#FierceBattle
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thebrokenspine.co.uk
Big love to everyone who showed up through poetry these past weeks:
#PoemsAbout #FierceBattle #Transitions #ItsASin #Spectacle

Your words mattered. You didn’t just write Pride; you lived it.
Thank you for your voices, your fire, your joy, your truth.
#Pride2025 #QueerPoets
alanparrywriter.co.uk Alan Parry He/Him @alanparrywriter.co.uk · Jul 5
I don’t support Pride for show, I live it. I’ve got two queer kids. This isn’t a month-long costume. It’s survival, joy, and future. So yeah, silence from presses and poets? It stings. #Pride isn’t optional. It’s life. Show up or shut up.

#Pride2025 #QueerPoets #PoetryIsForEveryone
My son (on the left) and his boyfriend at Pride. He’s rocking his usual cheeky grin, glitter and rainbow stripes on his face, and that loud palm shirt I love. His boyfriend’s next to him, matching face paint, tropical tee, and all the joy in the world between them. My daughter at Liverpool Pride, beaming in front of a fierce drag performer in full green and gold regalia with a towering headdress and bold makeup. She’s wrapped in a rainbow flag, glitter on her cheeks, sunflowers in her space buns — completely in her element.
July 5, 2025 at 11:41 AM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘A broken breakfast bar, unpeopled’ Such plain wreckage, that hums with absence. The battle here is domestic & quiet. You let the ruin speak. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 27, 2025 at 6:20 AM
badvibrations62.bsky.social
A Poem a Day, Day 172: Hole in the Roof. I wrote this in 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Works equally well for Gaza and Iran.

#poetry #poem #poemsabout #fiercebattle #bitlateiknow @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
Hole in the roof of a ruin, somewhere in Portugal, looking out at the grey-blue sky. Hole in the Roof There is a hole here now Where the sky gets in And a chill wind whistles and bites Cracked tiles, pie wedges of plates, strewn A broken breakfast bar, unpeopled And a jagged glass bullseye, framed in A rectangle wrecked on the rubbled linoleum Family snapshot, frozen in fun, smiling up at The hole in the roof Inquisitive jackdaws perch precarious Bright blue bead eyes seeking out any sparkle
June 22, 2025 at 8:56 PM
wodz.bsky.social
and then there's Paul McAuley's Red Dust, Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, etc etc. 😀 Let me stop the digging for Parry: Alan runs the poemsAbout and this time the prompt was FierceBattle. He's an active editor/publisher promoter of poetry. see bsky.app/profile/alan...
June 20, 2025 at 9:08 PM
wodz.bsky.social
Thanks!
hints: David Birch wrote Sand Martins about migrating birds bsky.app/profile/davi...
Alan Parry prompted FierceBattle
HGWell invaded the Earth with Martians hidden in meteorites, beaten by bacteria.
My Sand Martians lose to mankind's stupidy - global sea level rise, storm surges, etc
davidbirch.bsky.social David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · Jun 3
Thank you @rfsmith.bsky.social for this week's #promtcombo #spectating. Here's something which is a glorious annual spectacle near my home #poetrycommunity #BlueSkyPoets
June 20, 2025 at 4:19 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘Dance like your name was stolen’ - that doesn’t ask, it dares. This is all sweat, glare & reclamation, grinding beauty from rage. Not performance, rather, war cry. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 20, 2025 at 7:34 AM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
I’m a day late in posting this but since I attempted it, going to post it. This is from Prompt1 (from newsletter): Velvet Armour; Poetic devices: Alliteration and repetition
First line was provided in the prompt
#PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
@alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
"Dance like your name was stolen." Steal the show that stole your name. Gore their walls of #glittery #gazes; Gaze through your #velvet embers veil. Dance in your #stilettos, then dance barefoot. Floor the stage that forgot your name! Show them your #sweat, #howl hoarse your #resistance; Howl like no one knew your name! Sweat it out, sweat out your sweet little resistance; Howl like you had to claim your name! Walk out of the floor and dance in rain; Pour like raindrops in a trance... Dance till the raindrops soak your name. — C. Oulens
June 20, 2025 at 6:45 AM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
'The monster within us / it is awake, it is hungry' that shift hits like a match strike. You flip the fear, feed it power, make it righteous. There’s rage here, but also discipline. This isn’t chaos. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 20, 2025 at 6:11 AM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
'Which "me" will I wear today?' is pure theatre; it stages the whole poem as a brutal costume change. Love how you don’t turn from the performance of self. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 20, 2025 at 6:09 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Love Love Love: a low tide of crabs looking for the shelter. Left me gasping. So unexpected, so good, so very good. #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle @alanparry83.bsky.social
June 18, 2025 at 12:54 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Some really great word choices, like 'clingclimb' 'bloodsoak' that linguistically catch me off guard, forcing me to pay close attention for what come's next. Nice work! #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle @alanparry83.bsky.social
June 18, 2025 at 12:51 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
You are working with some outstanding images here: "pushy hooded crows" "horizons grow gouache cloud shapes" and more that are poetic eye candy. Very nice! PS: welcome to #poemsabout @alanparry83.bsky.social #fiercebattle
June 18, 2025 at 12:40 AM
poetry-with-hart.bsky.social
So my last poem may have woken me up, but this one is one that kept me awake. The #FierceBattle #prompt from #PoemsAbout wouldn't leave my head. One's more inner world, this one's more worldview. Enjoy. 🤗

#resist #protest #poem #poetry #EatTheRich #5amwritersclub #5amwritersclub #politicalpoetry
June 17, 2025 at 9:48 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
This: and fight to remember we have wings. The push, the pull, the pushpull / pulling push so tautly written. I read it silently and then as spoken word. NOTHING uncomfortable about either for me. #KeepCreative #poemsabout #fiercebattle @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
June 17, 2025 at 5:05 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Love: footsteps / not following it says so much about what does /does not come next. Nicely done! #poemsabout #fiercebattle @alanparry83.bsky.social
June 17, 2025 at 4:29 AM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘where the Atlantic licks toes’ is both invitation & vanishing point. This meanders like the road it names, with a kind of lyrical inevitability. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:40 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘time’s familiar drip, drip, drip interrupted' offers up an eerie disorientation when trauma fractures the everyday. It calcifies silence. Bleak. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:38 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘a rage all consuming’ sits at the heart of this. It won’t burn out, this is resistance carved into selfhood, a fight not to be redefined. Fierce & clear-eyed. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:34 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘our clashing teeth’ hits like a nerve struck raw, intimate, frenzied, impossible to separate harm from closeness. This spirals in on itself with breathless urgency. Dazzling chaos. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:32 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘fingers bleeding / on memory’s hinge’—what an image. That final stanza wounds, naming trauma’s reflex & the lies we tell to survive. Rage under every line. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:31 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘I throw these mad arguments to the sky’ is such a howl, wrenched & wild. The biblical weight, the salt-surge defiance, the need to be unmoored; blistering. A storm poem with a pulse. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:29 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘til next moon’s stampede’ captures that cruel cycle. This is primal, defiant & undone. An astonishing piece. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:27 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘ribs sublux out of habit’ is habitual dislocation, both physical & emotional. This hums with vigilance & grace, holding itself upright. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:25 PM
alanparrywriter.co.uk
‘The balance is a mirage’ hits hard. Ephemeral, cruelly visible, never touchable. There’s strength in this refusal to romanticise the grind. Just honesty. Just survival. #KeepWriting #PoemsAbout #FierceBattle
June 16, 2025 at 4:22 PM