Hear the Hush of the Axe Behind You
By JupiterMoon
A collection of older poems, some from the last few years, some older than that. Some are funny, some are sad, some odd, some beautiful, some just unsettling...
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- 1640 reads
without
without you catch her voice, whispering why within wild waves. your tie still worn black a year gone. each cigarette is seven minutes of forgetting, (or not remembering)
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- 835 reads
carryon
carryon crunching down on a meal of gravel, my teeth, red raw and shattered, bawl with enamel duress. as i choke on bloodied regret. the ground caught my cheek in awkward landing.
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- 613 reads
cortege
cortege like an eel, the cars crawl in a line over the curling russet cushioned carpet. shiny black metal polished with late afternoon sun, a solemn, sluggish pace set
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- 730 reads
margins
margins i am becoming like a series of pencil strokes; an addendum. squeezed in without thought whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. just a name, left to curl and fray
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- 465 reads
heart attack Friday
heart attack Friday something about the nearness of the weekend, moves the hearts of a certain kind of man to frenzied beating, squeezed in the grip of the fading glow of the week:
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- 572 reads
the principal of one lost shoe
the principal of one lost shoe i have lost a good many things in my time: a key, money, good friends, a brown leather jacket, more money, poems on scraps of paper like this one,
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- 1167 reads
farewell, old black settee
farewell, old black settee your leather had become tired, brought to ribbon corners by determined claws. we pushed you over, and turned away from your dusty belly.
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- 761 reads
hundreds and thousands scattered like ashes
hundreds and thousands scattered like ashes the recipes remain, ingrained like folded away papery scars, or the memory of a wartime lover, felt over the lips like a ghost wind,
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- 1058 reads
the wrong hands for the R.A.F.
the wrong hands for the R.A.F. during the festive crush of the rowdy season, i got to talking with a newborn pilot, who fresh from heavy correspondence, talked of jets, of choppers,
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- 562 reads
ink black
ink black an ebony lacking in all possible reflection; limpid, mildewed blackness crushing forward, through a glassy introspection, solid, insurmountable
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- 575 reads
there's few things more tragic than a wasted condom
there’s few things more tragic than a wasted condom deep in the night - somewhere around 4am, i crawl awkwardly from the bed. cold rubber against the sole of my foot,
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- 4 comments
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- 1149 reads
Painting for Lemonade
painting for lemonade an ancient man, brittle on a wooden stool, slowly painting his gate-post. a day of raw sunshine, but autumn will soon roll over the horizon. by winter the
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- 749 reads
innocent wallpaper
innocent wallpaper through the wall, i can hear a family failing next door. a couple in the thirties, nearly, average intelligence. i think they drink. they stopped fighting
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- 917 reads
sometimes i deserve a capital I
sometimes i deserve a capital I everyone loves a writer, loves to watch paper fill as a pencil moves in blurring. it’s a sub-conscious fascination. it’s why she smokes that way…
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- 662 reads
Slow Measures
Slow measures ‘I’m dying on my fucking arse here!’
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- 585 reads
the woodwork mirror
the woodwork mirror an ill-bred design, assembled from comprehensive impatience: awkward geometry, and timber bruises of a badly managed sanding machine. triple angled plinth,
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- 718 reads
snail
snail back curled and tourmaline. your infinite, soft stroked hatchings remind; bring forth whispered remnants, from another time. your dawn pavement, now faces an onslaught-
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- 838 reads
let there be light
let there be light inside the mole dark, shivered like a slim fit bandage of blackest crepe, the rooms sink, slithering smaller and nearer and damper and colder and closer and then
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- 2 comments
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- 836 reads
family photograph
family photograph it might never be better than this: the close shouldered assembly line smile, forced against a sea blue background. neither of you can work the camera.
