She wrote him a ballad between the Classics and the Poetry shelves in the public library, inhaling papery pheromones. She spotted his shadowy figure between periodicals and autobiography, held her breath to stop the erratic timpani of her heart and the blood-red symphony surging in her ears. The poem slipped from her sweaty fingers, drifted […]
Month: April 2020
Sullen
After countless years and so many sullen stars, we yearn for sparkling seas, fast running rivers, snowy mountain tops and vast green plains on our home planet beyond the moon. We have longed to escape the monotones of this metal box: utilitarian grey and brown, the tasteless sustenance, our heads blown by shifting body fluids, […]
This Island
This island was mine, I lived alone with everything upon it, unnamed but known to me. Fresh springs sparkled for my eyes only. Twanging music accompanied the lullaby of voices on the wind and waves. Now I collect sticks for firewood and share the bounty of my isle, with no hope of unconditional love, a […]
Joe and Nelly e-book
Yesterday I found out that my children’s novel, which I self-published on Monday, was #6 in the Amazon Hot New Releases in Horror & Ghost Stories for Children. Not having any experience in marketing and promotion, I had no idea about this, and it took a friend to make me aware of it. Being #6 yesterday was […]
Early Rising
It’s four o’clock and it’s still dark outside, but blackbird chorus glimmers gently through the curtains gap. The window’s open wide and I can smell the chlorophyll, the dew, the dreamlike whiff of rain-soaked earth, and you asleep beside me, unaware of dawn: late risers hold morn’s moody light in scorn. Kim M. Russell, 9th […]
A Wing and a Prayer
The wings of my prayers are capricious, unlike my solid carapace, too delicate to reach the height of heaven, too flimsy to withstand the heat of hell. Tickled by the honeyed scent of spring, I open my elytra, ready to spread my alae, about to fly – when I’m thwarted by the shadow of a […]
We all have to make sacrifices, I tell him.
Originally posted on Sarah writes poems:
He’s not drinking milk each morning. Milk’s the thing that sends us out into the town, and shopping’s not a pleasure now. I plan our meals, now, carefully, avoiding waste. We check the list before we buy. We’re not so frivolous. Our pleasures shrink. The sky is blue –…
No Fallacy
Below brisk grey skies, the landscape folded in on itself, exhausted from the iron rod of a long dark winter. One April morning, I awoke to the whisper and whistle of spring: tentative promises opened in snowdrops bowing and pearled with dewdrops, fanfared in sunshine and a blaze of blossom, intent on sparkling and banishing […]
at the water’s edge
a boy crouched at the water’s edge his fingers felt the waves the pull of the current tangle of chickweed wash of passing swan tickle of trout inhaling scents of far-off places breathing them out he watched his toy boat skip ripples on the breeze blow under willows where ducks gather water voles bask in […]
Writing on the Pavement
On 2nd April I posted a poem called ‘Writing on the Wall’. This morning on Twitter, I saw photographs of something that’s happening around London: someone is writing the names and descriptions of trees below them in chalk. Now that’s what I call poetry!