A missing piece.
You can feel it,
can’t see it,
this fractured thing,
an echo in the dark.
you never knew.
What someone said,
but never meant.
A memory of being
the thing you wanted to be.
what do I want,
what do I need?
the less you are.
Wednesday, 20 August 2025
A Poem a Day (729): A missing piece
A Poem a Day (728): Smoke (poems from a pub)
Smoke
a trickle of haze,
this distant daze
within this maze of being
smoke.
you can never extinguish,
an unbreakable line.
seldom amused,
she feels the afront
of being female,
actually daring to be so
in a world of bias.
It gets in your face,
refuses to shift,
confuses your perspective,
overstays its welcome.
simply to free yourself from
smoke.
A Poem a Day (727): Bang (poems from a pub)
Bang
a spill of adrenalin,
the turn feels like the ocean.
A body built of water
feels the flow, the slide,
the churn of the turn,
the fire inside,
this nocturnal high,
a figure eight never ending,
always in tune
til the end of the world.
This raging burn
will never die.
A Poem a Day (726): “Normal” (poems from a pub)
“Normal”
How you dress, how you smile,
how you move, how you dream.
It’s something outside normal,
this beyond, this becoming
someone they don’t understand,
a person they will never fathom,
no matter how hard they seek
to control, to use.
You broke the mould,
you became something new,
someone unforgettable,
just by being you.
A peg that didn’t fit,
someone they didn’t want to breathe.
They held you in contempt.
They kept you down.
But you can only be you.
The peg that doesn’t fit.
That was you.
The person you built.
The human you were deep inside.
A unique thing.
A treasure.
A gift.
No need to feel ashamed
of who you are,
who you had to become.
You are just you.
Let it be.
A Poem a Day (725): The pub at the end of the sea (poems from a pub)
While waiting for the check-in time for a hotel, I sat in a rock pub with a pint and wrote some poems.
The pub at the end of the sea
drunk in the stall, the pause,
a vacancy of purpose.
Without ambition do we die?
He thinks he withers like a tree;
he just pauses, thinks, dreams a while.
Leaves refresh, repurpose in rain,
treasure will unearth secrets long hidden,
any move to betray beneath sound.
while she walks jagged to the surf line,
the edge, a crossroads in water,
looking for the bridge she once built,
the one the enemy sought to destroy
through his lack of understanding.
Walk backwards into the sea.
Light beckons and grows,
blasts ignorance to smithereens.
Thursday, 14 August 2025
A Poem a Day (724): Drop
Drop
this downstroke,
this oblivion.
to catch yourself,
to trip yourself,
just breathe into it.
seek to become,
ensure your light.
a little stardust,
a little something other.
resist the gathering storm,
walk in the sparkling deluge,
untethered,
feel it flick on skin.
silken leaves lift you up,
twisted roots drag you down,
yet you can breathe
in the drop,
the abandonment of strings,
cables, dragon pulls,
suspensions you don’t need,
holding you back in places
that eclipse you
when you can just...
a wide-open smile
of dripping rain.
A Poem a Day (723): Catching lines
Catching lines
& you can draw a line straight,
something true, a bridge,
a crossing over a blank page.
But can you draw a circle,
round like an orange is?
only encompass with your hands,
a black & white creation,
maybe crosshatched, a little shaded,
a thing you could bond with
if you’re not feeling too jaded.
post it to your windowpane,
announce that you’re an artist now,
a big hello to the wide world,
even though it was always in you,
cos you are that thing, that word,
thinking you’re just not good enough,
but it’s still you through & through
because you are that hand that draws,
that paints, writes, that cannot laugh
but can touch, can feel, can give.
step inside it, open up a portal,
this open thing you want to kip in,
slink into, escape & be gone in,
but it’s an opening just for you
& it ain’t staying open forever.
but this one isn’t for you.
It’s for every drifter-by to see,
to accept – an invite to come inside
& feel this curved charm, this oval,
this true thing you can offer them.
A Poem a Day (722): The bubble
The bubble
upon a world that does not exist anymore,
a cyan cast of faces adrift on breeze,
strokes of cirrus without sentence.
recalls echoes without shields,
swords that cut without a bitter edge,
the taken with nothing to take.
and we drift out of perspective.
a reason to discard all mockery,
a vision of a self not yet lived.
out of himself, as others got things wrong,
but even he could not live forever.
build a wall against an invisible army.
