Here you can find some examples of poetry I have written- they range from soft expressions of feeling, dark fantasy tales and tongue-in-cheek stories for a younger audience. I hope you enjoy!
The Wanting:
She suffers low,
Wanting for darkness,
Closeness,
To burrow underground,
To get warm and safe and hidden,
And deep, earthward bound-
She sleeps so sound,
So soft, mudcotton and cloud,
She curls and crofts,
Alone,
In the slow, darkworm shroud.
Or Would You Like to be a Fish?
Curious eyes and fly-a-ways,
Energy flickers and fingers extrapolating stars,
Mind racing,
Manipulating grace and fire,
Facts and keyboard tappings,
Trappings and woodworm quire,
Spirit and hyper-focus,
Reaching far for moonbeams,
And being better than you are.
The Witch and the Bones:
A thousand silken mirrors flashing liquid pearly teeth,
A swathe of grinning secrets, clothing hidden bedrock beneath
Above:
A gown of loving water,
She said that would rise, where
Both good deeds and murder,
Are indeed prophesised.
Dancers light and cello woes,
Walk upon their water.
False beliefs and ransom feats,
Give way to fallen falters.
The witch tallies and counts and bleats,
Skinning the bones of the men she eats,
But nothing ripples the surface,
No live man knows,
What exactly goes on, at the hidden bedrock below?
Mid-Lockdown in the Night:
The town is dead.
Clockwork empty,
Automaton ghost,
Concrete plenty,
Where are the whispers,
Where are the creatures,
Where the staring eyes fuelled by mottled tinctures?
Monsters bleak are beneath chalk-bleached streets,
Light highlighting shadow and shadow fright’ning-deep,
Silent feathers beating warm harrow,
Prey restless-ready for the coming hallow…
The town is dead,
Clockwork empty,
Automaton ghost,
Concrete plenty,
Whispers silent,
And creatures grim,
Staring eyes full of sin,
The people are gone,
Monsters remain,
Eyes mouth and breath, watering grim.
Reportage Project Poem 1:
Crowded beaches crammed with people, talk of the vaccine, allergic reaction, whose cousins are vulnerable and who’s going to get in the sea. People forget to socially distance, forget your personal space in the grey space between this lockdown, freedom and the possibility of the next. I sit and listen and breathe in the sunshine and sand, the hard grit of it between my teeth and toes while seagulls menace and jibe at picnics and fish and children and chips. The sun scalds hotter as the sun rises and skin cracks in the bake of it. Existential thoughts sit sandwiched between ignorance and my reach for it, while the people surrounding us on all sides smile and yawn nescience and comfort in the breeze.
Reportage Project Poem 2:
Buying into a coffee shop rush,
Background noise high with caffeine lustre,
Fat dollops of cream layered over with worry
Pushed down and stopped either side with ice
And syrup. And denial of danger and
We sit on our island, a table of two, not one
Metre across from the government-approved,
Maskless men who spit out their thoughts across their own.
For hours we listen and engage in the lives we all live when in this room.
And the cream melts to a film in our mouths
And the worry fizzles away to our stomachs,
Almost imperceptible to taste.
Reportage Project Poem 3:
The warm tarmac crawled with people,
And light shone warm and fierce,
And the bubble and rumble of pirates and dragons,
Brought life again, back to the streets.
Today we’re keeping our worries,
Behind our teeth.
A Walk with Jess and a Whale Call:
Round, circular bellows from the deep
A rhythmic clinking of chains against a harbour,
Skeleton rafts wavering at insomniac beat
Chuntering and constant, cold, no heat
And a whistle of spirits across rippled water.
Full English:
If I were a fried egg,
I would have a yolk,
I would sit on your plate,
While you sip on your coke
With my whites splayed out,
I’d make friends with the chips,
I’d play games with the bacon,
And laugh with the dips.
But then you’d use long metal tools
Start to chop at each of us
My nice round yolk would all spill over,
My smile turning to frown,
And my friends would all but lose their composure,
As you put me in your mouth.
So having thought it through,
I wouldn’t like to be an egg,
In fact, the thought just fills me with dread!
Least of all
One cooked
And served
By you.
Wiggly Conchiggly:
There was once a girl,
Whose hair had slight curl,
-Well wavy I suppose,
It was just a bit wiggly,
But she was ever so strange-
For she lived in a pasta conchiggly!
Ne’ertheless, when up came the sun,
Like you and me she drank tea from a kettle,
Boiled it up, then sipped,
All sat and settled,
-All before she had pasta for breakfast!
“And what’re you looking at?”,
She might ask, unblinking, unrattled,
To which you can only reply “nothing!”
(This, you definitely stammered)
But she would have a long day,
Drinking more tea,
And making things with clay,
-Scratching patterns on pasta walls,
And grumbling things quietly
Another thing you must note,
Is that she was very small,
-In fact, if you didn’t know she was there,
You wouldn’t see her at all!
-A baby were she,
Ne’er from foetus changed,
Bum in the air, and face to the ground,
She slept like one too,
All safe and sound.
Epilogue:
A beige cocoon in a pan,
For a girl wrapped in blankets of sage,
[until they turned up the heat, and that was most certainly the end ]