A few poems ... Send Yours and I'll add them to the Blog ...

Just thought I'd pop a few poems up to keep us all going ...
Chasing Rainbows is a reminiscance [tho not mine].
Summer Holiday ~ I feel a little bad about this ~ but sadly, at the moment, it's true.
Slay that Dragon ~ about the workplace of course.
You're welcome to add one of your poems to the comment box or email me at gmhesketh@googlemail.com and I will copy and paste etc.


Summer Holiday

Sand pies and donkey rides,
toffee apples, ice-cream cones,
penny slots to the tower top.
Side shows, pier strolls,
arcade larks in pleasure parks,
landaus and tram tours.
Oyster bars, funny postcards
and the best fish and chip suppers.
A summer holiday.

Discos, boogie nights
strobe lights and neon
pubs, clubs, karaoke singing
alcohol chasers and fun.
Kiosks and canvassers,
kebab bars and burgers,
curry and chips, end E’s
and the night’s just begun.
A summer holiday.

Stags amass in lap dance saloons,
bare-midriffed girl-gangs
flock promenades, festooned
in logos and kiss me quick hats.
Grid spewing teens
collapse by roadside
market stalls, then muggers,
frays, fracas, a police siren
and drugs scuffle on street corners,
A summer holiday.




Slay that Dragon

So many dragons, leaping flames
filling your cheeks with scarlet,
tongue tips lashing like a rope
on a film too cruel to watch,
charring your memory forever.

Slay that dragon, cut out its tongue,
stop its outburst its constant song
maligning your mind, messing
with your attention span, fouling up
your incentive plan.

And when the dragon is slayed,
from the depths of humanity, another
breathes the hair on your neck
becks, calls, makes you hot under
the collar forget the dollar
the pound the yen, slay that dragon
who calls and calls again.

The dragon is dead in the middle of the night
nothing will resume its fire, its bite,
you dream of a dragon-free day,
impolite out of sight dragons,
breathing down someone else’s neck.




Slay that Dragon epitomises the pressures of modern life, expectations, deadlines and goals to meet. In the workplace, there is always someone to answer to, someone breathing down your neck, putting the heat on, making demands.


Chasing Rainbows

We used to hide beneath cotton covers,
torches glinting, uneven breathing, reading,

screen ourselves like twigs stuffing hedgerows,
watching blue-tits feeding,

chase rabbits down bob-tailed burrows
kneeling beside, feeling,

squelch and scurry along tractor’d furrows
scattering earth’s seedlings

and beneath glass frames, grumpy Joe’s marrows
hauled out by our scheming,

our cargo, brimming over his barrow
dispatched somehow, wheeling,

crunching gravel, dust drops borrow
our last breath, laughing

down emerald-eyed hills and buttercup meadows
me on your crossbar, reeling,

trickling streams, fine fingered sunlit hollows
coming, going, leaving

fresh breezes, pecking at my cheeks like sparrows
making feather bedding;

guzzling golden lemonade, we’d wallow
in liquorice hoardings,

endless escapades, chasing rainbows,
you leading, me preening;

Now I see it in a shadow,
trekking homeward to our willow;

Mum, beaming white flour, kneading,
those times I feel like stealing

as I see our scarecrow leaning.
Grimacing.



Gillian

Keeping Busier ... Ramper Pot Adventures ...

Okay, I said I was going to whip over Ramper Pot ~ Adventures and send it off to a story writing competition. I did just that and realised quite soon into Chapter 1 ~ The Hideaway, that it had been a while since I’d read it. Crikey. What a mess. Well, not really a mess, more of an out of date boring account of two children bored out of their brains, holed up in their new house by the rain and hiding from their recently instated boring step-father. I bored myself to sleep reading it ... a fusion of modern day Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons meets Jacqueline Wilson without the tattoos, drugs and alcohol. What can I say? Boring.

So, Touchstone will have to wait the week-end out while I get back to Ramper Pot’s ~ The Hideaway [Chapter 1] and River Cavern Escape [Chapter 2]. Apologies to Rob and Zak who I’ve left in a cliff-hanger situation - holding on for their lives, trainers, Penguin biscuits, playing cards and an ipod have sailing downstream faster than money down a slot machine. Can Amy get help in time? Can I make the scene dramatic and exciting?

In between the news and serving up a snack, I managed to delete two thousand truly unnecessary words. Phew, that felt better. I didn’t even wince. Another thousand needed to go but not before adding a couple of pirates and a ghost, did I go to the local pub for lashings of ginger beer and the occasional whisky sloshed in.

Ramper Pot ~ Adventures is based on a semi-rural area with a history of piracy near to where I live, in Lancashire.

See you tomorrow,

Gillian