FATE'S LOTTERY

FATE’S LOTTERY

Fate’s lottery

Rolls the dice

Picks you out

Sometimes twice

Gambling gods

Grant your wish

Give you hope

Lavish gifts

Finger points

Illness strikes

Or one loose nut

On a motorbike

Random acts

Pick you out

Life’s bad luck

Spits you out

Fate’s lottery

Deals its cards

Picks you out

’Cos life is hard

Bets are off

Violent acts

Turn a corner -

Psychopath

Number’s up

With no way out

Just my luck

Met that lout

One wrong turn

One bad day

Evil acts

A price you pay

Fate’s lottery

Spins the wheel

Picks you out

With no appeal

MAWH, March 2017

RING OF STEEL

RING OF STEEL

A spring breeze blows along the silvery Thames

Afternoon’s calm pure and clear

Torn by brutal mechanical detachment

Peace to war in one cold blink

Of an uncaring staring foe

Taking everything they have

Everything they might have been

With mindless violence

Your choices are made

The options are gone

For those who have no tomorrow

For those who have no tomorrow

A chill wind blows along the silvery Thames

Piercing the solid ring of steel

With the madness of mechanized mayhem

Shattering the heart of such freedoms

We once thought so precious

Ripping the souls from the bridge

Combining steel and flesh

In bloody conflict

Your choices are made

Their choices you took

You woke up and decided to kill

You woke up and decided to die

An icy chill freezes the silvery Thames

For those who must still stand and stare

The heart of a nation clamped inside a fist

Still pumps furious but hopeful

Tempering our nations temper

Made hopeless by frustration

Streets we will tread more carefully

With righteous anger

Your choices are gone

Such choices we make

For we may not have tomorrow

For we may not have tomorrow

Martin A W Holmes, March 23 2017

PERFORMANCE POETRY

PERFORMANCE POETRY

I’m not very good

At this sort of thing –

I suffer from what

The impatient might call

“Crippling shyness”

So standing up

In front of people -

An ‘audience’ if you prefer

Isn’t really

My sort of ‘thing’

The problem with writing

Performance poetry

Is that eventually

Someone might ask you

To actually perform it

And… unfortunately

You can’t really expect

Someone else to

Do it for you

Can you…?

Unless that is

You happen to write

A play in verse

But we’ll come to that -

Later on

So for now - here’s a poem

Steeped in the frustrations

Of spending time writing

Performance pieces

That will never be performed

Martin A W Holmes, March 2017

GREYBEARD

GREYBEARD

Unshaven

I’m asked

If I have toothpaste

On my chin

What’s that

dazzling flash of white?

Unforgiving

Hints of

The grey beard

Of great age

Are revealed

In unflattering light

Martin A W Holmes, March 2017

POETRY ROBOT

POETRY ROBOT

O poetry robot

O robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

Retweets are not an endorsement

Of quality, or approval

The poetry robot sees a word

Via algorithmical perusal

O poetry robot

O robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

So are the poems any good?

Are such words worthy of your time?

Will publishers come flocking to my door

Or am I still committing poetic crime?

O poetry robot

O robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

Am I in my creative prime?

X

X

But does that make it Art?

O poetry robot

O robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

I'm seriously considering

Offering my collection up

For the Paula Nancy

Millstone Jennings award

O poetry robot

O robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

X

XBut… (and I ask this most sincerely folks)

Can I claim it’s Art?

So poetry robot

So robot of poetry

I wonder each and ev’ry time

Why do you retweet me?

HOUSE OF WORDS

HOUSE OF WORDS

I built a house of words

Spoken by all those actors

On all of those shiny discs

Or written by minds

Far cleverer than mine

Some of which I have even read

Many of which I still hope to

I built a house of words

Shelves bursting to the seams

With books and magazines

So many piles more

Scattered around the floor

Some of which I have skimmed through

Many of which I may still do

I built a house of words

A collection of many thoughts

Much forgotten; so many unread

But still they sit there

Piled next to my bed

Built on a misguided foundation

One day there’d be space for all

I built a house of words

Each trimmed doorstep another brick

Now it feels as if these blockbusters

Are the only structure left

To hold up crumbling walls

Decorated with a strange compulsion

That one soul could collect them all

I built my house of words

Hard-earned investments for the mind

The knowledge hungry can’t eat those words

And they will not

Keep the rain off

In some danker, drizzled times when

Too many rainy days might come

Martin A W Holmes, March 2017