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paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #Transitions
@alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
& #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
June 20, 2025 at 5:18 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #ImperfectMe #KeepWriting
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
matters of the clock Flower power liberated me. Smart suit and tie, straight job: the movies preached those made a man. Impossibility. My trade-off: sanity for duties breached. Our first-born, anxious she’d be late for school aged only six, delayed by me—dumb rules go hang, they know you’ll miss no class—blind fool I was, now watching as her play unspools and mark my irresponsibility. Base theme: her stumbling over keeping time since angst subverted punctuality. Though I’ve rebuilt my views, that early crime— plus many others flickering her screen— she’s worked to straighten, made her clock run clean. Paul Rapley 2025 #ImperfectMe
October 10, 2025 at 5:52 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #Mannequin #KeepWriting
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Apolloshopped milling headphoned joggers scud hardpacing trilling foodsearch bluetits quickflit tracing shillingsized fleet spiders scatter fleeing billing birdborne beaks sharp eyes unseeing chilling gapyear lads laughlocked amusing thrilling younggirl watchers snappers cruising willing clotheshorse models deftly choosing asking youthrich lad would you like posing basking handsome visage snaplights rosing grasping youngblood pixchance buffskin glowing tasking lad seductive profile showing casting adolescent bloom brief staying masking blemishes best side displaying drafting image likely prospect paying glowing skin judoka bold announcing flowing strength exotic tincture bouncing growing knowledge brighteyed aura moulding knowing buyers seek unflawed beholding throwing defects out skinfaults withholding going softlensed filtered fogs spots scolding slowing flagrant sparks soft clothes enfolding signing greenhorn heartthrobs free performing priming figures faces nonconforming twining face to rubric figure stifling mining real imagined wardrobes rifling pining mannequins more oft endearing whining tough reality sour sneering dining out on fashion’s interfering Paul Rapley 2025 #Mannequin
October 3, 2025 at 8:08 AM
karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
In this galaxy, all is #Stardust. Thank you for this #PoemsAbout prompt @brokenspinearts.bsky.social @alanparry83.bsky.social and thank you to the #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky #PoetryCommunity
Stardust me Behind a star in Hercules’s shoulder, I hide from astronomer probes to dissect, colonize. Leaked radio waves whisper there are cracks in this constellation’s armor. I tightly hold his upper arm. If I let go, I could drift into a black hole valley or sink to the bottom of a frozen planetary sea partially thawed by the heat of my despair. I would be lost. Earth emigrant — pinging in a pinball game against others in the Milky Way— I can no longer return. The third rock from the sun has boundary issues; does not yield enough. Collisions billions of years old still ripple me. I now lean into this kneeling giant, nicked by asteroids, poked by scientific claims and kiss his split seams – love them for their own fractured sake. Karen Pierce Gonzalez
May 9, 2025 at 5:38 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
thepoetryhour.com/poems/broadc...
Thankyou, all...
#poemsabout #blood #KeepWriting
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Maeve’s glove avoids the blood Assigned a coarse, chaotic, struggling school, both he and I, like to a desert beach, within the desiccated Larkin’s rule that he should never strive to overreach his pent-up realm, sought fruitful pertinence in Maeve’s unnoticed glove. Afghanistan, her lives and deaths, the bloody warzone whence he’d fled, left little space for Philip’s yarn in verse of how he’d tried to hear Maeve clapping on his radio. What was Phil’s point? Intelligent, polite, forthright, and strapping, his closest London friend in some dull joint had been stabbed dead, his blood soaked through the concrete floor. With all he’d known, how little I, how might I help him soar? Paul Rapley 2025 #blood
October 31, 2025 at 7:45 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
a little sketch...
