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Anne Davies Oct 2014
Golden sand tickling your toes
Pebbles gleaming, glistening, slushing
When the tide comes  back  to shore.
Sand dunes hiding wildlife,
Multitudes of migratory birds,
Safely returning every year to
This beautiful, marshy paradise.
Skies so orange, pink and red,
An artists palette of natural art
Greet you at sunrise and sunset.
*****, kippers, cod and plaice
Shrimps, cockles and whelks,
Mushy, minty peas and chips,
The show at the end of the pier.
The lifeboats and their hardy crew
Risking their lives to save others,
When visitors run into trouble
At the mercy of the cold North Sea.
Crumbling coastlines, cliff walks
And nature reserves full of the
Scent of wild garlic and herbs,
Norfolk lavender. Steam engines,
Fishing boats, river boats,
Paddling boats and cycles
Take you on journeys
Around the Broads or
Past the famous Castles.
Tigers and leopards peer
Through the bars of their
Zoo homes by the sea.
Easterly winds that bite your
Fingers as they whistle and
Howl through the City.
Guest houses closed for
The winter as you stroll
The lonely promenades
Breathing in the air.
Queen Bodicea,  Normans,
Vikings and Romans all
Marched through this
Historical  landscape
And yet we remain
Stalwart and strong
Proud of our heritage,
Our roots,  our birthplace
There's only one place
Better than Norfolk,
And that's the
Beautiful Ozarks.
Torn between Norfolk in UK and the Ozarks in Missouri
met a friend for lunch and tea?

done the wrapping, sticking
and packing, most work has gone,
some has been hung, so i am left
with paper and bits below, new work
coming in.

the bottles are up for sale, and
am drawing an erasure with all
my might.

have you seen my writing site?

yes, we had kippers on toast, tasty.

sbm.
the crowd at the local shop
was packed very compactly
much like a tin of kippers
a tight squeeze indeed
jo spencer Mar 2014
Kippers and toast for breakfast,
washed down by a fairtrade Ceylon,
eagerly anticipating the Christain Aid appeal
through my letter box.
Aware of others earthly disengage
their morning monotony flickers  through their lounge,
consummate hypocrites watching the repeat soap operas,
the profundity of their silence radiates through to the adverts.
as they had a cause too,
until its auto recluse with the
outside world
the news slot borders on paranoia
a dent to exclusivity.
Bathsheba Dec 2010
I cautiously peep out the bedroom window and immediately spy snow.

More snow!

****!

I have already been trapped inside this house for five days now and I am beginning to get serious cabin fever. Something has to break and it has to break soon. As I stand here I am strangely mesmerised by these fanciful flakes as they fall seductively over a garden that has long since been abandoned.

The garden itself is actually heaving a huge collective sigh of relief at all this unwanted attention. Someone or something has finally acknowledged its hidden existence after so many many long years of neglect. The garden is stirring; there is a new vibrancy in the air, an unknown quality has begun to tease and tantalise the remains of a life once lived.

It’s funny the things that you notice when you have too much time on your hands. The old derelict outhouse, for instance, forsaken since Freddie left back in ‘72 takes on an almost ethereal quality. Gossamer threads subtly woven together now delicately frame and highlight his old stomping ground with a wicked wildness and urgency.

I must close the curtains and return.
Return to what?  

“Right …. stop your maudlin girl, time is only relevant now, remember that, always.”

I slowly walk through to the front parlour and collapse into the battered old fireside chair. It stills my beating heart. I so love to read and interpret the intricate patterns stitched so expertly into the very fabric of its soul. I have a very vivid imagination and can spend hours recreating different scenarios courtesy of my patterns.

My patterns.

Sometimes for example I imagine a paddock full to bursting point of millions and millions of tiny black spiders. Each one hell bent on weaving the perfect and foolproof web. Millions of eyes darting here and darting there. Cautious of their peers. Always cautious. Consumed and driven with the need to spin. Their seedy beady eyes are very dark and very seductive. It is a rather a frantic scenario, I grant you, but it does sort of lend itself a certain amusement.
Honest!

