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Dean Norton

@zentinl.bsky.social

somewhere between cold coffee and used twist ties is a paper life in an automatic heart

1123 Posts195 Follower 110 Folgt

C. Oulens @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social · 4d ago

Delighted that my poem “I had a” is published in Full House Literary @fullhouselitmag.bsky.social alongside an excellent group of poets and artists. Thanks to the amazing head editor Leia Butler @leiabutler.bsky.social & editor Lowena Olver. A draft appeared on #poemsabout #poetrycommunity #Oulens …

I had a by C. Oulens — Full House Literary

fullhouseliterary.com

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2d ago

Thank you so much @jenthorne.bsky.social for hosting this week's #promptcombo. Can't wait to see what we all make of #stand. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 4d ago

I thought I would have another go at #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Thank you for hosting @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · 5d ago

In response to today's @thebrokenspine.co.uk excellent #PoemsAbout prompt #LastTrain, here's a rewrite of an older poem recalling a childhood train journey. Many thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk and the rest of the #poetrycommunity. Looking forward to reading other responses!

Jen Thorne @jenthorne.bsky.social · 6d ago

Happy #PoemsAbout day everyone. Here is my offering for #LastTrain. I can't wait to read everyone else's. With thanks as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Have a great weekend all ❤️ #poetry #choo-choo

The Last Train

I am a witness
to the lairy, blaring call
of rowdy rogues returned from revelry.

The subdued quiet
of the nurse,
longing to kick off sensible shoes
and dance.

The hushed husband
accepting the gin‑soaked airing
of his inadequacy.

The impatient sigh
of the lost girl,
searching for
the last breath of warmth
before the cold night claims her.

I am a witness
to the carriage as confessional,
to the tracks that hum with stories
no one meant to tell.

I am a witness
to the sway of strangers
bound together
for one brief, rattling moment,
before scattering like sparks
into the dark beyond the platform.

I am a witness.

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 6d ago

Good morning everyone, still not much writing time but always good to write something about trains, so here's a wee draft for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk as always! #poem #poetrycommunity

Late train to Dundee

I run for a seat as
the day slides shut.
Ticket gates, the noise,
wheels feeling for grip.

A coal-black city evaporating,
tenement stone, brick, darkness,
the bridge where the city is lost.
And you.

Steel and diesel, dark fields blur.
My palm on the cold glass.
At Inverkeithing the line forks,
as the land begins to open.

Through salt-hardened towns:
Dalgety Bay, Aberdour, Burntisland.
Shuttered fronts,
sea-worn stone.

Then harbour lights, iron hush.
This river holds no shape
until the final curve,
and you.

Fiftywords @fiftywords.bsky.social · 6d ago

Here’s one for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Last Colliery Train The future had gone
before the train did. I climbed the same steps,
laid my hand
on the same worn controls. The rails were rusting beneath us, as if the earth
had begun
to take them back. Behind me, the black wagons drew slowly
from the pithead.
On the bridges, men who had worked below, women who had waited children lifted high enough
to remember.
Nobody cheered. They watched us pass as they had watched their fathers leave for work, their husbands return
with darkness
worked into their skin.
For years, these tracks had carried coal from beneath the valley
and wages into its houses. That morning
they carried neither.
At the main line I brought her to a halt
and shut the engine down. The cab trembled,
then settled. And in the silence
that followed, it seemed the whole valley
was listening
for a pulse
that did not come again.

