Haiku #27

When the water flows
Carving gorges into rock
Think of every drop.

Haiku #26

Multiple stories
Silently learning their lines
Car park paragraphs.

Haiku #25

Sew a circled Sun
Darn twelve Moons that wax and wane
Stitch your tapestry.

Hidden Treasure

The bags under my eyes
Are packed for a journey
I've already taken.

They appear still to shine
But the artist has played
With a watery hue.

Grey spots the horizon
Across Autumnal downs
Of changing scenery.

My old thoughts hibernate
In the forgotten caves
Off their well-trodden path.

Many versions of me
Sit masked inside their lair.
Highwaymen of fortune.

I stand and deliver,
Give up some hidden hoard
And count the coins of fate.

What use this veiled trove
If on some winters eve
It cannot shine again?

Haiku #24

Frost finds feint canvass
Brush works amid cars and grass
Galleries of white.

Ripping Yarns - 10am 2018

In one hours time,
One hundred years ago,
The guns stumbled silent.
Time scratched its head at my question.

This would take some thought.

Rivers flow but one direction,
Branches grow but from the tree.
So why stop here and now for me?

I see my grandparents,
Long passed from my view,
Play in wild excitement
As children always do.

I see my great-grandfather,
Dead before I gasped my first,
Inhale victories of grateful breath
Through shell-corrupted lungs.

I see my great-grandmother,
Grateful for what had returned,
Weep privately with his wounds
And softly gasp for what he'd left behind.

I see my great great uncle.
The greatest of them all.
Laying buried and silent.
He echoes then. He echoes now.

Time scratched its head,
This would take some thought.
Who'd dammed its river
And changed its course?

Who pruned the branches
Back to the tree?
Who shrunk a century
Just for me?

Time scratched its head
This would take some thought.
The dead, the living,
The lives they fought.

Smoke and fireworks,
Smoke and battles,
Mixed up Time
But still death-rattles.

I see the whole century
Spread out for me,
Ripping yarns from coat-tails,
Which I should not see.

Time scratched its head
This would take some thought.

Time finally answered my question in no time at all.
I nodded.
I understood.
He hadn't stopped for only me
He'd stopped a nation for Memory.

Haiku #23

The dawn waits off-stage
Made-up it clings to the wings
Word-perfect wake-ups.

Remember! Remember!

Remember! Remember!
The sixth of November,
One day after the fun.

Spent fireworks display
In dark alleyways,
Shells of themselves to no one.

Sparkles lay sparkled
And bangers have banged,
Catherine's Wheel looks like it's beaten and hanged.

Candles from Romans,
What've they given us?
A short burst of flame,
Centurion dust.

Rockets and bottles
Once intimate friends,
Still live in the same street
But opposite ends.

Cold cooked potatoes
Stand deep in white ash,
Replanted in earth,
Unpicked for this bash.

The echoes have faded
There's no one to shout,
Whilst smouldering embers
Just pucker and pout.

The darkness returns
To the night as it will,
And even stray bangers
Lack yesterday's thrill.

Smoke lingers in noses
Not wanting to leave,
The very last mourner
Alone and bereaved.

Remember! Remember!
The sixth of November.
One day after the fun.