Fiftywords

Lillie Your Beautiful Life? The fire wouldn't light that morning: smoke curled into the room, refused to rise. They carried you like a burden no one dared to name. No last words. No glance. Only the shuffle of tired boots and one man watching a wall turn red. I kept your letters with dust in creases, your hand was steady, always. Others claimed you. Recited you in chambers where no cleaner earns a living wage. Raised glasses to your name with wine you never tasted. You were never theirs to own. Not flag. Not state. Not the party men with soft hands and slogans. You belong to the dream not yet diminished, to bread shared fairly, to work that holds its dignity, to shelter without shame. To the quiet defiance of those who still believe life can be better than this. And to us, the ones who know your words were fire and are not yet ash.

Today’s #vss365 is about the great Irish revolutionary James Connolly #speirgorm

Teenage Riffs I was fifteen, already full of life, laughing loud, limbs quick, the world still wide and mine, but then a riff kicked in, pierced me, like the sound had been waiting for someone alive enough to catch it. It sparked me. Buzzcocks on a battered tape, a Clash lyric like a dare. I unleashed. Ripped jeans, radio static, hair razored to rebellion, vinyl sleeves spread out like maps of who I already was. We moshed in basements, sweat, spit, black nails, Doc Martens stomping out the heartbeat of the lost. We didn't want tomorrow, just the chorus, louder, louder, till the walls shook with it, and we howled it back: "No Future!" Our idols were broken angels, Poly Styrene, Howard Devoto, Siouxsie Sue, we worshipped them in stickers and patches, zipped up in leather and adolescent ache. Every track was a flare, every night a manifesto. We believed, God, we believed, that songs could save us. And maybe they did.

This one seems appropriate for today’s #vss365

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

The Wise Pomeranian As a woman in a man's world, she bends before she breaks, folds herself into a quiet corner, a sigh between sentences, a pause where his name should not be. He looks at her like a child marvelling at a flame, unthinking that she, too, can burn. He speaks of love as if it is his to define, as if she has never known hunger. I watch her step carefully, balancing shame and longing, as though she is the sinner, as though his hands do not carry the weight of other women before her. He moves freely, his ring a mere suggestion, while hers is a lock, a brand, a chain. His pleasure is indulgence, hers a transgression. She calls it love. He calls it fate. I call it what it is a man's world, where women whisper their desires in shadows and men repeat them in the daylight, claiming them as their own. Even now, they call it romance this theft of freedom, this careful undoing of a woman who wanted more than to be a moment. She will stay, because he asks. She will suffer, because she loves. And he will call it tragic, as though the tragedy is not him. I can only watch. My voice unheard, while hers is silenced. But if I could speak, I would tell her, Run.

This is my full poem inspired by the short story

“In the end there is left a life groveling and curtailed, worthless and trivial.“ The Lady With the Dog, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov #BookWormSat

Thanks, that’s definitely what I was after

Fascinating character but, yes, very unsettling

Thank you Carolyn, you’re very generous

Thanks John

Apologies for breaking the brain but relieved it was in a good way

I love the way the poem blurs advertising language with existential questioning, it’s as if consumerism itself is haunted.

This is richly allusive, it fuses folklore, Cold War paranoia, and political satire with dazzling intensity. The fractured, incantatory style gives the poem the feel of a ritual denunciation, or a Walpurgis chant.

This is powerful, the dislocated form enacts the poem’s theme of silence and fracture.

Fierce, unsettling, and direct, it forces us to confront what we too often consume unthinkingly. It exposes the violence implicit in display culture, surface beauty as entrapment.

This is darkly compelling, it turns the language of dismemberment into a desperate plea for wholeness.

Deceptively simple, but layered with critique, a mannequin becomes a metaphor for every silenced body.

The tension between permanence and decay is beautifully handled, wax as both preservation and prison.

The closing line is devastating, it skewers both Tanzler’s pathology and wider patriarchal fantasies

Hans Bellmer made surreal and unsettling dolls in the 1930s, bodies broken, reassembled, uncanny. But here, the doll has her own voice. #PoemsAbout #Mannequin Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Thanks

Here’s a bit of fun for #NationalPoetryDay

Today’s #vss365

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Thank you, that’s very kind of you

Sublimate We burned, bright, too clean, no smoke, no scent, only the hush of what would not rise. Desire: base metal, raw, ungoverned, craving its own heat. We called the fire holy, as if the word might save us from its appetite. Each touch: a transmutation, skin becoming symbol, breath turning prayer. We took restraint for grace, ash for salvation. Even now the air shakes with what we almost said, a warmth remembering the body long after the flame forgets.

Today’s #vss365 uses the earlier meaning of sublimation, to transform by fire to look at the sublimation of desire

Yes, his life’s work is a rebuke to today’s narrowing of culture. He showed that culture doesn’t just trickle down, it can be remade from below.

RIP Tony Harrison. A poet who made the sonnet snarl, who gave working-class England its lyric voice, and who never flinched from truth. His words will keep ringing. He taught us that poetry could fight, console, and never apologise.

Absolutely. It’s a necessity not a luxury

Thanks Alan, I appreciate that and all the work you do for this community

Yes. Never again never becomes never again