#poemsabout #DogTags #KeepWriting
thanks again to
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Attributes Landscape of dust and bitter wastefulness! Flogged catamite of the pubescent bros, Submitting to them as they soil and mess With gangue the grace that through our Eden grows; They choke with tailings ancient hills and trees, And excavate with coldness hallowed rock To plunder ground and seize the rarest earths To ship back homewards; thereby adding stock Upon stock of so-called servers for our data, Trapped in fortress clouds to play us later, Whose keystrokes, screenshots, will yield grim afterbirths. Paul Rapley 2025 (with acknowledgement, 1820) #DogTags
November 21, 2025 at 1:48 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Glory
#poemsabout #Glory @alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
and #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
(work in progress)
Still blazing after fifty years They seldom spoke about their war, the ones who did come back. Their postwar lives rethought, some found a job, a wife, a home, and sons who, stirred by glorious tales and legends, sought to trace their fathers’ gallantry in wars’ heroics, roaring guns, and derring-do. Mine volunteered and was assigned the stores to organise, and feed the ship. I knew that in the Med he’d bought an orchard’s fruit amid the years’-long battles—and survived a bomb that smashed the screws. But he’d stayed mute— until the TV coverage contrived to free his tears—re D-Day. And then: Those poor drowning kids, their ship ablaze, we hauled them screaming out the burning oil… He wept alone for those lost lads of Omaha. Paul Rapley 2025
May 23, 2025 at 6:43 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
First draft

#poemsabout #spectacle
@alanparry83.bsky.social
@brokenspinearts.bsky.social
& #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
well I ain’t tentacle manacle equivocal reciprocal— why’m i trapped here like a fool? friable pliable convertible retractable— think you’ll bend me to your rule? spiracle pinnacle— them dork words the cream for you? risible visible— having a laugh? see this be true: miscible permissible— i hate mixing with them dorks biddable formidable— listening to your boring talks look at them they’re o so teachable don’t touch me cos I ain’t reachable why’re they staring? what’s she want? what you looking at? huh? well don’t god these boring losers bore what you looking at me for? so why you staring at me now? god I hate that pretty cow you look away or get a slap— stay out this miss—you want gift-wrap? see all them get right cowed and hunching under my dread gaze, fists bunching— why’m I up? i’m that susceptible to my red rage? so dead intractable— rage to legs to fist—directable by my ire? so who’s a spectacle? i make a spectacle right here? i’ll give you one—just lend your ear for I can scream the whole school down you bores and swots and preaching clown now watch me stride from desk to desk and throw your books with their school crest in scattered glory through the air and kick the bins and toss this chair at your glazed miss and thrust the door and twerk right through and slam its poor mute trembling frame and bang each class along the hall and smash the glass of that big lamp that hangs respectable scare the head with my great spectacle your christmas tree—you’d love a miracle? something’s grabbed me most satirical so let’s grab it and let me climb high up the wall for my first time onto that beam—o you’re assembling to watch my show? huh! they’re all trembling way down there while peering up for miracles to fill their cup behold! a shower of sparkling balls and tinsel, stars and angels falls upon your dorkish faces chums and hallowed needles painted plums and now the tree herself descends upon your horrid cliquish friends so all of you can badmouth me i’m out +25
June 6, 2025 at 2:19 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #WaxTears @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
& #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
darkness, light, passion For shame! For shame! Lock up the mad cat! Red. Pink. Crimson. Mahogany. No jail was ever more secure. Rain beating, wind howling, fireplace blank violent tyrannies, proud indifference, plain aversion darkening deposits in my mind’s turbid well courage sinking cold into the coming night… Outside, a swift-darting beam, unrecognised [from the burning oil of a whale, perhaps] the herald of some coming vision from another world head hot, heart thick, the rushing of wings in my ears in terror i hear my cry… there was a stranger in the room soothing conviction of protection and security more tenderly than ever before, i felt raised, upheld before the warm fire and a friendly flame [from the combusting fat of sheep, no doubt] before he went out, and then the fire and the flame A loud bell ringing in bitter cold the girls up and dressing evincing fortitude under wintry privation night irked out by feeble glimmers [from the ignited pith of grease-dipped rushes, for sure] water frozen in the pitchers i let down the window and look out behind us, the town to judge by the number of its lights [from volatile components of coal, distributed, in main] a place of considerable magnitude
July 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Hi, all.
