Absent Love - Kate Gallienne

I was born from you
But you’d never know
For you love for me
Did never show

The last on your list of priorities
I often prayed upon my knees
That one day you’d suddenly see
Your daughter, your child, little me

Wrapped in a world of deceit and lies
You turned your back as I cried inside
Your mind distracted and away from home
Forgetting me, leaving me all alone

My life is a winter, so bleak and dark
With scars etched deep across my heart
Thoughts of you, surely bring me down
I cannot smile with this heavy frown

Time will heal or so they say
But I live this pain day after day
Like a jigsaw piece I’m all amiss
And I cannot recall one single kiss

So don’t be alarmed when I scream in your face
For the rage within me is hard to displace
You say you love me but it cannot be so
For your love for me never did show.

Kate Gallienne

Deadwood - Donald Keyman

It's time to cut out the deadwood
and pile it in the yard
in front of the polling station
it needn't be too hard

yes, it's time to clear the alley
of supine bowling pins
a spring-clean after a winter
that's lasted four long years

so let's get out the new broom
let's get out the axe
yes, it's time to spill some old blood
it's time to cut out the deadwood

Donald Keyman

Modern Poets - Bryony de Lat

I wish to declare my long-held disquiet
regarding the inaccurate image of modern poetry
presented by media, schools and the like
where the poet's a recluse, strange and solitary.

'Au contraire!' in my experience, (quite varied,very long)
yes they step back, but only to digest, philosophize,
by their very nature, folk easily become friends, and more
they hear everyone's woes, an ear kind and wise.

Bryony de Lat

World of Sadness - Diane Scantlebury

Yesterday I saw you,
A shadow walking,
Wearing your sorrow
Like a too heavy coat,
Your face was pale
And the sparkle had been
Extinguished,
From your once bright eyes,
Now dull, opaque opals
Stared back at me,
Where there used to be
Fiery diamonds,
You were drifting along
All the fight inside gone,
I wanted to hug and console you,
Reassure you that life
Would trundle on regardless,
But I knew this was not the time,
You were locked in your lonely
World of sadness,
And probably wouldn’t listen anyway.

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