A Poem a Day (738): Pulling the chain

Pulling the chain
 
Spend four months kipping in hotels
because you don’t have a choice –
no job = no flat – and they’ll soon lose
their idyllic, romantic charm.
 
In the capital you’ll hemorrhage cash,
so choose the cheapest chain,
the buildings you think are the safest.
Can you fork out £100 a night?
 
Down the leafy high street you collide
with a ragged man begging, a girl huddled
in wet cardboard, and you feel sick
at throwing so much money away,
 
wonder when it’s going to run out,
how long til you’re on the same road,
asking for money from everyone you meet,
the cold searing through your veins.
 
In the end the chain just looks the same,
purely functional: a bed, a shower, a desk
and a chair. But it’s a roof over your head,
with your suitcase of your life.
 
You miss the books you want to reread.
You miss the music you used to play.
You miss the festival boots, band T-shirts,
hippy shake skirts – your unique you.
 
Paint-splattered posters, quirky postcards,
personality for your wall, body and soul –
the things you wrote, the things you drew,
the wishes that meant something true.
 
People say objects don’t make you happy,
that striving for them is superficial,
but you spend a lifetime working for them,
to create a comfy world for yourself.
 
In a hotel, you feel anonymous, an actor,
a wanderer adrift in frames devoid of
your expression, each one a carbon copy.
It’s only the angle that changes.
 
Sometimes a stranger disturbs your space,
enters uninvited, thinking the right belongs
to them, as if you’re a pet, an object.
A scarlet heart in this too-white box.
 
People come and go. So does this pursuit of things.
Not for greed or want, but to feel at home.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 20, 2025
 

A Poem a Day (737): Chasing water

 
Chasing water
 
You can smell the rain melt into the trees,
spray the sidewalk a-glitter, invisible chaser,
staring up at sunlight cracking the sky,
a portal promising a backward glance.
Summer breeze shrouds you like a lost coat.
It glistens on your cheek, tickles eyelashes,
trickles down the tilt of your nose,
soaks your skin and T-shirt, skimming
denim shorts, your legs in silken warmth.
This moment sticks on pause. Drifts over.
Just you and the rain. The elements and you.
You blink it back. Endless.
 
He crosses the zebra, avoids the scattergun
of traffic, squints against the tumult,
this downpour heavy like lead, feels it
different, the burden of it. Pain wrapped
in a bow, a rainbow swirl of memories.
The air shifts, a momentary glove,
almost holds out its hand to shake.
A near-miss as a taxi snakes past.
Jump to the kerb and scatter your heart
in the gutter. It’s an instant switch,
this scene dissected into a kaleidoscope
turning, a cubist painting unravelling.
 
She rests her body without motion,
listens to the elemental language,
fingers scooping her hair into place.
A quiet wildness. She doesn’t care.
Water circles down the curve of her back.
She wears socks and trainers like a kid,
yet she’s anything but, in her stance,
in her tranquil contemplation of air,
the leaves in the silver birch above
arching to protect her. She feels it all.
He stands caught in her energy for a time,
outside the hissing spiral of traffic,
all the chaos silenced, erased, blocked,
and only she exists here, unrivalled.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 1, 2025

A Poem a Day (736): Track & trace

Track & trace

 
It’s track and trace,
the age of Big Brother,
every day on record.
 
Can you hear the bounce,
the standoff? Sweet
fermentation of echo.
 
See you smile. Sense your style.
No manufactured glances here.
Just the original, no spin.
 
Catch a scarf in centigrade,
wander pools of being.
We reflect in another’s art.
 
Caught in traffic you break solitude,
don’t need to engage.
Red light here, green there,
we’re all stuck on amber.
 
I admire your pearly cage,
embroidered as I am in my brick one.
I guess we walk the same stage,
you a little higher on your ladder.
 
I peer at stretchmarks,
a little sagging, prepare myself
for my final measurements.
 
We run the list.
Race the pack.
Double back for a rebound.
 
