Author Archives: grahamswords1962

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”

Last year’s leaves assume the footsteps of mice,Scuttling across an empty dance hall dance floor.Empty as an out-of-season football ground car park;On a Sunday.Empty as a school playground in summer,The footsteps filling the space childhood voices had vacated.Occupying the still Arctic plains with pinpoint acoustic precision.And yet, it was not cold. Nothing else stirred, notContinue reading “Miro’s Square”

To miss the emotion in intimacyAnd the intimacy of emotion,Simultaneously,Is the curse of a pyric victory. The wraith of love scornedIs a starving hyena,A self-serving carnivore of the soul,Serially committing Seppuku. Here is the cold, wet quayside,Where sailors cast off hope.With one foot aboard and the other on shore,Hankering for neither and both. Chefs thatContinue reading “Black Pearl”

My tired and wracked body rocks, To the sound of patrolling wind beyond glass panes,The wind that sought it out among the fields and lanes, Along the windswept paths and gust-filled plains,Where buffeted birds rose and fell, Like tossed boats on heaving seas, Unequal to the overblown breeze,I feel it taunting me from outside. WeContinue reading “Windchill”

First the search.For the empty space,The safe space, where legs don’t stroke, whereElbows need not beg forgiveness, fromEyes that have tectonic resistance to meeting.The space amongst the pigeon-holed mannequins. Silence is the order of the day,No one bought a ticket to speak. Inside ear bud tuned worlds,Lives unfurl,In silence. Silent, like a jury in waiting,PoxContinue reading “Ping Ping”

Each time it happens, it happens,It happens in the same way. Embroidered filigree dried lace petals of hydrangea, So, soft. Solo fall from me, falling, and as they fall,Fall away in fine weights. Iridescent fish scales float down gently on bat wings, So, silent. And reveal a lesser me, a less me,Lessened to something thatContinue reading “Filigree”

I watched James Bulgin’s “How the Holocaust Began” – it inspired this. Every year, for O’ so many years,The perfectly manicured green fingertips appear. Clawing their way up towards the sun’s rebirth,They mark their unseen place beneath the earth. Signs of Spring, signs of things to come,Signs of things that cannot be undone. Labels, markersContinue reading “Fingertips”

As we headed east, above our heads the sequential lights went out,One, by one, by one, until every one,Was dark. The dawn’s gloom rose, slowly, as our eyes unfurled from their beds,To behold a sight, so rare, so bright,So stark. A perfect screen of iridescence, a diamond-cut blazing foil against which,Two dimensional man-made silhouettes stood,SoContinue reading “Morning lights”

He hears me without listening,Without ears. He sees me without looking,Without eyes. He speaks to me without talking,Without a voice. But I hear him daily, feel his words about me,Not about, but around me. He looks older now, his skin pale and drying,Scrawny arms in silhouette revealing, A frame still statuesque,Even in his winter years.Continue reading “My Old Man”