Monday, 9 February 2026

A Poem a Day (743): Poems from a London bar

 
Wisps
 
High on the level, fire on the pedal,
metal cleaves in ever-descending miles.

Set a record in the waking night
to an audience of blighted stars,

where trees seek to leap chasms
of fire played, indifference plagued.

Insomnia streaks the skies in wisps,
grips the moon in a silver boa,

dances the pitch into pink dawn,
a lonesome kiss melting upon the lips.
 
 

Seek something to devour
 
Let’s dance where the earth roars to its outer limits,
echoing all our yesterdays in one voice,
one phrase the whole world can recognise,
a full tilt of every dream we ever had,
walking different paths, telling the same story,
rattling each phrase in its empty cage
until every emotion leaks out as water.

A spiral of words, glittered and true,
spent, unspent, wrapped, unwrapped,
this parched bark etched, leaking dew,
its lifeblood resurrecting the earth.


 
Tarmac

Criss-crosses of tarmac sear the earth inside out,
scour lines so deep we forget how to breathe,
dirt so red it seeks to bleed
an ocean to eclipse the sorrow you feel inside.

A restless spirit haunts every refraction,
every shattered shard stripped of hue,
leaving a kaleidoscope of black and white,
missing every rainbow chained to dark.


 
Paint

Paint leaks off the page,
faces reflect in window flecks,
light shadows walking
steal a slip of sunlight.

Time strides back sometimes,
freezes in order to release,
leaves imprints in sunken sand,
shies backwards into the waiting sea.


 
Surrender

Give up everything to be free,
to search for yourself in blue sky,
the magic of the dreaming,
where east devours west,
colours you gold in retrospect,
reminds who you never were
in this fight to stay you.
 
 

Slight

Light strips, detects,
resurrects forgotten details,
faces painted with a white brush.

We rename ourselves without thought,
risk abandoning our disguise
to walk an invisible tightrope,
deconstruct ourselves to fit a box
only to smash it with both fists.

I sit waiting for the stars to lift,
for the earth to be rewatered,
for ruin to bury itself again
between all these moon rises.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, 8 February 2026
 


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