Donations are essential to keep Write Out Loud going    

Brother can you spare a dime?

Brother Can You Spare a Dime

I got drunk in a 

a Portland bar

thirty minutes after

I had exited my

girl-friend's car,

she text

to tell me

that she had finished with me

that that that was that.

I sat drinking

and pouring tears

into my whiskey

a guy with an

English accent

joined me

we had a good time.

I bought all the drinks

as I remember.

I l...

Read and leave comments (0)

brotherdimefull-lengthdrunk

proud Scots wha hae

Which ever way

the voters turn

(Robbie, river and the flame)

for Auld lang syne

they've crossed the burn

proud Scots wha hae

a land to claim.

And even if

the map's the same

and even if

Westminster rules

Scotland's braves

they've yet to tame

coz they've the oil

ye Southern fools.

Read and leave comments (9)

🌷(1)

ScotsAuldwestminster

Happy Birthday Bill

Repost in memory of the 55th anniversary of his birth.

 

I love Bill Hicks (while being tickled)

    ...I love Bill Hicks (laughing)...

...no no, stop...

   ...I love Bill Hicks (laughing)...

...no I love Bill Hicks honest...

     ...hahaha...shhh...

...I love Bill Hicks behave...(laughing)...

    ...shh...stop it! I love Bill Hicks...

(wistfully)

Bill Hicks

dea...

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(2)

Billhicksbirthday

Higgs Boson pt2 (Haiko)

125 GeV/c2

Point a stick at the sky

count its meanings

and wonder why

 

The Boson that is Higgs,

hides when it jiggs,

with an end nearly instant -

and the unification of quantum chromodynamics still quite distant-

the search for the particle,

was often quite farcical.

The technology involved

in the mass that's financial

unlike the thing itself

was massivel...

Read and leave comments (3)

🌷(2)

BosonHiggsmassivelyparticle

Haiku

Workers and poets
down tools:
Cohen is dead.

Read and leave comments (0)

🌷(1)

CohenHaiku

Cohen.

Workers and poets
down tools:
Cohen is dead.

 

Cohn is amongst 
that now lost crowd 
more distant in
their remembering
they can pass their
left words 
freshly traced
their lines
to be born with
searching   again

 

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(4)

Election USA

Conniving madness-
ever in the wings- 
has come centre stage 
strutting with a fringe
as a stick
with which to stir 
a pot of bile and fear
whose drips and spills
point towards
a new strategy:
suicide
disorder
and self harm
that hang about
on every corner
on every farm
as wild seeds
are privately sown
in a different time
and every home.
 

 

words and foto Tommy Carroll 

...

Read and leave comments (3)

🌷(2)

electionfringeusa

AmeriKana

AmeriKana night

bought from a shop

outfits  and make-up 

Ker-ching 

trick-or-foodbank night

sweets for teeth

knocked doors

ringing fingers

spend spend spend

 

Duck-apple

penny fades dangling on a string

creek in your neck

apples bobbing in a bowl

drowning for fun

scary stories in the dark

cheap as f*** night.

 

words and ffoto Tommy Carroll 

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(1)

AmeriKanaapples

She runs...

She runs down the 

meadow 

Catching grasping at her

breath

Faster faster 

Legs akimbo

While her shadow

crept.  

 

Words By Dad + Roisin

Foto Tommy Carroll 

 

re-edit 

Read and leave comments (0)

🌷(1)

Roisinrunsshadow

She runs...

She runs down the 

meadow 

Catching at her

breath

Faster faster 

Legs akimbo

While her shadow

crept.  

 

Words By Roisin

Foto Tommy Carroll 

Read and leave comments (0)

🌷(1)

Sir! - step away from the pot

Conniving madness-
ever in the wings- 
has come centre stage 
strutting with a stick 
with which to stir 
a pot of bile and fear

 

words and foto  Tommy Carroll 

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(1)

centremadness-stirstagesirsteppot

Higg's Boson

125 GeV/c2

 

The Boson that is Higgs,

hides when it jiggs,

with an end nearly instant -

and the unification of quantum chromodynamics still quite distant-

 

the search for the particle,

was often quite farcical.