Another one that amuses me is the one that involves ‘The Butcher’, should I go on? Ok I will. Well, initially I was unsure until that one bright spring morning when it finally showed itself. Cheeky really! Actually, funnily enough it was just after the last heavy snowfall, what some three years back now. I was sitting down eating a particularly nice plate of kippers when it just jumped out at me. I can honestly say that I do not know where it appeared from but appeared it did none the less.
Quite shook me up really.

There he stood (The Butcher) in all his glory, in all his garb, with the biggest meat cleaver this side of the county. There was blood a plenty. Dripping of his face. Dripping of his hands. Dripping of his arms. I guess you get the picture. I laugh now, off course, but not initially. He also has these big huge bulbous eyes and a squashed boxer’s nose. And if this is not scary enough, at his feet are the remains of the entire cemetery of Standfield. All in various different stages of putrification.
Nice!
Bones and flesh merge and spurge forming a sea of rotting corpses. One huge heaving mass writhing at the filthy ***** feet of The Butcher. It makes me smirk!

I glance at the clock on the mantelpiece. That can’t be right. It says that it’s nearly 2pm. How can that be?  I have only just sat down and I know that when I woke up and peeped out of the window it was just after 5am. Strange! Still, I guess the clock has simply stopped and maybe needs re-winding, that’s all. I’ll sort it out later. These things are sent to test us, aren’t they?  
Been happening a lot of late.
Bless.

“Oh, that’s right listen to Freddie and not me. What’s new? This is all so ****** pointless. How dare you ask me my opinion if you are not actually interested in the response? Why bother? Look Freddie, I know it’s not your fault but you do so enable the old fool. How about supporting ME for a **** change? Look at me Freddie, not HIM, look, what do you see? It’s ME Freddie, open up those blind eyes of yours. I am here. I am real. Touch me Freddie. Please, please ….”

The clock strikes six times. Six! Does that mean that it is now six in the evening or is it six in the morning? I feel confused. I don’t like the snow. It scares me. Reminds me. I do not want to be reminded because I live in the here and the now. Now is all that is relevant to me. Time is only relevant now, see I remembered!

I attempt to stand up from the battered old chair but immediately collapse back down into it. Defeated. The curtains have not been drawn correctly in the front parlour and I can see through the tiny gap straight into the garden. A winter wonderland assaults my eyes. I try to shut it out. It is bearing down on me. I am struggling. I am struggling to breathe now. My heart is pounding and desperately trying to escape from my body.  What shall I do?  Help me? What, you think that this is funny. How? What part of a fellow human being having breathing problems is actually funny, prey tell? That’s right then, pretend it’s not happening. Maybe it will go away ….. just like Freddie did.
Olivia Kent Apr 2015
Mother knits scarves in soft wool.
Daddy creates suits in steel.
Auntie makes a mess of strings.
Played with a bow, a twiddle, a fiddle a serious riddle.
Uncle strums his guitar, while  he's coughing catarrh.
From the **** he smokes.
While playing with kippers and older men's zippers.
Pretensions of kindness, while fetching their slippers.
Money hunting, baby bunting, wrapped in boas of stripy snakes that choke, crush and strangle, dangling lust on a string, it's his sort of thing.
Uncle carbuncle, peril to both pusillanimous child and men of great age.
Daddy knows and  he's so enraged, steel suits beat the outrage of misuse and abuse, through the family and mummy knits more scarves in soft fluffy wool. ****** old fool, never does anything by halves, it's all covered up by soft fluffy wool scarves.
(C) LIVVI
Ken Pepiton Jul 2021
If Dexter's Parents had not divorced and he had not moved away with his mother,
Who was beautiful as I recall, today would have played out or worked out or turned out
Differently. Very differently, considering that little twist in my six-degrees of separation base pattern
Hapt seventy-years ago, or so,
----
Watch starlings, if you have starlings, or watch congregations of kippers on Netflix.
Their steering is on auto. Do you agree? Then we are in Agreement, which is an odd place to find one's self in the midst of so great a cloud of witnesses.
-----
'e goes a gain a ginning, grinning all the while
Aye, and radioman turned on just
Now listen -Radio Mumbai

I meant, you and I agree schools of sardines and flocks of gulls are all on auto-pilot-propulsion-maintenance programs,
Right?
I thought so. The code in a gnat must be so much more elegant than the vast terabytes of programming in the GPS constrained self-drivers evolving on earth. Gnats never collide and are nearly impossible to hit, unless you have bat tools, which you don't. Nobody wrote that gnat code, right?
Of course not, evidence of programming only appears to be programming, evidence of design only looks like design it's not design. Right? So says Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and all the people so called to win the battle for the minds of **** Sapiens Augmentatious, lest, as the confusion of Babel subsides, those minds should begin to reason together more clearly in light left after the lies standing on men's minds are revealed inferior to what our senses sensationally acknowledge. Whew. Long thought.

