Water Under The Bridge - Lyndon Queripel

It’s all water under the bridge
And clouds across the sky
Where time just seems to fly

It’s all water under the bridge
Just listen for a sigh
As dreams begin to die

It’s all water under the bridge
There’s no point to deny
The years have passed you by

It’s all water under the bridge
There’s a shadow in your eye
With no tears left to dry

It’s all water under the bridge
Of a river running dry
While winds just whisper why.

Lyndon Queripel


Image : Pixabay - fietzfotos

Images - Richard Fleming

This is a tree, he said and pointed to a tree.
We have seen images, they said.
There are many trees, he said. This tree is cedar.
We have seen images, they said.

Here is a flower, he said and pointed to a flower.
We have seen images, they said.
There are various flowers, he said. This is a rose.
We have seen images, they said.

This is a cat, he said. See it moves. Watch it stretch.
Just like the images, they said.
This is a dog, he said. Watch as it wags its tail.
Images are better, they said.

That is the sky. Those small birds are swallows, he said.
We have seen images, they said.
Over there are blue mountains and a lake, he said.
Can we go back inside? they said.

Richard Fleming


Image : Pixabay - JESHOOTS-com

Mound - Donald Keyman

They built that mound in London Town
For the traffic to drive around
Resembling a power station made of peat
It’s at the end of Oxford Street
This carbuncle covered in wizened crops
Is supposed to lure you back to the shops
It looks such a sickly threadbare hill
It’s as if the gardeners lost the will
To make it look like the rolling dales
They settled for a slag heap from south Wales
It’s supposed to be a piece of statement art
To warm the Nation’s jaded heart
Instead we look and ask each other this:
“Is it Banksy taking the piss?”

Donald Keyman

Image : splashnews/Daily Mail

Bee-hind - Tony Gardner

Is there anything lovelier under the sun
Than the wonderful sight of a BumbleBee's Bum ?
Though they can be white or yellow or red
They're a vision of splendour it has to be said
It makes me smile every time that I see
A BumbleBee flashing his backside at me.

Tony Gardner

Image : Pixabay - ekamelev

Post-Lockdown Scenes From A Guernsey Beer Garden - J. Archer Avary

We’re back at the pub
at a table in the sun
drinking to welcome
the end of the lockdown
                          socially distanced
                          as per restrictions
                          examining faces from
                          two metres away
Over at the next table
with his back to us
a punk in a Kangol hat
sips on his Breda with
                          the aplomb of a man
                          who can pull off a thick
                          gauge double earring
                          worn without irony
Over in the corner
a Boddington’s drinker
in builder’s knee-pads and
paint-splattered trousers
                          he nurses his golden pint
                          props it up on his belly
                          like a man who doesn’t
                          want the moment to end
The atmosphere is merry
like the X-mas decorations
no one bothered to take down
when spring transformed
                          the island into a paradise
                          for flies and bees that
                          circle the table sometimes
                          landing in the beer foam

J. Archer Avary

There’s A World Outside - Lyndon Queripel

Flash through my window
Sunlight slipstream
Drivers swearing
While tyres scream
Red stop bus queues
All running late
Old man walking
He won’t wait
Young girl with sad eyes
Baby on her arm
Life seemed so calm
Back on the farm
Why won’t she turn away
From all this madness
She thought her kiss
Would mean success

There’s a world outside
Of the dreams you store
Take steps, don’t hide
You could lose much more

Now the day is dying
And the night is bare
City lights don’t shine
They can only glare
Freedom is counted
Between nines and fives
Punch card wrist job
And time table lives
So buy your ticket
And ride your rail
Letter your tall stories
Where all diaries fail
Why don’t you turn away
From all this madness
Before you change
More than your address

There’s a world outside
Of your four walled door
Have you joined the slide
Leading to the floor

Park bench prophets
With embankment shrines
Dark dustbin treasures
And cardboard goldmines
Down in subway hotels
Beneath concrete streets
Cold pillows of wind
And old newspaper sheets
But in centre circle
There’s a missing link
A face in space
It’s me I think
Why don’t I turn away
From all this madness
I’m just the same
As all the rest I guess.

