war

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Poets Silenced

The Poets are silent today.
Nothing left to say.
No clever arrows
released above the world,
dropping truths
into troughs of expectation.

Not even the laureates with
their liquid pens
can find the flow
to describe the suffering
that distant butterfly creates
as he fans the flames of chaos.

Yes, the poets are silent today.
Their pages unsullied
as their gaze falters,
and their mighty hands
lie motionless
at the sound of distant fire.

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Writing 201, Day 9 – Landscape

Oh my, today’s challenge gave me a fright! The task was to write a ‘Found Poem’ using words from random articles, books, etc, on the theme of Landscape, using Enumeratio (listy stuff).  To be honest I could have spent several days playing with this, but with only an hour or so to spare today, this is what I’ve come up with. A little lacking in Enumeratio, but hey..

Not sure if it makes any sense whatsoever to anyone else, but it kinda works in my head!  What I’ve learnt today is that I’m pants at cutting out and sticking – I’ve made a right old mess 🙂

Nonetheless, I did what I was told, and cut out and stuck (with thanks to The Guardian), but just in case you can’t read it for the excess glue, I’ve typed it out below.

PDP 3How Much Should We Laugh?

Streetwise city
silencing the bagpipes
brings home heroes
with promise of new stars and harmony
They were not scared
rising from the rubble
for there’s no better time to build

Still

No distance between them
they were still alive
ready to kill us
I saw the muzzle flash
fall down buried in
the void the blood
There’s no damn reset button

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War, Religion, and Alcohol

Taken as part of the photography 101 challenge – today’s topic ‘Street’

Not exactly a street, but this is a picture of Canon Square, just off of the main Market Square in Retford, close to where I live.  I am always struck by the juxtaposition of the impressive ‘Sebastopol Canon’ (captured in 1855 at the end of the Crimean War) sitting alongside the beautiful St Swithun’s Church with it’s graveyard spread like a cloth around it, both set midst at least four pubs all within a stone’s throw (The Vine that you can see is just one of those.  I was standing outside another to take the photo).

The photo is a little wishy-washy I fear, as it is very foggy here this morning, and to be honest, I was feeling a bit self-conscious taking photos in town, just for fun, for the very first time!

DSC_0029_F

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One Woman’s War

A navy blue river
runs down the A5*
sheet of green paper
that rustles in the quiver
of her clammy hand

Misty eyes scour
the blurred lines,
searching for meaning
in the weary letters
scrawled by a stranger

The last of one man
in ten sentences delivered.
Deadpan.
He regrets, she shivers,
and knows the truth

Her wombwarm babe,
whose downy head
she waved to
only yesterday,
lies cold and shroud covered.

 

*Standard paper size measuring 148 x 210 mm, half of normal A4 letter size.