You don’t know the drill, the phrasing,
and we all melt in welcome heat.
turns in echoes of fortitude, smoothed
out without discipline or order.
in this traffic of organised sound.
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
A Poem a Day (721): A purple rose
A purple rose
yet its echo still flickers, still lingers,
an arc of rainbow reflected in rain,
a dance of scattered notes.
Patches, flowers, cards & empty cans,
dreams that will never set.
Memories of places, faces, dances,
conversations & drunk romances,
his voice drowning everything,
like water reviving parched earth,
& we are found no longer crying,
but reliving every chance meeting,
every song, every riff, every drum roll,
digging the beat within our rib cage,
& every time the lights seemed to blow out
as we staggered into the starry night
like zombies, our hearts full of lyrics,
silenced a while in contemplation,
smiling wide, eyes bright, feeling lighter,
our spirits swept up by sound.
Thursday, 19 June 2025
A Poem a Day (720): Burial in water
Burial in water
fake disappearing, halo effect,
a plunge into obscurity,
disintegrating in oceans rapt,
a burial, held aloft to wonder at,
to hold, let fall into dust –
feather-like, stranded stars
crossing the sky like ants.
hits you, a rainbow striding,
motions arcing over broken idols
drilled into the shore.
You count the score when you
should plunge, salted, disheveled,
into breath. A starfish shapes itself
in sand, winks its orange skin,
its radiating heat, rhythmic beat,
guide it through the crystal deep.
The horizon walks a heady line.
It whispers sometimes,
bubbles beneath this jaded sun,
an arc of dripping yolk burning
words of hope into water.
Tuesday, 17 June 2025
A Poem a Day (719): Sea claws
A prompt from napowrimo.net: “I challenge you to find a news
article and write a poem using (mostly, if not only) words from the article.
You can repeat them, splice them and rearrange them however you like. Although
the vocabulary may be just the facts, your poem doesn’t have to be.”
redo, refit, the prompt said,
so I hunted for a happy one, devoid
of war & fighting, death, hate
& suffering. It took a while.
those snippy little fellows with claws,
a crusher & a cutter, aqua-true
with beady black eyes.
or European lobster to me & you,
paddling the Atlantic to the Azores.
baby lobsters indulged in their first swim,
all 1,088 of them, ten weeks old
& just an inch long.
as to its whereabouts,
but it’s pretty famous,
so you can probably picture it.
to do 25 releases in 25 locations,
a happy 25th anniversary
to the National Lobster Hatchery.
5,000 little snappers in all.
in her belly, but only one is expected to survive
out there in the wild.
they dive down, limbs flaying, scuttling,
to settle on the seabed & burrow
deep into spongy sediment
to spend a year learning how to live
in the bounteous sea.
no war, no suffering,
a shakeup into cuteness.
It took a while.
snippy & aqua-true,
Homarus Gammarus paddles
the Atlantic to the Azores.
& just an inch,
baby lobsters begin
their maiden voyage.
1,088 tiny clappers floating free.
& burrow deep into the sea floor.
They’ll spend a year here,
learning how to live.
Saturday, 14 June 2025
A Poem a Day (718): The circle
The circle
bereft of season
extinct of leaves
that survives emotion,
a release to savour
beyond endeavour
the world’s compassion
amid pure elation,
to seek to celebrate
outside the obstinate
all the indelicate,
afraid to waken it.
Beneath this starlight
jibes another trick
that licked the night,
the way it burned so bright.
We stand still in time
outside of every rhyme,
every turn in the sky
seeking truth, not lie,
fierce oceans ironing out
beyond any doubt
this desire to speak
when you feel so meek,
a vowel left unsaid,
a need unfed.
So we caress water,
defend with laughter,
stand still, naked,
always so eternally naked.
A Poem a Day (717): Crossing water
Crossing water
listen for the soft surf of water’s flow,
the truth of all our destinations,
a lover waiting in the wings,
this always-in-the-ether maybe.
recite conversations we never wrote,
seek recalled waves from all our yesterdays
and watch the sun set into a sleeping sea.
And somehow we are encouraged
So here we are, not so small after all.
We are the waking and the being,
and the rush of something else
we can never get a handle on,
reflected in flittering black obsidian,
wondering who stares back at us,
clerical, whimsical, ephemeral,
and we are reborn without even wishing it.
or a deep dive through a kaleidoscope
of shiftless shapes we cannot even see
until here we stand at the all too familiar
crossroads, seeing only as far as we are allowed,
throwing caution to the delight of our heart.