Lyndon Queripel

No Strings - Diane Scantlebury

Without strings
Bows will fire no arrows,
Without strings
A guitar makes no sound,
Without thoughts
A mind can’t trip over,
If wisdom’s pearls
Cascade to the ground,
Without strings
A puppet has no animation,
Without life
A body is just a pile of limbs,
Where there’s no loving spark
To pull on the heart’s strings,
Or inflate the lungs of the soul within.

Diane Scantlebury

May the Devil not notice you sneak into Heaven - Tony Bradley

Life is like the finest of wines
it's really fermented, only, when ready
each one individually has it's own 'best years'
unless the decanting's steady, it could 'heady.'

All the young fruit begin their milling
some are lost, in the distilling, some spilling
but if one is willing, it really is thrilling
the whole act becomes quite the top of the billing.

Tony Bradley

A Mother’s Hips - Trudie Shannon

Small children
Have legs, that
By right, embrace
A woman’s hips.
Women, by right
Have hips
That are
Safe places
For small children.

Trudie Shannon

Who Cares? - Diane Scantlebury

You can always tell
The crazy ones,
They have an air
A vacant stare,
They drift along,
Without a care,

You can always spot
The cocky ones,
They jog along
Their shirts undone,
They have an air,
They don’t care,

You’ll always know
The happy ones,
They always smile
Stop to chat for a while,
They have an air,
Because they care.

Diane Scantlebury

New Neighbour - Trudie Shannon

You are stranger to me than stranger alone.
Stranger because my image of you
Was conjured from disparate sounds
That emanate from the walls that stand between us.

Footsteps, a cough.
Water running, door slamming.
A muffled voice.
A squeaking tap.
The swish of a hand through water.
Creaking floorboards.
Humming.
Early morning baths.
Foot shuffle.
Singing.

All came together to paint my portrait of you.

Female, thirty something, neat and tidy.

But today as I drank tea beside my window
I happened to see your shaded form through the hedge
That separates our gardens,
Saw you, as you left your house,
Slamming the door shut behind you.
And I saw the distinct figure
Of a young man in a hoodie,
Shoulders hunched, hands pocketed!

From a series of disparate sounds
That emanate from the walls that stand between us.
I have made a stranger,
Stranger than merely stranger alone.

Trudie Shannon

Baby Boomers Are Aging - Kathy Figueroa

Baby boomers are aging
Sometimes, dementia takes hold
It isn’t a pleasant thing
But happens as folks get old

Personalities might change
This can cause consternation
When someone starts acting strange
It’s a bad situation

What is a person to do
When a friend becomes bonky?
Relationships get ruined
When things go weird and wonky

What if they behave in ways
Both hurtful and offensive?
It seems pointless - of no use
To even get defensive

You can’t suggest to someone
That they go and take a pill
If they’ve “gone off the deep end”
But, yet, you care for them, still

If they become deceitful
And deny the things they’ve done
What are you supposed to do
When you can’t just turn and run?

It’s a terrible disease
One that seems devoid of hope
So, until a cure is found
We’ll pray for the strength to cope

Kathy Figueroa

Baby Boomers Are Aging was published in the February 23, 2017 issue of The Bancroft Times newspaper.

World Watching - Diane Scantlebury

Watching the world pass by my window
Some march fast,
Some walk very slow,
Up and down the challenging incline
To reach the places they need to go,

Some pause briefly in the doorway
To catch their breath,
Or to have a smoke,
Some faces sad, others expressionless,
Some laughing at an unheard joke,

Through the frosted one way glass
Upon their lives I can surreptitiously spy,
Captured in full colour,
For a fleeting moment,
The to and fro world that passes me by.

Diane Scantlebury

Labourers - Trudie Shannon

The church is beset by scaffolding.
A spider web of Metallica.
Inside the welcome porch,
The labourers stand to, folded neatly
In their cement spattered jeans and steel-capped boots,
Drinking tea from battered flasks.
Inside the God space, there is an air of neglect,
Of eternal waiting.
The swear words from the portico rush past
The stations of the cross,
Dust motes multiplying in their wake,
Cruising past sainted images
With the soft, eradicable ease of light.
From his vantage point, high upon the crucifix,
Jesus hangs about, wondering
If any the lads might stand him
A mouthful of water.

