My Norman walls have overseen the bustling market for centuries. I’ve witnessed war and rebellion, wealth and famine, the flourishing of Norwich as a fine city. I harbour ancient treasures, chronicle the lives and times of citizens: some were imprisoned in my dungeons, while others hung from my walls for all to see. Ghosts linger […]
Category: Poems
Looming
This year, high summer has cast a tidal wave of rhetorical bullshit. We swim in an ocean of it. It’s smeared over every beach, masking the sweet scent of sunscreen with its bitter stink until nothing’s left of August’s decadence. Sunny holidays disappear into autumn shadows, night falls far too soon, and the stench of […]
Water
the words of water having no punctuation flow around pebbles and rocks wearing down to silt words roll from ripples pop from bubbles and sparkle in foam and crystals forming sub-zero dirges words melt into spring filling ditches and gutters gurgling and splashing with the plump plopping of dew and rain dripping and dropping Kim […]
words in water
water has no punctuation its words just flow around rocks and pebbles or wear them down to silt roll from ripples and pop from bubbles whirl in eddies and sparkle in foam crackle from crystals that form in winter sub-zero dirges that melt into spring filling every ditch and gutter with gurgles and splashes and […]
August Poppies
Blood red blooms line dusty country lanes, they dot the village verge, and a meadow explodes into a rippling scarlet sea. Here and there blow pale pink blooms, their blushes fading in the sun, papery ghosts haunting tired fields. Dog day heat has scorched the brittle fields, the only shade is found in leafy lanes, […]
La Catrina
It is said that you should never place your faith in a sensual woman in red with full lips on a smooth-skinned face, who sells bitterroot to raise the dead. Her naked heart was born to darkness, counting corpses in an eternity of death and wicked business running the affairs of the city of bones […]
Televised Childhood
My TV memories are mostly in black and white, that’s how we saw the world when I was a child, how newscasters would present each triumph, each disaster. I couldn’t see the difference on the wobbly monochrome screen between grief and joy, now and then; but we were taught that a cowboy in a white […]
Bodies
Our bodies unfurl and then curl into each other under night’s cover. We are waves in motion on an inky ocean or sand-blown stones hidden in a desert’s undertones. We are intertwined limbs, hearts, souls and minds, dancing in the dark until we spark – stars falling in the empty sky of morning. Kim M. […]
Sea Threat
Miles from the shore, we sleep secure, drifting on dreams like boats or moonbeams, undisturbed by the sound of waves or shifting ground. On the coast, rocky reefs, laced with cuffs of sand and foam, protect the land, waver with the ebb and flow, the pull of undertow, resist the locomotion of the powerful ocean. […]
Meditation on a Leaf
My head fills with chlorophyll, green blood of a mesophyll, as I follow ants and flies on microscopic journeys. Rain-blessed and windblown, leaves leave my mind blown, ecstatic with a peaceful heart, each vein a karmic chart. Kim M. Russell, 6th August 2019 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Mindfulness, also linked to Imaginary […]
