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.
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