Tessera

patriciajvs.bsky.social

@patriciajvs.bsky.social

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 6d ago

Hurray it's Friday and time for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk, @thebrokenspine.co.uk for a great prompt. Sorry for the inaccurate references, but I had a great time remembering the play and the journey. I'm still in touch with the friends and we are still 'witchy'!

Old Vic 1973

Escape from the ancient theatre of magic
Darkened hills, mystical woods, desolate heaths,
We three sprinting along cobbled lanes, Racing, laughing, enacting, cackling,

Black patent platforms, Mary Quant miniskirts,
Smoky eyes, shimmering lips,
Modern day enchantresses of the age Weird sisters and witchy friends,

Darkness and torrents of cold spring rain
Anointing faces, recreating scenes,
Images of a man who silenced lambs Avenging woman, keen knife in hand,

Behind behind behind, breathless,
Hurling, whirling along a wooded Kingsway, Cutting through slithery streets,
Emboldened by what was just seen,

Shadows of gothic Saint Pancras tower, The blackened gateway of Battle Bridge Where chance determined Boudicca's resting place, And Kings are named,

Racing along a perpetual platform
An engine of the industrial age, steeled, Exhaling fog and diesel fumes,
Poised for the whistle,

Tumbling through closing doors,
Falling into shabby seats,
Heading home to the eastern fens
Quietly reflecting as the magic ends,

Stars hide your fires,
And before tomorrow comes,
High school girls again,
Travelling the last train.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2w ago

Second post on behalf of Sunshine who is 8. He wrote these at school and inspired me to write the one I posted earlier. He asked me to post these for #PoemsAbout, #BadHabits. Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for giving a young and aspiring poet an opportunity.

Plastic piles builds up.
Smashed bottles surround the beach.
Small turtles trapped in plastic.
The Earth asks for help.
The beach sleeps rubbish.
Plastic swims across the river.

Stevan

The smoke is like a blanket.
The beach is a rubbish dump.
The park is like a landfill.
The rubbish blows like storm.
The river is a dirty soup.
The donkeys are in a plastic prison.
By Stevan

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's #PoemsAbout, here is my offering for #BadHabits. Inspired by an 8 year old who wrote a sparse poem about climate change at school. Thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk I'll be back later to read all, after the dog's physio has been and said grandson is in bed!

Bad Choices
Leave the lights on when Hurrying out for a day,
No time for the darkness to come,
Heating too high it?
There's no one home to freeze, No thought for a cold tomorrow,
Tap running whilst?
The chat is flowing,
Ignorant of the dry eventuality,
Car idling waiting with?
Nowhere to go,
No time to exhaust on miles,
Flying across the Earth for?
Fantastic and frivolous reasons,
No cares for the world,
Two journeys instead of one when?
Time is of the essence, Not a flash of understanding,
Plastic in the pink bin why?
Wrong colour, wrong bin, Not a time for waste,
Unconcerned, shameless, Bad habits propelling Man Towards a dark future,
Lost time, lost love, Lost land, lost planet,
Lost Earth.

A photograph of a parched field in the Yorkshire countryside after two months of exceptionally high temperatures. Two spaniels are wandering around too.

Brenda Blue @brendafromia.bsky.social · 3w ago

#poemsabout #exitwounds #RhopalicVerse no exit horrific wounds inflicted in a tragic war— like it’s a game now he’s bored f*ck you trump

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 3w ago

Reposting, with thanks to @jenthorne.bsky.social who noticed my error, definitely 'more haste, less speed this morning! #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds

patriciajvs.bsky.social@patriciajvs.bsky.social · 3w ago

This week I have written about garden ornaments and tomatoes, before finding time for a short sharp poem about #ExitWounds. As always thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for the prompt and to @zoomburst.substack.com for introducing me to the Friday ritual!

A poem:

Seen and Unseen

1. On Entry

First a stab of stolen identity,
Second a shot of betrayal,
Third the spatter of shot gun pellets
Quiet lies, unassuming arrogance.

2. On Exit

Grief and chaos in the blade,
Amid the mire and mud of a cold winter,
Family sprayed by cartridges of distress, Bullets of endless illness,
And sobbing from all around.

Lin Hart @poetry-with-hart.bsky.social · 3w ago

I don't have explanation for this one. I nearly didn't post it, too brittle, a time we don't speak of in my family. Might be an impossible one to edit, but here's daylight on it for a moment. CW: childloss. @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #poemsabout #exitwound #poetry #5amwritersclub

It was way too early and the light was on
making bright truths, we were too young to prepare for.

