Poetry in Commotion
By Turlough
The scribblings of a man sitting on a train or under a tree with a mind full of nothing except whatever it is he’s scribbling about … and the train or the tree.
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A Hot Afternoon in Malki Chiflik
Nothing moves. There is no breeze. No birds fly by in the cloudless sky. No creature has the will to disturb the cruel tranquillity. Not even bees...
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- 1330 reads
Crucial Moves of Fantasy
Sit back and watch the sea above Where images of waves and whales and fish and ships Collide and slide and get mixed up Until it is a sea no more But...
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- 653 reads
Betty Lewis Eyes
A teapot on a tray she brings. Digestive in each saucer. Horrific tales of war to tell But only if she’s forced to. She’s angelic, prim and ninety...
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- 1491 reads
Mother Bulgaria
As Lenin looks down from his sombre pedestal Concrete erupts from a bleak landscape like The broken teeth of windswept peasants Drinking homemade...
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- 866 reads
The Condemnation of Darkness
Hello darkness my old friend You're here to drive me round the bend As sultry summers meet their end You pounce upon my fear and send Me screaming...
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- 1055 reads
We Are Seacroft!
With my folks, I lived on top Of the North East Gas Board showrooms shop In a row of flats called Parkway Mews From which we had outstanding views Of...
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- 2462 reads
The Liberation of Stefan and Penka
We met in black and white. Four eyes peircing dirt and spiders‘ webs To escape their world behind the wood pile In the darkest corner of an ancient...
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- 1079 reads
Baby Love
Two new eyes Startled; staring out at An old world. Not knowing it's old. Two new lungs Taking their first gasps of air Breathed a million times...
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- 1314 reads
When It Gets Late Earlier
As my hemisphere gets darker The men who wind up the world Decide to make it darker still Just days before my birthday When I always wish for more...
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- 507 reads
Take It or Leave It
I love to see the sun come up through early morning mist. I quite enjoy a pint or two without ever getting pissed. I like to walk around the town, my...
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- 1293 reads
The Friday Pazar in Gorna Oryahovitsa
Coffee imbibed, strong and black. Old men sit and talk and cough and hack Beneath a fig tree even older. Tobacco smoked, even stronger To blunt the...
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- 1733 reads
Copse and Robbers
No Bulgar children, women or men Can recall the day exactly when They first strode into forested lands With an axe on a shoulder or a saw in a hand...
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- 8692 reads
Take It or Leave It (with music video)
I first posted this poem on the ABCTales website in November, during the week when our Inspiration Point was ambivalence. Please forgive me if you...
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- 1627 reads
Hotel Mediterraneo
Sultry and still the sweet night air. Latin music. Crickets chirping. Like a favela in Rio or anywhere But for the sound of Geordies burping. For el...
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- 1315 reads
It Being December
Dulled A mind follows a rainbow Seven shades of jet In hope to find A faerie shoemaker In wee black jacket and cap Tap-tapping at the soles Of...
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- 1546 reads
Fantasies of Enya (with music video)
I'd like to be the owner of a butcher's shop in Newry. I'd like to shake my hips about and sing like Billy Fury. I'd like to be a cosmonaut like...
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- 1958 reads
Christmas With Monsieur Bublé
A portfolio of lively tunes A carousel and gay balloons To start, the handsome Gaul festoons Season’s greetings most profound To all of those who’ve...
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- 1349 reads
They Think I’ve Gone Berserk (with music video)
This is a poem I wrote about forty years ago. I was working as a waiter in a cocktail bar at the time. My dear friend Anthony Healey found the faded...
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- 1586 reads
The Chips at Twerton Park
When Raleigh’s ship came into port the gentry gathered round To see the cargo in its hold of veggies small and brown. But little did the people know...
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- 1760 reads
Before The Year Is Gone
Around New Year and before Lent, the Kukeri walk and dance through villages to scare away evil spirits with their elaborate costumes and the sound of multiple large bells attached to their belts. They are also believed to provide a good harvest, health, and happiness to the village during the year. The Kukeri tradition has been practiced since Thracian times, predominantly in Bulgaria but also in other Balkan countries.
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- 472 reads
Priyatelka, Turlough and the House of Cats
She was sleeping in a gas station, south from here on route E85. I asked the pump attendant, ‘You think that little feline’s still alive?’ He said ‘...
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- 2722 reads
For Yer Women, the Women
All the year they scrub the homes From Skibbereen to Portglenone. They work their fingers to the bone, Afraid to pause to moan or groan. They milk...
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- 1618 reads
Poking James MacGuigan’s Pig
There have been many doors in my life, some real and some metaphorical, but on a quiet little farm in one of Ireland's beautiful Glens of Antrim, one in particular stood out and the memory of it will stay with me forever.
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- 2764 reads
Lady Danube
A photograph of a green wooden hut beside a river. But the river is none other than the River Danube (known locally as the Dunav / Дунав) taken on my phone a few days ago from near the town of Svishtov in Bulgaria, approximately 80 kms from where I live. I love watching rivers flow by but the might of the Danube (the second longest in Europe, after the Don) is extraordinary. Its beauty and the folklore and mythology that accompany it compelled me to write this poem.
