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Acronyms


PTSD
PPE
BA 2.75.2
Ratios, numbers, percentages
“look after yourself…” they said.
We were all Marcel Marceau feeling the invisible walls closing in.
I was lucky, I could get out for 30 minutes
Music in the car on the way home from the crem.,
to those invisible walls carrying the grief of the world on my shoulders
and forever in my heart.
Ratios, numbers, percentages
“look after yourself…


Suzanne

Currently Popular Poems:

White Hawthorns

The day speaks of white hawthorn Sundays Long washed out road trips, reluctant relatives waving you off on arrival. Rain from decades passed, a swishing of glimpses. Parents cramped and fretful. Passing through a littered accompaniment of faceless outlines. Stretched out warming children, car sick, scrunch up weathered newspapers. Pungent smells of nostalgia, almost Springs bouncing forward hours. Eager sweet wrappers lunge for half opened windows to adorn the floating blossom clouds of hawthorn bushes, March’s winds step in much like a bone-chilled but amiable hitch hiker. A querulous sibling rolls over, sickening, falls out in a screeching of tires. Tearfully rain-splattered. Another weekend pulled out and pegged up, redolent of adolescences quickly traversed. Mark Ereira-Guyer

Alone (with the birds)

I’m not good at numbers; words are more my thing but I dabble in statistics and the mathematics of probability. Chance I call it. I’m not often alone. Not often silent, except that companionable silence when you’re lost in your thoughts, but in good company. Surprised all at once by a squawk, a solitary moorhen deep in the reeds, minding its own business, today I’m out practising, sitting alone in the sunshine. Together, we come here often, striding up the cliff-top, dawdling through Kensington Gardens, pointing out fading displays of dahlias and falling leaves. We order americanos at the café, with a jug of hot milk on the side – ‘that’s hot milk, please’ – to make our stay last a bit longer. Today, though, it’s just coffee for one. I consider a cappuccino, a break from routine; old habits are hard to break. ‘Americano’ I say, ‘with hot milk, please’. Would I change if I were left alone? The moorhen seems content. Does it ponder the meaning of life? A seagull soars into the blue – doe

Erosion

Unerring yet erratic The weight of water never waits for readiness Sandstone is proven to be a two-faced liar a pretence of solidity written into the features of its rockface which crumbles under a wave’s supremacy and we wave goodbye to all we knew Lynne Nesbit

Leper Chapel - Mosaics of Time

Mudstone mosaics and jumbled fractures - an uneven puzzle waiting; holy stone with leper marks, dotted and spotted black. Ever expanding lichen rings with double oil-spotted rainbow; angular rust-like stains Testing the presence of time. Clenched into cracks Of weathered rocks and broken messages; scarlet snapdragons trailing their cardinal stems. Damp buttress of moss clinging, Festooning the flint; ink spots, stone measles, proud thistle commanding the base. Random yet structured, closely inter-twined cobwebs Fastened carefully to parched and pocketed stones. Chaotic yet ordered toad-like grotesque within; marking essences of devoted and hidden faces. Picture flints grinning their caramel coffee smiles amongst Anglian crags, embracing their forgotten cousins. Stephanie To see the inspiration for this poem and hear it being narrated at the remains of the Leper Chapel, Dunwich, visit this page from our Chronicles of Greyfriars project website.

River Stour, Sudbury

Mirror of ripples, floating tangles and bubbly foam. Swans racing The togetherness Of aqua. Sallow splashes Poplars tremble And minds drift. Jungle of reeds On vertical plane Moorhen hideout. Anon.

Feathers

It’s as if all the birds In every weather Had dropped every feather The weight sometimes Of all those why's A ton of lead Or a ton of words unsaid Down on a feathered bed The weight belies The width of squawks When the birds are dead And they sing remembering When a ton of song Weighed the same as Fly away Autumns Flu away fall Feather or not Bird at all. Stephen Kirin

Pandemic

Piecing together all our hopes and dreams, joining the broken fragments of our lives, managing the pain of another loss, full of joy when finally together, society’s fabric hangs by a thread. Julia Duke

Why Do the Sunflowers Smile?

                                                    Vincent van Gogh, 'Sunflowers' (1888) D o you have a secret? Are your serotonin levels so high? Absorbing yellow radiance, you seem powered direct from the sun. Bending benevolent heads you shower me with joy, with the abundance hoarded in your life-giving seed, stored up, it seems, for a future when heads hang heavy, sunlight recedes and winter has come again. Anon

Above a Sea of Fog

Caspar David Friedrich, 'Wanderer above a Sea of Fog' (c.1818) She once said I looked like a graceful swan drifting serene across the surface of the water, giving no clue to the feet paddling so furiously beneath me. It was a cliché, small comfort unless you are obsessed with appearances. His wandering, like mine, is threatened by the drifting mist that twists and turns, obscuring paths that lie ahead, decisions that weigh so heavily on lesser minds, not lightly made. Masterful he looks, above this boiling sea, so nicely turned out, so dapper in his neatly tailored coat, perched high above the reach of such disorder, never likely to muddy his resolve. Webbed feet paddle beneath me so constantly I am not always aware. I dress well, tie back my unruly hair leaving a wisp or two free to roam. I do not want to look severe. But the fog creeps. Julia

Hope

What is hope Glistening frost on the pavement A hint of dawn in the east Small tits flitting, picking some seeds, hesitant first but soon bold. My hope, "light of the world" Shining in you, then reflecting in me. Nothing is lost, just sometimes, it is not so plain to see. Regina