I meander, but you do as well. That is how things flow.
Not over immovable objections, around.

One life that was connected to mine in boyhood friendship was severed about half-way through my sixteenth year.
He died. I don't remember how. Alcohol-related, I can imagine. I did not attend the funeral, though some acquaintances did; one of whom was later my lover. She is dead now as well, too late to tell me anything. She had a baby less than a year after I returned from Vietnam, more than nine months later. That is a heavy thought, but not one I think does much good now.

So little of history is noted. So few lives function to trigger generational unctions that devolve into wars against imbalance, iniquity, slavery and death.
Fraternity, Egality, ******* *** the mob all riled-up, burn , baby, burn.
Whole people die in history's whims,
If whims they were.

Rebellions…

Watch the starlings steer through 4-d patterns eternally random,
fueled by bugs they convert to food for the soil itself.
Their life is their work and they do it beautifully. As one.

Can Boeing-Raytheon-L3 et al build a self-propelled, self-refueling drone that can fly at top-speed, maneuvering millimeters in each direction from other self-propelled, self-refueling drones while dropping their payloads without a single friendly-fire crash, ever?

Starlings don't **** on each other.

If war-profiteers could build such things, would you watch such things perform and wonder at the minds that built them, or deny such minds played any role from concept to creation, and ask who authorized development and deployment of such an expensive fertilizer distribution system that fertilizes wild weeds as well as gentled weeds?
Which would you say: "Wow, how did those get made, who paid?" or "Wow, look what billions of years and energy alone can do against absolutely insurmountable odds and impossible physics, with chaos and corruption always on the job?" Holy entropic bad moon.

Are ye not more precious than starlings, or sardines, or gnats. Would a sense pertaining to immediate locational proximity, evident in birds and fish and bugs, not be apparent in Adamkind, at least as a metaphor regarding benefits gained in knowing where you are relative to your own environment, regardless of any sense of personal purpose?

I can see it in the fact that we can agree, for good or ill.

As generations mature and regenerate, might there be patterns in the tumbling of the powerful and the powerless populations. Patterns depicting group or herd preservation by fully mentally equipped populations of mature and maturing Adamkind are detectable. Facts now overflow the cup of knowns. These are those days when knowledge is increasing and increasing and increasing to the point of being a destructive force in tightly closed minds.

Name dropping, rather than restating, Helen Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"(1966), Bertrand Russell, "The Problems with Philosophy"(1912), Pankaj Mishra, "The Age of Anger"(2017).

These three books and some browsing of names and titles the authors drop, have spurred me over the top of a rise I had not seen coming. My path had become gradually uphill without my noticing. I was interested in other things and ignoring notices from my body that oxygen stores were being depleted more rapidly than current inventory of red blood cells and nurse lymphocyte-bots can recycle the quadra-monthly disassembly turnover, H2O stores for sweat heat-dispersal systems and plasma regeneration and digestion of what little remains to be digested are now at "caution, think about stopping" levels. But I saw that from the top I might see to the top of the next rise before I chose the downhill part of my path. The down hill path determines the uphill path.
In the desert, you can see trails marked in many ways, mosses grow in least-heat zones created by angular location relationships with the sun. Breezes whisper into shade puddles by ever slow slight temperature inequilibria shifting some heat to the triggering of my sweat system.

If you were compelled to reason about every step you take in life as if it were your responsibility to regulate and control every function of your flesh vehicle in which you abide in relationship to all around you that you could harm or that could harm you, you would be mad. {mad?} illusion of reality

assumes reality is friendly here. I'm okeh
with that improbability aside,

implied as self explicatory and unfolding life…
examined,
for what its worth in words redeemed may be,
in the future, when this is what they thought,
you think, and I say know,
I thought this,
on a bet. Or an oath, depends on the fret.

