details are yet to come out [it's not about politics]. So: neither written as yet. I like to be serious & also like to be funny, but hate to be trite.
Please don't think of me as a fount of wisdom: just another guy.
But thank you for your kind words.
Take care of yourself!

...I might be able to knock it out fairly quickly. The "Locked Doors" prompt led me to a circumstance that's too delicate for me to rush when trying to put the right words together & to an incident in the news which I've researched (I prefer to be accurate about facts) but where some important...

We both have lives beyond the internet - & also need thinking time - so no apology needed.
I've tried to keep up one poem a week, but it's proving too much. If the prompt stimulates an idea that's either about some personal experience or in an area where I have some knowledge (or if it's satirical),

Why does Mark Stone, your Washington reporter, have a Sky-logoed Trump 100 sound muffler on his microphone?

Saturday Exile c.2002 I am a phantasm. Haunting the doorstep, binliner of my life cushioning head. Ben Sherman shirts aren’t made for alfresco sleeping— cotton is cold at 2am. At least the linger of whisky keeps me warm. A drunken day turned into drunker night. When the golden hour strikes I’ll fade into my walls haven / sanctuary / prison hell / heaven ©️ Paul Short, 2025

It’s after midnight so here’s my piece for #PoemsAbout #LockedDoors

‘Saturday Exile c.2002’

Another excellent prompt.

@thebrokenspine.co.uk

Looking forward to reading and replying on Friday and over the weekend

Labour’s AI Growth Zones: The Corporate Land Grab Disguised as Innovation How Starmer’s government is carving up Britain into deregulated fiefdoms for Big Tech, without asking a single community

Beyond concerning,
The European Commission is reportedly considering delaying parts of its landmark AI Act following heavy lobbying from U.S. tech giants and pressure from Washington.
Thread
Please read!
substack.com/@europeanpow...

Greenery alongside cycle tracks cuts the risk of flooding by managing stormwater locally, the hedge also makes a nice barrier between bikes and motor vehicles, reducing spray from motor vehicles during rain, as well as improving the look of the street.

The Disaster What started with church services and a festive atmosphere ended in a watery grave. It was the 10th of August 1628, when Vasa, the most powerful warship in the Baltic, foundered in Stockholm harbour b...

Unlike the White Ship, which was setting off after a refitting, this ship really did go down, tragically, upon its initial (and final) launching.
www.vasamuseet.se/en/explore/v...

White Ship disaster - Wikipedia

I suspect, since individual ships tend not to figure prominently in standard histories, many people will be recollecting vague memories of this once more-well-known event:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_S...

But that's almost everybody, Susie.

Nearly there!
We need around 50 signatures to push my petition calling for transparency and a review of deregulated free zones to 10,000.
Please sign and share across your social media platforms.
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/72...

tablet | British Museum Clay tablet; record of beer; impressed with five different types of numerical symbol.

Were they trying to tell us something?
www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

Explain how I've slandered someone.

Hi Luke
Did you know you come across as a bit weird?
Trying to help.

Probably to somebody's taste, but opening those drawers (if they are indeed, functional) is going to be a real challenge, I suspect.

Perhaps Mr Thorpe, being conscious of Forest fan & Londoner Mr Crean's connections with Dublin & Roscommon, wanted at this point to avoid being accused of bias?
Better do your homework, mate.

Petition: Transparency and Review of the free zones and ports impacts To ensure full transparency by releasing data on governance, funding, and operations of free zones. Plus a public review to assess impacts, such as job displacement and value for taxpayers money

URGENT: 6 WEEKS LEFT - We're 743 signatures away from forcing a Government response
The UK Government is rolling out freeports and free zones nationwide with billions in taxpayer money, yet operates with an alarming lack of transparency. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/72...

Granted, but we writers do like validation for our skills while we are, in reality, merely the transmitters of perceptions.
I'm not a moral arbiter.
If one person reads a poem and makes some small adjustment to the way they respond to another, that's something gained.
But it won't fix the world.

Thank you, Debra.
But the one poem so inadequately expresses the young man's dilemma - and that of countless others.
Our world is so fragmented, muddled... and inadequate.

...and then give form to that expression.
I'll leave that there.
I'm not very good at superficial sympathy, but I would encourage you to believe that your writing has real meaning & not to regard yourself as an amateur.
The crowd is not the best judge. I'll be cruel: most merely follow.
Viel Glück!

I take your points re Snowsuit. The brain-fog thing: I symp/empathise. I won't advise you: I'm not a quack.
However, the mind does need to roam, to acknowledge uncomfortable truths, to work to dispel lies that masquerade as truths (often hard-baked-in), and to give expression to the actual creation

...Also from Chinese: trying to avoid the tyranny of tenses. Using present participle without auxiliary verbs/gerunds ["puttering pottering dayspreading bittern booming"- from my stanza 6]: Walt Whitman, "Patrol(l)ing Barnegat". Eschewing punctuation: T.S. Eliot & the moderns, etc. etc. I admit it.

...poets & poems, not necessarily those top of my faves or those whom I've read extensively. They've metaphorically given their nod of approval: Invented compound words: Beowulf, G.M. Hopkins, Shakespeare. Elimination of articles (a & the): Chinese verse, generally...

...that we all have this, so best stop worrying & take heart that we can all push boundaries in our own way, using our own unique experiences and perspectives.
e.g. I've just completed a longer poem in a (faintly) experimental style. Thinking about my debts, I realise I owe plenty to a variety of...

On the reading & reading thing: I never understood this back in the day. Harold Bloom published a book called "The Anxiety of Influence" in 1973. I wish I'd read it then because although he does articulate the worry we all (should) have that we're aping earlier famous writers, it made me realise...

Paul, I admire a true sonneteer who, like you is not a slave to the line, but is able to rhyme mid-sentence and carry the argument/narrative across. It’s really something how you have woven the characters into this piece.

Thanks, John, But upon re-reading I notice that I've included (at least) two ambiguous pronouns.
And more besides...
Needs fixing, somehow!

YouTube video by Whitney's Fan Club "This Is The Only Way To Prepare For What's Coming” | Whitney Webb FINAL WARNING

A new asset class is being identified as ‘Nature’s Economy’, where a country’s green spaces are targeted by a sovereign wealth fund controlled by a Saudi Prince, or Blackrock for example. This is global, but it is already happening in the UK and part of Zone Fever
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xn...

UK crossing warden holding Stop "lollipop". Schoolchildren crossing.

UK version

“Most people have no idea what’s about to happen”
Palantir’s move into the ‘terrorism futures market’
Palantir secures health data as a major asset in its portfolio, including the NHS in the UK.
Palantir’s dragnet involves pre-crime tech or predictive policing.
Thread
www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...