poetry

Toxic Petals

photo: @John Stadnicki

People travel towards the water.

Believers and non-believers, abandoned,

wet books with pages turning themselves,

in the hot breeze.

 

In times of peace, the bread chooses wisely.

It chooses us.

To hear the summer from miles away – a sudden blast.

 

Toxic petals float in the air and

drop vertical shades of colour

on busy roads, on silenced barracks.

 

We all are the collective eyewitness,

the sleep-deprived well;

knowing litter pickers, mending

the gaps in this violent history.

 

 

A poem for ‘Europa‘ by Andrew Heath https://www.amazon.co.uk/Europa-Andrew-Heath/dp/B01LYHL716 

For further information on Andrew Heath’s music, please click here: https://andrewheath.bandcamp.com/

International Times and ‘Imperfect’…pre-election dossier, 19th May 2017

The box arrived. The first books now being sent to the British Library. And, in the middle of it, a new poem published this morning in ‘International Times’ – the newspaper of resistance.

‘A Day at the Office’ – pre-election dossier.

http://internationaltimes.it/a-day-at-the-office/

 

Uranium Bullets

I always arrive late for everything.

Stuck in a traffic jam by the docks,

missed Noah’s boat but

survived under water

accidentally trapped between stolen books,

trapped by a word heavier than a stone,

lighter than a feather.

 

Hidden in the overcrowded wooden train carriage,

radicalised by the anonymity of my blue name-tag,

with a heart growing outside my body.

Each beat painfully visible to the guards

around the Monopoly table.

 

On the waiting list for ballet lessons,

radicalised by the price of uranium bullets on Mother’s Day

handwriting an apologetic note.

My deep eye silenced.

The familiar solemnity of a world without a face.

Photograph: @John Stadnicki, Bristol MMXVI

Thought

Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment

my mother woke up to give birth to me,

I jumped out and spilt her blood on the floor.

 

My first angry poem, scream at the top of my lungs,

in the pale room.

 

A dormant city blessed the muddy wreath above the cradle

and

asked me to keep the noise down.

 

Mother went back to bed.

 

The following day I learnt to

write on white walls with red letters.

 

Soldiers

The dreadful day we had feared

arrived at last. Possibly March the first.

At the picket line.

We held hands with the same familiar tenderness

maybe shared the same memories witnessing

the course of events as the revolution unravelled.

With a kind of regret my fist hit

the walls of a prison surrounded by weaved carpets.

With photographs stored in books

different directions awaited.

Never to see each other again.

mm