Poems
Rainbow
If you can Look, see the children play. Build sunshine from rain Casting rainbows and rubies, Find stairways to heaven And back again. If you can Listen, hear their voices, Bring music from sound Raising castles and kings, Find highways to freedom Begin on the ground. If you can Learn, with their teaching. …
On a night so deep you can taste it
On a night so deep you can taste it, I read your letter, aloud. Quietly. Uneasily. But I can’t make sense of the words. As if somewhere, between the page and my eyes, they gave up the ghost. Lost all meaning – jettisoned any sense they might once have had, on the journey to my …
The Boy Who Grew a Mane
When Ben was ten, he thought, for a while, I’ll grow my hair long, have a different style. So Ben grew his hair, and nothing could stop him, not wind, nor sun nor rain. And it grew in big locks, right down his back, just like he had grown a real mane. Unlike …
Post Covid: Special Needs Kids
What happens to… the ‘rear’ kids? the ones with the silent voices (that) go unheard. Their sound not travelling from the back of the class. Who listens out for them? Are we so deaf now? So immune? Or the ‘fear’ kids? the ones with the hidden bruises (that) go unseen. Their marks not …
Berries in the snow
Hidden in barren boughs iced berries, like frosted rubies, await the raw sunshine warmth of the day. They spatter the monochromatic blandscape of a winter in post viral modernity, dancing and laughing in the breeze. The gathering sun articulates their inevitable doom as it arcs across a pale cerulean sky, cut glass crystal crowns trembling …
To Derek
I miss The early morning kitchen cups of tea Catching up on the news and gossip I miss Those conversations across the desk tops Pretty much doing the same I miss Being summoned from afar And taking my reading glasses – just in case I miss Being texted or called in boring meetings Just to …
The Corona Quiet
So quiet the land – the lanes, the paths the leafy glades. Where in the air viral shadow evades surgeon scalpel blades. Corona cripples cursed confused countries, Crying out for medicine and medicals. Rage against a parasite That Earth itself has sent. Covid 19 coursing, carousing, carelessly carefree through the blood of this us – …
A RAGE Of Cancer
I am RAGE! And rage is ME. Blinding, bubbling, Burning, broiling, RAGE. Erupts from me, like lava from some vehement, vengeful, violent volcano, bent on disruption. I am FEAR (too). FEAR, festers inside me, A savage scar, and I can’t see past the C Word Now. FEAR has blinded me, lives with me. An …
Competing Religion: From the window of a train
All across the flat lands, The scattered stoic stone spires of English churches, reach towards the sky, in tribute to their god, Crying to be heard, A testament to the toil of their beliefs. And in the fields of gold, The withered wooden limbs of lightening trees, reach towards it too, in honour of their …
Work In Progress
And the noise, the noise, It’s all white in my head. And all I want, Is to go back to bed. Endless lists within lists of things I must do, The priorities of others, rising like a tide, Wave after wave of them locked in a queue. And I’m drowning, not waving. And …