The technology involved

in the mass that's financial

unlike the thing itself

was massively substantial.

Read and leave comments (0)

Mirror cracked

In the mirror

I held a face

that held a face's stare,

In that mirror

the face that stared

stared back at me in fear...

 

I knew that once

I turned away

that we would meet again

that he would watch

the back of my head and

whisper once more my name.

 

words and foto  Tommy Carroll 

Read and leave comments (0)

mirrorcrackedfacestare

Tour de France

 

Annual posting 

 

oooh ahhh

oooh ahhh

oooh ahhh...

aching buttocks

aching thighs

unseen crowds

unseen skies

between the shoulders

lakes of fire

stinging eyes

on the spinning tyre

calves and heart

will explode

grip the handles

eat the road

kilo meters

whirring chains

mountain passes

grassy planes

the body's racked

the body begs

...

Read and leave comments (2)

🌷(1)

"Yes You! at the back of the queue"

 

Sunday 12th July 2015 11:47 pm

 

-a rap-

 

We clap some Blacks,

them entertaining Blacks,

on stage, in film and racing tracks

tho' we mow the shacks

and dish out smacks

to those working blacks.

 

We clap them Blacks

and forget them whacks

and the blistered backs

of hands that buy

the music tracks

and then we clap them

Blacks them stand-up...

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(1)

Paradoxes: 1; 2; 1.5 and

1]

A Paradox is a conflation of stigmata: The certainty of mathematics and ones inability to describe (in language) what we experience. This confusion is the point at which motion obeys all laws and defines all laws. 

A paradox is a conflation of contradictory assertions. At no time nor space, are you able to ascertain the point at which a changeover occurs... Movement never occupies a serie...

Read and leave comments (8)

et Spiritus Sancti

The rasping metal teeth

unfolding  it awaits

my finger points 

you lean 

and then 

we smile 

and your mouth

sucks

whilest you are

looking at me

I sigh

and I bless your head

 

words and foto Tommy Carroll

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(2)

etspiritussancti

They never called me nigger

Blow after blow-

maybe

his greatest

victory

was his refusal

to fight

the Vietnamese.

 

words and foto  Tommy Carroll

Read and leave comments (3)

🌷(2)

Looking out of a window

alone and together

with Tom

a lost argument

in the swill of your each

and every drink

whilest  watching

the traffic below

your ache for words

in the track of

his next and every song...

 

words and foto Tommy Carroll

Read and leave comments (4)

The Votive offering

''here- hold this''

he offers it to her-

she holds out

her hand-

''keep your fingers together''

he smiles-

she sighs

holding her fingers apart-

''try and grasp it''

he watches her.

Looking at him

she forgets her hand-

he picks it up

and, again smiling,

he repeats-

the votive offering-

 

words and foto Tommy Carroll

 

 

Read and leave comments (0)

🌷(1)

The Gaoler's daughter

The oblivious kind -

that you must be,
because of their eyes

that you don't see.
The conspirators that

plot with devices
who clearly show

the signs of a crisis.

Those murmurers that

gather about you,
whisper of doings,

but don't dare to 
You'r not privy 

to their machinations
nor would-be

secret invasions.
Their intelligence

that will be used, 
rebounds- and

leave them c...

Read and leave comments (0)

🌷(1)

Poetess

her written brevity

enjoyed a shrtness

of width

tho'

the words became her

they

oft' caught me

adrift

and while her

recollections 

could be of

dire situations

her lines would

flow because

of her lack of 

punctuations

 

words and foto  Tommy Carroll

 

 

Read and leave comments (1)

The Problem with Grammar

"Guilty?"

"Guilty!"

"Justice?"

"Justice?"

Read and leave comments (2)

🌷(2)

Hillsborough ll

Hillsborough Inquest report due within the hour. Regardless of its conclusions no person will be found guilty as in a Crown court.