#poemsabout #Candlelight
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
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Lennie Your lad Lennie’s lit a candle, and it’s got too hot to handle, such a fiery candle handled in a manic-panic heat: like, it’s scared the pants off Lennie cos it’s leapt his sister Jennie then absconded through the window and gone blazing down the street! — That squirt Lennie’s such a vandal, I’ll right thrash him with my sandal if he’s singed my hits on vinyl while I’m working down the pub; but if he’s scorched his ma’s best curtain, then of one thing I am certain: that I’ll bring him here to whoop it up and treat him to their grub— Mate, that text was from Bob Randall and there ain’t no time to dandle with them is it-ain’t it riddles when your place is getting smoked; why don’t you pause your drinking, loan a moment to some thinking: run along with me to check that Robert Randall ain’t just joked— If he’s pissing me I’ll lamp him and then kick his arse and stamp him in his jewels in a bundle—Hang on, mate! What’s out that door? Who’s them voices out there screaming? Wow! Your Len! I ain’t, like, dreaming— Let me get at that daft toerag and I’ll teach him quick what’s for! — Hello Dad, I’m in a muddle—If you’ve come here for a cuddle you can think again, you spindle. Spit it: what’s with this fake news? — Well, this candle jumped right out—Then shut it there! I’ve got no doubt about your lies and—Dad! Stop doubting and lay down that stinking booze! — Clamp your gob, you—Mate, get humble. Tell us, Len. Speak up, don’t mumble, what has happened to your candle? —Well, we followed it to Dave’s, where the shouts were loud and hearty (Dad had banned me from Dave’s party), yet the candle sailed right in and then the cheers rang out in waves— So, then what? —I heard the jangle of Dave’s mother’s silver bangle as she skipped out at an angle, blithely burbling, dazed in shock: “You won’t believe what has transpired: a kindly angel has inspired a wax” —You stupid boy! Your fibs make me the town’s new laughing stock— On you, mate. Did you wangle your way in? —No…
September 12, 2025 at 6:21 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
followed a mind-trail & came to this
#poemsabout #BreakingTheMould #KeepWriting
thanks for stepping in @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
best wishes to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
parsing the heart Today we have parsing the heart. Last week we had long-buried grief and next month we’ll have how to revive, but today we have parsing the heart. Hatred burns like acid across the public landscape so today we have parsing the heart. These are the lower heart ventricles and these are the upper heart auricles whose use you will feel when fleeing authority. And this is the lifeblood which in your case you have not got. Our biota was born of the beauty of stardust which in our case we have not got. This is the conscience which is always inspired by a careful understanding of the other. And please do not let me see anyone using their ignorance. You can find it quite easily if you have any depth in your soul. The rulers are selfish and hopeless, unashamedly letting everyone see all of them using their ignorance. And that which we feel is the fear. The purpose of this is to close down our impulses, as you can sense. They can pump it rapidly upwards and downwards: we call this pumping the fear. And rapidly upwards and downwards mock-elected lords are assaulting and trashing your laws. They call this pumping the fear. All call it pumping the fear. It is not easy to counter, but doable if one has enough depth in one’s soul with the hope and the aim and the will and the way and the means which in our case we must ask if we’ve got while the old leaders sit silent in all of the lands and the fear’s driven upwards and upwards. Thus today we have probing of hearts. Paul Rapley 2025, with grateful acknowledgement to Henry Read 1942 #BreakingTheMould
October 17, 2025 at 2:52 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Something for the pot.
Thanks for the prompt, Alan.
