Skip to main content

Currently Popular Poems:

Change

As  I stand with my feet in the ocean, and look at the setting sun, I think of how many me's, have stood in how many seas, but always stared at the same one. A snapshot of scenes in the movie of me, at various times of my being. A new version of me every single time; the same star I'm always seeing. It fills me with curious wonder, for the places that I may go; And the life that has yet to happen, and the things I have yet to know. Jess
View Poem »

Torn Apart

Afterwards it was a long process, two years rolled into ten, of letting go, letting it out. She stumbled through days, drank warmed milk or camomile, paced all night. She worked; walked in the green; bathed in geranium and rose oil hot baths; and only talked to those friends who made her laugh. No sugar, no wine, went vegan, but tears, so much wetness like the churning of rainwater tumbling into a ravine frothing, drowning she fought for breath. She tried counting her blessings. She put on the lost smile, pretended. She made consciously positive statements about herself, about others. No-one knew. She went to happy places, spent time with good people. She allowed the tears, gushing taps, to drench at night kissing her lips with salt, with stinging, with coldness. Sometimes, now, even after all these years words needle her memory, but that is the stitching pulling, snagging. Soon there will only be a scar. No getting over it. Just a mend to staunch the bleeding. Sue Foster
View Poem »

Something is Stirring

Underneath parched brown leaves, curled, crumbled remnants of winter, a new stirring. Something in earth’s ancient time clock signals to tiny organisms. It is wake-up time. Something deep, irrepressible, mysterious is on the move. Sap begins to flow. The winter sun is still low in the sky but it has a little residual warmth. It warms the earth. Like human nerve endings messaging the brain, the warm earth sends its invisible, long-awaited signals to bulbs, tubers and roots buried under their mulch of winter leaf mould. Tiny shoots appear on desiccated roots; small tendrils, coiled foetus-like beneath the soil, start to unfurl, reaching for the light. From brown to darkened shades of red, from red to green, finally the world sheds its winter weeds, reaches for its habitual cloak of green. From the stillness of its deep slumber, something living, something new is stirring. From death to life, from darkness into light, a new creation is emerging from the depths as surely as year succeeds t...
View Poem »

Drying the Eco Way

Rope across the lawn and a long fork-ended wooden prop too heavy until I was eight. Wooden pegs on a shiny spring never two pronged ‘dollies’ until I was twelve. Then I was delighted by a 24 pack of red, yellow, blue, white and green and, joy of joys pink plastic pegs.  Plastic coated metal line-twine across the balcony on pulleys and reels to be hauled across the Calla Boucheria to the apartment opposite on Mondays, Tuesdays or Saturdays. They could haul theirs across to my hook on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Neither of us ever could or did, on Sundays. The wooden horse in a Muswell Hill bedsit dank, mouldy drying space for a single young professional trying to pay her rent. Wouldn’t use the in-situ white-goods dryer concern for the environment a principle. Too many work blouses and not enough space or money to be clean or crisp. Danish designed the eco dryer fits into a corner easily. It takes heat and drying time from a radiator. Hanging all your clothes a whole wardrobe...
View Poem »

Ballinasloe Station

Flood plains replenished and diminished, a deceiving here-and-there fluidity and the flat statement of stubborn water. Occasionally trackside trees are stranded, littered in swirling pools that soundlessly disappear. On the horizon, tall walls and radio mast mark the far-off asylum neatly screened with its avenue of trees. The people are hidden beyond the town, their tears reaching as far as the railway lines. The train navigates the flood’s edge like logic escaping emotion, trim engineering escaping danger, holding firmly onto the rails. (Ballinasloe was a major mental home in County Galway) Pat Jourdan
View Poem »

Decay and Madness

From the depths And gazing into the distance Strength not normality Fallen to the post. Long in sadness Decaying and madness. Kim
View Poem »

Birch Tree

White bark shedding tissued layers And stripes across the brown earth deep leaf littered floor. Diamond shaped fissures Twigs with small dark warts Pointing to the sky. Light green Tooth-edged leaves Swinging to the wind. Jane  
View Poem »

To Shed My Youthful Skin

To Survive Against at the odds of secure authorities And recognised establishments. I shed my youthful skin. I Thrive Against the odds I flourish and prosper Desolate and torn by institutions. The arrogance of the untouchables. Anon.
View Poem »

Thoughts Beside a Stream

Flowing alongside water's edge An overflow of activity And constricted Jumbled thoughts. Broken passages and swollen memories of channelled energies And intermittent promises. Hungry vines Competing for light Succumbed to the fragility of life. Awash with echoed considerations Downstream they float Towards a bareness. Dynamic vitality Sparkling from the frontier Invigorated to the final source. Daniel  
View Poem »

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
View Poem »