Category Archives: Poetry

National Poetry Writing Month/NaPoWriMo 2017 – 04/04/17

Posted on by Standard Reply

Covered

The snare drum rattles and pops a staccato introduction, doubles and triplets complemented by the low swinging parping of multiple trombones that get the shoulders swinging for several bars before the bright trumpet section start up the main riff of Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing; all high end sass and macho brassy swagger, teasing you instrumentally, over and over before, finally, three minutes in, a joyous chorus swells and erupts

impressed into wax

      an irrepressible groove

mounting to release

Image result for hot 8 brass band

Advertisement

National Poetry Writing Month/NaPoWriMo 2017 – 02/04/17

Posted on by Standard Reply

Marina Bay Sands

An enormous surfboard structure sits atop three white skyscrapers, towering above the bay. An azure blue sweep of water, speckled with tourists and selfie sticks, stretches the length of the gigantic shelf with no edge apparent, seemingly nothing to separate the laughing and tanned from falling fifty seven floors into the tarmac heart of the resort

        the great and the good

                    suspended, floating in clouds

forgetting to swim

Image result for marina bay sands

National Poetry Writing Month/NaPoWriMo 2017 – 01/04/17

Posted on by Standard Reply

Casing the Joint

Down there, by the industrial units with steel roller doors and weeds poking through brickwork, a selection of vans of various sizes came and went. One unit in particular drew a steady stream caked in muck or gleaming like teeth in a commercial. A red panel van sat with the engine running, headlights cutting through the falling gloom as a flash of bright white suddenly lit the small window in the galvanized frontage. A hooded figure clattered out awkwardly and made for the driver’s side; I prepared to take chase

                          turned up my collar

                          against the cold wind and sang

                          How You Like Me Now?

Image result for trading estate yeovil

Blockbusters, Abridged

Posted on by Standard Reply





The Fast and the Furious



Some people go fast

in Hot Wheels cars.

Vin Diesel sports

a grappling hook.



Legally Blonde




 

A blonde woman

isn’t stupid;

she is instead

an attorney.



Moonwalker




 

Michael Jackson fights

drug gangs and Joe Pesci

to save kids; he turns

into a freaking robot.



Lethal Weapon




 

Riggs!

He’s crazy!

I am too old

for this shit.



Titanic




 

Leonardo Di Caprio

fucks Kate Winslet;

I think we all know

how this one ends.






Image from: www.msbnana.blogspot.com

A Flight and a Crash

Posted on by Standard 2

Tradition,

religion,

our flight plan repetition

dead people’s luggage clogs the runways of the mind.

Terrorism,

fundamentalism

exploitation of the blind

grounded forever in the baggage of your kind,

Tradition,

religion,

tied up together in tales of better times

with snapped straps that we have chosen to rebind.

Ignorance,

delusion,

travelling through life, imaginary friends at your side

  tell us all exactly what it is that you expect to find?

Illumination?

Inner peace?

Enlightment?

An afterlife?

My friends, the truth is that we are all just flying blind,

  whirling on a rock, staring at a star with streaming eyes

and we are all alone, together, hoping it will rise,

and that we are just a moment, blinking through the sky.

Image is “Earthrise” from Wikipedia taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 moon mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise

By Hook or By Crook

Posted on by Standard Reply

Frost vs Nixon

 

Smashed in riotous circumstances,

he wobbled at every function

fanatically followed by “the sheep”

he called them; and they followed

bleating their two-bit ambitions

in the wake of his rising star.

 

He really didn’t care;

they liked the money,

he liked the company,

it was lonely at the top.

He popped another

and dove right in.

 

The flock grew infamous behind him,

braying loudly, squabbling furiously,

eager to sup from the hand that fed

too busy clutching at bottles instead,

fighting dirty, spreading muck and filth,

he was theirs, at least in their heads.

 

They really didn’t care,

his cash stopped flowing,

he was empty inside,

they’d drunk him dry.

They waved goodbye

 

The shepherd cried out

but nobody listened;

it was all just an act,

the boy who cried wolf,

nominated by the Academy

consumed by the herd.