#poemsabout #Ceasefire
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Responses All signs are pointing to a yes— they’ll sign next week, is our best guess: agreed on land and checks and arms and stepped responses to alarms, absorbing scares and threats and warnings, planning ways to cool hot mornings— protocols to shape reactions, reining in their wilder factions: it looks certain, all plants say, a cease-fire’s marching on its way. Time to pull out those old files and wipe out their pacific smiles. We won’t allow the sides to sign when we’ve such intel—dead malign— gross photos, audio, and logs, and evidence of when, like dogs, they sweated at it in our places: compromised their public faces. Make it clear what we’ll enable: smash their treaty off the table. Paul Rapley 2025
August 15, 2025 at 7:37 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #ItsASin
@alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
& #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
rogue state frame zero shows some scrubby sneakers, masked— five tooled-up shapes which, catalogued, might pass for men—who prowl around a small box truck; at six, a shout plus baton strike (unasked) full totals the guy’s window; eight—sans class— you are, you fucking (incoherent); pluck the inner door lock up, pull wide the door— till more men drag the filmer to the floor; at eighteen: get him down! get the fuck down! while felled phone eavesdrops: you just fucking lay there! give me your fucking hand! crude barks can’t drown fierce scuffles off; on mic, the grim affray fair rends the ear; at thirty-two—you wannit? you gottit, sir, you fucking gottit—pale sky is blocked: smudged dark by faces forced upon it, snarling demi-wolves and curs who tie his hands: you wanna go to jail? (that’s) fine, you gottit; the face is glum, a concubine, quite plump and grey and passing forty, topped— like all—in adolescent cap, full stopped from intellectual thought by tribal hatred making brutalising action something sacred; you wanted it—you gottit; as radio instructs, one minute in: right, boom! (lurch) boom! the picture wobbles; get up sir, get up, the petty boss conducts his handcuffed quarries upwards; boss’s stricture: you wanna put your phone (back) in your pocket comes at one-o-five: the screen goes dark, while I Am Become Ice, Son Of Moloch! booms quite eerily around the vehicle park. Paul Rapley 2025
June 27, 2025 at 7:05 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #NoFuture #KeepWriting
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#TakeRisks #EndOnAnImage #AvoidCliché #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
knocked out quickly - interrupted by a person from Porlock
gaps to be filled...
rip tiredness tired of searching, lugging, peering, failing, nagged by certainty that if he found it, or if they, discovering themselves to him, through half-dreamt chance, by half-remembered waking, longing, long-abandoned planning, buried deep within forgotten books; or crushed beneath a pile of magazines long semi-read while meaning drained away; or dwelling with a creche of much-loved toys whose lovers, grown and gone, had bid adieu; or furniture awaiting skilled repair and warm return to rooms that never were; or, trapped within soft piles of sleepless blankets, confidants of truth to aid his quest; or relics from the homes of hard departed, promising solutions to life’s puzzles only if he’d brave his torch to read them; or, tucked beyond in some far crevice, out of reach, denying his spent grasp, he lay in darkness under his dark roof. […] slipping the ripper between the flat slates, its flat body subverting their reign of opacity, feeling its nose tap against the old nail, he adjusted its tooth to engage in the darkness and pulled out the nail… […] …and began his ascent to the light and the sky and his future beyond… […] Paul Rapley 2025 #NoFuture
November 29, 2025 at 11:31 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Thanks for the challenge, Alan.
#poemsabout #Riots
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Venting The populus must have a way to vent the pressure of its anger vs the state, says Niccolò—for lacking their consent in weighty things, their patience will not wait. When Gnaeus Marcius forced a punishment upon the people, starving them of corn, the tumult would have slaughtered him, absent the tribunes—commoners—who braved his scorn and set a trial from which he fled to foes— the city saved from civil discontent, resolved to face a war—but juxtapose that with how Caesar aimed to circumvent the obsequious tribunes’ now corrupted powers: and how their time so resonates with ours. Paul Rapley 2025 #Riots
August 29, 2025 at 1:51 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #NeverForget
@alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
and #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
Rescued from Drowning You saw me slowly sink, and caught my hand; and, praising me for swimming well, you lightly buoyed me up, so wise to understand my churlish grunts, tendentious rants, when rightly heard, denoted the turmoil of deep distress. Twisting the skirts of your gown, coughing smoke at twenty-eight, hearkening as I express dogmatic views and judge boys’ rhymes, evoke my inchoate ideals, you give me Life in Shakespeare’s England; Faulkner; Plutarch; one of C.P. Snow’s, to redirect my strife. I never knew you’d rescued me. Then on I swam: no thanks. Rod Connors, with your wife, A thousand thanks I send, now you are gone. Paul Rapley First published in Blue Unicorn, vol. XLVIII no. 1 (Fall 2024)
May 16, 2025 at 6:23 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
My stitch for the thread
#poemsabout #Glamour @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
[BTW my #waxtears effort was a rip-off of that wonderful novel, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.]
