CANCEL CULTURE

When you choose to live on a small island in the English Channel, travel becomes something of a challenge, not least of all when almost every journey by air involves transition through London's Gatwick Airport.

2023 has been a particularly difficult year with delays and cancellations the norm rather than the exception. One such lengthy delay prompted this piece of rhyming verse.

                           

            

GATWICK BLUES

Imprisoned in an airport between flights,

I read, but even reading starts to bore.

Distraction comes in countless forms: the lights,

the noisy people that I can’t ignore

who jabber trivialities on mobile phones,

the tantrum-throwing children and the teens, 

the shrieking girls, the hijab-wearing crones,

the idiots in pricy torn-up jeans …

I could rant on but realise it’s true:

the human race and I don’t really gel.

Apart from some good friends (and they’re damn few)

where I’m concerned the rest can go to hell. 

If I believed, I’d pray they’d disappear.

The modern world is not for me, I fear.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/  

POEMS AND OTHER LIES

I try to write creatively and not overly depend on obsessive introversion as a source for verse: that said, a writer implants something of himself or herself in almost everything he/she writes, either consciously or otherwise. This little poem, however, is about as close as it gets to pure autobiography.

         

WRITER  

An early reader, I aspired

to be a writer and acquired 

a little notebook, pocket size,

where I wrote poems and other lies.

The habit stuck: I write each day

in search of truth, that old cliche.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/  

LIFE AFTER LIFE

This is a reworking of a poem, Invisible, that appeared in my Stone Witness collection (2017). Whereas the original version was written in free verse and was rather more lengthy, the poem below is basically a rhyming precis of its predecessor.

THAT'S LIFE                      

Faces lean in, make sounds, then move away:

they hover like great birds above the cot

where he lies swaddled. Nothing that they say 

makes sense. He is an infant. It’s Year Dot.

So it begins. Time hurries on. That’s life.

He lies in a red room. Faces lean in,

make sounds. Nothing makes sense. Pain wields its knife.

It’s Year Ninety. Ice settles on his skin.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ 

A POEM OR NOT A POEM?

In the gloom of post-Brexit Britain, all that sustains us is hope. I wrote this recently. I don't know whether it qualifies as a poem. You, the reader, can decide.

PROMISES                      

Tomorrow promises to be better.

An old friend, you thought lost, will telephone.

You’ll receive a long-awaited letter.

Somewhere a tyrant will be overthrown.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ 

LYING IN WAIT

Unlike the Psalmist's 'Valley of the Shadow of Death', Murder Mile is a place where a Theosceptic walks unaccompanied.

                   

MURDER MILE            

I’m fast approaching Murder Mile

and can’t resist a rueful smile:

who ever thought I’d live so long.

These days I simply limp along

in puzzlement that I’m not dead

but I expect to be waylaid 

soon by some thug or else his mate,

those brutal swine that lie in wait,

with sharpened blade and filthy tongue,

if you’ve the cheek to not die young.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ 

DOT, DOT, DASH, DASH

A short poem written whilst on holiday in France where, unlike Britain, the rail network is affordable and appears to work. 

BY RAIL

The scenery is moving fast,

the present changing into past

so speedily it dulls the mind

as what was there is left behind.

The distant hills, the greenery,

the hulking farm machinery,

the cattle, sheep, sometimes a horse,

are dashes, dots, a kind of Morse

transmitting messages, the kind 

received by the subconscious mind.

Enthralled, I watch this moving map,

abandoned novel in my lap.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ 

ON TARGET

Here's a humorous antidote to the depressing headlines that confront us these days.

 

AUNTY GUN               

It must be said about my aunt,

she wasn’t very tolerant.

If, on the beach, she saw a sight

that she deemed rude or impolite

she’d fetch a rifle from her kit

and promptly take a shot at it.

In consequence, chaps in tight briefs

adorned with slick Speedo motifs

or ladies, vast, bikini-clad,

that, in aunt’s view, were twice as bad,

were struck in his or her kazoo

with pellets from her 22.

For verse of a different kind, why not visit: https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/