.
They rule the culture like machines,
And serve up, bite-sized, on our screens,
An option menu for our dreams.
The bad ones will be swept away;
Nice shall prevail day after day.
...
Monday 6th January 2025 8:47 am
God's Grace
There but for the grace of God, I thought,
As he rose from his place on the pavement
And stumbled to the shelter for some soup.
Fifty, probably, but looked ten years more.
Unshaven, stinks, frankly, but still too proud
To ask for a bath. How did he get here?
Not long ago, he had a job, a spouse;
Then both disappeared and his home with them.
‘Bloody fool,’ he mumbled, ‘no di...
Thursday 2nd January 2025 8:52 am
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