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 6d ago

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

DISJUNCTION

they took the train away
and they tore the lonely station down
left the barefoot pineys
with no way to get outta this town

So I’m talking about the old train station by where I walk the dog, that there’s only a sign now and a vinyl fence in front of an overgrown embankment, and that there used to be a turntable a few yards back because three rail lines met there, and my wife says I’m sorry but I just don’t give a shit.

the boiler is hissing the steam is nice and hot
the blue comet’s departing at nine on the dot
gals in summer dresses guys in linen suits
headed for the boardwalk on the classiest of routes

So we’re on our way to WaWa and my son goes what was all that about with Mom and I’m like I’m looking up shit for the prompt, last train. And then I tell him how my grandfather operated the Public Service trolley from the Hub City to Perth Amboy when he was still a teen. I wish he was still alive so I could ask him about it now. I wish he had told me stories when I was a kid. All I have is an odd quote in a retirement program I found at my mom’s that says, “My greatest thrill (Keasby [sic] Trestle) You ask me how I felt when the trolley went off the track.” I don’t even know who the “You” was, much less the how why and when.

the seriouser I study to me it starts to seem
the world is just a fat man in a trolley problem meme
I’m out of joy I can’t employ anything uplifting
the more I learn the more I turn to multitrack drifting

So I tell my son I looked up the Keasbey Trestle and didn’t see anything about trolleys, but the deadliest US train wreck in the last hundred years did happen in Keasbey when “The Broker” commuter train derailed on a temporary wooden trestle built to accommodate New Jersey Turnpike laborers working on the main line. If my Pop Pop conflated the train and the trolley I wonder why his most thrilling memory would be something he wasn’t involved in and my son says probably because every other workday was boring. Yeah I laughed it p…

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 5d ago

In the fading hours of my Friday finally I can settle with #PoemsAbout and read poems for #lasttrain. Here's my first. Good vibes to our host @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · last wk.

Thank you @emteepoetry.bsky.social for hosting this week's #PromptCombo with #Perseverance. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Andy Williamson @andywilliamson.com · 2w ago

Had a bit of fun with #PoemsAbout #BadHabits, not my usual stye at all! With thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk / @thebrokenspine.co.uk! #poems #poetry #writingcommunity

The good glass

she reaches for the good glass
ice dropped in for the sound effect
keeps pouring
a nightcap, a tonic
a well-earned reward

second glass, she’s luminous
she’s who we agreed to remember
third and fourth now
the house holds its breath
and waits for morning

she’ll say the day got away from her
we let her, we always let her
only the bottle keeps its word
the one thing
in her world that doesn't lie

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

#PoemsAbout #BadHabits @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put s reading in the comments.

BADASS HABITS

Not to be overshadowed by Jane
Fonda or Joan Baez or a flying Sally Field
they were the OG and primeval punks
jamming acoustic in tie-dye and jeans
no nine to five to tie them down
but 24/7 crushing on Christ
tryna make a better world
one coffeehouse one CYO
one flower power park at a time.

Yes they were healing the sick
and teaching us all the while with love
in their thoughts and in their words
in what they had done
and what they had never failed to do
not counting rosaries glued to a pew
getting the vulnerable off the streets
trading fresh linen for bloody sheets
neither vicarious always hard core
no matter who knocked they opened the door.

On the perpetual first two or three gather
at the facility where their Sister Felicity lives
but never leaves the past behind her
on a garden bench under golden elms,
power chords off her grid and the lyrics
she wrote like herself swirling in steamy
and silent kaleidoscopic hallucinations,
but when her soulmates reach the chorus
she hums along in quivered but perfect harmony
hint of a smile sneaking through closed eyelids
and Badass Habits rocks again.

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

It's #PoemsAbout Friday. Let's talk about #badhabits. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

A second one for all you #RealPeople writing for @rfsmith.bsky.social's #PromptCombo. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · 2w ago

🙏 to @rfsmith.bsky.social for hosting #PromptCombo #RealPeople #poem: ©Jan Peters, 2025 #London #1960s #FamilyLegend #Autodidact #FrankieHowerd #CampComedy #poetrycommunity

Titter-Bound in Kensington

Taciturn ancestor -
Great-grandsire -
Expires with hardly a stir
Fifty years ago this month.

Many-portalled capsule of
Nested puzzle boxes, he plies the
Discreet, seasoned trade of
Cabinetmaker.

