january joy
it’s the first month of the year (2024 — 😀 on the assumption this blog may still exist in years to come!) but here in Portugal the weather is unseasonably spring-like…Sun currently shining is mild and tempting all the usual frolics and fecundity of the coming season to erupt a little early: January Joy Percussion […]
happy new year 2024
post-festive, post-covid, post-flu, almost post-human… the muse seemed to be on extended vacation the suddenly she returns with an ironic riposte… Happy New Year Stressed, depressedAnd lacking restBathed in a lakeOf disinterestPost-festive malaiseBesets my daysThrough half-formed thoughtsIt weaves its waysMisdirecting my moodThrough an endless mazeMisbegotten areThe games it playsAs it twists my mindLeaving joy behindMy […]
why we love bees | a poem for children of all ages
originally published in the children’s book ‘Why We Love…Bees’ by A Graham Smith and available for kindle or in paperback here why-we-love-bees
christmas day 2020 | a sad poem
Those out there who know the pain and inconsolable grief associated with having an alienated child might best relate to this poem — and also understand why I am unable to read this poem out loud to make an audio version, like other poems on this site: (You can ‘right-click’ with the mouse on this […]
medicine walk music
with acknowledgement for the inspiration to try and articulate this poem, ‘medicine walk music’, on the occasion of attending a beautiful weekend retreat and course run by the barefootshaman, Dee Kyne and hosted at naturalma venue in Portugal. This is a somewhat ‘finessed’ version of the rapidly composed original — and I felt compelled to […]
jabberwocky | someone else’s ‘nonsense’ poem
jabberwocky is possibly the most acclaimed nonsense rhyme ever written in the English language. Charles Dodgson writing under his pen-name Lewis Carroll included it in his famous children’s story: Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it tells of the slaying of a fearsome beast called the The Jabberwock! The poem […]
a poet’s plight | an ironic short poem
Ironically inspired by a ‘visitor from Porlock’ this short poem refers to the individual who even caused the tale of Kubla Khan to be cut short… 🙂
cheeky fairy | prose poem
Now that the ladybird has somewhere to go to when she ‘flies away home’, a short prose poem to celebrate the occasion that was inspired by the wave of the wand… or perhaps a swing of the ‘magical axe’ 🙂 😉
apocalypse | as the four horsemen ride out in 2022
With humanity anything but free from the pandemic pestilence of the last two and a half years, with war in the news by the day, and famine for as many as 200 million forecast by the ‘powers that be’… it seems that we are beset daily with tales of economic woes on the horizon: recession, […]
dream girl | a quirky little rhyming poem
As happens on the infrequent occasions a poem manifests itself this quirky little traditional rhyming story poem ‘downloaded from the ether’ onto my page on an odd day in 2021… and (inspired by the general mood of that mid-pandemic period perhaps?) reflects the lack lustre existence of a female protagonist who only seems to experience […]