Look at Me I’d set my heart on all you loving me so learned the ways to catch your needy eye I’ve sussed the greedy blatancy of fame and how to blag a freebie with cool cheek I shine and strut with sleek insouciance while flashing charming smiles to devotees I’m setting shame apart for it is just that my smart clique should pleasure out its days since I was yearning for this as a child and mildness never stopped a bee’s despatch I shall be earning squillions at this mine as others bend the knee and trudge for miles I shall have been… What? Your bad. I was misled. I swear you’d said I had to stitch an epic thread on grammar. Paul Rapley 2025
July 25, 2025 at 6:21 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Now I've finally got into this (nice idea, Alan), I think I'll rework it and make it twice the length.
But here's a rough sketch.
#poemsabout #Facades
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Heaven-bound So sleek of body, her curves will carry us unto the heavens, entrapped in perfect form, thrust ever forward by deeper-welling powers torn from earth to feed her ever-thirsty locomotion. Held in her embrace, secure and smooth, constrained by nymphs and satyrs high above, the wealth of the world, upon sheer molecules of air, transported blissfully to richer, far-off dreams. Her panoply proclaims her constancy: our safety in her arms is their concern— their legend blazons reassuringly, declaring that there’s nothing here for you to worry about. But those who tend her majesty, do they both understand her foibles and take heed to keep her complex systems in good health and fix all threats to her deep need for equilibrium? While she conveys the hopes and fears and fluids that flow from all the folk that she uplifts, her membranes, stretched ten hundred thousand times, with silent ache may chafe, then fray, then rupture, sight unseen. Beneath the flawless skin, decay assays her flexing struts and stays, subverts her strength, accosts her labyrinthine nerves, and questions if her skilled creators’ claimed omniscience will hold. So, should our mortal liquids—blithely spilled and lurking through her spaces that are closed from our own eyes by corporate facades blanked off—find ingress to reactive salts: who’d know in time? Or if a humble sensor, rudely wiped by chance with oily rags, sends out three blips of data to her flight control which tips her whole anatomy to stall—how can we help her fly? She seems a single whole, although we know a million parts and more take her aloft; and thus we greet each other, faces bold, you good? I’m good: as rats inside consume our tangled souls. Paul Rapley 2025 #Facades
September 5, 2025 at 12:05 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #SilentPlanets
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Flags Put Out We must put out the flag, my father said, rejoice in our new queen and that we’re free— or so I think he meant. Dad went ahead, and hung one from upstairs for all to see. On our estate, few others did the same. Why not? he wondered: they were Labour, too. The Queen enraptured me—but, to my shame, perplexed, I could not see how Royal poo could even be a thing just like mine own. The Wondrous Coronation Coach So Golden, Her Majesty, Divine: might She, alone, do that thing too? With time, I’m less beholden to pomp: in jest, I’d wave their jolly banners had not thieves soiled them with bleak and boorish manners. Paul Rapley 2025
September 19, 2025 at 7:34 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #FierceBattle
@alanparry83.bsky.social @brokenspinearts.bsky.social
& #Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
