London Calling – dVerse

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London skyline, change unceasing
Altitudes aspire, increasing
Reaching scudding clouds suspended
Your city’s tale has not yet ended

London skyline, change unceasing
Skyscrapers empty, workers releasing
Easing on to pavements, thronging
Each mind alone, yet still belonging

London skyline, change unceasing
Parks reducing, space decreasing
Many cultures, smells and tastes
A never-resting, human race

London skyline, your heart’s still beating
London skyline, change unceasing.

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This week, on dVerse Meeting the Bar,Tony has asked us to repeat, repeat, repeat – whether it’s a word, a phrase or a whole line. Let’s get the musicality going!

I haven’t aimed for a particular form, although if I hadn’t submitted a villanelle to a competition, I would have shared it right here, because it is, by it’s nature, a musical, repetitive piece. Hey ho. So, ‘London Calling’ is inspired by my place of work and by the wheels going round on my train journey home. I hope you enjoy.

Please pop over to dVerse to read some excellent poems on the travel theme. Join in – we don’t bite!

 

 

Resurrected – VisDare 66

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Photo Source

I grew up in silence, a hindrance to my parents.

The woman would stare at me. I soon learned to disappear like the morning mists.

They didn’t want me, and yet the times that I left were countered with them hunting me down.

Irony dogs me now, its reprimand fiercer than any they could ever inflict. My heart is barren and blasted and yet here I am, in charge of this child.

I don’t know who she is. We could be the only people left alive after The Burning. The land is scorched and skeleton trees pierce the white-hot sky.

Who is she?

She is terrified. I remember such a feeling.

I allow the carapace around my heart to crack. I take her small hand in mine. I am awkward, lost in my own wilderness.

“Will you look after me?”

The words fall from my lips, not hers.

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Here’s my latest entry into VisDare this week, the prompt run by the lovely Angela. The response came to me almost immediately – it’s a beautiful, heart-wrenching image. Please do pop over to her blog and read the other submissions – no two will be alike!

 

Grounded – dVerse

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nailers, brewers and
butchers; artists, hoofers and
railway platemakers

Titanic, double-
booked, third class overflowing
what a stroke of luck!

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This week, on dVerse Poetics, Grace has asked us to delve into our family history – what makes us, where have we come from, who are our ancestors? As I get older, as life changes, I feel more of an urge to answer these questions. Recently I spent a lovely long weekend with my family up in Worcestershire, investigating old photos and luxuriating in tales of what happened way back when. This knowledge is to be treasured, no?

I have decided to be short and sweet this week. Two haiku-form stanzas and two photos – one of me as a little girl, and one of my scribbles during a quick coffee break. You’ll see the second stanza didn’t really sit well with me… hence it got the chop. Ancestors in both my mum’s family and in my step-dad’s family almost made it on to the Titanic… strange, but true!