In no particular order here are some of the conclusions that I have drawn:

1) Architects- who have designed the ground and its access: GUILTY
2) Town planners who have passed the design: GUILTY
3) FA officials who agreed to use the Leppings Lane end of the grou...

Read and leave comments (8)

🌷(2)

Hillsborough

Guilty?

Guilty!

Read and leave comments (0)

wetting her lips

where butter melts

and honey drips

and parting comes

from parted lips

 

with my finger

I smear the dew

its knowing touch

from knowing you.

 

their nacent access 

my tongue enquires

their warming wetness

 wanting fires.

 

 

words and foto  Tommy Carroll

Read and leave comments (4)

🌷(3)

She pushed

MARXMAN. "All About Eve". 1993. original album version.

 

 

I often think about her, 

turning away,

and pointing.

She points

(always)

from a winning stance...

She says that she

thinks about me,

or so she says...

I  think of her push and shove

laugh, and her fingered

arguments- I was wrong

she was often correct

and as

we crawled into each other's 

...

Read and leave comments (1)

Her shadowed look

I now recall her smile

her voice and words

that when gathered gently

-like the corners

of a folded towel-

were placed between 

her letters in my drawer

and like the now hidden

memory of her face

her parted lips in silence

said more than

spoken breath,

her shadowed looks

and gaze now hid

this mark.

 

 

words and foto Tommy Carroll

re-edited

Read and leave comments (1)

A Palestinian child's enquiry

"Please lay down

why?

I need you to lay down

will it take long?

not at all

will my father know?

yes

will my mother object?

shh now

can I pray first? 

yes"

 

How easy it is

to bequeath a   

stopped breath,

to point towards- 

at arms length

or twenty fields

-the gasp from fire,

how easy to reload

and hold

the repeated 

sigh,

as if ...

Read and leave comments (2)

moving closer

stop touching me!

and we watch

and

then touch.

Read and leave comments (1)

Taxi at the door

one 

bottle of Drambuie

I 'phoned her again 

two

bottles of gin

she said she would sort something

three

bottles of Scotch

the 'phone rang but it was not her

four

bottles of vodka

more people than expected turned up

five

bottles of vermouth

she was not amongst them

six

bottles of wine

I rang her again

no answer: I left her a message

seven

...

Read and leave comments (5)

Monsoon winds

I would whisper the wind

to tangle your locks,

to tease your hair into a web

that entraps my thoughts

that entraps my

spoken wishes.

Let your hair be a

tapestry of my words

words traced as your

mouth is traced

while I whisper

those demands of you

I will lure your smile

with those fingered words

and let the Monsoon winds

whisper them back to me.

 

...

Read and leave comments (5)

not Bill

(a response to Cottage holidays in the Lakes new advertising campaign)

 

Tom loves holidays
Tom has a fear of flying
Tom has a fear of drowning
Tom has been banned from wearing a life-jacket  on the Mersey ferries
Tom has been refused a passport
Tom is not allowed to drive
Tom is averse to noisy amusement arcades
...ditto children
Tom has no tent-pegs
Tom has no tent
Tom hates camp...

Read and leave comments (3)

🌷(1)

p45

Whom the gods wish to destroy

its media they first employ

turning claimants into shirkers

making criminals of honest workers

the government then does its best

to thwart attempts to pass its test.

Read and leave comments (1)

🌷(1)

Kill yourself

'By the way

If anyone here

is in the Tory party

or

votes Conservative

kill yourself.
Kill yourself,

It's the only way

to save your

fucking soul,

kill yourself.'
                  with apologies to Bill Hicks

 

foto unknown

Read and leave comments (1)

"He gazes at his Venus..."

there's no answer to that.

Read and leave comments (1)

Hotel

I prefer spending my time

during the Christmas holiday:

in a hotel

incognito

in bed

in the shower

in pajamas

in the dining room.

I prepare the week by

leaving my phone at home,

filling my suitcase with

pajamas, books, toiletries

And

a new notebook

some red pens,

some black pens

sharpened pencils

and a rubber.

And

Two cases of Stella

a dai...

Read and leave comments (1)

This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Find out more Hide this message