Heroes is a TV Show, Legends Never Die

Posted on by Standard Reply

St. Michaels Tower sits watching
the black and white cows grazing
upon the bright green fields leading
us on through the gates of Avalon
sat lonely atop the mighty Tor,
rising high above rows of pylons
that thread the emerald pastures
between busy roads and hedgerows.

The midday sun casts a long shadow,
the charcoal outline of the old yew tree
draped delicately across dotted nettles,
providing shelter for the aged weary
trudging through the land of faeries,
tracing King Arthur’s deep footsteps
through the ageless fields of Avalon,
through many seasons born and gone,

the famed sword lives on,
set into stone
buried beneath the roundabout.

Not Strictly Entertaining

Posted on by Standard 1

“This is dumb” grumbled the celebrity chef

as he attempted a clumsy bald-headed plié,

and, mugging shamelessly for the cameras,

he announced he had never danced before.

 

“It’s mad, I’ve never danced before” he revealed,

rubbing his head proudly to a waxen sheen

with his sweaty, torn cuff; he liked it rough,

as his publicist had briefed him he should.

 

“My wife thinks I must be gay!”                                silence,

cut to a sequence of trialled pink sequinned shirts,

a nonsensical statement left to hang in the edit

like a homophobic fart in the prime-time lift.

 

Then cheers as he and his partner hit the dance floor,

hands on bums, pumping their hips with fixed grins,

stiff, like over-sexualised animatronic mannequins

lurching along painfully to Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb.”

 

One judge liked it, he always does, flirting in his verdict,

one judge hated it, he always does, flinging verbal excrement,

one judge wasn’t sure, she never is, she liked his swinging hips

the last judge was too busy flogging frozen food (like he always is).

Bhāvanā (Meditation)

Posted on by Standard Reply

Master Hand

Buddhist technique #1 – Palm descending from Heaven

My stomach sinks. I am falling; incredible speed smashes against my ears. I spot a far-off spark and spy a single star. A comets trail catches at me and, suddenly, enveloped, I am still. I push and punch at my prison; the walls respond and retract. Looking up now, I feel weightless as a chink of light appears, opening. I crawl out, on to a great golden palm that quivers beneath me. Gigantic glinting fingers crease, and fold back, to form a clawed cockpit. I step forwards, reborn, the pilot of the hand of God.

Buddhist technique #2 – Void and diffusion

Sailing into night, all is silent as it stretches away forever, the vast black frozen sea. Time seems spurious as all is speed and void, all is silent as it stretches away forever, the vast black frozen sea like sleep with lucid dreaming, and all is silent. A vast sea, black frozen time silence, all is spurious and void. All is silent, and still, and then, suddenly, from eternal darkness, springs forth a light. A coloured pinprick, blinking, beckons me in, the great whim; a simple request for investment of consciousness that must be answered.

Buddhist technique #3 – The hand that feeds

The hand agreed, wordlessly. Vibrations quicken, ear drums quiver. I crouch low as colours grow and blossom: great pink and yellow space-orchids spinning red and blue. We approach as petals part; an interwoven helix of paint box strands unravels. Psychedelic spaghetti twisting past a dislocated prism and we are speed now as we fly through the heart of the matter. A camel squeezed at terminal velocity through the eye of a syringe.

Life Beyond the Screen by A. Television

Posted on by Standard Reply

Discarded TV

 

I was born of a conveyor belt

in a factory line, in to a box,

a blueprint baby you brought home

and set in a cradle before the fire.

 

Happily we grew old together as I threw

my flickering campfire light so bright

that the cold hearth lay forgotten.

You swept my brow of gathering dust

as the porcelain ballerina grew greyer

and we laughed at my portraits,

laughed dust clouds for entire years

as the skeleton clock wound down

on the mantel – its rotation slowed

as time itself grew old and seized.

 

The credits rolled on.

We were golden together.

 

For our anniversary;

you dumped me in a black plastic bag,

moved a skinny bitch in to replace me

but I knew she was coming as

I once knew the red button

of your tender caress, my controller,

before you left me out on the kerb

to the mercy of furry cocked legs,

smashed and unloved in the bin,

cursed by the un-gloved rubbish men.