https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wXPU0XSt50DB8K1R4q_GOlEYc25-mWvU/view?usp=drive_link
A collection of 74 poems. All of these poems, except for Judder, were written between April 2, 2022 and May 14, 2023.
Hi, you can read Kiwi in Cat City, the first of 6 books for kids aged 7-100, for free here. The series was selling well until 2015, so I thought why not make it free, because the whole idea was to be read.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ihUVY_CmQpq-n9w5Y5NcfesjSv8zpE8L/view?usp=drive_link
My new poetry book, Alice Walks the Night, is available for free here -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V28Ot7fb25-ttcpgMZDOzjMt9W00oE7H/view?usp=drive_link
It's a collection of 119 poems.
I own all the rights to my books, but they stopped selling in 2015, so I thought why not make it free.
I started planning it last year and put it on the backburner while being homeless, but I was sitting in a pub yesterday afternoon with my usual cup of coffee and decided to finish it off.
So here it is. Enjoy.
Freedom
walk sublime,
echo you in mime,
come to
find you lurking, somewhat stilted.
Tap the
shine. You devour wine, red,
converse
a while, dance on cirrus clouds
a dream
of being something other
than who
you are – what you could’ve been.
sometimes.
When the sun slides, sparks,
as the
full moon rolls in on breaking waves,
and rain
flees order in its tin timult,
you might
find your own centre, still,
rediscover
how night falls,
eclipsing
iron structures, gilded cages,
long bent
out of fashion, eaten by rust,
find who
you always wished to be.
Two little
pieces I wrote. The first one I wrote in Waterloo around 11pm. Was crossing the
road towards the station and a guy was playing amazing guitar, watched by a
blonde woman kneeling down. You could feel the connection between them. A bus
light blared in the dark as it stopped for me on the crossing. He stopped
playing, so I walked a little bit and stopped, waiting for him to start again.
A train trundled over. He didn’t play again, so I stood there and wrote this
poem, and then got my bus. Then I had a cheap cup of tea in a pub and wrote the
second poem, Freedom, and later I listened to a guy play the theme tune to Merry
Christmas Mr Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
all the
missing pieces, the zeroes,
half-lives
strewn, never fully realised,
trains munching
metal girders, rumbling
carcasses,
levelled wings of steel.
spaces reinvented
so we can fit in them.
ushering
me across a stained-out road,
bus lights
picking shadow from loin;
neon cut-glass
glows, shrapnel howls –
we seek
escape from the beaten scrawl
while part-notes
mimic it all.
play with
rhythms half-recalled. Stalled moments.
rays caught
on a double clef, romanticised,
this train
the accompanying drumbeat
transporting
sound into another yard.
flick red
betwixt the sure and the maybe.
you wonder
if they really want you to step
into the
void between you and them,
feel the
gap close, the subtle burn
filling a
space once empty.
and you
pick without thinking,
but shyness
locks you in yourself.
so you
may see through a glass darkly,
but walk
away too shy to look back.
Yet you
feel it, this shift, a new skin.
into an
open sky of happy endings,
feeling like
an opportunity missed.
it reflects
a guise of a chance,
becoming
a runaway thing you wanted,
this man
you never got to know.
Pictures
unseen slip, live a secret life unnoticed.
A child
laughs, snug in their pushchair,
too innocent
to recognise ghosts in the dark.
Sunborn
how it
wakes, breathes, uneasy storm,
the sunborn
scent of the ever ocean shifting,
scoping air
and wing and self.
raindrops
twisted from the eyes of clouds
screaming
truth into a wild scribbled sea,
sun-speckled
woven quilts of salted lace.
in an
escape of shot-out landed blue,
and we
are aghast at the dice full-thrown,
their echo,
their shape, their secret truth.
waving surrender
before you could fail,
your number
waiting in the wings,
this dripping
real the only salve you need.
Copyright
Vickie Johnstone, June 24, 2026
Hi, I've taken a break from writing this year.
I'm currently jobless, since March 2025, and homeless since 1 July 2025. I was made redundant after passing my probation in a new role at the end of 2023. I went to live with my dad as I was made homeless by this and I ran out of money by Christmas. I looked after my dad and he died after a month of end-of-life care at home in June 2024. It was difficult, but I am grateful I got to spend that time with him as he never said he was feeling ill. Whenever I spoke to him on the phone he always said he was okay. My mum died in August 2020 suddenly. I was with both of them alone when they died. I came back to London in March 2025, but found friends had gone distant and my manager ended my job. So it's been a strange time. People went distant, so I went distant back. I've been unable to find a job and I've had blocks on my phone. I've also had a stalking and harassment group disrupting my life since June 2022. It got worse in April/May 2025 and included theft and people getting into my hotel rooms. So it's been a weird time. I keep reporting it to the police. But I get stalked daily. They've ruined my life. I was living off my inheritance from my dad, but the harassment and stalking (by a half-white, half-Indian team) was so bad that I escaped abroad. And I went through my savings last month. I've spent 13 days sleeping outside and I'm going to be doing the same thing tonight. I have found somewhere for showers and food. I am probably going to lose all of my possessions this week because I can't make the payments on my storage and the company has refused to give me "special treatment" as she called it. I have no income. I've never made much money from my books, poetry and records. I didn't fulfill all of my dreams, but I tried. I got defeated by a harassment and stalking team who haven't stopped since June 2022. They even stalked and harassed me abroad on my birthday week in March. I'm single with no fall-back. It's just me.
So, for these reasons I've stopped writing.
I thank everyone for their support and the people who believed my story. I can't be the only one.
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.
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 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.
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.
Camouflage
seeps into spaces
etched in concrete,
the places
between oceans swept,
air blown
outside wild shadows.
This skin
resists insistent erosion,
mixes faces
beyond every false start.
Reflections
dance, drip checkered lights,
wipers sweeping
midnight’s rush.
We are slow
to weave our stories.
Moonlight combs
dry leaves to memory,
no imprinted
names on ghosted windows.
He echoes
this night of slipped shadows,
speaks words ripped from his own pages,
phrases you
wish to recall in morning’s dew.
Eyes
haunt, caught in moments only his.
He sees you,
through you, and you repeat,
voices his
regrets, his sorrows, his burnt wishes,
but they’re
the same as everyone else’s.
Nothing vanishes.
You could step outside yourself
and catch
his glance in mirrored time,
try to walk
the imprint he leaves,
knowing you
could never live who he truly is.
clothes drip
like laundry
on disjointed
limbs etched out.
He sticks
out like fresh cream,
armour rusted
in salt dust,
plasters a
smile on the iced street.
Night's glimmer creeps into his eyes,
tells you things
he wants to forget,
dreams of lucid
summer, what he can’t resist,
when clouds
forgot to sweep his sight.
He walks
tall beneath moon shimmer,
winter aching
his bones,
seeps wisdom
like milk,
this sustenance
that should sustain him,
but he is moulded
from water.
It flickers
sometimes on the surface
of ideas
stretched too thinly,
memories he
can’t block,
old phrases
that used to work,
the silences
he’d rather forget.
Yet we can
walk and talk and be ourselves
on these
silent streets keeping their truth.
We can be
bonded through small things,
be a safe harbour
in this weathered storm.