We are the divided outside of division.
We are the wonder that we ever spent this long
drifting.
A Poem a Day (716): Exit right
Exit right
she drifts like water flows,
a warm abyss, your welcome
into sweltering rain.
Pure rush, this downpour,
an effervescent everything.
you’ll feel it
in the silences,
the emptied out,
the spaces she’ll leave behind
in the walkout, the exit,
the surrender outside of herself
just to be her.
before you,
before the accusations,
the dance, the pretence,
the other women you couldn’t ignore,
the criticisms, the putdowns
cos she could never be enough
for you.
That’s the kicker,
the punch,
your realisation. So,
you’re gonna have to forgive her
cos it was you that wasn’t enough.
She walked through the blizzard
and she kept going.
Monday, 28 April 2025
NaPoWriMo Day 28: Cruel summer
Day 28 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
I decided
to write a poem made of loads of titles of songs/albums. See if you can spot
them.
he could
get no satisfaction:
“What’s
going on?”
“Dream on,”
the girl replied,
as he
gazed at the Waterloo sunset,
thinking how
nothing else matters.
He needed
a whole lotta love,
but he was
living on a prayer.
Am I
losing my religion, he wondered,
just like
yesterday, or something.
“I wanna rock
you like a hurricane,”
he somehow
blurted out,
and she sped
off down Abbey Road.
Ice, ice,
baby! Imagine.
She was a
rebel girl. No Maggie May.
He’d hoped
on heaven being a place on earth,
but love
just wasn’t in the air tonight.
Que sera,
sera, he thought.
Layla just
wasn’t gonna light his fire
tonight or
any other night. She’d pick up
one of the
boys of summer instead.
Epic. I
will survive, he thought –
I’m a
rocket man with great balls of fire –
so he took
the midnight train to Georgia,
Gangnam style,
just a smalltown boy
looking for
his dancing queen.
NaPoWriMo Day 26: Night of the hunter
Day 26 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
this curse
of night, an avenging clawed moon.
Bereft of sound,
he moves on, a panther
crossing roofs,
sunk alleys, life out of tune.
for the
North Star’s glow to show him the way.
He wastes
no energy, shores up his scope,
outside time,
place and the ordinary.
who escaped,
pursued, the muse to his art.
A bunch of
chaste white roses, the thorns pruned,
he holds,
but only shadow in his heart.
but her
image washed away in his tears.
NaPoWriMo Day 27: A new chapter
Day 27 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
A new
chapter
of time, unheeded,
a heady sprint
into the
dust of evening’s song,
an
emptying of the greyest clouds.
in the
station, a huddled pile of clothes.
Suitcase bulging,
ticket in pocket,
but he was
never going to show.
as you
count the years on one hand.
You read
all the places out loud until only
one train
is left. It won’t wait forever.
the in-betweens,
the maybes, lost faces,
all traces
of the times even you forgot,
seeks to
smother all memory of them.
so you
join the departures at the gate.
For there
is steam and there is speed,
and there
is the rain to make haste in.
your eyes
and your skin. It strips clean
the days,
the months you stood waiting
until you lost
more than just time.
smooth your
skirt, unpin your hat,
open your
coat and settle in. You’ve far
to go but already
feel lighter.
towns are
for leaving. The river spreads
below you,
hills rising either side.
Unkempt trees
sway, throw blossom away.
You open
your book to the first chapter,
read the
title, see the whole page inked in,
unlike the
one you’ve embarked upon.
NaPoWriMo Day 25: Echoes
Day 25 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
life’s
time echo in the red,
deepset against
a cyan sky.
Set feet
deep, dig down,
synchronise
so you’re in balance.
a distinct
roll, a heartbeat,
the raindance
of the shaman
opening his
hands to the cirrus clouds
feeling the
weight of the wind.
in rhythm,
like the eagle’s wings,
a sweeping
eclipse of the soul.
In the
still you can hear the echo,
the pump
of blood through water.
NaPoWriMo Day 6: Cinnamon
Day 6 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
My words: cinnamon
– wheeze – golden
watch the
flame wheeze in the air,
wax
trickle into a pool
of silent
memory.
serves me a
slice of apple pie,
sugar crystallising
on warm pastry,
crimped
edges tinged golden brown.
and suddenly
my grandmother is here,
holding
out her wooden spoon
as she
used to do when we were baking,
covered in
heaps of snow
to dip my
finger in the mixing bowl,
stick it
in my mouth with a grin.