I was the first one up to see them. My mom
in my dad's arms cradled crying clawing for peace.

She was home. She was home. She was home.
They said it'd be another week, they said a lot of things.

Our brother was in the NICU, and she would stay
in the hospital. I stood in the hallway, liminal space.

Not quite entering, not quite exiting, haunting
without acceptance of the sight of my mother in despair.

We would always have a guardian angel, they said
group-hugged with breath vacated by grief.

Tyler would always be there looking out for us
they tried to spin it like it was okay, accept it, it's life.

Loss left no visible mark on her. Still beautiful
still her, still soft warmth, still my mother.

I saw the wound that left no scar. I saw her and
wondered how close we came to losing her.

I chanted it in my mind like a prayer.
She's home. She's home. She's home.

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 3w ago

Here’s my contribution for #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds Thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Créacht na Staire
The Wound of History The empire sailed away, or so the history book said, a small engraving of ships
diminishing into weather. But it had already hidden
inside the mouth.
Our rivers answered
to names they had not chosen.
Mountains were corrected. Fields divided themselves
obediently on maps.
At school, we were given rulers. We learned to draw straight lines, to underline the subject, circle the object,
and call possession grammar. The old words survived
as contraband: in kitchens, at wakes, under the breath of women who knew a language could be beaten
without being killed Still, when we speak,
the wound opens: claim, clear, settle,
own. A conqueror's verbs, passed down
as ordinary speech.
The flag was lowered. The alphabet remained, some letters missing,
others drilled into order. And somewhere beneath each careful sentence, the tongue remembers
what was taken from it.

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 3w ago

For #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds @thebrokenspine.co.uk

At The Rising

up of the moon
we will forget them.

On special days of Forgetting
we will write down what
we need to forget
for it to be later burned
into oblivion.

We will forget atrocities
by our home nation
as an act of national
forgetfulness.

It is a sombre occasion
as those who cannot remember
cannot rejoice, as they cannot
recall why they are rejoicing.

Joy at what we have decided
to forget is an embracing
of the fullness of nothingness.
We must celebrate nothingness.

Nothingness is not loss
as we cannot grieve
for what we cannot remember.
We will recite poems about

nothingness.

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 3w ago

Yay it's #PoemsAbout day again. Here is my offering to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for #ExitWounds Have a good weekend everyone 😊 #Poetry #Home

Exit Wounds

We close the door on twelve years,
on a house that learned our footsteps,
moulded its walls around our living,
and sheltered us through every storm.

Now it stands
hollow,
echoing bedtime stories and laughter,
whispered fears,
the lives we lived inside it.

Scratches on the door jamb,
each one a celebration
of legs stretching longer.

The dent in the wall
where the sofa refused to turn the corner
still smiles at us,
a stubborn reminder
the furniture remembers too.

Nail holes pockmark the plaster
where photographs once clung.
Faded squares linger,
where smiling toddlers
in floppy hats once watched us.

We leave behind the marks
of having endured.

The house will heal.
Paint will cover.
New laughter will fill these rooms.
But these scars are ours.

We walk away knowing
a home is never just bricks.
It is every wound we made,
and every wound we mended,
inside its walls.

Ian Brownlie @ianbrownlie.bsky.social · 3w ago

Thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds

an exit wounds

recycled air breaks
through the apartment's wind tunnel
carving new paths
around
the now emptied spaces

a bullet never says goodbye

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 3w ago

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 4w ago

#PoemsAbout #PowerCut @thebrokenspine.co.uk Will put a reading in the comments.

BYPASS

kissing goodbye at the service
elevator
as the doors collapse
her heart
powered down
for repairs

a book
brought to kill time
used as a coaster
nervous chatter
silenced by a code blue alert
as camaraderie dissolves
are cohorts psychic adversaries

visiting the intubated mummy
I don’t recognize
my wife
whisper wake up
over the chirping
monitor bank

protests of love
opioid fever drip dream
I honestly wish
it was a truth serum confession

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 4w ago

Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for #PoemsAbout #Powercut I made hard work of this one and only started it last night after mulling over ideas for a few days. This is version 5, but maybe there should be more!

