Mortality Games

A game for all the family
Cherry

All change here

Additional stop at Great Salvation
Cherry

Blue

I had a cat named 'Blue' rhymed with Kalamazoo Grey with stripes a tabby My mother hated cats a family thing One suffocated a child allegedly But he was only six weeks old A kitten

Dad

Afraid he’s passed away? Oh, thank you. Well… that’s ok. You see… we thought he might. He wasn’t meant to last the night.
Story of the week

Dreaming of my dad

I’d forgotten how much he said with his eyes. A man of few words. Happy to sit most of the time in his window seat, reading his paper or lost in contemplation.
Cherry

Exudate

Not pretty
1 likes

Funeral

There must be a funeral going on somewhere Miserable day for it

Harry Gore 1

For Harry
Cherry

John

Just a little short. Sun's shining - bike's in the garage.
1 likes
Cherry

Marion's hairbrush

Blackened silver plate and matted bristles stare accusingly from foetid water in the shared recycling bin

Monday

I arrived into the office full of the usual start of week melancholy and immediately detected a far deeper gloom already present.

Monday (2)

I laboured through the day.
Cherry

Monday (3)

I had a thought.

Pier end

A short walk

Send no flowers

Quicky thru the train window.

Stan

What's in a name?
Cherry

The bar

He walked into the bar. At the tables sat the usual faces, mulling their drinks. Each bottle and glass was covered in sticky red fingerprints.

The Grim Raver

Where'd that come from then?
Cherry

Visiting Jack

What did you die for, Jack? I ask as I sit by your grave a long way from home and take in the sun and the cooling breeze of a French morning like you would have known
Cherry

To The Dead!

The two friends stood looking down into the grave as the first shovels of dirt clattered on the coffin lid.
Cherry

Walls have ears

Continuing adventures
Cherry

The three amigos

How news travels fast
2 likes

The turning of the tide

La discusión sobre el filete / The lost supper
Cherry

The reading

How Javier relented and became reacquainted with his friend

Sunday evening

I’ve just had a full-on attack of consciousness. Wandering about the flat of a Sunday evening, I mixed myself an Aperol spritz in the kitchen and...
Cherry

The dying

So the putrid, sick body dies beneath us – we who haven’t already died living – and the industry moves in to keep us out of sight.

Amazed

I wake like this each morning.
Cherry

The visit

I have no idea how long I’d been asleep. Maybe an hour or two, maybe less. Someone was playing guitar – quite well. Better than I could have. But so...
Cherry

Never look down

Walking the edge The razor’s edge Don’t look down Look straight ahead Smile Play to the crowd Keep moving - always Riding the the gusts Wait... Use...

Washing days

For my mam

Cantarme

A song for all the fake hobos

Question

My God! What is family? Where is home? And who are these people I love being around if not family? And where is this place if not home? Where is life...

Bumping along

38,000ft over Biscay. Bouncing around the sky like we’re all going to die soon and I’m chuckling, embarrassingly, at HST’s “Fear and Loathing”. The...

Sorry

I'm sorry for the double / treble spacing, but at this point.......

Good Friday

I just coughed on the touch-screen. Nightmare.

Today

An interesting thought: a sense of danger is a key animal faculty for survival. It develops from childhood, overpowering us in old age. They key to...
1 likes

A poem

para ti

A universe in a box?

Kerouac is telling me of the Universal Mind. I like the idea, but not sure my practical mind can accept it. How about the universe in a mind? Each...

Girl on a horse

I’ve never seen her so happy So naturally fitting the scene Each photograph a testament To a woman and her dream Observe the girl on horse-back...
Cherry

See me?

Standing in my father's shoes
Cherry

Listen!

The grass has been cut for the very first time.
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Happy Easter!

Healthy living. No such thing.

After Jack

I got to thinking
Cherry

Keep in touch

After a while, you get used to the sound of the shelling. So it’s hard to imagine a world without it. I can usually tell ours from theirs – theirs...

Poppies

Move along. Nothing to see. Scarlet. Arterial. Irregular. Tragedy not long gone. Aftermath. Aftershock. Immediate. Not yet dulled. The pain. Sharp in...

Scribbles

It occurred to me while contemplating these scribbles that most of them are attempts at capturing the moment when two or more souls recognise each...

Friday prayers

Filed under Miscellaneous to defeat Plato and Aristotle
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Modulation

Music drifting through the trees. A summer's day borne on a breeze.