let nature do her thing leylandii rise so very high, set two sides of the little pond weak strength outdone by endless skyward growth flanking shoots and cones drag down their feeble boughs darkness within: old tinder brittle dry sterile inner zones where tiny goldcrest hide atop the firs, the robin sings his ownership the sweet gum, now in springtime leaf, holds bold the eastern sector one head-high limb extends clear out—a sun-blessed southwards salient a lesser branch extends right-angled across the water pacific pigeons mumble smugly far aloft a shadowy arena beyond, a mass of lush green tangled foliage cool…verdant…sylvan arboreal eden left free by lax suburbanites to sprout and swell and screen before the fall holding morning’s mug of instant, sipping slow upon our bendy bench light breezes tickle leaves; soft traffic throbs back of beyond a crash—hoarse mocking screech on angry scream and panicked shrieking— cracked twigs loud crushed en masse—massed leaves resound to sudden impact— hideous flurry in the western eden—grim pursuit concealed within— fast chuckling ha!ha!ha! and dire screamed kshehr! kshehr! near overwhelm shrill high-pitched shrieking, kyek!kyek!kyek!kyek! kyek! and out they burst, punch through the dark core of the far leylandii and —while the clock is ticking through one single second— compounded into black and white with speeding shades of pink and flashing blue, wild wings and somersaulting torsos, hoarse beaks ashriek with scream and screech— the frenzied fledgling jay, its desperate dam and hungry magpie crash onto the southern salient bough to clash and claw beat wings and stab amid the scattering sweet leaves almost within my grasp   unyielding flapping, magpie straining for the fledgling, mother bouncing off the magpie harsh sardonic chatter of the predator for prey mother blocking, feinting, guarding, screaming young’un, dressed for fancy partying, much confused, hops rapidly about the branch’s end kyek!kyek! +350 chas
June 13, 2025 at 6:44 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Stardust @alanparry83.bsky.social
& #brokenspinearts.bsky.social
#Authentic #TakeRisks #poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #KeepCreative #PoetsOfBlueSky
Thanks to Cindy Ana with help in posting.
(this intro redone & reposted, plus alt)
stardust Laetitia told such startling tales— like how she’d stripped the Prince of Wales of mantle, rod, and coronet, rolled down his socks, and, tête-à-tête, apprised him he’d just soiled his shirt —you marvelled how she’d dish the dirt on toffs, celebs, knights of the stage, the VIPs of every age: those grace-and-favour shady grandees holding out for bungs and candies, brushing dirt beneath their Persian carpets, each a tawdry version of the scum Laetitia did for: all—in sum—Laetitia hid. Four artistes, newly rub-a-dubbed— bare potty-mouthed—she’d fast re-scrubbed, till, laundered thus, hung out and dried, they’d topped the charts. Strong men had cried at stern Laetitia’s forceful rinsing, tumbling, beating, past convincing she was right, till foul events proclaimed Laetitia made most sense. She’d swept the floor with high-born Yankees, sobbing in their sodden hankies; dirty, lying Texan oilmen came out clean when Titty’d boiled ’em; trolls, cleansed she, from X, née Twitter, cleared up Gary’s gaudy glitter, fixed it so that Jim could play on, rubbed out Rolf’s most errant crayon, mopped up dons’ sick sycophants, and bleached our Tommy’s underpants, till Hollywood and Bollywood spilled all before her, bad and good: great heartthrobs of the silver screen, while acting faithless, sight unseen— their brightness dulled to fractured light —she’d buffed like burnished anthracite, then passed right through each smiling face to reach out to that central space where heart should beat: an empty cavity, that she wrung out with quiet gravity, then tossed their garbage in the trash, and stored the best stuff in her cache. Should you declare, “You’re such a star!” she’d answer, like S. Bolivar, “I swept their rooms, I read their dust, I helped them shine, I gained their trust— Debrett’s, IMDb, and all the charts of stars, as I recall, ne’er breathe my name, which means my joy: the dust of stars was my employ. I’m super pleased my name’s a void: I’m just a dust-free asteroid.”
May 9, 2025 at 10:50 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Sorry this is late - done in a rush
Thanks, Alan, for setting the challenge.
