Author Archives: grahamswords1962

You think I’m wrongThat you’re in the rightThat your case Carries all the might, And all because,Your mind’s far from lame,You’re not insaneAnd all your friends all think the same. You may think that is soBut if you bear Let me shine a light,On the problem of wrong and right. If I place you withContinue reading “The problem of wrong and right”

Napowrimo 2023, Day 4 Today’s challenge is to write a triolet, an eight-line poem where all the lines are in iambic tetramenter (for a total of eight syllables per line), and the first, fourth, and seventh lines are identical, as are the second and final lines. This means that the poem begins and ends withContinue reading “Spring Spikes”

NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 3 Take a short poem you like and reverse all of its meanings I chose Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith, written below: Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd nowContinue reading “Stand proud as a Tulip”

NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 2 Pick 5-10 words from a list, next, write out a question for each word selected then for each question, write a one-line answer. Now, see if you can make a poem of just the answers. The following are my chosen words, questions and answers. What is a clove? – an aromaticContinue reading “The myopic Mardy Bum”

NaPoWriMo 2023, Day 1 Russ, we need to talk.It’s not about you, andIt’s not about meBut it’s very much about us. You see, the thing is,You wrote this song.And I know you meant well,But, well, it’s just so very, very wrong. I’m full of empathy,But try as I might,There’s no holding back,My tongue I can’tContinue reading “We WON’T make love.”

NaPoWriMo 2023, Early Bird Tell me, Do they make fun in the fun factory?Is that the funny place to be?Where all the happy employees,Are busy making tee hee hees.Do they invoice in giggle squiggle,Does the lunchtime teapot laugh a lot?Do they sack you if you niggle?Would they fire you on the polkadot? It must beContinue reading “Welcome to the fun factory”

Her skin is too pale to be written,Her sexual proclivities,Warrant no words.Unheard are the sounds of her birth,Untraceable her origin on earth.She bears no labels,She wears no tags.Her anonymity is commonplace.Are we missing something?

Brown are the winter downed mounds of Ling,Down and brown like the tumbling Meadow Pipit’s.Ground bound these players of hide and seek.More easily spied when they speak,Than when they move, than when they fly,Trying then to avoid predacious eyes,Borne high and wide on wider wings.Best to be quiet, best not to sing. Stone walls lieContinue reading “Walk the Dales with Manley Hopkins”

They’re killing the kids againIt’s a right enshrined in law.They’re killing the kids again,Because they won the independence war,They’re killing the kids again,In the name of God-given rights.They’re killing the kids again,Blasting school days into nights.They’re killing the kids again,In the name of self-defence.They’re killing the kids again,And it makes no bloody sense.They’re killing theContinue reading “In the name of”

On the spiked barbed wire of time,The savage Berberis Sparrow sings,Dropping tunes of dripping blood,Into the Port wine of autumn, from childhood. Their cawing Carrion friends,With sharpened pick beaks pick till the end,At the gaping open gashed wounds,Garnered by lyrics in their tunes. Spoken talons leave no scars,On which squinting eyes can gaze,No nose detectsContinue reading “Berberis Sparrows”