Post-trauma

Last Tangle in Paris
2 likes

On reading the headlines

I broke my news blackout on the train home tonight

Something missing

Life overtaking youth

Autumn

Standing in the rain

Thursday tomorrow

It's Thursday tomorrow Hurray! Another weekend and a lie-in But we're all getting old and we're dying Hurray! Hurray! We're all getting old and we're...

The gun

It didn’t really matter where he picked up his work. The people were always ok. The money was reliable. They always paid on time and it was enough to...

See you again

A signal drifting out
Cherry

The years

You bear them You name them You spin them off You hope not to bury them Then they become like you A name given by someone else Brand new in a distant...

A solstice death

Samhain sets the scene. Yule closes it.
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Song for a soul

More strange than any page of fiction Deeper and more raw than all the words of Sophocles, Shakespeare or Stoppard More beautiful and out of reach...

Beautiful

Oh, beautiful An empty mind in which thoughts can swim A place for dreams to meet A world of whispered messages Fractal scenes without an end I sense...
Cherry

Blow wind Blow

Blow, wind, blow! Your chorus and your overture The howling pain of every soul Moans against my window Rage, storm, rage! You are the spirit of the...
Cherry

God bless

Funerals. Bittersweet. Depends on the circumstance, I suppose. We’re going through the passing of a lot of people right now. A big family. It’s the...
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Auchwitz-Birkenau 70

How could one human being enslave another? How could anyone design and operate a business whose purpose was to kill fellow human beings in cold blood...

Barking at dogs

I wake to the sound of people barking at dogs and I’m back My mind replaying meaningless scenes Dreams of reality Head spinning with things I need to...

Two souls

Two souls roaming Drifting without end In emptiness Seeking satisfaction Knowing that there is none Filling in our time Without any reason Trying...

Enjoy the roses

Don't kid yourself that life is all gingham curtains and flowers on the table. You're only putting off the inevitable torment. Keeping reality at bay...

You and I are a binary star

You and I are a binary star I'm so in love with what we are You and I are a binary star Our light will shine clear and far You and I are a binary...
Cherry

It hit me this evening

It hit me this evening: the passage of time; of things, events, memories and people; people just like you and I. I remember the models: Spitfires,...
1 likes
Cherry

Night-thoughts

It always seems set against you Victories Little wins eclipsed by failure If you stand still it overtakes you I guess that's why you have to keep on...

Just like the sun

Lying in this field in June's evening light I think about three things: how we're born, how we die, and about the sun that burns my face; how these...

Let's check out forever

Let's check out forever sometime See how long it lasts
Cherry

Abyss

For all the young men
Cherry

Her dream

Drifting down upon a river Secrets open to the sky

Earthstruck

I’m reading my course-book on the train. It’s one of those July evenings when the sun details buildings and illuminates trees as rain etches...
Cherry

Step Inside

So long. So long ago, I fell for you. I was eleven. You were thirty and married. I carried your photograph, from a newspaper, I think. Beaming smile...
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Samos

I watch the autumn leaves drift by Turning, tumbling, sinking to the mud Autumn's great farewell A fleet of waterboatmen dart through sycamore and...
Cherry

Inner-dramas - Rabanal

It didn’t rain all the way from Astorga to here, but I can see it’s just started falling in the simple stone street outside the window. Like so many...
Cherry

On meeting Jesus – an imagined argument

I had an imagined argument. It was along the lines of “What would you ask Jesus if you met him?” It bubbled to the surface whilst thinking about the...
Cherry

Becalmed

No wind Or rain No rivers Or trees No people Or conversation No sun Or moon No motion Or pain No sacred Santiago No scattering-wide of souls A...
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The witness

He woke with a pale-blue sound in his ears, like an empty sky. It sounded like peace. It looked like a dream, but he knew it wasn’t, on account of...

The untimely passing of truth

Out of the shower of anguish comes the blood and guts of it all We shake our heads in dismay and disbelief Blame is laid alongside the remains and...

Journey's end

It looms large for some reason tonight, The loss of these things: Life, Breath, The beating heart, The old familiarities. The scar on your thumb. The...
Cherry

Thoughts of a madman

God awoke and rolled away from the sun that streamed through the window into his eyes. His mouth was dry and he needed to piss. Reluctantly, he gave...

En los Jardines del cabo Noval

I'm watching the kids playing football in the sun. There are many times when I sit and think there’s nothing more to write – that I have nothing more...