Crazy mad, but angry auch. That would be unfair, because you don't know how to do what you are being compelled to do. Reports of persons who can control ****** functions not commonly consciously controlled are easily found. Such persons spend their time so countering the rolling rhythms beat by heart doors slamming shut and swooshing open in response to electricity, that, we, Adamkind, have yet to truly understand. We've no need, that which concerns us was
to be perfected, not by us.

If my use of Adamkind offends you, the reality of my benefits, wrought from my comprehension of my relation to Adam, will likely make me your enemy, in your own mind, not mine.
Ax'em, do they love po' o'hate rich?

Believe one chance in practically infinity of current evolutionary-nontheistic thought being the way things must be, then multiply the number of times you make that bet by the number of insects on earth or even by the number of mitochondria in your kidneys.

Ignoring life's delicate imbalances in light of what can be known today, breaks our minds's ability to agree perfectly. The social dichotomy that seems to arrange adamkind's affairs over eons and eras: rich and poor, have and have not, mean and meek, is ego-driven, self-benefit seeking and not part of the original program.

Contemplate the sweet influences of Pliades, silently questing the truth of hope and matter. There is more power in this stream.

Chapter end.
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Sam Temple Aug 2014
energy seeker reeking of leeks
taking a leak
streaking for weeks
freaks squeak
in bleak sneakers
Sneaking peepers
beat feet
pretending all fins were
dorsal
eating dried morsels
of old oiled kippers
flipping off
soup dippers
tripping off duped riffers
picking bent strings
singing “bling bling”
with gum-wrapper rings
Queens bring flare
ensnaring rarified misfits
quick to quip
“whadda jip” –
Youth unemployment
youth unenjoyment
a loan to destroy them
paid back by old men.
Old men are the best
eating kippers for breakfast and
burying themselves in the Readers Digest.
Their day is done, let the young ones
chase after the Sun,
but
the young ones are done ones as well
no chance in hell of securing the gift,
that lift that work gives you,
it's no wonder they're blue and
don't know what to do
except drink and blow dope.
Work shy? shy of hope? some manage to cope,
some do not.
The government's got some explaining to do after
their summer recess,
meanwhile,
in Malibu where the ocean's so blue
and the party is on,
all thoughts of the jobless and homeless are gone,
Olivia Kent Oct 2014
I'm going tripping you know,
Staggering into the bedroom of terror,
Hell on Earth,
I can't feel the floor,
Tumbled over the footwear,
that's left over there.

Fell over those clothes,
strewn under my nose.
Her smelly old slippers, resembling kippers,
Chucked on the floor just inside the door.
I know I shouldn't oughta,
Share my bedroom with my daughter.
We're both messy.
Piles of shoes,
just yesterdays news.
I nag,
she does too,
all over a collection of shoes and clothing,
Being tidy's not my thing!
(C) Livvi
BJFWords Mar 2017
So the journey postponed
By the method of twine.
Twas decided they’d book on the telephone line.

A jungle safari with gin and Campari.
And lashings of kippers on toast.
Despite the location of bison migration
There was still time to fish by the coast.

At the end of the plodding in boots made from wadding.
They both had a wonderful time.
They couldn’t deplete all
The stocks of the meatball
From bellies of African swine.

There’s no moral this time.
As their trip was just fine.
Said the owl to the pussycat’s purrs.

Their next time in Turkey
Was rather more murky.
On their quest for some jewellery and furs.
There is no 'Skippy'
no more kangaroo
it was traded as bush meat
so you kids
could eat.

'Flipper got put in cans
sans flippers,
tasted like fresh
kippers,
they tell me.

TV's responsible for
killing our dreams.

but I still see them when I sleep
'Clarence the cross eyed lion'
is there to keep
me company

another safari
one more
'Daktari'

I'm on a different page
'Lady Penelope and
Parker
are all the rage

watching 'Thunderbirds'
seeing Gilligans isle
while Popeye and olive
give me a smile
and I know it's for me


It's on the TV.
BT Joy Oct 2019
I

That twitch in the schoolgirl’s eye
Isn’t caused by snowy mountains.
There’s Guildhall in her twisted lip.

