2016
Richard Archer
Poets Don’t Carry Cash
Poets don’t carry cash,
Instead they carry words.
Words stuffed into pockets, mixed with fluff.
Words forced into wallets, alongside old receipts.
Words withdrawn from dusty old accounts.
Words gathered from faded ashtrays on windowsills.
Poets should be rich,
But they can be careless.
Because as they fumble for the right word,
They spill out like so much loose change.
Which rolls around the floor, unwilling to be caught,
Lost, until found and read by puzzled strangers.
Ask a poet and they will swear they have words on them,
But when they check they find nothing.
The words have tumbled into sofa like cracks of their minds,
There to gather dust along with other lost ideas.
A poet’s words start promisingly sharp and crisp,
Until they are nibbled by literary moths.
So they become tatty and unrecognisable,
Unaccepted and unusable.
Anyway as I said,
Poets don’t carry cash.
Instead they carry words.
Which in spite of all the trouble they have with them,
They love to spend freely.
RICHARD ARCHER
Unstructured
I'm an unstructured poet
Writing words
That I stretch to fit
Indeterminate subjects.
These are DLO words
Often failing to deliver.
Ideas lost in translation
Between brain and pen.
Part digested themes
Regurgitated as concepts.
Luckily I cherish all
My warped offspring.
Nurturing them
Until they are ready
To breath, leave and
Finally live.
RICHARD ARCHER
Obsessive Compulsive Poetry
I'm writing this poem,
While on the bus.
Disturbing commuters,
Creating a fuss.
I'm writing this poem,
While sitting at work.
Ignoring my in-tray,
Its contents I shirk.
I'm writing this poem,
Perched on the throne.
Using loo paper,
If I run out of my own.
I'm writing this poem,
Even while asleep.
I dream more verses,
On to pillows and sheets.
I've been writing this poem,
All of my life.
Everyone has left me,
Including my wife.
I'm still writing this poem,
Just ignore the knocking.
I can't stop now,
Even in my coffin.
RICHARD ARCHER
Machine Gun Poetry
Poetry is a weapon that I always have ready.
My brain is fully loaded with verbal ammo,
My tongue is always keen to open fire,
I'm ever ready to deal out poetic justice.
I know my combat drill, let's do it.
I visualize my verse.
I ready my rhyme.
But most importantly,
Once I pick a target,
I don't recite until I see the whites of their eyes.
Then I never hesitate to unleash poetry,
I let slip my words of war,
Savouring the impact of each phrase fired,
I empty my verse into the target.
Watching them fall with a poem between the eyes.
As my mouth begins to smoke I halt,
Then I flick the safety catch on my couplets.
Pausing my performance,
But remaining vigilant,
Poetry is a weapon and I always shoot first.
RICHARD ARCHER
Ron Savory
Attenuating Circumstances
Full of grand thoughts
Bones of fear knit together
All sinew strong Death’s Soft touch hands
Quiet refrain Sown in every nerve ending
Deftly Scythes the attention poised
# Terry Pratchett 1948-2015
RON SAVORY
LEFT in DUST
Left in dust
The rusting tricycle
Triangle kite mark
Abandoned
Pock marked tyred
Peeling
Gathers silence
Ron Savory
Jumble Sale
No thing can buy
What she gave
My Mother’s son
I am un done
Love is free
# Ivy Hannah Hicks 1930-2015
Tin Plate Poet Ron Savory
NEXT
In the waiting room
Invisible, I remain an empty chair
In search of a corner, full of awkward
With a need to avoid stares
Even though not far away the door is always open
Maybe tomorrow will be different
But not today
Ron Savory
Tom Higgins
Blessed are the Meek
He awoke under the rubble
the weight pressed down
his breathing laboured,
he tried to move
but he had trouble
feeling his legs
or his arms or hands,
only his mind was not numb
he could hear the screams,
and he could see the flickering flames
and he could taste the dust,
and smell the blood,
and the bitterness of burnt meat
rising from below him
within the smoke and
the heat.
He tried to shout
he raised a squeak
he was six years old,
"blessed are the meek."
Tom Higgins 20/07/2015
It's a Hard Life
How hard it must be
To make your living from
Making bombs, and missiles
and planes,guns and shells,
and mines, and tanks
and helicopter gunships, and drones,
and rpgs and nerve gas,and training mercenaries,
and marketing them
as if they are as harmless as sofas,
but selling them to every thug and
murderer, and gangster and dictator
on the planet.
It is obviously difficult for you to make a decent living,
but very easy to make a killing, or two, or three, or...
Tom Higgins 22/09/2016
Book of Memories
I look forward to the future
I look back upon the past,
And I hope I’ll keep remembering
For as long as my life may last
And I hope that the album of my life
Will have an expanding trend
And that my ability to refer to it
Will stay with me to the end.
I hope its colours never fade
Or its bright reflections dull
For from these is the person made
And a life can never be full
Unless the memory stays clear
For those remaining days
Without fading into the mists
Of an autumnal evening’s haze
To gradually disappear
Into a wintry fog-bound Hell
A man without a memory
Is a mere empty shell.
Tom Higgins
If I Could Achieve The Impossible
If I could stop a river's flow
Or reverse a waterfall,
If I could make light be slow
Or cause the wind to stall,
If I could make men see sense
And refuse to go to war,
If I could stop the pretence,
That money's worth dying for,
If I could build a better world
Where everyone could thrive,
Or stop the flags being unfurled,
And let the innocent stay alive,
Instead of being bombed and burned
Before they've had a chance
With history's lessons left unlearned,
As death's macabre dance,
Once again takes to the floor
As so often throughout the ages,
The martial music plays once more
And we quick step into the pages,
Of new history as it is written
Never knowing who,or when,or why,
Which of us are to be smitten,
Who amongst us doomed to die.
If I had such powers under the sun
I would be sure to use them to
Change our world so it is run
For the many, not just a few.
Tom Higgins 24/05/2014
Clive @ Kinmos
Life is short
Life is sweet
Life is neat
Life is so complete
Clive @ Kinmos
Andrew Hider
Strawberry Flowers in the Wind
Strawberry flowers bow their heads,
To their lord and master the wind;
Who cruelly whips them,
With his grey and sullen lashing rain,
Suppressing them with depression and anxiety.
To him they display subservience,
Praying to him with whispered words,
Singing soft his pious hymns.
And soon they die.
But from their corpses grow their fruits of red,
That resurrect them from dead,
That through scent and taste and colour,
Comfort the mind of each lost soul;
And make dreams possible,
That the broken can once again be whole.
Andrew Hider