On throwing away an old copy of LOTR - blank verse

One volume, binding all in paperback,

with spine of crisp and yellowed cellotape, 

Its corners bent and nibbled down by age

Dog eared as a faithful hound past fights

Redundant on those overloaded shelves,

Replaced by illustrated, brighter tome

Too old, to tattered e'en to give away, 

I turn it over in my hand and see, 

One pound and pennies for five hundred sheaves, 

A price that tells a story of its own,

Of dreams and half a life- time spent

In lands whose air I’ll never breathe.

Then Aragorn strides out one final time,

Lost chapters shift and flutter to the floor, 

Bound for darkness; a fellowship’s doom, 

Or beyond Grey Havens never to return.

LOTR stuff to throw away

On throwing away an old copy of “The Lord of the Rings.”

One Volume, paperback
with spine of yellowed sellotape
Corners folded into cabbage leaves
Not dog-ears unless in some dreadful fight
Too tattered for the Shops
Of Charity to take and sell
Redundant on new overstocked shelves
Replaced by illustrated, Alan Lee’s.

I turn it over in my hand and see
The price that tells a story of its own
Pence and shillings for a thousand
Pages of delights and daydreams.
For half a lifetime lost in lands
Whose air I’ll never breathe.

Appendices shift and flutter to the floor
Aragorn strides out for the final time
Into the black pit and the fellowship’s
Doom without return.

Horror Box

Rambly free verse unedited as yet

The horror box


I put my hand into the narrow
Circle of the hole
Grabbed by the writhing tentacles
of a demented squid
my arm is flayed in a frenzy of suckered hooks
My fingers crack between the jaws
Of the dull scissored beak
Crushed and severed digits fall
From one hand to the other
A hapless juggler in a circus of distress.

I put my nose up to the puckered hole
Slaughterhouse smells of blood, shit and rot
Marsh gas from intestinal swamps
Mingles with the lurking underwaft of
Stale piss, rotting nylon and sickly
Sweet pine of cheap air-freshener.
Olfactory meltdown,mucus streams
The sense of smell is replaced by
A dull ache and a caught breath

Involuntary reluctantly I taste the thing
Chitinous crawling creatures leave acid trails
Across my tongue the ripples of filth
wash Rancid milk and Bilious meat
a sandwich of mouldy bread
stuffed with the gag of fur and taint of metal.

Holding it before me it shrieks
A writhing mass of venomous metal
with scrabbling legs and glutinous slime
It stabs and slashes its way free
Repulsed and plunging to the floor
It skitters to the corner
A stain spreading in the gloom
Tendrils worming to the wardrobe
Poisons seep into my pores becoming part of me
Its remnants multiply within. Dividing,
Subdividing in a honeycomb
Of cryptic chaos and
Putrid birthing cells
Today’s shame is
Tomorrow’s horror.

Flying to Drumore

It was a beast of a thing
my Dad's old car.
All wheels and engine
but small inside.
A tardis in reverse
with red brown leather seats
that stank of woodless pine and sweaty knees.

When we left the Little Chef
a rumble turned into a roar.
Flying to Drumore one hump at a time
in the goony bird express.
Seven hills, passing on single tracks
A last bridge seen too late
and flight both longer and less graceful
than the rest

The bubbling spring of coke welled up within
Spewing out geyser streams as I yelled stop!
My Father's Brylcreamed hair slicked back
and suddenly immersed
in the former contents of my sugar loaded mouth.






-------------------------
almost a true story,
I missed his head.

The Electric Boy - A Terza Rima

The electric boy twitched and danced,
His sister, frightened, stared in silence .
Fire and lightning round his body, lanced.

His teeth, clacking in a morbid cadence,
Limbs flailing like a fiery mill.
The boy a burning dervish out of balance.

Powered down, the street, and houses, still.
Screams pounding at the air in waves
He lies, rigid, beyond slats of steel until,

The girl batting at him with a stave,
Blackened by energy, washed by flames,
Helpless, tries to pull him from the grave

Mother's running, crying, shrieking, James.
Past the sign, marked on it , "No Ball Games".


Its funny how childhood memories seem to come back once you start this creative writing lark. The poem is based on an incident that I was told about as a child, at length, by my parents. A boy who lived in our street (but whom I didn't know personally as he was a bit younger) climbed over the rails of the electricity sub-station his older sister was there too and tried to pull him away from the machinery with a bit of fencing. He was, according to my Father, burned to a crisp. I used to walk past that generator on the way to my Aunts and the hum of the wires was a very eerie sound . Needless to say I gave it a wide berth. I still have an image, which I didn't manage to work into the poem, of a black and white plastic ball, melted half to slag on top of one of the machines. I think they left it there as a warning.