Two distinct early recollections:

Iced silence in a smoke-choked
Company car as his son-in-law
Ferries him to Sunday lunch.
He smirks indulgently, knowingly as
I tell of nocturnal trysts with
Imaginary friends.

Hushed, dark-clad mass in an armchair -
Soft-brimmed fedora rested,
Poised at hand;
Plain suit offset by plain
Campbell-plaid tie – he murmurs, Dismisses with faint wave an
Offer of double cream on his dessert.

Denizened in Pinner, he
Spurns the blandishments of that
Betjeman Metroland suburb.
Pines for London proper;
Gravitates towards West End,
City, Kensington, Chelsea.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Extramural commute to
Lectures at learned societies in
Bloomsbury, Finsbury or Hampstead;
Sought-out talks, shows, tours,
Concerts, recitals at Royal Academies,
Cadogan or Wigmore Halls.

Jobs often take him into town.
He works well into the sixties -
Well into his seventies:
Slow-thaw remission from the
Great Depression, no doubt.

One morning, he calls at a
Terraced townhouse on the
Regency garden square where
Chesterton once thought and wrote.

Frankie Howerd opens the door in his
Negligee.

I’m not going to say it -

Yes, it is a funny place to have a door!

Brows arched, plastered aslant over
Mock-outrage, reproachful peepers;
Finger-jab, skewer-mouthed rebuke:

Titter ye not!

My great-grandparents, Enid & Ernie (or Steve) Margetts, looking enthused at finding themselves on a trip to Great Yarmouth in 1953. Ernie is the subject of this poem.

Camp comic, Frankie Howerd, on "Up Pompeii" in the early 1970s.

Scott McConnaha @smcconnaha.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you @rfsmith.bsky.social for this week's #PromptCombo, #RealPeople. Here's my contribution.

Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 2w ago

Thank you to Paul for last week and apologies for today’s delay in posting - last night’s World cup joy. For #PromptCombo this week it is #RealPeople love to all. @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social @emteepoetry.bsky.social @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social @jenthorne.bsky.social @paulbrookes.bsky.social

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 2w ago

A bit late for this week's #PromptCombo: #RealPeople. Big thanks to @rfsmith.bsky.social for teeing us up! #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

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.

stace.bot @stacebot.bsky.social · 3w ago

For this week's #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds, I'm thinking about how infrastructure is invisible when it works. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets #writingcommunit

a love letter to the evidence of absence

exit velocity
is the speed required
to leave
a gravitational field
forever.

not to travel.

to escape.

the body
measures
what force
was required

by the wound.

the evidence

that something
overcame
an enormous force

to leave

at all.

Jane Dougherty @janedougherty47.bsky.social · 3w ago

A kind of #ExitWounds that I'm familiar with. For #PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk

John Chmura @johnchmura.bsky.social · 3w ago

#PoemsAbout #ExitWounds @thebrokenspine.co.uk I will put a link to a reading in the comments. I think the commentary would be helpful and I do something very rare for me if you can guess what it is.

THE PERFECT PLACE, POSTHUMOUSLY YOURS

when i started to write
this letter
it was all i could stand with edward bear
singing it’s the last song i’ll ever write
for you on the phonograph
maybe it will take two years to finish
maybe it will take two years for it to find you
and I won’t be here anymore

the raveonettes have been playing
last dance for seventeen years
sune’s pursed lips
barely unzip as he squeaks
baby baby please
and sharin foo
cut glass eyes glimmering
under liquid platinum bangs cooing
if this is the last dance if this is the last dance
save it for me baby
what happens to your soul
when you probe a prolonged ache
for so long
microscopic razor cuts
shearing the gossamer sheath of your psyche

people in trauma have been saved by words
on a wee bench for scott in kelvingrove park
we’ve still got hope so i think we’ll be fine
maybe it’s true but it wasn’t for him
i’m torturing myself in bed well
after mudnight bingeing frightened rabbit
i know the perfect place
may never exist may never exist
yet how far from perfection can one survive
how much air does a locked room suck
from your personal space and leave you
recognizable yes
i’m bored of flying but
i still want to be here too
i just don’t know

