Day Ten-Rocky Shorelines

-Both photos by Paul Brookes

ROCKY SHORE 

The churning sea,
steel-grey-opaque;
The land, Broccoli-topped,
dark, black, basaltic;
Giant pencils of ashen columns rise,
notched like kills on an axe-haft.

An echo below the cliff
leads to a mossy maw,
dark still pool
which hides a local legend –
Dragon’s teeth
that once sank a submarine.

Reaching from the peninsula
an arthritic claw
clings to a sister
like dementia.

A ruined castle teeters,
haunts the skyline.
Resists invasion still
with crumbled gatehouse,
draugr-skeletal,
white-braided,
wizened pride.

-John Wolf 2nd August 2021.

The Sea Cucumber

The sea cucumber
Is an odd little number
When attacked he turns inside out
What on earth is THAT all about?!

The Stinging Anemone

The stinging anemone
Repels all enemies
But not the clownfish, with which it reposes
In a state of blissful symbiosis…

Winkles and Whelks

How does a winkle tinkle?
And how does a whelk do a poo?
A clam can pop his lid up
And so can a cockle too
But winkles and whelks are lidless
Their shells don’t open to view
So how does a winkle tinkle?
And how does a whelk do a poo?

-David Smith (A.K.A Ivor Folio)

The Marine Sonnets:

Rocky Shores

My high tide mark periwinkles, limpets,
breaking wave spray moistens, incoming tides
and storms envelop them. Exposed In its
drying heat and extreme cold lichen thrives.

My seabed’s shoreward fringe between upper
and lower, dried twice a day, barnacles ,
algae, mussels, sea palms. Sea cucumber
catches passing prey in its tentacles.

My scoured fissures, fractures and joints, abrased
and weathered rock refreshed every time
with new water, my pools isolated
when it withdraws, small worlds redefined.

Every tide renews, sculpts, refugees new blood,
reinvigorates, new life, new food.

-Paul Brookes

Yorkshire Day

 

-peaky Braggers

Yorkshire Lads

Wi just us sens wi belt and braces
no pretence no airs no graces
us Yorkshire lads real rough hard cases
a willin for to fight the fight,
to fight for what we see as right,
just us sens no airs no graces Yorkshire lads wi belt and braces.

Nanite God Bless

Nanite God bless she’d say to me
with a kiss upon my brow
I never knew I’d miss so much
those simple words as I do now
her loving arms would cradle me
and rock me off to sleep
so to dream a dream of safety there within her bossom deep
now here tonite I must confess
I miss my mam’s nanite God bless.

-Martin Bragger

-Garry Cochrane

Attercliffe

Three piece suites, old mattresses, bedsteads,
dead dogs, kittens, tyres. You name it
they chucked it down the cutting. Old hands
would load up a heavy iron boat
two inches down by the head, and then run
at half throttle to stop all the clutter
fouling the prop. One of Furley’s men
stripped a gearbox running over a cooker.
When we passed under bridges, folk spat
at us, or sometimes worse. It were a rude
stretch. We kept bilge-water in a bucket
on deck, so, when they spat down one side,
we’d chuck our mucky stuff over t’ other.
A fair exchange, I say, water for water.

-Matthew Clegg (from his amazing collection “The Navigators)

The language of childhood

Childhood was bilingual /Our mam says “Ay up”
Playground and classroom/I’ve forgot me dinner money
Strict demarcation/I’ve left it at ‘om
Classroom was knowledge/I’ll tell thee summat
Playground was wisdom/Tha dun’t pick mother-die
Class room was orderly/Give us some spice, then
Playground was marauding/Yon bairn’s roaring
Childhood was bilingual/We were only laiking

-Sarah Connor

-Laura Graham

Never Dull In Hull

Newland avenue, where the first birds chirp
A fine place to begin our days
Princes avenue, where the last diners burp
No better place to end our days

A fine place to begin our days
Fresh croissants! That gets the nod of the head
No better place to end our days
Than with the smells of Jackson’s tasty bread

Fresh croissants! That gets the nod of the head
What better way to kill the pain?
Than with the smells of Jackson’s tasty bread
Memories deep within the brain

What better way to kill the pain?
That is a question for Jameson Street
Memories deep within the brain
The wonderful walk: daily beat

That is a question for Jameson Street
The answer may be Ferensway
The wonderful walk: daily beat
The answer may be Freetown way

The answer may be Ferensway
Is the question Springbank?
The answer may be Freetown way
The Drains! Ugh! Oh so rank!

Is the question Springbank?
Would he be proud? That Wilberforce?
The drains! Ugh! Oh so rank!
Terrible stench! What is the source?

Would he be proud? That Wilberforce?
Paper publishes a fascist
Terrible stench! What is the source?
Do we have an apologist?

Paper publishes a fascist
In the great city: Never dull
Do we have an apologist
In this, our Kingston-Upon-Hull?

