Tag: free verse

Not in Our Name

There were mutterings that each day grew louder,
signs and portents that we refused to believe.
Local militia were organizing and drilling
getting ready to answer the call should it come.

Not that people thought that it would come.
They believed, as they hoped,
that something would be done to prevent war…….

As for those others who prophesied and prayed for it,
who wanted the vials of God’s wrath uncorked,
they got what they wanted.
Their prayers were answered;
the land was drenched in blood.

But for the most of us
we did not.

Taken from ‘A Virginia Girl in the Civil War, 1861-1865: Being a Record of the Actual Experiences of the Wife of a Confederate Officer’, edited by Myrta Lockett Avary. By Juliet Wilson.

Détente

read it

KEEP OUT

NO sisters and apsolutley NO brothers

Just sisters

Just for today
Brothers
allowed

and me
Freddie

A notice blu-tacked to the sitting room door by my son, aged seven, 24 February 2011. It was half term. By Amy.

An anemone also

This is a whelk.
When it dies its shell lies
On the sea bed until……

A growing hermit crab
Takes up residence.

In his new home
The hermit does not
Feel the arrival of a ragworm,
Which crawls into the same shell.

Later, an anemone also
Settles on his shell.

So the ragworm, anemone and
The hermit, all live together
In an old whelk shell.

When the hermit feeds,
The ragworm takes his share
And the anemone clears up
What is left on the floor.

If attacked, the great claw
Provides an armour-plated door.

Taken from a display in an aquarium on the Cobb in Lyme Regis. By Nathan Lechler.

The spineless man

My dad had
an affair with his
21-year-old secretary.

He regretted it
almost immediately when she
started standing on bridges
and threatening suicide should he
go back to
or pay maintenance to
his wife and three
very young daughters.

Disgusted, my mother
refused to have him back. The spineless man
was then marched up the aisle,
vasectomy reversed, child produced. Anti
depressants ensued, along with
the loss of any meaningful
relationship with his
previous three daughters.

He currently works
long hours with a
serious heart condition to
support his wife and her
expensive horsey hobbies.

Meanwhile my mother
grew strong, witty and
wise. His daughters all
suffered. The lure of
a youthful admirer!
More fool him.

From Where did it all go wrong?, 9 February 2011. By Marika Rose.

Backing for old age

Foulness, say, is light.
Not altogether courteous, almost icy,
nothing but a party type.

July nuts cracked with criminal intent
Underwear that’s left to hang about.
Leave record in river.

Spirits for composer and poet
Reader’s possessive,
Spots hesitation with less careful cut.
Plant makes radio almost quiet.

Clues from the Guardian cryptic crossword 28 February 2010.

Strumpet

hushed homes
dishevelled and stuck
with oxlips, primroses, cowslips, violets, and
TeenInPinkBikiniStrippingOnWebcam
manifoldness and steadfastness of the universe
is as truly whoring trade

From spam email, 24 January 2011. By Laura.