#poemsabout #BlackSky
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Bortle One to Four I think I’ve never seen the Milky Way, I said—at least, not registered it as such— for many years had churned since I’d not known that earthly lights would cancel out the stars and blanch stark blackness into tinted greys that mock the glistening fractured tears which mighty giants weep and beam to us in mourning for their snuffed-out spectral kin. Acknowledging their house amid the hills, set far from towns and screened from neighbours’ homesteads, crouching mute beneath the moonless sky, was blighting night’s eternal darkest blackness, blazing out its own illumination which, with a finger’s flick he might extinguish; and, learning of my longing to gaze further, he quenched the lights to outside space for me. The porch and drive and field and further workshop, the bend, the private road, and flanking trees sunk down to formless shadows while the vault of heaven permeated my tired eyes… Yet, where’s the Milky Way? I had to ask. Look up, above your head. Yes, she was there but faint, like long-lost memories of love or soaked-in, blotted, spilled ambrosia. My sister and his wife were still inside not drawn to stepping into chill and dark— perhaps not knowing quite why we were out, or even that we’d left. Their lights were on so, even near the bend, they teased our sky and sapped the Bortle scale. I’d not the cheek to ask, invite them to join in. That other star, he said, I think’s a satellite. Paul Rapley, 2025
August 8, 2025 at 9:02 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Great challenge - forced me to confront a time:
did three 9-line stanzas - I reckon will run to 15+
So, smthg from past.
#poemsabout #Defeat @alanparry83.bsky.social
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The Briar Rose, the Plum Tree, and the Pear The briar leans out to kiss the blossoming plum. He lifts it lightly from a compliant sprig And guides it back – its task to hug and twine Around the pear-tree’s stem: a living shroud Shooting from earth—dead wood within enshrined, Bleak bark parched black, he notes—then tests a twig, Which cracks with brittle snap beneath his thumb. A climbing rose—could such a shrub become The arbiter whose smiling blooms might signify Maternal peace—or would sharp thorns consign Her withered frame, dried xylem, trunk de-boughed, To haunting him? Each briar thrusts out a line Away: they’ve never flowered. In mute indignity The pear declares opprobrium. No Epsom salts to treat magnesium Deficiency, nor iron chelates rigorously Dispersed beneath the tree’s decline— While leaf-stalks weakened, veins once green and proud Yellowed, then shrank, biochemically maligned— Could halt her fade: the foliate stigmata Of this gift he’d watched succumb. Eight years ago, his mind a vacuum, With fork in hand, preparing for a dig, Some brightly tinctured fluttering caught his eye Near the far fence. “What’s that?” he’d asked aloud Of no-one. Strode across, where all seemed fine Except autumnal leaves— a few—some big, Each scorched, in spring: the pear’s long fall had come. In her prior seasons, strung to maximum With nascent pears purporting fruitful vigour, Learning that the tree could not define Her need, he’d carefully thinned the swelling crowd To ease her birth. Yet from the spurs he’d finally Spared, the crop slipped off, half rotted, figures He feared, of past distress, now lying dumb. Perhaps by pruning to the minimum— Or even less—he’d leased to her the signal “I can’t touch you.” Why so meek? Why sign Away his rights to secateurs, and cloud His cutting judgement? Why prune the others fine— The plum so young, the cherries bulging big— And yet by one pear tree be overcome? Cut it down, Dad, burn the lumber, Plant (plus another 240 words)
May 30, 2025 at 3:20 PM
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #NeverAgain #KeepWriting
Thanks, as always, to @alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