II

I was of three minds.
Greta Thunberg took all of them
And cloaked them in a yellow hood.

III

A small part of the pantomime was never Greta’s style.
She has miles to go before she lets us sleep.

IV

Of the things schoolgirls hate
The sun is not among them.
The blackbird’s wings and the oil fields of Manitoba
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The thought that they might one day bring out
Greta Thunberg bobbleheads
Or the fact that bobbleheads exist at all,
The fact that we’re ******
Or the fact that we’re enjoying it.

VI

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O pigtailed teens of Stockholm,
Please remember
What Wallace Stevens said
About birds of golden feathers
And of black.  

VIII

What is involved in what I know?
Like Socrates, I don’t know.
But it’s more than 99.9 per cent
Of climate scientists could ever dream
And less than a signpost
To the wrong city in the snow.

IX

When Greta sailed two weeks to New York
She was in a circle of close friends.
I bet they ate tinned kippers
And had those sweets the Swedish love.  

X

To cry out sharply is what we do
If we are lucky enough to cry.
And so I have more compassion
For Greta than you know.  
Some women have no time.
Their children dying
Takes up the best portion of the day.

XI

I can’t remember the part of the campaign trail
He rode over to tell a waiting crowd
How the size of his equipage
Compared to his small hands.
There are good reasons why Greta hates his guts.
This is not the best of them.

XII

The river is full of plastic.
The thermometer must be rising.

XIII

It is snowing
And it is going to snow.
B.T. Joy is a British poet and short fiction writer living in Glasgow. He has also lived in London, Aberdeen and Heilongjiang, Northern China. His poetry and short fiction has appeared in magazines, journals, anthologies and podcasts worldwide including poetry in Yuan Yang, The Meadow, Toasted Cheese, Numinous: Spiritual Poetry, Presence, Paper Wasp, Bottle Rockets, Mu, Frogpond and The Newtowner, among many others. His debut collection of poetry, Teaching Neruda, was released in 2015 by Popcorn Press and his 2016 collection Body of Poetry is also available through Amazon. He can be reached through his website: http://btj0005uk.wix.com/btjoypoet
Shuffle slipper bathroom kippers for breakfast
at last I am a man
Got man 'flu
it must be true
yippee
I am a man

feels like **** though.
Freeflow
Olivia Kent Oct 2015
A million stars sparkling outside in the gloom.
So beautifully gleams the sky of night.
While sleepers sleep impeccably within the realms of rest in peace.
Tomorrow shall they arise again.
As bright as sparkling diamonds

Once more to face the daily strain.
Daily toils, once more.
Of potentially going to war.
Hopping on commuter trains.
Like penguins up for catching fish.
Served up on a guilt edged dish.
Poor Michael, he was one you know.
Laughed at the fact.
That the wind wouldn't blow.
Who remembers poor old Michael Fish?

War in the city.
Where politicians swing as pendulums.
The wind in the house the hot type.
Emitted from many stuck up butts.
Whiffs and Whigs.
Broken twigs.
No notice paid to issues green .
In service of H.M the Queen.

Don't know what they're voting for.
A few rude words spoken.
A group of noisy chaps so ******.
A gang of wild animals.
They're starting to squabble.
Politicians party.
Unholy rabble.

Reading speeches from notes.
Prepared by someone else.
The lady of the house.
Picked up the latest speech.
Just a little p*ssed.
He didn't grab his speech at all.

Was just a shopping list.
Stood up on the podium,
Check out his change in mood.
His most profound of words.
Was just a list of food.

Queer as a fish.
Hate to say.
The nicer ones, just merely gay.
They're just as queer as kippers are.
Vocal politicians supporting the bar.

Debate over.
Time to head home.

Steps into the ministerial car.
The tatty black car,
Heap of scrap metal.
Press car in pursuit.
Put your foot hard to the pedal.
Another boo boo, that nobody missed.
The p.m's speech and the shopping list.
(c)LIVVI
met a friend for lunch and tea?

done the wrapping, sticking
and packing, most work has gone,
some has been hung, so i am left
with paper and bits below, new work
coming in.

the bottles are up for sale, and
am drawing an erasure with all
my might.

have you seen my writing site?

yes, we had kippers on toast, tasty.
(20 minute poetry)

Write me in dialect
slang
as one would expect
a hobo to be.

