This year has unravelled like a discarded old sweater. The sound of distant traffic that died weeks ago sounds closer now, and the empty pandemic town has started to regain its orange glow. How long will we see the stars, scattered like salt across the night sky? We must not give in to temptation, take […]
Month: May 2020
When the Jackdaws Clatter
Visual Verse has found another unusual image, this time by an unknown artist, from the Getty Open Content Program, which is the inspiration for a wide range of writing in the May 2020 issue, Vol. 7, Chapter 7. You can find my poem on page 35 or you can link directly to the poem, entitled […]
Raven Rain
Ravens sweep the sky, wheeling and tumbling stringless black kites, until the sky weeps with impudent little tikes, whose sooty wings stir up a storm like dust, each curious eye a piercing stud of black diamante, until the clouds break. By afternoon, the earth is damp and green and lush, and somewhere a blackbird in […]
Chickenpox
Summer was the worst time to be sick, tucked up tight in bed, restrained by grandmother’s hospital corners, bullied by the clock’s resonant tick. The room was stifling, even the sticky Lucozade was too warm to fizz, and the fly too drowsy to buzz and batter against the window. Outside, neighbourhood children played, lawnmowers droned […]
Impressions of New York
I was nervous about the long flight, the stories I had heard about New York, and the terrible event of the previous year. Yes, my one and only visit took place a year after 9/11. We came in to land at night, lights sparkled below us, but I was sitting in a middle aisle and […]
It used to be easier…
when there wasn’t so much to protest about, when war was war and peace was peace, and we saw the effects of nuclear power in newspapers and on the television screen. It was all about humans committing atrocities against other humans and fighting for our rights. Now our sacred Mother Earth is under threat from […]
Message from Your Future Self
You will tear holes in life, portals from one self to another, city to city, country to country. You will adapt your nostrils to different scents and smells, your tongue to sweet and sour. You will adjust your eyes to everchanging landscapes, falling from another sky to land on concrete or grass, sometimes on your […]
Love Notes from a Courtesan
aromatic steam rises from a matcha bowl waiting for your lips to press against porcelain sweet taste of jasmine flowers our tantric dancing trips the light of galaxies we are earth and moon cheek to cheek and face to face inhaling each other’s breath when we last parted soft drumming of rain on leaves was […]
Rossetti’s Harp Player
The harp is made to play laments, and her fingers pluck its strings mournfully in mellifluous torment. Notes spill like dawn birdsong from the instrument she clings, as if it were the first song the harp had learnt to sing. Her velvet gown is black as night, the harp of ebony made, but light shimmers […]
Holes
I have torn holes in life, portals from one self to another, city to city, country to country. I have adapted my nostrils to different scents and smells, my tongue to sweet and sour. I have adjusted my eyes to everchanging landscapes, falling from another sky to land on concrete or grass, sometimes on my […]
writing in north norfolk 