A little late-night reading.
Bed bugs chase the cover light.
I catch one in a jar,
hand it into reception.
 
A little water might suffice
unless you’re drowning in it.
 
Listen to the tick.
The tack.
The walk back.
A hit on the wall is a strike-back.
 
They’ll close you down.
Hit the blacklist.
 
So keep in line.
Stick to your lane.
 
I’d say sit on amber,
admire the flowers,
throw a bone to your dog.
 
We don’t discriminate.
They just want to bury you,
find you lacking.
Pin the blame.
 
If you fall asleep,
they’ll steal the wheel.
Take everything.
And move on.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, October 2, 2025

A Poem a Day (735): 4 poems from a rock pub in Brussels

 
Mannekin
 
Into the cave,
bricked up, forbidden love.
Wooden tabletops compare sunken contrasts,
muted lights flicker in cloudy glasses
awaiting the big turn-off.
 
We measure streets on maps in streets.
A man carries half a mannekin,
his missing bits strutting their stuff,
held aloft in a real man’s hands.
It raises a smile in the slinking day.
Half a man being better than none.
 
I go the whole yard on a butter croissant,
flip it with tucked-in cheese, au fromage,
rediscover mellow sweet Home Alabama
cos it never went out of fashion.
 
Checkerboard tables invite your knight to play,
so bring your sword and magic helmet
Bugs Bunny style, shooting his carrot guns,
flipping the guys on the football table.
He scores without even trying.
Jambe-de-Bois someone called,
rousing cheers from blocked-up ears.
 
Circle back, confound the crowd,
trace backstreets to your starting post,
scribble poems in an Irish well-easy
in a high corner on a round table.
 
Red Hot Chillis take a turn on the box,
‘like nothing I have ever seen,
waiting for you’ – an invisible skin.
They take a chance you might never run.
 
Flip the switch and it’s night-time leaving,
wondering how much time you have left
while the light flickers in your hollow glass,
music caressing an empty room.
 
There is a reason to smile at something new,
delight in the potential,
the unexpected corner untaken.
There is no time, yet there is always time.
You can sit and think and dream a while,
remember every moment taken,
every chance you didn’t walk on by.
 
 

Slink
 
Strip
the light,
embrace dark,
raw, how it curves,
how it slinks,
the way it holds you,
this swallow whole
into yourself,
inside who you are.
Outside comes in.
Welcome the full,
this opening
beyond you.
Feel the rise.
It is the ocean,
deep.
 
 

Reflow
 
Oceans of stone,
feel the ridge, a stolen pause,
unreal, discarded, unwieldy,
where coral ceases to speak.
This underworld on pause,
bereft of flow,
simply pauses,
waits for reinvention,
for seeds to grow
and become what the oceans
are starving for.
 

 
Feel
 
I don’t feel.
I overfill.
Can you feel it?
Have you had a moment
where you pour over,
where you are more?
You find your thing
to find yourself.
We go out of our way to search,
but it might be here all along,
in your hand, in your heart,
in your eyes.

 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 4, 2025

A Poem a Day (734): 5 more Poems from an Irish pub in Brussels

 
Unfaded
 
To be unfaded,
I’ll trace your reflection in ink,
a memory recorded in smoke,
a maybe you will never obey.
We starve ourselves in contemplation.
Starstruck, we fall to our knees.
Pour your presence into my hands.
I will carve you out of clay,
write a capturing, a blessing,
mimic you as a leaf dressed in autumn colours,
send you into the wide open skies
and give you freedom
to fly.
 

 
The unsettling
 
Triangles, all the unbreakable
prisms, an alternate side of being.
Scarlet dawns, a castaway’s curse,
distances we swore we would keep,
but give away in truth in a day.
 
It is happening in this unhappening,
blue-green journeys of a never life.
It stopped at a red light
and this pause continues to block
any semblance of incoming traffic.
 
Wait for go.
Wait for continuation.
Cast aside reinvention.
Wait for life.
Even if it takes another lifetime.
 

