Fiftywords

Thank you Rachel

This is pared back but socially charged. It moves from corporeal fragility to structural indictment in a single gesture.

Thanks Jan, I really appreciate those comments

The diction moves confidently between academic and incantatory registers. Its philological curiosity gives the piece scholarly texture without losing lyric force.

A chilling embodiment of intrusive thought rendered as parasitic presence.

The movement from friction to erasure feels inevitable and chilling.

Subcutaneous A syringe. A need Clear liquid gathers, bright, viscous, held in restraint. Select site. Soft tissue. Abdomen. Thigh. A field of warmth, fat under skin like stored light. Clean. Allow to dry. The surface gleams. Pores tighten. Bruise-yellow ghosts mark older entries. Pinch. Lift. Skin popping, resantial by being iself. Angle. Enter. A brief dimple. A give. Steel dividing warmth. Advance until the bevel disappears beneath pale skin. Depress plunger. Liquid presses forward, threads into fat, spreads through honeyed dark. Count. The body swells, a small raised moon holding what it did not grow. Withdraw. A bead forms, clear against pink. Already closing. Apply pressure. Do not rub. Absorption begins through blood-warm layers that bruise, heal, bruise again. Soon the rush. Still intact. Still flesh. Still the crossing.

A literal take on this #PoemsAbout #UnderTheSkin Many thanks as ever to
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk

He Was Somebody He was somebody. Before the microphones. Before the campaigns. Before the crowds learned the rhythm of his name. He was somebody when the doors were closed. Somebody when the vote was counted out. Somebody when hope had to be spoken into rooms that did not want to hear it. He was somebody who stitched coalitions from fragments of anger. Somebody who believed dignity was not negotiable. He was somebody, not because he ran, but because he stood. Not because he won, but because he showed the way for those who would. And if he was somebody, it is because he taught a nation to say it of themselves.

He Was Somebody He was somebody. Before the microphones. Before the campaigns. Before the crowds learned the rhythm of his name. He was somebody when the doors were closed. Somebody when the vote was counted out. Somebody when hope had to be spoken into rooms that did not want to hear it. He was somebody who stitched coalitions from fragments of anger. Somebody who believed dignity was not negotiable. He was somebody, not because he ran, but because he stood. Not because he won, but because he showed the way for those who would. And if he was somebody, it is because he taught a nation to say it of themselves.

For Jesse Jackson

Thanks Rosanna, that’s very kind of you

Far Arrival The mountains arrive before the town, before thought, a stern architecture the earth built for itself. The lake holds the sky in its long mirror, a depth composed in listening. Cloud drifts in slow procession, learning shape against the ridgelines. Here, stories were spoken long before they were written. Ancient names run through valleys, carrying weather, warning, welcome. Gold came later, then the hunger for more, a brief glitter on older land that tolerated intrusion but never ceded authority. The town stands where ascent begins, a hinge between water and stone. Everything feels provisional: roofs, roads, even the hours, as if time must negotiate with altitude. Even at a distance you understand: this is a place where perspective falters. A quiet held between two immensities, a town by permission of the mountains that watch, and wait, and outlast.

A recent trip inspired today’s #vss365

Moth I move because it moves. I write because it burns. The circle narrows. Powder loosens, wing-dust, word-dust, each turn a thinner margin between hunger and erasure. Still I lean. Voice is friction against heat. If I fall silent it will not be from doubt but from proximity.

Enchantment They did not arrive for harm. They arrived for light. For the gleam off cut glass, for the low animal warmth of being noticed by someone whose name moved markets. Power does not shout. It whispers: stay. you are safe here. you belong. The first compromise is small, a laugh that lands too late, a question not asked. After that, the gravity of greed takes care of doubt. The gleam of gold makes the grift look clean and wreckage small. They told themselves they were adjacent, not involved. Observers of orbit. But orbit is obedience with better tailoring. Somewhere a file was closed because the man in the photograph had once funded a museum wing. By the time the spell broke they were fluent in the dialogue of doubt. Not close. Don't recall. Didn't see. Now the spell is over. The glass still gleams. It still cuts.

This is for today’s #vss365

Against the Straight Line Empire prefers a letter that stands upright. Clean back. Measured breath. White space trained into obedience. The word must travel quickly. It must cross provinces without altering its face. It must report to authority. So the stroke is pared back Curves corrected. Margins cleared of creatures, of weather, of doubt. Meaning thinned to what can be copied, counted, sent onward. But at the western edge a different hand holds the quill. It does not hurry. It lets the letter lean. A line becomes a braid. A curve keeps its weather. Ink gathers where gold insists on interrupting the sentence. A beast unsettles the capital. A vine crosses the border of the page and does not apologise. Here the word is not a road. It is a field. You do not pass through You enter. You kneel to see how one stroke threads another, how space is not empty but listening. Empire calls this excess. Calls it dark. Calls it unclear. Later, it will call it inefficient. Hard to process. Difficult to standardise. But meaning here refuses the drill. It coils. It doubles back. It refuses to be made transparent. Alive in the margin, it keeps its light against the straight line.

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Carolingian Empire promoted a standardised script (Carolingian minuscule) across Europe. Irish scribes continued to write in their insular hand, producing some of the greatest works of calligraphy such as the Book of Kells. #vss365

Kisses They arrive pre-softened, airbrushed for affection. Ok'd by the Unicode Consortium No breath behind them. No awkward teeth. No hesitation at the threshold of skin. Just pixels performing tenderness. Love, fully inclusive. In every configuration. No pulse required. Once, a kiss risked something, tilt of chin, misjudged distance, the sudden comedy of noses. Now: by the dozen, bulk-dispatched, stacked like tins. The mouth opens but nothing moves. Message sealed withe Flat against the glass. sent without a thought. irl, two actual mouths hover, unsent, typing... XXX

Today’s #vss365

Thanks Merril, a bit of fun with a message

Thanks Ann, pleased you got the ’punchline’ didn’t know if people would miss it

Thanks Dean, I appreciate that

It was definitely a fun write. Thanks Rachel

Very different to how i often respond to the prompt

The poem captures the intoxicating mix of youth, cold, and risk with striking immediacy. The clipped rhyme scheme mirrors breathless daring.

A strikingly distilled meditation on transformation through damage. The breathless accumulation of verbs enacts the very process of fracture and repair. It achieves philosophical depth through verbal restraint.

4 Minutes 33 Seconds in an Anechoic Chamber The door seals. A swallow. Breath. Breath. The small hinge of the jaw tests its patience. Saliva shifts position. An eyelid closes like a soft switch. Somewhere behind the sternum, a metronome refuses instruction. Blood makes its rounds. The ear, having nothing, magnifies everything. Cartilage confers with cartilage. A pulse rehearses the dark. Another minute longer than a corridor. The tongue rests but will not disappear. Nerves conduct without score. Breath. A minute more, no different, no quieter. The body, unmuted. No silence. Only listening.

I’ve always been fascinated by how Cage recorded this piece and it fits today’s #vss365

Nothing is as innocent as it seems

A finely sustained metaphor of emotional exposure rendered through the language of undressing. The poem understands vulnerability as seduction rather than surrender.

The poem reframes the Fall as awakening rather than catastrophe.

Thanks for that John, it was a fun write

Thanks. A bit of a change from my usual approach

Thanks Jan. A bit of fun this week for a change