In the great city: never dull
Newland avenue, where the first birds chirp
In this, Our Kingston-Upon-Hull
Princes Avenue, where the last diners burp

-Pramod Subbaraman (First published in Places of Poetry)

Links and Bios

-Laura Graham

is a stand up poet from Leeds and 2021 national slam poetry finalist. Her Yorkshire Day poem was shortlisted for Leeds Poetry Festival Competition and featured on BBC Radio York. 

-Pramod Subbaraman

is a Dentist and Poet who lives in Hull with his wife and son. He returned to poetry after a long absence during the first lockdown in 2020 and has since been published in the UK and the USA. He runs poetry workshops for NHS trusts in North Lincolnshire and Goole, and Hull and East Yorkshire. He tweets @briteeth

-Matthew Clegg was born in Leeds in 1969. His published works include Lost Between Stations (https://longbarrowpress.com/current-publications/matthew-clegg/ ), West North East (https://westnortheast.wordpress.com/), The Navigators (https://matthewcleggthenavigators.wordpress.com/) and Cazique (https://matthewcleggcazique.wordpress.com/). He currently lectures in creative writing at Derby University, and he lives in Sheffield.  

-Martin Bragger

has long been a Sheffield poet. He is also a well known local singer/songwriter and musician. He has performed at various Yorkshire venues over many years also as his alias Billy Martin Junior.

Two of his songs penned with his real name Martin Bragger were included on the 2008 album ‘Made In Sheffield’ and performed by Tony Christie.

Danger Is A Woman In Love

Paradise Square

Here is a link

https://www.discogs.com/Tony-Christie-Made-In-Sheffield/release/10448841

-Kerry Darbishire

lives in Cumbria. She has two poetry collections published by Indigo Dreams: A Lift of Wings and Distance Sweet on my Tongue. Her poems appear in anthologies and magazines.  She has been placed in competitions, and recently gained 2^nd prize in Folklore and was commended in Grey Hen and Ware Poets competitions 2021.  Some of her work will be performed by The Cumbria Opera Group’s Lakeland Cycle in September 2021. Kerry has a pamphlet to be published by Dempsey and Windle in October 2021, and her third collection (joint winner of the Full Fat Collection) will be published by Hedgehog Press in Spring 2022.

Ninth Day -Crabs And Other Crustacea

-Hermit in the turret photo by Ankh Spice

Group therapy for clever crabs

There were no windows and we spoke of home
as therapy – those who had tongues not yet unhooked by their dosage

Mrs Jesus sang, predictably
– Ave, ave, the roasting flare of the sacred heart the warmest hearth – her rosary
chattering DT-teeth in time with our rolling eyes

Quiet Joni said nothing, but beyond her starved-skull-smile a hatbox
spiralled out coloured scarves in the wind of a Julie-Andrews meadow, popping daisies

Simon, lion-posed on his chair, just roared for the fortieth time that morning
his teacup bounced steel drums, greening-gold, Zion’s royal spires and he the king of crowds

The nurse foghorned on what about family, what about people and houses and such
things that are normal like windows and loved ones and gardens, until
my faraway reason-voice came as grey paint – please understand, we are only crabs

And I could not say this then – when the weight
of the world cracks your careful shell
the pink cringe of a person
finds whatever it needs to mean safety – a rusty can a palace
when everything else has been thrown away

-Ankh Spice

-Barnacle photo by Andy MacGregor

BARNACLES

You make a hard scrabble
over calloused rocks
where you’ve settled
in seashore shanty towns,

growing tough & waiting
through low times
to grab whatever scraps
the tides wash in.

I’d rather be a whelk
with a whorled palace,
gliding above it all
on my big belly-foot.

-Andy MacGregor 

Crab photo by Sarah Louise Wheeler

CRABS & OTHER CRUSTACEA 

Crabs

lurk in crevices;
public libraries;
the canteen;
smoker’s corner;
make sideways career moves
into familiar places.

Lobsters

worship sunbeds,
turning soft skin
into leathery teak,
Grumble
about towel-habits
of Germans.

Shrimps

boast boringly and rhetorically;
say certain words often, ‘I’, ‘Me’, and ‘literally’;
weave word-legend they’ll never achieve.
Truth is, they’re bottom dwellers
hanging around sewage outfall pipes.
Only the Mantis Shrimp packs a punch.

Kryll

Exist near the bottom of the food chain,
yet are eaten by some of the biggest creatures.
A bioluminescent wonder who lights up the ocean in a chemical flush.
They add romance to films like The Beach.
NASA used kryll oil to supplement astronaut diets;
the superfood until Spirulina arrived.

Barnacles

Are like trees in a rainforest,
providing shelter for other species.
They can grow on plastic rubbish,
even create a new ecosystem.
They remind me of Captain Pugwash –

-John Wolf 1st August 2021.

Krill

A single whale to eat his fill
Will swallow several tons of krill
Yet none complain at this scale of slaughter:
I bet krill think they bloody-well oughta.

Crabs

The crab is quite drab
when viewed in the nude
but I’m always impressed
when I see one well-dressed.

-David Smith (Ivor Folio)

The Marine Sonnets:

The Barnacle

Before I make my shell, I float in search
for a permanent place to live. My home
is beside others, where waves swell and lurch
I stick my head beside them. Make my dome,

secrete six plates outside myself. Include
four as one to open and close with ebb.
Aswim, I went through many changes, food
swam ahead of me, I chased, as it fled.

