What is this twilight, this world of shadow? Neither day nor night, we name it limbo, the crumbling ledge on the fiery edge of hell. We think we know it well, and yet the glow of hellfire is tempting compared with the empty darkness of uncertainty. Anything to stave a spiritual void beyond the grave. […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Maenad Madness
What you doing with that ivy, sister? Pretending it’s a snake like that one on Instagram. Didn’t we get wasted last night, man! Yeah, we had a right scream! My lips are still black with all the red wine. My head’s all over the place with ecstasy. LOL – mine’s so bad I can’t see. […]
April Morning
The morning’s dust-tongued with short-lived frost and seabirds moon-blown from the coast compete with bell-voiced wood pigeons. These early muffle-toed strolls are full of promise: spring winds roar in a leaf-foamed coppice and all the quiet moments in between, while hare-heeled boots touch damp earth with a kiss. No dark-vowelled dreams could have predicted this […]
River Cascading
Between deep gorges water flows: springs that glint over moss and lichen or energetic streams that tumble, shifting and grinding over rocks and boulders. Between deep gorges water flows, fizzing with minerals and petrichor, full to the brim with April showers, springs that glint over moss and lichen. In summer months, watercourses dry where water […]
Into the Sea
We are crumbling, eroding into the sea with our pigmentations of blue, brown and green, accompanied by a withering wind and scent of rain. Dithering on mouldering marsh and […]
Humming into the Wind
Through sullen branches of ancestry, a deadened wind soughs a song of loss. Straggling souls skim the trees in skeins towards an ancient rookery to caw themselves to sleep. They echo through insomnolent dreams, but silvered by moonlit poetry I hum against the windy wings, through a mouthful of mouldering leaves, and the succubi of […]
Kölsch (revisited)
Kölle Alaaf! I miss the echo in the streets, the crowds on Rudolfplatz and Neumarkt, the oompa pa of familiar Fastelovend songs and cries of ‘Kamelle!’ as sweets hailed down. You helped me dress up as a clown. I drank cold Kölsch, ate salty Pommes mit Mayonnais’. You taught me the words to ‘Mer losse […]
Time to Turn (a Quadrille)
Osier wands planted in November are almost trees. Now’s the time when we remember to pluck a switch or three of willow, white with soft, sleek buds, gold with catkins, sweet temptation to hungry humming bees, still drowsy and crawling from their winter sleep. Kim M. Russell, 6th March 2019 My response to dVerse Poets […]
Progress Forgiven
I forgive pylons that march across fields where once glaciers sculpted valleys, horses plodded down stone-walled lanes and everything travelled by hoof and foot. I forgive the engines that puffed their smoke into the heaviness of time with dark intention and a constant soundtrack of stridulation against a sky the colour of congealed blood. I […]
The Privilege of Green
Once I walked among dusty cars, along crowded streets, hemmed in by buildings and a depression of sky. I had the freedom, the privilege to choose green. Fields, trees and lush leaves are all that crowd me now, and the sky, although not green, stretches its hugeness to infinity. Kim M. Russell, 18th February 2019 […]
writing in north norfolk 