On the Day the Postings Stopped
One day, just any ordinary day, there were rumours that everything that mattered would cease, every written word fade into the unwritten. And on that particular day no one dared post on Tumblr; no one dared to oppose.
Agony!
And the silence slowly spread across the land
And the low light found itself in longing pretence
And a feeble foot cursed and cussed
As an unpleasant pain broke the silence of night
– the longing and words of woe
replaced by agony from head to toe
Agony! Agony!! Agony!!!
The pain a disproportionate punishment
Agony!
for a tepid tap of toe
on another foot of cold and chrome
a crushing blow
then a howl like a hurricane at dawn
as the brittle bone broke
or the unnourished nail knew
it no longer had a home.
Silence fell. Lights dimmed.
The lonely shadow hobbled
through
the night’s final embrace
towards a brighter morning
– of pain
April 1, 2023 – PSA: A Book is Born
April 1, 2023 – PSA: A Book is Born
I’m unlikely to fool anyone into buying my third poetry collection; publishing it on April 1 is as close as you’ll get to me revealing how I feel about the third instalment of weary words for wanting wanderers.
Bumblebee is a poetry collection for dark times. Poems to help deal with fear of being still, combatting the urge of constantly being on the move, and the consequences of being.
The Thought took flight long ago along an oral path that spanned a lifetime; but as Death came and Distortion followed the Thought morphed into another’s. Then the Thought caught the turning tide; through the ink splattered on papyrus and parchments the Thought found a final resting place at the hand of Man and the pen of the Mighty.
Bumblebee revives that ancient art of handwritten poetry that enabled not just the transfer of thought, like its oral predecessor, but also the highly individualistic expression of the poet with part clarity and part illegibility in the written. To futureproof the legibility each handwritten poem is accompanied by a state-of-the-art AI-generated* version presented in a standardised font.
(*: well, no, not really from an AI, just the poet typing on a keyboard)
At the Bus Stop
Bus stop. Life stops as bus service is cancelled. Thirty-two minutes of no life asking whoever is listening why the only time I don’t check if the bus is cancelled it is cancelled. I don’t like change. Change from go to no go. Do I have ASD? Am I one of them who will get a late diagnosis? Life stopped at the bus stop. Am I the Bus without Driver? Will I be cancelled. I count each minute, and wait.
Taking Flight
The Thought took flight long ago
along an oral path that spanned a lifetime; but as Death came and
Distortion followed the Thought morphed into another’s. Then the Thought
caught the turning tide; through the ink splattered on papyrus and
parchments the Thought found a final resting place at the hand of Man
and the pen of the Mighty.
The intrinsic value of the works stems not from the traces of dried ink but rather who wielded the quill
The intrinsic value of the works stems not from the traces of dried ink but rather who wielded the quill
In Fair Olympia
You sneezed and trees in fair Olympia
Awoke the god of gods from deepest sleep
In toppling turmoil rose and kissed your cheeks
As if a wind of change had come to greet
The dawn of dawns of Time and Sorrow gone.
Like liquid core about to crack the earth
Spew forth a golden storm of hate and hurt
Untempered torrents swept the land of Man
Like plague and famine both in search of leaves
My pen delined them all in greyest grey
But barely shivers felt or whispers heard
Among the living dead on this scorched Earth
The dawn of dawns beyond all comprehend.
Shadow Dancing
My past has no shadows, as shadows need light to live. Life is a dance between light and night and the darkness of days. My present has shadows, but no dance of happiness or merriment of being a worldly presence. My future is unrefined, undefined as the sun may never rise above the horizon of maybes and likelihood of a waltz.