Tag Archives: Life

GUEST POST // Ghost Letter 53 by Mark Renney

I have managed to abandon the City yet again but there it is; the point that rankles, a sharp needle stuck in my side as I walk, the fact that I have done this before, that I am doing it again.

I rarely think about my former existence, but I remember now how my past life had also been filled with repetition. But the rituals then had been more intimate and my connection with the places I frequented much more deeply ingrained and that these places had been rife with memories.

I wonder, is this what I am running from, am I trying to forget, to not feel this deeper connection. Drawing to a halt, I turn away from the busy road and, gazing out across the open fields, I realise that, if so, then I have failed.

by MARK RENNEY
© All rights reserved 2020

expiration date (copeland can’t cope)

the oncologist called
said the tumour was benign
i returned to my laptop
an open tab beckoned me to proceed
looks like i’ll be transitioning
from mortal fear back to dull career then
but, damn, even if the tumour’s benign
why should i continue this drawn out
malignant metastasizing existence?
so i click ‘yes’ and proceed
to my merciful mail order death
by stoning and virus coroning
they ask for the expiry date and cvv
i type six six six and laugh

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2021

regret

heed the silence that follows
truer than any promise made
the sound and fury of a hidden life
you cannot dream this into submission

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

saoirse

at the beginning of time there was a girl
in a melamine bowl
she had no family, no friends
and was on the dole
she was sat there in a corn flake swirl
a milky, sugared doll
her belongings were mere odds and ends
oh, what a poor little soul!

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

at noonday’s predoom was a woman cold
in a gumball machine
for the merriment of boozers
in a stinky shebeen
she would shiver nude and candy bold
a pert and tart cuisine
a laughing stock even for losers
oh, buy her a tall glass of poteen!

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

at the end of all things there was a crone
in a bottle discarded
fighting her battles all over again
in weakness, unguarded
she inhaled a black wind through her bones
and all she’d once regarded
her last sigh was for the land of cockaigne
where life is ample tabled and lardered

her name was saoirse
though people hardly remembered
yearning between dearth and plenty
buried under stone in the garden of rasure

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

GUEST POST // A Birthday Poem by B K Rollason

There comes a time
for taking stock
of what one’s had
and what one’s got,

of where one’s going
and where one’s been,
of what one’s heard
and what one’s seen.

You know the games,
you’ve learnt the rules,
you can tell the wisemen
from the fools,

you’ve learned that all’s
not as it seems,
that life is both
reality and dreams,

and like the tides
that ebb and flow,
life’s sometimes fast
and oft’ times slow.

To survive the storm
a tree must bend,
and a new day starts
where this one ends.

by B K ROLLASON
© All rights reserved 1982