48 Hours Later

A quiet muted moment,
Forty eight hours on from a rollercoaster ride,
That ended with an end,
So a celebration of sorts,
An eulogy to a matriarch
On an icily dark and wet New Year's Eve,

Cataclysmic sleet falling on icy ground
Swirling down the lonely lane.
And then comes the bolt rocking the core,
A son doubling down with pain intense
Dread interrupting memories,
Bright pulsating blue lights and a swift trip,
Support and succour from his partner,
To a place of aid contained by patience,

Home alone apart from the faithful,
Warmth and reflections suspended,
Electricity failing this abandoned outpost,
Dark shadows pervading
Expanding maliciously from every crevasse
And corner of an aged room,
Sleet raging against the windows
Rattling in the rhythm of the storm,

Comfort dissipating, disappearing,
Darkness slowing attempts to live,
Watching the mantel of night from inside,
Reassuring stirring of dogs in a sofa like lair,
Occasional headlights crossing the window
Momentarily brightening space,
Contemplating the numbness of the loss
And death two days before,

A growling engine outside,
The metal Warrior appears from afar,
No livery, no lights above,
Beyond the window silence slips
Nothing moves as the torrent falls,
A fearful calm beyond the door,

Eons later a figure emerging, shapeless,
Heavy, encased, a costume for a storm,
Woden alighting his post modern chariot,
Manifesting an old Norse god in the night
With a weapon above his head,
Gleaming diamond blade facing skyward,
Screaming doom and destruction,
A tableau of horror on a storm laden night,

Then comes a terrifying knock on the door,
A hesitation, a pause before confronting fear,
Where the Northern Power linesman,
Soaked to the skin, smiling, dripping,
Announces there's no power for now,
Or for hours and hours,
He offers hot tea from a full thermos flask,
A hero bringing kindness, no villain after all.

Brenda Blue @brendafromia.bsky.social · last mo.

#poemsabout #CheapMotels

pretend patriots
waving a flag
parading about
willing to sacrifice
250 years of Democracy
with cunning schemes
to enrich themselves
behind closed doors
dirty deeds
clandestine meetings
practiced lies repeated
with a sneering grin
spewing gilded words
to lure us in
like a predator to
a cheap motel room

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · last mo.

Not sure we have motels, but we do have some well dodgy Travelodges! Happy #PoemsAbout day everyone. Can't wait to read the different takes on #CheapMotels #poetry #poetrycommunity

Affordable Sanctuary

Trains scrape their metal teeth
against the night,
a few metres from my window.
I coax the air conditioner awake.
It coughs once,
then smothers every other sound.

Cold water needles my skin;
the hours for warmth
have long passed.

I don’t search the sheets.
Some truths are better left
unfound.

The kettle gets its ritual cleansing,
and the chair braces the door
like a tired sentinel.

On my floor,
soft‑eyed wanderers drift.
One lifts a can toward me,
a companionable offering
in the lift’s
flickering light.

I shake my head.

Their music thumps through the walls,
a rough lullaby braided
with train rumble
and the air con’s asthmatic wheeze.

Still,
this place cools the heat
pressing in from the city.
A pocket of noise
that isn’t the world’s noise.

I lie back,
the mattress sighing beneath me,
and slip into sleep
where dystopian skylines rise
from the hum of shabby machinery
and the thin breath
of borrowed sanctuary.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · last mo.

#PoemsAbout #CheapMotels Thanks for the prompt @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

A word a line poem:

Blackpool B&B

Brief
Consuming,
Damp
Dark
Dirty,
Ephemeral,
Intense,
Memorable.
Silky
Skin,
Crumpled
Cotton,
Dawning
Skies,
Cold
Light,
Then
Morning,
Only
Passion
Survived.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · last mo.

I tried something new - I'm sure it's unfinished but I have a busy day today... @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #TheLook

A poem about The Look, describing Nella and her life here

A photograph of Nella who is a black working cocker spaniel. The photo was taken by Andy Biggar.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Thank you for the prompt #PoemsAbout #OutAfterMidnight This one's real and it was terrifying.

A poem about walking on a field after midnight with dogs when the poachers came

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This week's prompt from @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout #WrongBody. So a testamentary piece of art, life changing surgery in the family and three generations in one home helped to frame this offering.

A poem written about the wrong body using the headings from a Paul Gaugin painting, entitled where do we come from

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

It's a well deserved fallow week from @alanparrywriter.co.uk with no #PoemsAbout. Thanks to Mike, @zoomburst.substack.com for #OddFriday #PoemsOn #OpportunityKnocks Inspired by 'ob portum veniens' and veni vidi, vici. Just about all the Latin I remember from many decades ago!