I stand on my head and eat with my feet.
My glue will outlast me. Incoming tide
makes me open to sift food brush and sweep
it into my shell to my head, inside.

I grow, enlarge my home, with neighbour
I make babies, who one eyed leave my door.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-David Smith

is a writer and poet blessed with the good fortune to live in Royal Tunbridge Wells. He is rarely if ever disgusted, but often disappointed. Around 40% of David’s poetry is humorous verse for children, or so whimsical it might as well be. A further 40% is performance poetry, ranging from the humorous and whimsical to the obscene and acerbic, the latter often a reflection of that previously mentioned disappointment. He also writes ‘proper page poetry’ (which accounts for the remaining 20% for the sharp eyed, mathematically inclined among you) and is a regular contributor to the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society’s Folio. He rarely submits for publication, partly because he prefers the oral tradition and partly because he handles rejection badly. As one half of Flitt & Folio (Pam and Ivor to their friends) and one third of the Gluten-free Trio he also writes and performs comedy sketches and musical numbers. The poems offered below were written for ‘Fishy Fridays’, when on a whim he decided to write a poem a day for a year.

Day Eight: Beachcombing

-All photos by Annest Gwilym

Whelk Shell

Shells hold secrets
folded in the whorls,
where the creature hid.

The open mouth
sings like the tide,
or the vastness of space,
the emptiness between stars.

As a child they looked like
ice cream cones
or fairytale turrets.

Older, like bones
scattered on the beach,
bleached and crumbling
slowly into sand.

Held to the ear I hear
the rushing blood and heartbeat
of a living being.

© Annest Gwilym

BEACHCOMBING 

The sea will tell a tale if you place an ear to a shell.
Her tidal treasures softly wash, gift-wrapped in weed.
I think the tale will be Lord of the Flies;
it shall end in Deliverance.

A celtic knot scratched in the sand. Art.
Washed away at the end of the day.
That this is all ephemera –
is what the artist is trying to say.

Fire,
tinder and a spark juxtaposed,
The fire always burns,
it’s supposed.

Often it doesn’t – the spark fails to catch or tinder burns away,
small twigs exhaust before larger ones ignite,
It’s too damp; too windy,
cold hands tremble with malnutrition ;
or fear.

But when it catches and flares,
twigs crackle, logs smoulder,
a rose like a sunset blooms;
the feeling is incredible.

Being primal in the wilderness,
sharpening a skewer-stake.
Everything we need must found
or we’ll have to make.

I am the first on Newmania.
Walking a pacific island’s deserted shore,
collecting coconut husks, smooth glass,
sun-dried bits of crate.

Survival has four pillars. Shelter. Fire. Water. Food.
A fifth now – threat.
The other contestants arrive by speedboat soon;
Wannabe pop star, internet influencer, boob-job, ex-footballer.

It’s not a reality show,
we’ve been kidnapped by evil people :
‘The one who survives the Island,

-John Wolf 31st July 2021.

-All photos by Sarah Louise Wheeler

The Marine Sonnets:

Beachcomber

Gale force Eight or more with an Easterly
throws things on my shores, material drifts
on my strongest waves and currents, firmly
North to South. Comb me as my gales desist

start to subside or veer West. See patches
of weed and black coal amongst my rocks.
Delve into huge feet thick seaweed masses
Find rare ,warm Baltic amber in same spots

as coal and Whitby jet. Prove real amber
sandpaper it and smell Pine tree resin.
My fossils, bullet shaped Belemnites are
with curled Ammonites released from within.

Don’t get caught by my rising tide, falling
cliffs. Every find, a story calling.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

Recognizing the relevance and importance of friendship as a noble and
valuable sentiment in the lives of human beings around the world,

Bearing in mind that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and
individuals can inspire peace efforts and presents an opportunity to build bridges
between communities, honouring cultural diversity,

Affirming that friendship can contribute to the efforts of the international
community, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, towards the
promotion of dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and
reconciliation,

Convinced of the importance of involving youth and future leaders in
community activities aimed at the inclusion of and respect between different
cultures, while promoting international understanding, respect for diversity.

Extract from UN.

Not That Kind of Love Poem
(for Emily)

Something there is that loves
coffee and a lake and the smell
of old books and the quiet
tides of conversation.
Your delicacy with a hint
of steel, your alert ears,
your gentle passion.
Talking with you,
everything’s discovery,
like reinventing the world.

-Gregory Luce

Bios and Links

-Gregory Luce

is the author of Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications), Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications), Tile (Finishing Line) and Riffs & Improvisations (forthcoming from Kelsay Press). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press), Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing), and Unrequited and Candlesticks and Daggers (ed. Kelly Ann Jacobson). In 2014 he was awarded the Larry Neal Award for adult poetry by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Retired from the National Geographic Society, he lives in Arlington, VA, and works as a volunteer writing tutor/mentor for 826DC. He blogs at https://dctexpoet.wordpress.com.