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.
Rhonda Melanson
The magic of growing things, its tangible beauty, I did not understand.
Clive Donovan
I go to the top of the risen hill,
above the trees, beyond the grass,
where only hard ground lives
Gary Akroyde
We searched for it
through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky
in dark Pennine shadows where great mills
spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog
Nathan Curnow
I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein
floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule
toward his drifting pipe, Brian playing We Will Rock You—
Paul Short
Sleep.
Elusive as lucid dreams.
Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange,
spiderweb scarlet &
thatch-brown
Ash Bowden
Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.
Mallika Bhaumik
This is not a frilly, mushy love letter
to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man’s heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it,
Jena Woodhouse
Around midnight, the hour when pain
reasserts its dominance, a voice
behind the curtain screening
my bed from the next patient’s:
an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts
Kate Bailey
They’ve mended the park fence again,
patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork,
like a riot barricade.