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- 3795 reads
Her Troubles
Her Troubles Tuesday’s fish supper grease still lingers On grubby stubby stiff little fingers Cracked by cold and each one bleeds From overuse of...
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- 2332 reads
502 Kilometres
502 Kilometres Just up the road from my wife and me A fire’s burning constantly Folks just like us are in the street No food to eat Nowhere to sleep...
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- 2330 reads
When One Is One
When One Is One As our wee woman reaches one I wonder where the time has gone Those first twelve months so quickly passed As a list of skills you...
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- 2444 reads
Black Grape Cat Disorder
Osem our cat is black and white He’ll eat whatever comes in sight He eats all day and he eats all night No bounds exist to his appetite He eats...
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- 683 reads
The Vigorous Fig
But how did you get there? That’s got me perplexed. Oh the wonders of nature, and whatever next?
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- 1943 reads
Song to My Siren
I loved the way we shared that laughter. No other made me laugh like you.
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- 2225 reads
Water Under the Bridge
Crossing chasms to the past whilst not going out.
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- 1839 reads
Trip of a Lifetime
A poem inspired by a terrible incident my partner and I witnessed on the four kilometre journey into our local town this morning.
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- 1098 reads
Poking James MacGuigan’s Cow
This is an old bit of writing from the days when I was still nervous about farm animals. I’ve done a bit of the digital remastering because I was never really happy with it and I thought that while I was fiddling about I would change the subject from a pig to a cow, thus meeting the dictates of this week’s Inspiration Point. So you’d better read it because if you don’t I’ll set James MacGuigan on you.
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- 1113 reads
Hot Cross Bun Blues
If only they had a branch of Sainsbury’s in the Mississippi Delta.
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- 1608 reads
You Never Said
For someone I loved a long time ago, you know.
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- 4360 reads
Beneath Cnoc Daod
It would be hard to find a place more beautiful, peaceful and welcoming than the Beara Peninsula in West Cork.
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- 1179 reads
The Fall of the Mountain King
The best laid plans of teenage dreamers often go awry.
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- 934 reads
Jacques in the Box
A mysterious woman’s trunk of treasures.
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- 2459 reads
Me and My Muezzin
When I was a lad I worked on big ships. Here I describe the Suez Canal stretch of a sea passage from Quebec City in Canada to Colombo in Sri Lanka round about 1977. Our ship was loaded with a bulk cargo of poverty relief grain financed by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). Some of my writing is an embellishment of the truth and a little bit of it is the result of pure imagination, but this poem is as near to the truth as I could get whilst attempting to remain poetic.
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- 1016 reads
Three O’Clock Sheep Club
A crowded but lonely place.
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- 1217 reads
Yantra Mantra
Oh Yantra, river of my dreams...
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- 654 reads
My Verbal Diary Here
I couldn’t match the style of Jenny Skinner’s diary entries but I hope this helps to cheer her up a bit while she’s feeling under the weather.
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- 1646 reads
The Treadmills of My Mind
It’s that ole devil called insomnia again, where I’m entertained by the dark columns of the world’s problem page.
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- 1021 reads
Reasons to Be Bulgarian… Naz-dra-vee!
Bulgaria… a paradise that’s maybe a bit rough round the edges. This beautiful country may not be perfect but it’s the perfect home for me and Priyatelkata. We could never live anywhere else. I took my inspiration from Hristo Botev, my lovely neighbours and Ian Dury.
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- 1404 reads
A Girl of Eastern Beauty
I watched the girl in silence, not a single word she spoke.
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- 790 reads
Piblokto
Piblokto: a culture-specific syndrome occurring among traditional Inuit people, particularly women, characterized by an outburst of cries or screams, the removal of clothing, and seeming possession by a bird or animal spirit. Scientists believe that the causes include extreme cold and a lack of sunlight.
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- 2024 reads
Goody Two Shoes
It’s hard to find something to give up if you’re doing nothing bad in the first place.
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- 825 reads
Cheese and Onion Tuesday
Have you ever been contaminated on the way to your workplace?
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- 771 reads
Ophidian at Four O’Clock
Happiness is a hot Balkan afternoon...
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- 664 reads
More Elaines
Elaine and I barely spoke to each other but memories of this gruff, no-nonsense woman have stayed with me for fifty years.
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- 977 reads
Lactobacillus Bulgaricus or Bust!
Other yoghurts are available, though scientists have proved that our Bulgarian yoghurt is by far the best in the world.
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- 970 reads
Turn and Face the Strange
Contemplating life in a world where virtually everything’s becoming virtual.
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- 1057 reads
A Midsummer Night’s Apocalypse
When you sit through a storm…
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- 474 reads
Tang Hall Beck
Sunny Saturdays with the sticklebacks and my friend John Lancaster. A memory of York from 1966.
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- 739 reads
Candi Staton, the Sea and Me
Memories of my last night before becoming a salty sea dog. It all happened at the Devon public house in the fashionable Cross Gates district of Leeds, round about the end of August 1976.
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- 704 reads
No Country for Cold Men
Made in the shade of our covered terrace late in the afternoon on one of those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
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- 339 reads