Jan Peters - Solivagant Wisdom @janpsolivagant.bsky.social · 3w ago

🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this week's #PromptCombo Not sure how to make a #MapPoem out of a #Dimensionless constant, but here goes 🤷‍♂️😁 #newpoem: ©Jan Peters, 2026 #poetrycommunity #WolfgangPauli #QuantumPhysics #Mysticism #Quantenmystik #Death #Riddle

Quantum Riddle

Malignancy
Co-opts his stroma

Terminus:
Red Cross Hospital
Zürich

Room 137

Value:
One over
137

Fine-boned riddle of the
Dimensionless constant

Theory at its most
Vexing:
Solve this and you
Solve everything.

The
Beyond grants him a
Preview:

God
Scribbles manic-paced
Equations on a blackboard.

Patient in Room 137 -
Twitching
Mumbling -
Gasps and
Barks:

Ganz falsch!*

Then
Vanishes into a
Dimensionless constant.

©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2026

*German: “Totally wrong”

Ash & Ink @bundtkake.bsky.social · 3w ago

@thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @madp03t.bsky.social So I did the #mapform from #Promptcombo for #AmpersandAfterDark I think it worked? Should read as three complete #poems Two down columns and then across. Anyway I am done wrestling with it so Here is a #poem..

Pride

I stood straight with pride,
The possibilities endless in the moment,
I straightened my tie, a sharp half Windsor,
My shoes polished to a high gloss,
I was a pillar, carved from marble,
My heart thundered, pulse in my ears,
Immortal, invincible, and incorruptible

Fall

I sat, defeated, head in hand
Then the possibilities ended
And I wiped my tears on my sleeve
A false accomplishment, useless in reality

I wouldn't be moved, only admired
A throbbing at my temple
Time and Entropy chuckled in the corner

winterroom @winterroom.bsky.social · 3w ago

#promptcombo #MapPoem @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social "Collision"

(text is white on a black page)

'Collision'

(top right)

in this neighbourhood
of 100 billion stars
I’m baking bread*

old light
falls on my face
from Andromeda

*the translation is uncertain

(bottom left)

old light
falls on my face*
from our
magnificent
companion

I made this thing
it does this thing
I plot trajectories

*the translation is uncertain

(centre)

in this space
galaxies met
will meet
their heavy hearts
merge have merged
and the wave
washes the universe

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 3w ago

Thank you @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for hosting this week's #promptcombo with #MapPoem #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet #writingcommunity

roger waldron @throwawayreg.bsky.social · 4w ago

morning Friday there’s an old saying which I don’t remember here’s my little “throwaway” poem for #PoemsAbout #Powercut and thank @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #blueskypoets #poems #poetry and while we’re on the subject enjoy your weekend everyone everywhere 🛋️🚮🗑️🛋️

Dean Norton @zentinl.bsky.social · 4w ago

Thought I'd have another go at this week's #PoemsAbout #PowerCut. This one a little more starry-eyed than my usual. Hat tip to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk for hosting! #poetrycommunity #poetry #poem #poems #skypoets #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetsofbluesky #skypoet

Bernard Pearson @bernp.bsky.social · 4w ago

huge thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk for once again hosting #PoemsAbout #PowerCuts heres my wee contribution look forward to seeing the work of everyone else

Anomaly
The ghost priest that had been
ordered by Prospero
Arrived as lights failed.
Due to the collapsing sun .
While the girl who sang
Like a honeyed bell,
levered herself into some kind of dress.
As a silver snake sneaking
back into Its still warm skin,
Just as something went
bump in the day.
Telling you that particular lesson was over,
and someone would be along later.
to collect the bodies and your homework.
Sleep now, for when you awaken.
The dreams will come again,
seeping like magma
Through the cracks and seams in your façade,
Like tunes from someone else’s
Half erased, musical score.
© Bernard Pearson