I was five and struggled to understand the relationship; she was cousin to my mother but only a year older than me. Why couldn’t I stay tidy, just like her? Why couldn’t I keep clean, just like her? She had hair ribbons, shiny shoes and a music box with a little ballerina. I wanted one […]
Message in a Bottle
his poem a bottle blue glass glittering in the sand washed up on sea swell salt and power ebb and crash on a distant beach buried in sediment until a girl’s bare foot stumbled upon a jewel hidden well among stones and shells its tattered label washed by the tide the message inside cryptic and […]
Classic Joke Poems
Poetry Reading A haiku, a sonnet and a balladwalk into a bar. The barman says to the ballad,“If this is some kind of reading,chap, book the pub next door.” Dyslexic Poet Haiku (please excuse the political incorrectness) dyslexic poetwrote a depressing sonnetit was a mope dyslexic poethas trouble with syllables‘Hi auk!’ Doctor, Doctor I went […]
Why Spillage?
Why did you ponder on that daythat started with a shower of rain?You could have started with a rayof sunshine and then waylaidus with a downpour.Just saying. Why did you have to go on aboutthe many hues of green and shoutthe praise of buds that sproutand burst with leaves, withoutconsidering the soil?I’d like to know. […]
Spring Spillage
The day had gone from rainback to bright and dry again,and so we ventured out. So many hues among the greenof fresh new buds and leafy sheen,it made me want to shout out loud, when suddenly the firstbutterfly seemed to burstout of a leafy cloud, not primrose or even daffodil,but the colour of an accidental […]
The Memory of What You Were
‘The memory of what you wereis beginning to fade,’the man on the radio said,his voice fadingand crescendoingwith a turn of the dialor a wave of the hand. ‘Time moves around quick,that’s what I find,’said the man on the radio.But at mid-day it is so slow.I imagine him sitting downto ponder on things from the pastthat […]
Spring Fever
Spring seems to have arrived with abandon, the air full of birdsong sparkling in the early April sun. I imagine the boisterous hisses, honking, hoots and whoops of geese, barn owls and swans, birds that mate for life, busy renewing their marriage vows. I think of humans preoccupied with weddings in a season bursting with […]
Sailing Home (a sea shanty)
By day, we chart our voyage by the sun, in oceans where the sea’s ice blue, by night we track the pole star’s run – while I’ve been thinking of you. A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze; one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign […]
An Easter Love Sonnet
Yours is the face I see when I awake,its slumber-toasted skin is pillow-creased,a welcome comfort to the nightmare achefrom which I have been recently released. You stir – and in that moment I must smile,the naked truth of your expression slaysmy fragile heart and I must sit a whilepondering fond memories of days and nights […]
The Poet and her Pen
Her mind is a cauldron of chaos, her own doggerel has made her vomit, the bitter taste thick on her tongue – some words give her indigestion. Vincent must have felt the same painting a starry night in Saint-Remy. But she loves the fruity fragrance of words that fly in her mind like a sunny […]
writing in north norfolk 