Life with the sun in it –
Shaded by gloom!
Life with the fun in it –
Shadowed by Doom!
Life with its Love ever haunted by Hate!
Life’s laughing morrows frowned over by Fate!
Young Life’s wild gladness still waylaid by Age!
All its sweet badness still mocking the sage!
What can e’er measure the joy of its strife?
What boundless leisure
Count the heaped treasure
Of woe, that’s the pleasure
And beauty of Life?
by THOMAS RUNCIMAN (1841 – 1909)
Public Domain Poetry
ice cube, shop tin roof
mourning’s inevitable
with dawn’s bastard sun
by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2025
you walk over there
track breadcrumbs for your peace of mind
you walk over here
but that black dog follows behind
it’s fine, it’s fine
you have no need of tears
maybe skol more wine
let these last hours pine
away in another empty bind
you walk over here
are you out of your mind
you walk over there
the black dog follows you blind
also the dreams find you
unbidden, undoable
so you roll them up, dear boy
tuck them under your skin
follow your bottles back to bed
you stagger nowhere
in the corridors of the mind
& the black dog is there
you’re so goddam happy
you could vomit the sun
by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024
Thawed kernels popping toward the sun.
by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2022
sassafras closed her eyes
and felt the sun
it was warm and comforting
the sky was a blanket of blue
the ground a carpet of green
her eyes blinked
rays of colour from the meadow
streamed into her brain
she let herself feel
see, smell and taste
the world around her
for too long she saw anguish
smelt blood and tasted ash
it was time to come alive again
let colour seep into the black
and fill in between the lines
by CASSY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2022
unbolt me 