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- 4 comments
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- 1044 reads
greenland
greenland and beneath me, you lay like a fingerprint jewel. a world of white dreams, clasped to a quiet pause. man has not touched you here. like a wish not yet whispered,
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- 679 reads
king for a day
king for a day there is a couple slurring their way toward the restroom. she has large golden breasts, swinging free of her crumpled dress. he has the slack-jawed grin,
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- 849 reads
words make walls
words make walls they are married, i gather, and have met for breakfast coffee. he settles behind a Guardian, and a look of disgust. she fingers a croissant, trying to catch the eye
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- 702 reads
two winged bugs connected by a sex act
two winged bugs connected by a sex act at first i thought it was shiny dirt, something caught by the sun round southwest of my hot coffee. so i brought my eyes closer,
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- 477 reads
isn't anything
isn’t anything car scissors at the crossroads, have sheared the morning, from the end of night and the blue white ghost moon, heavy fogged and branch bound,
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- 431 reads
Saturday night/Sunday Morning
Saturday night/Sunday morning dropped neon dragged behind traffic, as scratched letters bounce over the surface clinging now and then to lampposts trembling in the wind,
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- 3 comments
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- 857 reads
the lovers of Boulevard Saint-Germain
the lovers of Boulevard Saint-Germain there is permanence, woven into the way you hold one another; delicate, yet insistent, speaking of love found...
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- 525 reads
gulls over Paris
gulls over Paris church bells fall mute, having turned afternoon into evening, and in the fade of the peal, the cry of gulls, as they take to the sky...
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- 4 comments
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- 946 reads
birdman
birdman precarious, on dawn legs, sleep creaking like a jetty, you lean from your kitchen window, with that stoic determination that comes with age...
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- 383 reads
you can't just leave a noose lying around
you can’t just leave a noose lying around just inches away from the pavement, separated by a thinning, late summer hedge, a rope hangs bright,...
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- 545 reads
sola
sola each of us, sat alone in shivering boxes, made less fatal with predictable wall art; dented trinkets of teenage hope. sun-faded photos of...
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- 395 reads
plateau
plateau the only possessions shown in your bedroom window is a collection of thirteen paperbacks. from here, it is not possible for me to know what...
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- 2 comments
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- 574 reads
handholds
handholds when you left, all redundant cooking and trembling tears, my future got mixed up in your hurried carrier bags; mislaid within your shampoo...
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- 3 comments
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- 1479 reads
for the drunks, the try-hards and the pessimists.
for the drunks, the try-hards and the pessimists unconnected voices, clamouring around a table like well echoes, people crying for help; unheard. all...
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- 518 reads
tip and tilt to the sun
tip and tilt to the sun we are a nation of slanted, fat-eyed drunkards, rocking time on the night bus; our grandiose Friday dreams, lost like small...
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- 4 comments
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- 990 reads
the brown paper bag poetry club
the brown paper bag poetry club this small, musty room accepted our mould a long time gone. but rules live here; still-born memories once begun...
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- 679 reads
fogged at the tram park
fogged at the tram park blank faced machines, nestled like eels the shivering hiss of electric snaking through the air as an alarm call. travel,...
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- 762 reads
viper
viper the remembrance of your poison, still angers my blood. what you think you can excuse, with a smile, and a hug, makes me want to vomit my lungs...
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- 368 reads
not quite AA, but only 12 steps to the bar
not quite AA, but only 12 steps to the bar the afternoon drinkers, wear no wedding rings; these, are the lost men, who failed to persuade, anyone, to...
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- 9 comments
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- 6851 reads
red herring
red herring a warn-torn tomcat, 9 lives burnt, and lost. squandered; the cost, tallied by those left behind in the dust; scratching their heads...
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- 470 reads
14,000 mg
14,000 mg it seems like enough; the chalky shapes, gathered from middle-aged women, ‘just for my toothache, you know’. innocuous in my smiling...
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- 477 reads
for all the childless fathers
For all the childless fathers perhaps, you didn't love them well enough; consistently enough. perhaps, you never made it; never found someone safe...
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- 4 comments
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- 918 reads
breakdown
breakdown we sit in traffic, the same place the same time each day; leaking free will. our wheeled tombs, filled with smoke, with spite, with...
