A
Crow Holds A
key
to a butterfly's wings, a dark tree
blossoms
a lightning strike in its beak.
Use
stealth and cunning to capture the key,
Turn
it in the butterfly lock to break
into
the oak rich leafed with half a crown.
Crow
found key in city's bombed out ruins.
Key
to a door bomb blown in/out and down
of
life before war, and new beginnings.
Soon
fresh spores will find good soil
beneath,
inside and on the new wreckage.
Growth
for caterpillars to despoil
and
make their own transformation cage.
An
acorn is a cage for transformation.
Out
of rubble a new destination.
War Is A Child
on a
cross where nails have been hammered through
into
young skin. Below this statue Christ
cross
legged, focuses on his hands, back to
the
suffering child carved in white stone sliced
on
its side by a spear of war. Christ sits
in
the manicured grass, watches insects
crawl
over his palms, makes daisy chains fits
them
over his head. Two females inspect
the
young one on the cross. All three are freeze
frame,
tableau. And now Jesus is captured,
caught
on camera, a still life. Believe
you
see a child on the grass enraptured.
A
photo never lies, only meaning,
an
interpretation may be misleading.
War's Plastic Spade
left
stood on the beach in the rush to go.
Beside
the moat dug around the castle,
eroded
by weapons of gust, rain, snow.
A
home is a temporary vessel.
Unless
you are your hearth home. Traveller.
Sometimes
it is not your choice to move on.
Sometimes
the tide comes in, unraveller
of
all your belonging, time to be gone.
Home
is your fireside hearth that burns even,
when
your outside homes flames are put out, snuffed.
Fire
is a grief a child's loss of a friend,
that
plastic spade, that castle engulfed.
Go,
move, shift says the stern voice of war, waves,
day's
end pack up and leave others their graves.
Warhead
seeds
burst from the barrels of flowerheads.
There
was traffic here once. Listen. Listen.
Ghosts.
Bustling, raucous silence elbows treads
invisible
in wounded streets, broken.
The
seeds strike, make hollows of busy homes.
Absences
are in full bloom, vibrant glades.
Stroll
between rainbow bloomed borders of bones.
Inhale
aromatic fragrant dead shades.
This
city a garden of the fresh gone.
Snipers
make spaces for new shoots to grow.
Refugees
tell the way it carried on.
Their
stories keep their children in the know.
They
rename their city atrocity.
Actual
help ls needed, not pity.
I Sup Fathoms
of
poppies from a hotel tea cup roll
away
the stones from the graves, find clothes
they
were buried in. Drink the whole
flowers
to ease the loss and recompose
what
is lost. Reach for the stars, her upbeat
song
played at her funeral, takes me back
to
her cremation, her ashes in heat
tea
leaves so I sup her brew bring her back.
Asbestos
thread cough killed my dad. Ashes
I
must broadcast over Lake District tracks.
Cancer
took mam, old age nan, all mashes
tea
leaves so I sup their brew bring them back.
Grief
is a conflict over flight or fight.
Can't
resurrect not dead with drugged delight.
Paul
Brookes is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play
performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull. His chapbooks include The Fabulous
Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). A World Where and She
Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS,
2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder (
Afterworld Books, 2019). He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and
Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews, book reviews and challenges. Had work
broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and, videos of his Self Isolation sonnet
sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does
photography commissions. Most recent is a poetry collaboration with artworker
Jane Cornwell: "Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing",
(JCStudio Press, 2021)
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