<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Christmas Lights<\/strong> Santa I am waiting crowds have gathered explosion of light Santa God please don’t send death <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gareth Writer Davies<\/strong> was Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize (2014 and 2017) and the Erbacce Prize (2014) Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition (2015) and Prole Laureate for 2017. Commended in the Welsh Poetry Competition (2015) and Highly Commended in 2017. His pamphlet Bodies<\/em>, was published in 2015 \u00a0by Indigo Dreams and the pamphlet Cry Baby<\/em> came out in November, 2017.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mrs Winter Comes Home<\/strong><\/p>\n A whisker above zero, she appears <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joanne Key<\/strong> lives in Cheshire. Her work has been published online and in print and won prizes in competitions including the National Poetry Competition, Charles Causley, Prole and Bare Fiction.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nativity<\/strong><\/p>\n All the little humans were graded by size and behaviour Walls were plastered with tin foil and draped Today we’ll be hearing about\u00a0the detection that the parents were trying hard to follow the story, who had annihilated who, which gifts the protons but this,\u00a0sang Year 6, is how it all began. and the consequence of a billion collisions in a tea towel he was booed like a pantomime villain until the announcement that Higgs boson was found. He had already disintegrated. (Applause.) <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Gillian Mellor<\/strong> wrote this poem because it was fun. And because it was about the kind of nativity she never knew she\u2019d always wanted to be in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christmas Lights after Anne Sexton\u2028\u2028 Santa is turning on the Christmas lights I am waiting for my diagnosis crowds have gathered on the memorial green for the white explosion of light with a ho-ho-ho baritone Santa thumps down the switch God I will try to be good please don’t send death in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15347"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15497,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15347\/revisions\/15497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nafter Anne Sexton\u2028\u2028<\/em><\/p>\n
\nis turning on the Christmas
\nlights<\/p>\n
\nfor my diagnosis<\/p>\n
\non the memorial green
\nfor the white<\/p>\n
\nwith a ho-ho-ho baritone<\/p>\n
\nthumps down the switch<\/p>\n
\nI will try to be good<\/p>\n
\nin his fat red suit<\/p>\n
\non Slaughter Lane. Glass-winged
\nin the glow of fairy lights, she falls to Earth
\nas a dark, silk slip of a thing, drifting in,
\nsoft as baby breath. Poor lamb.
\nHer body pools on the floor
\noutside the Christmas Factory door
\nwhere she hardens into the dark mirror
\nwe daren\u2019t look into. At sunrise,
\nI watch her come alive. Bright eyed,
\nshe sharpens her icicles into knives, polishes her hooks.
\nSome folk try to chase her away.
\nThey glove up, crack their knuckles
\nand salt the lane, and counting the days,
\nthey shudder at the thought of her star-flecked
\nfootprints on the factory path,
\na sackful of feathers left on the step.
\nThe factory steams day and night, spewing
\nwarm light from its windows and tinsel
\nfrom its chimneys, but still she slips in
\nthrough the systems \u2013 a constant lowing that moves
\nthrough the pipework, refusing to be bled out.
\nPoor cow. She hasn\u2019t got a clue who she\u2019s dealing with.
\nAs glitter fills the air like blossom,
\nher fingers tighten their grip on me. I creep down
\nto the cellar and open my chest for her.
\nCome now, blue wisp. Feel free. Fold yourself
\ninto my cold storage, sleep
\nwith the dead meat until it all blows over.<\/p>\n
\nin the small assembly hall decked out
\nas the Large Hadron Collider.<\/p>\n
\nwith copper tinsel. Accurate? Who knows,
\nbut Mrs Boyle hadn’t had so much fun in years.<\/p>\n
\nof the Higgs Boson\u00a0said the headmistress.\u00a0The God Particle
\nwas Martin’s cue to begin:\u00a0And it came to pass<\/p>\n
\nbut it was so long since any of them had studied
\nparticle physics that they couldn’t remember exactly<\/p>\n
\nprovided and what flavours the quarks were.
\nIt colder in the collider than outer space,<\/p>\n
\nEach kid waved a magnet in the air
\n(the parents joined in with their smartphones)<\/p>\n
\nwere repeated as Gospel. Even Gospel has different versions.
\nSo when Lindsay came on as antimatter<\/p>\n
\nthough no-one could remember if this was appropriate
\nand the Supercomputers continued on glockenspiel<\/p>\n
\nBy the time the He had been wrapped
\nin swaddling clothes and placed in a manger<\/p>\n
\nWith a lifetime of 1.56×10-22 seconds
\nwe keep faith the data proves He really exists.<\/p>\n