Hey!

 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.

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