I carry what to me is a maximum load, but to the road
I'm as light as the air.

And I'm going nowhere as the compass points out,
however nowhere is somewhere so it looks like I'm going there,
all things being equal
how odd.

Here I am
stood as a man should be
in the cold morning light that
as children, we longed for
but
not any more,
give me my pipe and
bring me my slippers
kippers for breakfast
and tripe for my tea
will do me.

The quickest way
is to jump
so I pump myself up
only
to let myself down
easily and
It scares me
that I contemplate
the greatness of being
when I
being
one
on the road.
The woman with the cat face made a wish
And all the sparrows turned to fish.

The sky produced them at her command
Stacked like kippers upon her hand.

The woman with the cat tail switched it once
And paving stones turned to hot cross buns.

The woman with the cat tail switched it twice
And made Catholic bishops of five field mice.

The woman with the cat heart had a beau
Set him on a gallows and swung him low.

The woman with the cat heart clapped her hands
And made his coffin out of watering cans.
2011
Sensual?
that's what sold me on the bath salts,
but it was just advertising,
I looked the same under the bubbles
and
there was nothing sensual about that.

I always fall for the 'line'
time after time they hook me
and reel me in
I should have realised by now
that it's nothing but spin.

Leather suit,
they said,
wear it like a second skin
I wore it like a shell suit
( a fourteen pounder)
it looked more like
walrus skin, but they
reeled me in again.

Your shadow looks fatter on me
do I look big in it?

going off key and
playing my own song
you can
play along if you wish.

The man on a cart that came up from the bay
sold us pints full of prawns and that seemed like
yesterday,
in a parallel universe he's still selling his wares
cockles and shrimps and kippers in pairs.

and the knife sharpener who wore a sharp suit
and pedalled up on his bike
'sharp as you like' was his cry,

not forgetting the pop bottle man
who drove the streets in an olive green van,
but only sold pop and not olives.

I've forgotten most memories and that's not a bad thing
sing along, play along, write your own song. but in the
end they all sound like forgotten things, like foghorns on a
misty night, lonely
and alone.
He puts his spin on it
tells me that Rin Tin Tin
is in on it
and Tintin's having none
of it,
but Captain Haddock still sets sail
looking for Ahab and the
great white whale,

Flipper's eating kippers because
dolphins roll like that

haha
and you thought Postman Pat and Jess
were weird.
If you ain't old enough to remember, forget it.
met a friend for lunch and tea?

done the wrapping, sticking
and packing, most work has gone,
some has been hung, so i am left
with paper and bits below, new work
coming in.

the bottles are up for sale, and
am drawing an erasure with all
my might.

have you seen my writing site?

yes, we had kippers on toast, tasty.
battle scarred shocked and weary
after a solid month of them
non-stop noise the cannon carry
cannon carry them
carry until the trenches fill
with brother's blood soak the hill
with death dis-ease and disentery

the hero's task at length is laid
yet insanity instantly draws his pay
in far off looks and broken gaze
it be death alone
death alone that saves
legion eyes focused far away
as millions board the ferry

infinite naivete;
its innocence
the ancient bloodsnake craves
blind as it ingurgitates
its own dark hind yet hesitates
in fleeting dawning awareness bites
infinite in rav'nous appetite
sating only lust and what remains
hell's own night
joy's light's bane

for apathy and avarice
it's deception's pillow and its grace
death's own mask; its hidden face mercurial and at once chimeric
camouflage concealing
its concealment a passive weapon
chameleon quite as colorful
and as so quite as perfect

a last murderous salvo comes
dawn a fiery hour too early by one
in it's childishly entitled insistance
as we slough off our own skins
and eat kippers with them
from dented tins
our elegiac last breakfasts

and alas again forgetting everything
of nothing's own self-importance
we burn and die in last morning's light
as the band of gathered idiots bind
a consensual last query to send into the vast distance

we would give in to this abhorrence without resistance?
WAR

— The End —