The Sunday Posts 2018/Covering Two Years

This nothingness that feeds upon itself:
Pencils that turn to water in the hand,
Parts of a sentence, hanging in the air,
Thoughts breaking in the mind like glass,
Blank sheets of paper that reflect the world
Whitened the world that I was silenced by.

There were two years of that. Slowly,
Whatever splits, dissevers, cuts, cracks, ravels, or divides
To bring me to that diet of corrosion, burned
And flickered to its terminal. - Now in an older hand
I write my name. Now with a voice grown unfamiliar,
I speak to silences of altered rooms,
Shaken by knowledge of recurrence and return.

Weldon Kees.
Photo by Alistair

The Sunday Posts 2017/ As I Grow Old I Will March Not Shuffle

As I grow old
I will not shuffle to the beat
of self-interest
and make that slow retreat
​​​to the right.

I will be a septuagenarian insurrectionist
marching with the kids. I shall sing
‘La Marseillaise’, whilst brandishing
homemade placards that proclaim
‘DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING’.

I will be an octogenarian obstructionist,
and build unscalable barricades
from bottles of flat lemonade,
tartan blankets and chicken wire.
I will hurl prejudice upon the brazier’s fire.

I will be a nonagenarian nonconformist,
armed with a ballpoint pen
and a hand that shakes with rage not age
at politicians’ latest crimes,
in strongly-worded letters to The Times.

I will be a centenarian centurion
and allow injustice no admittance.
I will stage longstanding sit-ins.
My mobility scooter and I
will move for no-one.

And when I die
I will be the scattered ashes
that attach themselves to the lashes
and blind the eyes
of racists and fascists.

Brian Bilston

The Sunday Posts 2016/Emeralds and Black Diamonds

Lie down lass, lie down, in sage green meadows
Your blouse flouncing open, in the teasing breeze
The meadows, feel so cotton, this time of season
Come lay beside me lass, and sense th' softness

Open field, sweet honeysuckle....arouses my yen
Shamrock blades in sparkle by th' mid-noon sun
No clouds abide our scape of choice, to pleasure
Again i ask you lass......come lay you down by me

Come close my love...these hungry emerald eyes
Beg to stare into your warm, black diamond eyes
Take my hand in bond, lov', and let me asure you
That Emeralds and diamonds....never fade away

Frank James Ryan.
Photo By Alistair.     

The Sunday Posts 2016/ A Wee Cock Sparra'

This comic poem was an annual entertainment for New Year when I was growing up. The Scots dialect of the non-gaelic regions was always only heard on TV in a comic situation, not taken seriously, except in a work of Rabbie Burns. I always thought it was strange that the language I spoke everyday with friends and family and had grown up with was something to be laughed at in 'polite' society. At school you could earn a prize one day for reciting Burns and get belted the next for 'not speaking properly'.

Thankfully that situation has slowly changed but there's a long way to go in recognising and rescuing the diversity and heritage of a native tongue.

The Sunday Posts 2015/To the Moon

Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2014/ The Phoenix

Just because the leaves are falling, doesn't mean the tree is dying,
It only means it's time to cast tired things to the earth,
The sun may have got weaker but there will be another summer,
We have to die a little to get ready for rebirth.

The moon wanes before it waxes,
The stars don't fall from heaven,
The sea recedes so far and then returns to shore,
Don't mock the weary soldier for behind him is an army,
Who may have lost the battle but intend to win the war.

The flame's reduced to smoulder and smoke obscures the mirror,
Very darkly, through it I can see some fearful things,
But regeneration is coming and out of dust is growing,
Like the phoenix rising from the ash beneath its wings.

Cher Cassini.
Photo by Alistair.
{Thanks to local poet Cher for permission to use this poem}

The Sunday Posts 2013/Romance

Romance, who loves to nod and sing
With drowsy head and folded wing
Among the green leaves as they shake
Far down within some shadowy lake,
To me a painted parakeet
Hath been—most familiar bird—
Taught me my alphabet to say,
To lisp my very earliest word
While in the wild wood I did lie,
A child—with a most knowing eye.

Of late, eternal condor years
So shake the very Heaven on high
With tumult as they thunder by,
I have no time for idle cares
Through gazing on the unquiet sky;
And when an hour with calmer wings
Its down upon my spirit flings,
That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things—
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.     

Edgar Allan Poe.
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2013/The Past

The debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed,
All fortunes made;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet is death forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the Past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can reenter there, -
No thief so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal Fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2013/April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.      

Langston Hughes
Photo by Alistair.

The sunday Posts 2013/Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Sara Teasdale
Photo by Alistair.

The Sunday Posts 2013/ Sure Proof

I can no more describe you
than I can put a thing for the first time
where it already is.

If I could make a ladder of light
or comb the hair of a dream girl with a real comb
or pour a table into a jug...

I'm not good at impossible things
And that is why I'm sure
I will love you for my ever.

Norman MacCaig. 1968
Photo by Alistair

The Sunday Posts 2013/Hope is the thing with feathers

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson
Photo by Alistair