Tag Archives: creative

Reservoir (Minus the Dogs)

Posted on by Standard 2

The lake shimmers, side to side

it glimmers, the topaz sky

held in its eye as a duck

swims across the still sheet,

breaking glass in its wake.

A goose approaches

up the concrete landing ramp

orange webbed feet stamp,

the waddling of its tail white

cotton reflects in my t-shirt.

Orange beak hisses welcome,

hisses for bits of bread

which are carefully thrown.

Blue eyes deep as the water

catch the sun in a cloud break,

tongue clicking in the breeze

like a loose flagpole. Children shout,

chasing green head brown ducks

that spread purple-striped wings

to escape excited chatter –

they conquer all matter

as they soar in the air,

as they swim through a swell,

as they waddle towards us

dinosaurs have inherited the Earth.

Advertisement

Tinder

Posted on by Standard Reply

Gnarled skin, cut and peeled
from a slender pocked trunk
in a storm by shaking hands
and kept in a cardboard box.

A dried husk of a great legacy,
bark and leaves, verdant beauty
now faded, a silvered shade,
a curled fragment of canopy.

Applied to dead wood, piled,
it adds slight height to sticks
and sits there, dormant, until
match head meets strike strip.

The first flicker of rising flame
tastes tender flesh and bites,
shines bright through silver skin,
catches, and bursts, and burns.

Dry remains of an elegant birch,
those charred smoking fragments
of parchment, just for a moment,
shone, and danced, and died.

The Never-ending Economy

Posted on by Standard 6

 

“Queue Here” reads the sign

underneath the old railway bridge.

An arrow points towards the wall

networked with ivy, tracing mortar;

the road map of the industrial age picked out

in dark green with white-flecked veins.

 The line begins to form, men and women

arguing amongst themselves, exchanging evils,

totally oblivious, so terribly ill at ease

in polyester uniforms and crumpled suits,

virgins to hand-outs clutching at tickets,

early birds to an imaginary worm.

 

Eventually they begin to die, they fall

at the wayside and lose their position.

“Someone’s on the way soon,” they moan

insidious bankers walk amongst them,

nudging out their pockets into invisible sacks,

grimly extracting their pounds of flesh.

Charmer

Posted on by Standard 5

Image

 

His foot taps along and his blue cardigan shakes

as he breaks into familiar song, wispy white hair

frantic about his ears, dancing along in time to

heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

 

He bends and grates as he stands up straight,

down he goes again, a rheumatic metronome

for his harmonica, his playing fleeting, hypnotic;

a pretty woman stands transfixed, mouth open.

 

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,

heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,

and eyes and ears and mouth and nose,

heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

 

The old man pogos in time to the rhythm,

he gyrates and quakes, blowing hard, eyes shut

feeling each note as it tumbles from cracked lips,

reeling, he plays each joyous bar like it’s his last.

A Bird’s Eye View of Victoria Park (Those Damned Gulls)

Posted on by Standard 2

Image

The golden stone glows, rich with midday sun,

man-made cliffs that bookend a verdant ocean

of bathing sun-seekers and children cut loose,

chasing balls across the grand green expanse,

flitting past us like flies, riding bright plastic scooters

along grey tarmac rapids as the current sweeps us

onwards towards an island, a monolithic outcrop,

a gleaming rock where we stop, to preen and to roost.

Levels

Posted on by Standard Reply

Image

The dead lay next to the railway

in a small triangular yard where

two young boys lay down wreathes

and ask their uncle; “Where do they go?”


Hay bales wrapped in black plastic

rise like islands from a deep brown lake

that was a cornfield two days before,

now sodden sheep graze on the shore.


Cars roar past with an almighty splash,

driving up droplets that cover the road

and spray onto windows, little rivers

with no hope of reaching the ocean.


Rolling valleys of green and brown

fields tucked behind hedgerows

are drenched; they thirst no more,

like the dead, they thirst no more.


The boys and their uncle stop off

in a pub on their way back home

to where their mother waits, alone

sat sipping gin next to the phone.

 

Super Mega Fun Life!

Posted on by Standard 1

Text one one one one for super fun now!

Text in to meet people slash mega babes,

hot mega babes, on the phone, like you, now,

on the phone, naked and hot and waiting,

writhing beneath a chocolate waterfall,

waiting for you to text us and join the party

or tweet us, hash tag SuperMegaFunLifeMe!

for instantaneous hot babe interaction!

Do you want a Super Mega Fun Life!

but more Super and extra Mega? Text now

for the exclusive Ultra Mega Super Fun deal;

you could be riding a fluorescent dolphin

down a curly, luminescent neon-lit flume

on a river of strawberry milkshake, NAKED!

Fellated by angels, feeding you minotaur eggs,

Text now you fool! On one one one two,

Super Mega Fun Co. want you to join us now

in our virtual social media multi-screen paradise

come to our Super Mega Fun Sleepover event

and roll NAKED on our enormous velvet mattress

and put it WHEREVER YOU LIKE! Text us now,

if you’re lonely or desperate or horny, just text

one one one one to pimp your life, text now!

(premium rates apply, no orgasm guaranteed).

 

Single-track Road

Posted on by Standard Reply

Single-track Road

by David R J Sealey

 

With windows wound down

and smoke billowing away behind,

whipping ghost-white past dark hedgerows,

I drove and drove and drove.

 

The moon hung low in my rear-view

I watched it become consumed by clouds,

“Came looking here for answers…”

and I just longed to sing along.

 

A sudden swerve, a screech of brakes,

a heraldic chorus of broken glass,

a frozen rollercoaster photograph.

“Did you get what you wanted?”

my musical epitaph.

 

I fell past fast rushing tarmac,

I fell past a smashed dashboard clock,

I fell through a hole in time and space,

I fell through my life at breakneck speed.

 

I fell for you at the side of the road,

 

bloodied and bruised and beautiful

as we waited together

to be bathed in blue light and borne away

by our white-walled chariot.

 

Image

A War of Words

Posted on by Standard Reply

A War of Words

by David R J Sealey

 

A grey day when it shouldn’t be,

global eyes focussed on coming together

to compete in coliseums of ice

obscuring a slow-drifting fog of war,

and the cheering crowds conceal

an inevitable whisper in the wind

that nobody wants to hear,

but it comes.

 

Temperatures drop several degrees

in the face of global warming,

a warning shot fired in the former USSR,

ignites a flaming tornado of words.

A media shitstorm whips up the heat

to an unbearable degree, papers

are signed, cameras pointed at the pen

obscure the trigger finger.

 

A war of words breaks out,

an intercontinental ballistic first strike

launched from the mouths of the ignorant,

oblivious to our voices, deafened

by the ringing of the counter-strike,

justified by those that sell stories

in the interest of flogging rags that

tear open wounds and won’t bind them.

 

Image