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#PoemsAbout #EarnTheRight I'm on holiday in the place of my birth and thought there would be time for composition - I went for serious and philosophical but it did not earn the right.

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#PoemsAbout #EarnTheRight @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put a reading or link in the comments.

BIRTHRIGHT

Cover your shaven head.
Chant the devil earthly secrets
in a mother’s tongue.

A guillotine basket
for craven conviction, paper crowned
lowly roller waiting to die.

Those who leap
and never land,
those who drown in flames.

On the last night
I tell her I am so sorry
and she says who are you again?

Like Travis the chimp high on tea and Xanax
stabbed and shot for a ticklish fit
in psychic free fall,

neither man nor child,
I read my own fear
in the lines on your first face

and I die beside my open cage, breathlessly
mouthing the words in human language,
why am I forsaken?

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 2mo ago

Good morning @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk thanks for this week’s #PoemsAbout prompt #EarningTheRight Inknew where I wanted to go without from the off but not really sure I got there. Enjoy the #poetry Bit of crisis management here today but will check in when I can. Thanks.

A poem by Debbie Ross
entitled Earn Your Stripes

text as follows

Earn Your Stripes

In this country
we were raised
on public school diplomacy -
‘new boy’ rites of passage,
working your way up.

Earning the right
to go wide
in rugby
and in life,
playing by the rules.

I’m not sure I agree
with all that stuff,
but doing the hard graft
is what get’s results.

Nowadays
there’s way too much
entitlement,
politicians buying
their way to power.

People who think
their ideas
should be accommodated
because they have money.

We over value ‘gifted’
ignore the grafter,
support the grifter
who’s never
earned his stripes.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What to do on a Saturday morning but make a cover for my notebooks. I might go back to the workshop and make version two.

The next four images show a handmade cover for pocket notebooks

Jenevieve Carlyn @coastalpoet.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#PoemsAbout #BearingWitness America has never been one entity except in myth, and democracy has always been the great experiment imperfectly tried, but these are my thoughts on my country. For now it's the only one I have. This was in the Poems for Protest anthology from Rough Diamond last winter.

Democracy
Jenevieve Carlyn

America, what would it mean now
to go on without you?

You with your purple mountains
and amber waves,

me with my spacious skies
and shining sea—

all my unspoken credos,
all your valleys in between;

to say I never really knew you
would be the truth. And yet,

my heart is still a small dog
who waits without food or water

even beside the grave of the fallen—
the only war we're still learning to fight.

*Words in italics from 'America, the Beautiful' (1895)

The Grand Canyon and sky in shades of peach, mauve, and blue.

Francesca L Rolle @francesca-laura.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I am here. #PoemsAbout #BearingWitness

I Am Here, a poem by Francesca L Rolle:
I see you, when everyone else is singing their own songs, my ears are tuned in to your radio station, I'm listening, you can weep or scream or simply fall to static, but I'll be there. The folds of my concentration ready to envelop you, I am here. I see your need, see your eyes gently turn down, see your lips flicker and halt, words whisked away before they've had a chance to float. I'm here, I'm ready. Let me bear witness. Your soul bared, your voice running free. Let me see.

DrNaturegirl @drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk · 3mo ago

Good morning #poetry people thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk for this Friday platform. Here’s my wee snippet for #PoemsAbout #BearingWitness I had a rather boring convoluted piece I ditched. Will enjoy reading the contributions. Have a great day.

A single stanza 6 line poem by Debbie Ross entitled

We See You

Text as follows:
Atrocity
recorded
forever in reels on phones in your bones.

Mike O’Brien @zoomburst.substack.com · 3mo ago

And here we are! Another Friday, Another poem :) #PoemsAbout #BearingWitness.

A poem written from the point of view of an ex-Jehova's witness. I know that they haven't done much door knocking since covid. Now I see them congregated around magazine stands of Watchtowers in small groups on high streets, chatting happily with one another, and hardly bothering to interact with non believers. Makes for an easier life for them and me, but I sort of miss them.

patriciajvs.bsky.social @patriciajvs.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#PoemsAbout #Bearingwitness Second week, second poem.

A poem about watching the events unfold in Minneapolis and then a trip to the USA this year