Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Contactless / Miradas-19

A pamphlet containing five of my poems from the first Covid-19 UK lockdown has been published in the ‘Unmasked Writings’ series by Egg Box Publishing of Norwich.

The experiences of those days seem quite distant now. Having WordPress and you, its lovely online readers and writers, was a central part of the experience and crucial to me being able to maintain perspective. The poems in the collection are hereby dedicated to each of you who has ever read, liked, or commented on my posts. Thank you for being out there.

Alongside a prose poem by André P Hughes, the five poems I wrote in this short collection, appear with beautiful Spanish translations by Aida López Milán. If you would like a copy, please order from Egg Box Publishing:

https://www.eggboxpublishing.com/product-page/unmasked-writings-5-contactless

The publisher is a non-profit organisation linked to the University of East Anglia, all proceeds go into publishing new writers’ work…but not to the writers.

CLP. 23/06/2022

on Ukraine iii

Pennines overlook
darts refining their dark arts
muscles flex, nerves twitch

~

n.b. As we move around in our masks, military aircraft just above our heads operate on stand-by. Out of Plan B into Wing Attack Plan R?

~

CLP 21/01/2022

on time

we would jump on board
be in Paris in three hours
just catch memories

~

n.b. Time was when the passing Eurostar was a symbol of freedom, opportunity and hope. Now it is simply a relic of days when Europe was a place we shared with our Continental cousins, a symbol of loss.

CLP 30/1/2021

on Friday night

with dance macabre
we laugh at the masque of death
play Russian roulette

~

n.b. What on Earth is going on?

CLP 23/10/2021

Ghost

Aegean blue
or is it green
clear to the seabed
shadow so sharp
it cut me out
cast me in stone
anchored me
and here I am still
waiting for you
to dive in too

~

CLP 29/08/2021

The Worm and the Louse

Worm said that Louse had behaved in a way that Worm considered to be ‘mad and totally unethical’ and warned that Worm was prepared to give evidence under oath to an inquiry.

“It is sad to see the Louse and his office fall so far below the standards of competence and integrity that this ship of fools deserves.” Worm wrote.

Such a damning intervention by the Worm who was Louse’s key ally and source of ideological inspiration will deeply alarm the Louse and his lice. Worm is due to give his evidence to the Gammons next month.

~

n.b. Adapted from the top story in The Guardian newspaper of Saturday, 24th April, 2021; “Mad and totally unethical” Cummings hits out at Boris Johnson.”

NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Twenty Four prompt; word change animals featured in news article, or words to that effect.

It was supposed to be a fun prompt, but there is absolutely nothing amusing about having The Great Clown running anything more complicated than a train set – if that.

~

CLP 24/04/2021

Not Venice (Yet)

Let us not pretend

virus is only problem

time to regrow fins

~

CLP 07/04/2021

On The Surface

.

Down by the quayside

where fishermen know to sit

young seal making hay

~

n.b. I had heard of this young pup’s arrival a week ago and today I saw it surface a few times. Despite the snow in the wind, a woman had taken her coat off to sit on it on the grass embankment and watch the seal diving. It is remarkable how long these creatures can sustain a dive while fishing. It would then pop up its head and have a look around while recharging its lungs. Goodness knows what it finds underwater here, possibly the hire bikes from the city’s first less than secure public cycle scheme of a few years back.

There have been precious few boats on The Broads for over a year and so the river has become a safe navigation for this seal and who knows how many others. It must have found somewhere to rest up too, seals like lolling around on a beach or mudflat for long periods between diving for fish.

Things will change soon, as holidays within the UK become the thing for a while, so these waters will become quite busy, then where will this seal go? Similarly, I wonder how the otters further upstream, even closer to the city centre, will fare.

Can I come in? It’s not safe out there

…it never has been, I thought

I read the news, have seen the stats

hear the doppler rise and fall of sirens

bouncing off the city walls insistent

on untrammelled passage

scrambling wits of locked in drivers

blocked in lanes unsure quite where

the blue lights approach from

or head toward, what they are

and who they’re for

.

May I? For a moment, until it clears.

Could it ever, I wondered after

weeks, months, years have passed?

Some still remember how it felt

to bump accidentally into friends

or brew a fight with a stranger

or catch the light in a smile

(while sharing a smoke at the cool side-door)

agreeing to something a little more intimate

~

n.b. NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 6 Prompt, take a line from a story as a prompt, then write the poem, then

“Actually, one of them was supposed to come today, but because of the commotion going on out there they sent me instead.” 

From Samsa in Love by Haruki Murakami first published in The New Yorker, republished in Desire Vintage Classics / Penguin Random House (London, 2017).

~

CLP 06/04/2021

NaPoWriMo

At the Exit

Clocks have changed to British Summer Time. The Sun has come out. A strong southerly wind brings warmth to Norfolk.

People are out and about, the sound of children playing in the local park competes with goldfinches, blackbirds, chaffinches and the blue and great tits. An otter has been seen in the Wensum nearby and a large seal has come up river from the sea to nose around the old wharfside.

Daffodils, primroses jostle for attention, bluebells are preparing to make an entrance.

A day to savour. Not the end of Lockdown 3, but a step towards another way of living.

~

n.b. And I have just seen two bats spinning by my windows.

~

CLP 29/03/2021