David Birch

Thank you Stace - as ever your feedback is much appreciated!

You're very welcome, Dean

Thank you Debra!

Sunday Bloody Sunday

My final choice from the 80s is U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday
#FebMusicChallenge26
open.spotify.com/track/2ouuCT...
See you next February!

The Long And Winding Road - Remastered 2009

From the 70s (just) my choice is The Beatles' Long and Winding Road, released on Let it Be, their final album.
#FebMusicChallenge26
open.spotify.com/track/3mlMpm...

The Boxer

Thanks for hosting again, Graham! My last 3 choices are from the 60s, 70s and 80s. First up is Simon and Garfunkel's The Boxer
#FebMusicChallenge26
open.spotify.com/track/76TZCv...

It is the last day of #FebMusicChallenge26 so we are going #retro with our choices and we are going big. Thanks as always for joining in, it is the ten year anniversary next year. Little did I know it would last that long.

Excellent choice: Natalie Merchant has one of the great voices

This is achingly beautiful, Dean

Hello #PoemsAbout friends. I caught the prompt too late this week to write something new, so I went back to the archives. This one is from 1994 for #Spent
@thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

#poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry

Selfless // Spent You lie beside him like a gutted animal. This needy. This vulnerable. This far gone. Nothing is as exhausting as opening up, as making a church of the mess of yourself, as becoming a light for another. Ribcage and sanctuary. Shepherding the wayward sheep back from the storm-clad edge. Him and you both. Homebound. You wanted so much to be a morning star but you’re just the flick of his lighter with which he immolates you. You define your worth by how satisfied the hunter is, how easy the bullet’s job. How small can you make yourself so you’re not in his way, how fast can you do what he wants. Now he has rearranged your entrails to fit more pain inside. But you agree and carry it even like a crown. Anything, everything to make him stay; you are out there and dying just reaching for his hand. Afterwards, you sob silently behind the bathroom door as if your sadness was a great secret, something so dangerous and feral, you have to keep it hidden and leashed. Or, worse even, you would be found out, exposed for the wretched hollow bitch that you are, a martyr no angel would want. All you have to offer is the bones of yourself and isn’t that terrible, to be so thoroughly you? All that you are and were and aspired to be, you have given everything to him. The myrrh of ruptured spleens and breathless lungs, the hard gold of marrow. Incense of spit, myth told in freckles and stretch marks, stuttering. All your unspeakable stories spelled out scar by never-healed scar. And yet, he will get up and walk through that door. And leave, like you’ve never ever happened. You showed off your best tricks but you’re still just a dog. Your hot tears tangle helplessly in his wet hair like an army of startled fleas. You stand on the train station platform as it snows. He kisses you goodbye and it’s like drowning a puppy. Your teeth clash like barbed wire fences. He says see you soon and in that moment you know that there is nothing more cruel …

For #PoemsAbout #Spent ✨

for @thebrokenspine.co.uk
& @alanparrywriter.co.uk

When you give everything you have but it still isn’t enough.

Snowdrop A solitary snowdrop keeps vigil in my garden. Thirty bulbs went in; twenty‑nine chose to stay in the safety of darkness. But one refused retreat. Bravely it climbs through barren soil, a white flag raised against winter’s rule. Season after season it rings its small bell of promise, calling light back to my patch of world. Season after season it lends me its courage: fragile, foolish, beautifully misplaced. Season after season the world disappoints and the winter returns. Still it blooms.

@sonnetsmith.bsky.social
##WildWalkPrompt
#Snowdrop

Your own devoted poem 💚

The transition from movement to passivity here is very well executed, Paul

A poem about the feeling of being spent after a night of making love and the feelings that come after the it is over.

For #PoemsAbout #Spent
with much thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

I'll play...
1. Missing - Everything but the Girl
2. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
3. Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan
4. Boys of Summer - Don Henley
5. Into My Arms - Nick Cave
#FridayFive #Longing

🤣 👏

Thank you, Debbie! Much appreciated!

You're very welcome!

Exactly. I held the tools and handed them over...

My goodness, this hits hard: so simply expressed but so sharp

A poem in 4 stanzas by Debbie Ross entitled Nothing Left A cardboard sign, a filthy mat, a navy duttle bag. No pride, though I served the country with it once. A house, a car, a full-time job no energy I used it all on daily life. A college education, a meaningless job, a mouldy flat, no hope just debt I tried, Mum. A wester superpower, billions in the bank trappings of success morally bankrupt fascist dictator nothing left.

Good morning @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk and the #PoemsAbout #poetry peeps this is my offering for #Spent but I’ve had no time to juggle about for it. Very rough round the edges and a bit bleak (me and the poem) back to look late this afternoon. Have a good poeting day all.

Thank you, Dave, much appreciated: apologies for ruining your morning!

The images here are stunning, Jan, especially in the 3rd and 4th stanzas

attic sketches appear
unclaimed reels linger
as grey tinged captions
claim the passage
confounded and spent
my impulses proceed
through the fire and passion
stoking the burnt offerings
left scratching their way
through the ash and lust
where noted desires played

#PoemsAbout #Spent

Congratulations, Rachel!

I identify so strongly with this. My son came over last weekend to help me fix a garden gate. I say help.....

TWO FEET Shoveling two feet with my son, opening a single lane in the driveway from garage to impassable street and runs in the yard for the klee kai to pee and poop. I think I am pulling my weight, working from one end and meeting him midway, but just as I’m about to declare victory the neighbors appear at their stoop making no headway while their pup whines miserably behind them and my son unasked carves a swath between our yards, even inserting a cutout about halfway in. I find myself staring at his strong shoulders, imagining muscle flexing beneath flannel as he tosses full scoops of weighty fluff and wet hair streams across his brow until I guiltily realize he has been working alone and I can only fart around lifting little drifts that drop randomly in his wake.

#PoemsAbout #Spent
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I will put a reading in the comments…

I really enjoyed this: you've made so much capital from those minor but endless daily rituals. I think toothpaste tubes have become more problematic lately, by the way....

To all those who never ever get to start the new toothpaste! 😊 #PoemsAbout #Spent
Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk Happy Friday!

Very spare, but effective Andy, especially in the use of the insistent but gentle repetitions