Practical Ethics (lines 41-109) Once, when the plasterer was young, he said, before he’d even gained a skillset, led by war’s great claim to power, he’d joined the fight and disembarked in France to strive for right. His regiment, bombarded each long day while battling field by field on foot: soft prey for enfilading small arms fire, for tanks and raining mortar shells, their bloodied ranks cut down by injuries, mortalities and fractured will, all old normalities far blown to bits, inert upon the cordite air; the very soil their enemy, sown with guileful mines... In one small group, alone, he’d charged a hedge to claim a hard-won field. His NCO roared loud that all must yield. Our plasterer-to-be surveyed the corn that waved chest-high, gold filigree soft worn by dread Persephone, held close by trees on each sequestered side: a square to seize for the advance. Commands roared forth again. A pause… They watched, alert… until the grain but lightly stirred, vague movements in mirage— while, out of sight, two armies’ fell barrage informed the sky that mortals claimed the earth, and to the earth each shortly would return— …a trembling of the filigree… a hand… then two, soft rising… Across the field he scanned… the goddess, stricken, rippling her fine dresses to hide each humbled foe, soft acquiesces with slow grief to thunderous human strife, and, in shy deshabille, reveals the life that she has held in trust, as men’s hands rise in trembling pairs, war-grimed, with wearied eyes, their weapons tossed from sight, an endless prize, till, wordlessly, all plead beneath the skies.   He tries to estimate the number caught, but can’t, for they spread wide, outnumber thought: so many men stand poached in one chance swoop, too much to swallow for their tiny group. What shall we do? he asks the NCO, remembering that by Convention no dire harm may come to captured serving men. How can we round them up? The goddess then keeps watch while (continues) He tries to estimate the number caught, but can’t, for they spread wide, outnumber thought: so many men stand poached in one chance swoop, too much to swallow for their tiny group. What shall we do? he asks the NCO, remembering that by Convention no dire harm may come to captured serving men. How can we round them up? The goddess then keeps watch while his incumbent boss, perhaps but few years older than himself, and taught by war to make decisions, paused in thought, considers what their options are. Her field soft shimmers as she awaits to count the yield of finest crop she will receive this day. The corn floats wide, yet, like an alleyway enclosed and dark and short, his choice lies stark: round up their catch with his scant troops, embark on thinning out his men and risk that hands now raised will drop and seize the trampled land’s discarded, fratricidal tools of steel and turn hard victory to fatal loss; or tear the moral codebook up and live that life called free in others’ deaths, and give another certain day to those he leads. The goddess languidly with patience reads his calculating mind while our man sweats and each man stranded in her corn regrets forever that this bloody world’s events have swept him to his present broken tense. We round them up? No, lift your guns and shoot and leave no man alive. Thus falls the fruit of many mothers’ loves strewn in her stores, her golden skin soaked red. Paul Rapley 2025 (continues)
September 26, 2025 at 6:28 AM
paulrapley.bsky.social
Sorry this is late - done in a rush
Thanks, Alan, for setting the challenge.
#poemsabout #DarkSky @alanparrywriter.co.uk
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The Bortle Scale, from One to Four I think I’ve never seen the Milky Way, I said—at least, not registered it as such— for many years had churned since I’d not known that earthly lights would cancel out the stars and blanch stark blackness into tinted greys that mock the glistening fractured tears which mighty giants weep and beam to us in mourning for their snuffed-out spectral kin. Acknowledging their house amid the hills, set far from towns and screened from neighbours’ homesteads, crouching mute beneath the moonless sky, was blighting night’s eternal darkest blackness, blazing out its own illumination which, with a finger’s flick he might extinguish; and, learning of my longing to gaze further, he quenched the lights to outside space for me. The porch and drive and field and further workshop, the bend, the private road, and flanking trees sunk down to formless shadows while the vault of heaven permeated my tired eyes… Yet, where’s the Milky Way? I had to ask. Look up, above your head. Yes, she was there but faint, like long-lost memories of love or soaked-in, blotted, spilled ambrosia. My sister and his wife were still inside not drawn to stepping into chill and dark— perhaps not knowing quite why we were out, or even that we’d left. Their lights were on so, even near the bend, they teased our sky and sapped the Bortle scale. I’d not the cheek to ask, invite them to join in. That other star, he said, I think’s a satellite. Paul Rapley, 2025
August 8, 2025 at 4:46 PM