Stuff and nonsense

The bathroom is a great place to contemplate the divide between the spiritual and the temporal – the pure and the corrupt. A fitting setting to...
Cherry

A rainy night in York

History is flooding back from all directions. The low brick building passed on the bus, boarded-up and abandoned, I’m sure is where my mam and dad...
1 likes
Cherry

Everything is gone

The infinite silence

The Alps Cranial

I found them on the back of my head The Alps Cranial Hiding god-knows-what beneath They must have been present in school-boy days Beneath the tufts...

Making the most of it

It took a beat-up, pungent tramp passing through the Metro this morning to remind me that a healthy life is one of distraction – denial of one’s true...
Cherry

Hope springs eternal

Is God simply Hope? Where are we without Hope? Where are you and I? Why drag ourselves through the hardship and the tragedy? For a few all too scarce...

Meditation 173

Refreshed

Hereditary fears

His face is twisted, mouth contorted, demons dancing ring-a-roses round his head Brow creased, ears filled with voices jibing, teasing, criticising...
Cherry

Raking up the past

“I love you, son.” “I love you, too, dad.” It’s all I can remember of the pained conversation, crouching on the footpath. One of us kissed the other...
Cherry

Night

It's life It's absolutely life Cody In a borrowed suit Denver downtown Catching dames staring Awkward Me Home by six Keeping going Doing Thinking...

Time

You’re watching yourself in the mirror and seeing the setting sun

The need to know

The two men sat across the table from one another. To look at them, they might have been father and son. They were brothers. The younger one spoke...

Fall to Earth

There’s still some time to dream

Another soul

And another soul passes One among tens of thousands today Some of them screaming He, quietly holding the side of the bed Waiting But he was my soul...
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The wind in the wood

With love
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Diminishing returns

I think of my head inside this world, within this existence, and I'm thinking “Fractal”. But where is order? So I picture kaleidoscope landscapes of...
Cherry

Time and motion

It seemed so natural then
Cherry

Fear of existence

Fiction based on real-life events... and a few musings. Approach inspired by JK.
1 likes

Tonight

I got done by the Chinese shop Well and truly stitched Not their fault I should have said something Or just walked away and left the bag But I didn't...

Daisy

I am no more than a daisy A daisy with awareness And some vague idea Of its place within the universe
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Mulanje and the sky

Inspired by a forgotten photo

A problem shared

Fare thee well / welfare and the shared experience of unique beings

Knowing time.

I’m in my local café having breakfast: coffee and toast. This place suits my temperament. There’s nearly always an empty table, Salsa plays on the...

Restless

Restless, I roll onto my side and reach into the darkness for the switch.

Reina Sofia

From a bench. Watching. Thinking. Being.
Cherry

Fissure

Our ghosts live within, maybe
Cherry

The race against Time

Time lifts his finger from your tail and your feet scratch at the earth

We are here

I gave up counting poles and settled for the rise and fall of wires Thoughts setting out on journeys of their own oblivious to strangers’...
Cherry

SITREP

Waiting, out, in No Man’s Land

The awakening

For Bernard (1939 - 2017)
Cherry

What God is

God is oil God is gas God is a Tomahawk up your ass

Patio thoughts

What sights have these olive trees known? What sounds? Today, the tranquility of a museum patio; the fountain’s soothing trickle. In years past,...
Cherry

Glorious Dead

Where is the glory? Who gains?

Trying to understand time

Amateur ramblings inspired by a visit to the Lee Lozano exhibition. Only read if interested in such ramblings.
Cherry

The elephant

For corporals everywhere
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To those who lost their footing

I’m spending more and more time telling myself I no longer care.
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What poetry is

Wow is woW spelled backwards. The muse isn't with me on this trip.
Cherry

One for the road

A quiet moment
1 likes
Cherry

Inheritance

I caught him last night, in that sideways glance
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Don't get old

Easily said
Cherry

Aqua

Womb and tomb
Cherry

Golden hour

The sun slants, bright and golden, down Calle de Alcalá. Poetry Monthly - September.

Living with the curse

Why can't we be like daisies?

So

Spare a thought, if you can

Hiatus

Canary in the mine

For water

Para agua
Cherry

Filling time - 2

William picked a stone up from the water’s edge. He turned it over and saw that the moist surface was covered in small black snails. He picked up...

