Friend's Friend's Friend

(Try this at home. Use a FB friend, click on one of their friends who's unknown to you
and take a line from their page. Repeat 10 times and then arrange into a poem). 

Doesn't get much cuter than 3 Hawaiian mermaids
what a gig that must have been!
so many people are going live
I thought I'd do my version.
You crack me up Kathy
only you would see and say something like that
no encouragement needed.
I'm in the Alfred once again,
oh too far for us, would have loved to see you
it's very quiet here in Marsworth!

© Graham Sherwood 12/2016

Organic

(Wintry garden observations)

Spade cracks heavy blue grey clay
each piercing quake
a baleful squealing squelch,
life force evacuated
cleaved, lifted, turned over bare
a submissive corpse,
the plot sports a cadaverous battlefield
anointed with my sweat.

Remorseless
resurrection now begins
with horseshit salve
a potent potion
the victor’s gift
for ease of future skirmishes
and the chance of roses.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2016

Nether Muse

(More insomnia).

Ebbing from safe anchorage,
willingly as if hypnotised
I enter the soporific darkness
in search of words containing light.

As the Angelus suffocates behind me
and an invisible contagion
of night daemons quietly close ranks,
here I am plagued by music
from the deafening silence.

My pupils dilate to saucers
desperate for sanctuary,
from this deprived inebriation.

Then an unlikely fissure,
a needle’s eye, of
brilliant black light,
a polished ebony altar
bearing my words.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2016

Cohen Haiku

poet leaves his stage
soft words still ring in our ears
cry hallelujah.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2016

Haiku-ween

All Hallows Eve ends
old bones return to the grave
skeleton keys lost


© Graham Sherwood 11/16

Struck

(In memory of the late PC Martin Fletcher)

What am I bloody well doing here?

Bussed up

all the way from Northamptonshire,

we’re knackered before we start,

the overtime will be handy mind

with our Ben off to college.

Keeping the peace in a sodding field,

bleeding daft.

I’ve never seen so many police horses,

stay out of their way, big buggers.

Here we go, it’s kicking off,

it’s funny really,

we were only chatting to these blokes

half an hour ago,

they’d come nearly as far as us

now its fisticuffs!

© Graham Sherwood 11/16

Koan on a Snowflake

Where is the single snowflake

that fell to earth in a storm,

one wondrous moment

in the palm of my hand,

before melting into oblivion?

What purpose did it serve

or message did it bear,

where is the snowflake now?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2016