Sunday, 27 April 2025
NaPoWriMo Day 7: Made by Matisse
Day 7 of
the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
pirouetting
among sleek swans
posed in
my lace pink tutu,
adorned
with a trail of glittering stars.
I do not
yearn for the spotlight,
the crowd,
the roar, the applause.
I am
backstage in the shadows,
treasuring
my anonymity as I roam
soundless
and unnoticed, ordinary,
watching
each production in private,
my own
personal reflection.
away from
the lights, flowers and applause.
Perched on
the edge of a tin bath,
leg up on
the bar catching a conversation
or sat
down on a rug washing their feet,
it is only
a scene that Degas can tell.
the shifting
shapes of primary colour,
ever in
motion and twist
across an
expanse of empty white space,
always pursuing
this something other
ever so slightly
out of reach.
NaPoWriMo Day 17: Eyes without & other poems
Day
17 of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
Eyes
out of glasses,
abstraction
without guise,
a
near-sighted flirtation
bereft
of Confucius says.
a
conversation takes place,
this
meeting without minds.
masked
in mascara, witnessing
cosmetic
lies in transfiguration.
what
he leant his signature to
until
they sat on a tabletop
suspended
in thin air,
eager
to take flight.
Scarlet
She unwinds a ball of blue wool,protector of sea and sky
in search of the waiting shore.
piercing all his guarded walls,
knocks until his world opens wide,
a corridor into the dark,
his twisted labyrinth.
trailed by a single white dove,
passion and peace out of balance.
a disembodied ghost of memory,
her melancholy, her wanderings,
her protector in the darkness.
touches the seat of the chair,
anchors her in this world.
Bringer
of night’s curses,
fireworks
implode into pitch
around
his skeletal endeavours,
splatter
the blood of his foes,
stuff
of nightmares, grating,
all
engines of power paralysed.
seeks
to neuter the gods,
protects
no one, tells no tales.
he
pursues light in darkness
to
quell and destroy,
the
great wheel of bones turning
where
no tide will ever flow.
NaPoWriMo Day 4: Depth
Day 4
of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
exert &
exhale,
alert in
the delivery,
living the
heat, the expel,
of light,
emotive, vision,
mixed in a
fistful of paint.
walk on
water, flow,
wade into depths
of you
& spill
your insides out,
sweep your
arms in pigment,
become the
palette knife
that drips
your blood on canvas.
NaPoWriMo Day 3: Meld
Day 3
of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
I am sculptor,
a welder
of parts
that do
not fit,
until they
do.
alive
in the imagining,
lock metal,
refashion,
erase the
truth of things.
cling to their
opposites.
Stone breathes
curves
beneath his
hands.
NaPoWriMo Day 2: Mr Mouse
Day 2
of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
but
he acts as if he owns it.
He’s
stamped his prints on it,
this
cheeky teensy dormouse.
pyramids
of crumbs nest in the corners.
Follow
these trails to the inner wall,
the
hole that gives clue to his bedroom.
He
only creeps out while we’re dozing,
so
we look out for his daily efforts,
his
little eccentricities and squidgy presents.
but
he fits in snug with our cosy clan,
never
asks for anything, isn’t noisy,
keeps
to himself and lets us run the show.
but
for some reason he has chosen us,
this
invisible imp of the wild,
who
sneaks around, so shy of nose.
to
investigate what he does each day,
but
for now we’ll indulge his privacy
and
maintain our love of mystery.
NaPoWriMo Day 1: The school show
Day 1
of the NaPoWriMo challenge at www.napowrimo.net.
step up a
little to adagietto,
before
andante blends into moderato,
ambitious to
lift to the next level,
but before
it we will falter and revel,
a little
reckless, a little tart,
a little
eager to be the upstart
who begins
the ride but will not finish,
who yearns
to sing yet will only diminish
this song in
front of our audience of teachers,
peers and parents
– all our careful owners,
because they
all want something from us,
so expectant,
so eager to receive without fuss.
The
reckless soul within us dares us to withdraw,
to leave
the open stage to silence as before,
and a big,
bold question mark.
Everyone
will wonder how to fill the dark,
the wide
open space we’ve deserted for a lark.
Maybe one
of our parents will walk up for fun,
grab the
mike and show us how it should be done.
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