Apparition

You wandering bag of cancers Innumerable tragic parts How can you stand and look like that? As though nothing’s going on
Cherry

So long

Everything to come and all there ever was

The thing with our birthdays

When all’s said and done It’s just some miracle trick of light
Cherry

Contact

The two men looked at each other. The sun was hot. Even the air burned. Moments before, they had startled each other. Neither man had been sure what to do next.

Worse ways to go

Inspired by T.S. Eliot "The Waste Land"
Cherry

What is this life

What is this life, so full of holes This broken dream of drifting souls

Aquamarine blue

Hauntings

The art of keeping going

Thursday 14 June 2018. Could be worse (14 June 1918, Northern France).
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Cherry

Changing history

Proposed rewrite of part 17 and closing scene of "Boatman's Tale"

Nicola, I owe you

How I came to be here. Why I remain. People. Gracias Nicola, Tariq, Rafa, Claudia, Sandra and Pietre. And anyone else who might be in the reckoning.

The meeting - good friends

Opposite sex friendships - are they really free of hormonal interference?
Cherry

Lost in a space

More overblown nonsense

Sin titulo

Sin título - no title5

Bases 1

It has no name

Samhain fast idle

From memory
Cherry

Ceremonial

Soldier! Where are you going with that wreath?
Cherry

Poppy

Time to remember
1 likes
Cherry

Tricks of the light

What’s the flickering?

Sin titulo 2

The aspiration is to remain unnamed, but protocol prevents.
Cherry

Scribble 19.1

13 lines. Unlucky.
Cherry

Oblivion

I thought I had it all worked out. Oblivion. It had to be. There’s no other way. Even with the shadow that passed from hall to kitchen; the keys...

Vigil

Catching words

Histrionics

He does go on, sometimes
Cherry

A fisherman's tale

Re-write of a lost piece with a different turn.
Cherry

Figuring why

I’m in perpetual turmoil. Switches of form intentional.
Cherry

Thinking out loud

In a kind of structure. Experimental.

Of myths and monsters

Something about those roads, which once stretched mysteriously towards dull glass towers or the vanishing point of shade trees, and along which I’ve...

Orange and blue

Still trying to get my head around something
Cherry

Immaterial

Rediscovering old ways

Spurn Point

Then and now
1 likes

Where time making sense is time wasted

Anything but the set reading...
2 likes
Cherry

Season of hope?

It's barely light
1 likes
Cherry

Reading room

Final scribbles of the day - maybe
1 likes
Cherry

Swansong

From a deserted car park
1 likes
Cherry

Maintaining distance

Strange days, indeed. Most peculiar...
1 likes
Cherry

The swimmer revisited

Working on ideas for something
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Time of our lives

Works in progress - vignettes, ephemera

Down among the weeds

I’m down among the weeds and discarded trolleys, pushing through the bicycles, old tyres and prams. Digging in the mud for the remnants of hope. The...
Cherry

La belleza

Beauty
Cherry

When the light fades

Peace in the back garden

Unnamed

A flow of something. Playing.
1 likes
Cherry

Lepidoptera

Things we remember
3 likes
Cherry

Open-air theatre

We look up to see a dark form among the moss and crumbling elevation
Cherry

No love lost

Seems there's a lot of it around
Cherry

Under glass

Come on, geranium, push!
1 likes

On time

All the effort went into the title

Sundowner

From the _ing verb
Cherry

Sweet river

Windows of escape
2 likes
Cherry

Flyover

All things must pass

Hello

Visitor

Rag man's horse

To the sound of wood-pigeons
1 likes

St. Malo bound

Playing with an idea

Temeraire

Might have done one of these before. Ekphrastic job.
1 likes

Hanging in the air 2

Yet more s***e
Cherry

Happy birthday

Please do not read if suicidal or depressed. Go and talk to someone.
Cherry

Summer evening

Thoughts on entertainment and a fear of natural things
Cherry

Salterhebble

Light at the end of lockdown tunnel

Trig Point – 18 July 2020

Waterlilies rocking in spacetime
Cherry

Frag me

Tom
2 likes

Money

Inspired by an ear-worm

The Coming of Age

Accident involving a truckload of Scrabble
Cherry

Not horse enough to shoot

Only internal half-rhyme this time
1 likes
Cherry

Job description

Oversimplified? A job description? Surely not.
1 likes
Cherry

Darkness

Ephemera
Cherry

The wind's indifference

Page intentionally neo-Romantic
1 likes

Counterfactual

On not being there
1 likes

Wreck

A seascape

A wave crashes

Step On
Cherry
Pick of the Month

BIKE

Vroom