 
Cyclists (in paintings in an art shop)
 
Paint in ovals, screams of light,
scribbled movement, effervescent, alive.
It streams in waves,
a torrent unstoppable.
There is no end to this thread
casting rainbows, iridescent hue.
Motion in lines curve in enigmatic music
unwritten, unplayed, simply drawn
by hand, by eye, heart and emotion
in synchronised rhythm.
 
A couple balance on two bicycles
drenched by rain
streaking blue-soaked canvas,
trailed by blasted yellow lights,
the lamps of oncoming traffic
twisting paint under neon signs.
 
We are lit
when no one is watching.
 

 
Throwing stones
 
Triangle spires mark the distances
between lovers in time & space,
sink sadness like a weighted stone
to position & reposition.
Thus we spiral out like wool.
 
We don’t change places to confound.
We don’t twist to break.
We break in order to be ourselves,
to move in freedom,
follow our own footsteps,
And be. Shadows can yawn,
play bored or die. But they must leave.
The departed ghost needs to stay so.
 
We have free will.
Without it we can only hope to shatter,
for we cannot live as spectres.
 

 
Block paintings (in an art shop)
 
Block paintings
of bleeding colour
stack lines, track figures
unthought of,
believe in disbelief,
where every thought is readied.
 
We try each other in suspension.
Hands trace words in empty air.
 
I am the chase,
you are the follow.
I am the chased,
you are the fellow.
When can we reverse
so I have free choice?
If there is a reason
I am not a part.
What is the reason
to be apart?
 
I might just shatter space
with what is never said.
Is this a curse to be female?
Is it better not to stand out?
 
You follow cues
and get nowhere,
trace a line into an eternal void.
If you meet shadows on your path
ignore them to feel yourself grow.
 
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 4, 2025

A Poem a Day (733): 3 Poems from an Irish pub in Brussels

 
Stricken summer
 
She spoke, she moved, she eloped.
It was a stricken summer stripped of steel.
 
Knock out, step back, repent sideways.
Hear the gasp of glass shatter skywards.
Smoke clouds rise as epitaph, smart, depart,
limit their echoes into spoken words.
 
We cannot disparage what we don’t understand.
Cards of hearts assemble, spread, and fall,
stand the time in a simple house towering.
It won’t break unless you crack it so.
 
Here we are, and love won’t gather here.
Lend your ears and watch him cry out loud.
 
A joke won’t wake him out of himself
or change his time of departure.
Set a date and drag him out of his coffin.
 
We are all stood in the waiting room here,
loitering for some fool to stamp our wrist
or take us on a journey out of ourselves
where the hourglass won’t ever freeze again.
 
 
 
Guinness tortoise (from a poster on the wall)
 
A tortoise wears a Guinness crown,
carries time on his back to distant climes,
counts the dates of the calendar slow,
tells fortunes on his many-sided shell,
shiny octagons that blink in the night
to show the path to every indifferent stranger.
We wait his coming in this steely pitch.
 
He takes his time, this endurance, no easy ride.
Come hail or storm, he gets there in the end.
She dances in fiery signatures stolen
from strangers she tried to connect with once,
for we are all built of straw in owing time.
We ride with invisibility balancing our shadow,
not measuring the cost of forgetting we are here.
The tortoise waits at the darkest hour.
He’ll still be there, no matter how long you take.
 
 

Circular paths
 
Words seer the back of a plate ever spinning,
unstoppable. A world fallen off its wheels.
A trickster, card dealer, a mind in motion
knows when to cast adulation on the wind.
Don’t pause. Don’t thumb a lift.
Liken gratitude to a broken spur.
It’s a hopeless light that seeks a retract.
Footsteps mirror in stripped windows bleak,
a maze scribbled in a kaleidoscope of black.
 