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- 4 comments
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- 796 reads
section 136
section 136 it's coming... that day when i can no longer step over my pavement cracks. a crisp uniform and shoes polished within an inch of twilight...
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- 1 comment
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- 500 reads
cow pylon
cow pylon there is a conference of horses, bemused in the breaking sun. attempting to understand, why the calf lies still, cancer cold. the...
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- 2 comments
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- 670 reads
sad old man taking a shit
sad old man taking a shit it swings out of me, like a tired conker. a sigh in the water. i don't know when, i started looking in on it, curled in the...
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- 1843 reads
six gold bands
six gold bands i listen to you, trying to remember 1982. back when you weren't rich, successful, and married. and haggard. you talk of forty, whilst...
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- 396 reads
twin flames burning out separately
twin flames burning out separately we're identical you and i. nothing to fill a trolley, just the basket. i've disguised my drink with bread, and...
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- 2 comments
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- 686 reads
coup de grace
coup de grace bowed, over railings of ice, and iron, the cemetery stares me down. faceless, it blanks me with sunlit stone, frigid and unyielding to...
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- 4 comments
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- 1197 reads
how the dead rinse away to the sea
how the dead rinse away to the sea i walk the cobbled path downhill, away from the cemetery. a path for mourners, for those with supermarket Sunday...
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- 529 reads
the brink men
the brink men they meet, monthly. 4 coffees in a Tesco corner, 4 Mondeos at rest, beneath a Warrington rain cursed by Unilever. they meet to discuss...
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- 391 reads
heading Supertramp
h eading Supertramp they’ve made the petals bright/raining down/halo flocked/by artificial light/and i am reminded of buttercup chins/decades since/...
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- 480 reads
spent
spent the scrying glass, now knows only dark. a blackness, i find nothing in; can make no sense of, any longer. hope, used to swirl like a vision,...
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- 390 reads
blunted
blunted we’re all working so furiously, to take the sting out of life, blunting our edges, with drugs, or drink, or working late under artificial...
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- 391 reads
the loneliness of the long distance diner
the loneliness of the long distance diner the crisp, white linen almost holds my gaze, your empty chair – silent in the flickering light. we dine by...
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- 336 reads
mcdonalds
mcdonalds we broke the noiseless lift with small-talk. she mentioned copd training, i recommended an Italian restaurant i had not long left. she said...
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- 520 reads
scrapyard
scrapyard as a child i saw magpies, nailed to fencing. a crude warning from farmers; an example set. now, i see bumpers, wheel arches, bonnets and...
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- 479 reads
cotton wool
cotton wool i used to drink special brew for breakfast, claret and ice cold san miguel work days i’d take a codeine chaser that was when i worked for...
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- 430 reads
you'll find no online guide for this, so bring intuition
you’ll find no online guide for this, so bring intuition i need a safecracker lenient fingers of love that know how to work my tumblers i can tell...
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- 306 reads
wristwatch
i haven’t worn a watch since i lost the last one aged 23
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- 1 comment
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- 466 reads
amber bain
amber bain today i wanted to pin up a poster on my wall girl with guitar and a tattered jumper feel that NME hope again when pinning up the pages was...
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- 588 reads
missing: presumed poet
toothed toast edges remain, cooled coffee has assembled serene pools in the sink each reflects a ceiling
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- 1 comment
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- 445 reads
semblance
semblance displayed as swinging hams, we are ruddy, over-exposed; we have sneak filtered, failed love cropped from the borders a dead gaze, neatly...
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- 398 reads
teeter
teeter steel-toed foundations deep dug into crusted shores middle-class plastic drift pushes in layered like ageless skin cold hefty monoliths cloud...
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- 3 comments
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- 839 reads
does that phone work with crumpets?
does that phone work with crumpets? i have a toaster, a useful appliance – it can make toast elevate a teacake crisp a crumpet (eventually) even warm...
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- 1 comment
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- 137 reads