creative writers blog

A co-op of online writing

adrianpfox8@gmail.com
online poetry cafe

TINA ROCK

Natures orchestra Whipping bark lilt'n harmony Of voices keening songs The ancestor calls The dancers of nature Steppin out King of the forest-Oak Sturdy green limbs The shy girl-Willow Without her petti- Coat accepts hand Bend of knee swirls in motion.

Selected Poems 

Published by Liberties Press

Moyra Donaldson has assimilated the powerful 

influences of Yeats, Hewitt, Hughes, Longley 

and Heaney, together with 

Plath and Liz Lochhead, to present a 

hard-won distinctive self…’

- Medbh McGuckian

http://annaliviareview.blogspot.co.uk

Anybody from any genre can send me writing, even before my stroke I had the vision of creating an anthology I still have that vision and that passion for writing.  I’m lucky ina sense that my stroke wasn’t a severe head injury that didn’t reach my brain ha ha I think.   Writers I think need a little madness, any age group can send me writing and any form of writing as this is not a poetry or prose workshop it’s a

             

                writing of the moment workshop.

PHOETRY 

                GEORGE WEIR

RHYMED TIME

'loving them all the way back to the source

loving everything that increases me'

                                          Raymond Carver

The current of literature flows
And I stream the stream. 

I don’t know what kind of fish

This is until I land it, I’m writing
This for me, to find the current
Flow and to know that it’s
A big bastard. You have to know
Where the current flows
And when to let it go. The scales
Are black and silver and it swim’s
Every colour in between. It me-
Anders through the water as if
It knows it can’t be caught.

It’s big and bold and beautiful
It’s been hooked a thousand
Times but this isn’t about
The hooking its about its
About the killing time. Time
Is a big fish landed in this

     'IF YOU CANNOT BE A POET 

              BE THE POEM'

Spring Wildflowers in a Woodland Garden

A melting pot of Glory-Bluebells bobbing-Fern unfurling-Sorrel smiling-Horse Chestnut fingers waving-Lavender Blooming-Viola hiding-Daisy dancing-Ladies Mantle beauty dew-Montbrethia stretching-Lady's smock the Cuckoo calls-

Marsh Marigold bathing-A Frog hopping-

Trowel resting-Plantain nesting in a wall -

Moss in pretty pink-Rhododendron rising-

I hear the gossip of their Bloom.

                

                    TINA ROCK

JAX LECK

Nightdreams

Dreams are my bolthole

I close out the world

become my alter ego

The writer of wrongs

The chaos of reality dim
As solutions are found
To the insurmountable hurdles
Of my daily life

Empowerment surges
the burnt kittens
the butchered dolphins
never happened

Religion reads its scriptures
And understands the words

Politically masked self interest
is not de rigeur
becomes non sequiteur

I can feel the contentment
well-being and joy
I breathe deep and long
For morning when...

the dreaming stops
reality kicks in
the cloak of invincibility drops
I am left, vulnerable

POARTRY

---

    BARRY KERR       

                              IN-TURN-MEANT

                                                                                                           

(a special powers act)

My command of Lowell is in

my birth date fall of 1961, John

Keats is in melancholic autumn

leaves, Kavanagh is the ditch way

down in Muckers shuck, Frost is in

the snow and ive got miles to go be-

fore I know, Akmatova is in the O-

pressers boot stamping down on me.

Poetry is within the sensing feeling

sea like Raymond Carver's current is

in the fish brave and strong and true

the command is deep within me

and deep, deep, deep in you.

                                

PHOETRY

            

The Rippled sky

framed decay

                 by Tina Rock

THE CLOCK FLOWER

As far as the rest of the universe is concerned,

Maybe we’re like the feather-fluff of the clock flower,

The ghostly snow-sphere of the dying dandelion

That the child holds up in wide-eyed wonder,

Which the mother says to blow on to tell the time

By how many breath-blows it takes before the airy seed

All flies away, leaving her child clutching a bare stem.

And where our humanness might go, who knows?

And when it lands – takes root – what grows?

SOMETIMES I THINK

Sometimes I think that my happiest days

Have been spent in bookshops;

Especially when everything’s in bloom,

When the trees have hung out

Their flags on every street,

And the clouds have gone AWOL

Or been safely penned

By that orange collie of the skies:

Even then you can’t keep me

From feasting my eyes

On those book-shelved spines.

It’s then that I’m in my element

Because, because there’s magic in the book.

Even Hewitt, custodian of reason,

Was moved to heresy as he took me

By the elbow in his house

To tour his library, his working collection,

And pointed to a buckramed book

Selected poems by Matthew Rice

Anomaly

(Auschwitz, 1943)

His careful, intimate hands
cupped like a pilgrim,
the man with the big smile,
carrying sweets for the children.

Three Hares

‘They were trees, and trees don’t weep or ache or shout.

And trees are all this poem is about.’ –

from ‘Two Trees’ by Don Paterson

What direction

that trio of brown hares took,

spirit-bounding across my sight,

has nothing so much to do with omen

as with any Boudica style tit for tat.

They disappeared around the cafe corner:

into mystery, perhaps,

but still wholly in the world –

and that was that.

(First published in Live Encounters, October 2016)

The Weight of a Rock

to the end they will look at us
with a calm and a very clear eye
Zbigniew Herbert, ‘Pebble’

The rock in my hand
is unconcerned by the human value

I place in its symbolism,
that the weight of a rock

is easier borne than the soul,
by being inside my fisted palm

or how light it feels to me.
It is impervious to the tightening of my fingers

and, when I open my hand,
the swelling emptiness it leaves.

MONICA WATSON

Today's poem.

Into my mirror has walked - Brian patten.

Into my mirror has walked

A woman who will not talk of love

Or of its subsidiaries,

But who stands there

Pleased with her own silence.

The weather has worn into her

All seasons known to me,

In one breast she holds

Evidence of forests,

In the other, of seas.

CARDBOARD CITY

Last night, while leisurely

reading on the toilet, I be-

came aware of a strange

heat against my bare right

Leg, caused by the card-

board side of Huggies

Diaper box, emblazoned

with the promise, Snug

and Dry. 

I immediately thought

of people living in card-

board cities; Of just

how grateful one

could be for card-

board warmth.

                ADRIAN RICE 


New blog, old on at https://poetryfree.blogspot.com.

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS REWRIT BY ADRIAN FOX

WOEDAY

No worse, there is none. Pitched past grief

More pangs will, school, wilder wring.

Comforter, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother where is your relief?

My cries heave, herd long, huddle in

A world of sorrow, wince sing an age old

Anvil, lull release.  Fury shrieks no ling-

Erroring! Force my cry is brief.

O the mind, mountainous, sheer cliffs

No man has fathomed.  Life is cheap

For those who never hung.  Our small

Indurance doesn’t deal steep or deep.

Here creep under a comfort there

Is a whirlwind you don’t know.

All life death ends each day with Sleep.