You strip your clothes down to the basics,
keep going like a jumbled, rumbling stone.
Distance wakes, keeps itself anonymous,
not knowing what to say for every occasion.
Clueless, it steadies itself in silent inaction.
With nowhere to go you stand still.
The field won’t wait, but do you really care?
If it cared it would walk a straight line to you.
A roundabout route circles wildly until the bitter end.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 4, 2025
 

A Poem a Day (732): 3 Poems from Waterloo Station

 
Silk
 
The tall & the skinny,
sheer explosion of black silk.
It slides, it spills, it senses
when the world revolves anew,
as rain energises daily rhythms
from beach to urban to mountain high.
 
We are the escape from every notion
of being left behind, of forgetting,
of being stilled out of our sleeplessness,
knowing we can only be one,
all else submerged in silences.
 
There are no offerings in daylight.
Dawn washed them all away
& berries don’t wish to grow there.
 
 
 
Bower birds
 
Sometimes we are lost
& sometimes we are found
& sometimes we are beyond ourselves.
 
It’s an allegory of mixed betweens,
out of, in, and never inside out.
 
He makes a match. He never finds himself.
She never gets off the starting line.
The ever-potential of being something.
 
He leaves his suitcase in the bower,
scatters glitter to decor & adore,
struts his fancy manoeuvres to a captive audience.
We can only stand & stare in awe,
wonder how he can still pirouette,
balance, flex his muscles against the sphere,
flick a tail feather & bow.
 
The setting sun has more to do than stare.
It plants a star only the moon can see,
captures the full vesta for eternity.
 
 
 
Check out
 
Check in, check out,
newly awake & caffeinated.
Greet the naked rain in peruse.
Barefoot in the park, it echoes green.
Grass tickles, pokes itself between toes,
seeks a carpet of woes newly vacuumed.
Carve a pathway like Moses’ sea,
fenced in by sculptures of washed stones.
Crawl to walk.
 
It’s a wander into starlight,
an adieu to the beyond of day.
Figures dance in shadows met.
They cash in on nothing.
A manufactured thing is meaningless.
Grow in the knowledge of free thinking,
a knowing we can be ourselves
without the pressure to be anything more.
 
If we are never nothing
there is always something to aspire to,
even if we become invisible.
 
  
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, September 2, 2025
 

A Poem a Day (731): In/Out (poems from a hotel lounge)

In
 
A life in nine frames,
ebony lines on pearl,
stripped bare of colour,
yielding to mix.
 
Cut in, cut out,
a reveal without the whole,
a copy recopied,
just an interpretation.
 
An almost echo,
we reflect our symmetry.
 
Light paints fresh patterns,
moves in waves,
casts doubt on stillness,
enters into self.

Out
 
Calligraphic scales,
a dance in streaks of ink,
rip stark contrasts;
partners in depiction
fighting to describe,
like bodies out of tune,
desperate to separate
into disparate worlds.
 
For now we have pictures
of our life,
a memory of things
never written
for they were never lived.
 
Left with only an idea,
colour in the spaces
between these bold lines
that breathe and scold.

You seldom exist
outside of things.
 
 
Vickie Johnstone, August 23, 2025

A Poem a Day (730): In the turnabout (poems from a pub)

 
In the turnabout,
footprints walking blind,
taking their cue from the invisible,
a source with no foundation.
 
You await the uninvited,
take the step they think is slow
when you’ve already appraised it all,
evaluated and relived every detail,
every destroyed element,
your life scratched out.
 
There are things you need to forget,
there are moments you will never forgive.
If a wish was ever made
it was an empty one.
 
If you tell everyone the truth
it’s their failure not to listen.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, August 19, 2025

A Poem a Day (729): A missing piece

 
A missing piece.
You can feel it,
can’t see it,
this fractured thing,
an echo in the dark.
 
A piece of something
you never knew.
What someone said,
but never meant.
A memory of being
the thing you wanted to be.
 
And so you need to ask:
what do I want,
what do I need?
 
Who are you?
 
Because the more you ask
the less you are.
 
Copyright Vickie Johnstone, July 2025