Trudie Shannon

People - Trudie Shannon

They sit in the café,
Just the few
Who have weathered the weather,
The wet and the cold,
Who have donned waterproof clothing, coats, hats
And carried umbrellas.
Now, in reward, sit warm, in the café
Drinking warm drinks, warming cold hands.

Not too faraway
Others have fled bombs and guns
Crossing into foreign lands and then braving the sea,
Huddled miserably in leaking boats
Waves washing over them.
Cold, wet, worn with fear and exhaustion
Finally they reach land, but not salvation.
The wind blows icy and the sleet
Cuts into fragile, exposed skin.
Babies cry, children are stilled into abject silence.
They fall to the ground in open fields
And sleep the sleep of near death
Shelterless.

In the café people bemoan the inconvenience
Of the drizzling rain.
Such a difficult life.

Trudie Shannon

How Peculiar - Julian Clarke

"Oh! I don’t like that,
It’s not my cup of tea."
How odd some quotes can be
Now let's put the kettle on,
For a nice cup of tea.

Julian Clarke

Who's Got The Blues? - Lyndon Queripel

Yawning, I woke up this morning
And got out the wrong side of bed
I knew it the very minute
That I hit the wall with my head.

Lyndon Queripel

Our World - James Willis

Today's poem is a "Golden Oldie" and was originally published here in August 2012

Living in between the rays of light strung from the windows of idleness, painted with the colours of your own loving taste.

Where is there an end where there is no beginning? How can you talk when your words just revolve in the circle of an unchartered sea of letters?
When can you explain it?
When can all souls see it and believe that it is you and that it is for the taking.

I want to carry away this thing and yet I cannot lift it from the ground where heroes stood. I am fought back with spears of forgotten wars and the basis of the constitution.

And yet we have wandered in leafy glades past towering love mansions where all noise is wondrous, sounds are voices of peace and loving, where nothingness grows, where friends live in yellow madness, where people are manufacturing the cloth of gladness, where the sovereign is in the trench and the common labourer sits on the throne and shoeless children carve their names on its legs and the elders come to paint pretty designs around those monuments of singular, named existence.

You and I, safe in our own shell of hardest resistance. Love is protecting us from the snatching steel claws of the world around us. The temptation wolves are baring their bus-ticket teeth, the salesmen are opening their treasure troves, promising us heaven and they only have hell. The policemen are wielding their insulated guns but the bullets bounce off our aura of morale. The tarmacadam shines of fresh steam-rollers where the rates have been and gone…..and the shell remains intact.

Where are we going? Where are the others? Where can we find the wanted, needed, required type of idol?
Where is the thing we are looking for? Show us the way…. The simple, easy going, free and easy, carefree life where idleness is the barricade against the prickles of the thorn bush world outside.
Porcupine of politics and magnetic, adhesive existence of deceit, hate, privacy invasion, sacrilegious, nosy, quarrelling, crushing, cheating, doublecrossing, conniving population of the world we left behind.

James Willis

Gravitational Pull - Lyndon Queripel

Life makes less sense every day
Just unfulfilling your destiny
The only thing that makes you stay
Is the law of gravity.

Lyndon Queripel

A Golden Coloured Ring - Trudie Shannon

I wonder, as I sit adrift of you
On this somewhat rattling bus,
Empty, save for you and me.
Who gave you the ring
That sits , marooned upon your gnarled, arthritic finger?
It is not the golden band of wedlock
But sits locked between your swollen joints, still bright.
From where I sit, adrift of you
I make out the tired line of inscription or design
Unreadable to either of us, it is so faint.

In my mind, I believe 'she' gave it to you
Not wife, nor mother or sister
But she, who gave her love to you
When love was swift to blossom and as swift to fade.
When pocket money saved could purchase
A golden coloured ring, insignificant, without value
Save for the initials she scratched upon its surface.

As you stand to leave the moving bus
You grab the post and the gold coloured metal ring
Clinks agains its surface.
And as the the bus draws to a halt
You shuffle to the door
The ring weightless upon your gnarled arthritic finger.
You descend clueless to my pondering,
And I remain seated, wondering
What her name was.

Trudie Shannon