Today’s choice
Previous poems
Anne Stewart
03:41 Downstairs
a poem for insomniacs
Huddled on the cat’s blanket,
hyenas crying through the night.
Scribbled notes regretting tea,
the need for light.
Time passes, shoulders settle the hyenas
to a quiet shout.
Everything goes cold as energy, as will,
goes out
and him, snoring like a mammoth on
temazepam upstairs.
Sleep, hyenas, sleep.
There, there…
It’s just the sound of safety
winnowing the air.
Anne Stewart created and runs the poet showcase http://www.poetrypf.co.uk. She has won the Bridport Prize and Poetry on the Lake’s Silver Wyvern, and has published 5 poetry collections, the latest: The Last Parent and any minute now. https://www.facebook.com/anne.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.