musingsfromastonehead

[musingsfromastonehead]

The Winder's Rounds

The Winder’s Rounds(as told by Jack ‘Grindy’ Marr, Winder Third Class)I’m up ‘fore the clankin’ clocks confess,when the grease sticks fast and the springs compress.You lot dream deep in feather and wine,I’m elbow-deep in gear and spline.First stop’s the Duchess’s Chambermaid,all gilt and lace and so well made.She cleans, she sings, such gentle hands…but not without my winding bands. …wind her up…

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don't let the door hit you

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Scapes Of The Damned

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Scape Season

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The True Likeness

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I'll Take The Pub

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Doing Everything Right, Still Getting It Wrong

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Fifteen Tons

Fifteen Tons(With apologies to Merle Travis and Tennessee Ernie Ford.)[Verse 1]I was born one mornin’ with the sky burnin’ red,My mama said, “Boy, you’ll bomb towns instead.I got stealth in my bones and smoke in my name.I fly what they build when they’re playin’ a game.[Chorus]You load fifteen tons, what do you get?A phallic bomb and a smokin' threat.Saint Peter, don’t you call me, I’m way down…

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please upload your creativity

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Indulging Myself

I decided to indulge myself with the prize money from the Motorcitysixty Poetry Competition. For decades, I’ve written in cheap supermarket notebooks with equally cheap pencils. The pencils scratch across the coarse paper; I have to press hard with an HB—B and 2B are too soft and crumbly, 2H too harsh and shiny. The covers are flimsy, plasticky, or just plain unpleasant. So, I bought a couple…

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Not Every Poem Needs A Hard Hat

“Sixteen poems in an hour!”, Marion comments. Yes… and no. I wasn’t scribbling without thought. I was working fast, yes, but not freewriting. There’s a subtle distinction. What I do in those moments is closer to improvisation. Think free jazz, not stream-of-consciousness. No predetermined structure, but a beat, a mood, a dynamic range. A readiness to respond. In the 1990s, I played with free…

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Ledger

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I Live

I LiveThe field stank of split menand chainmail piss.Blood pooled in the wheel ruts,mixed with the pulp of handstorn from arms,faces gashed into flower shapes.Some still blinked.A helm steamed beside me:its owner gone,jaw and tongue laid bare like butcher’s trim.Gauntlets clawed into mud,still gripping snapped hafts.The ground chewed our bootsand wouldn't let go.The sun went down screaming.Light…

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What Remains? Fragments

What Remains? FragmentsFragment 1They dance it off: the breath, the pace,the break room jokes, no rugby grace,and me, I'm left with a hat of teeth,a squeezing lungfish, my namebeneath the bed. I restitch my skinas snails applaud. I begin to whirlbut drop.Fragment 2I once arm-wrestled pigs for rent,swam to work in a mud-filled trench,shouldered logs that whispered Geek,scaled fences just to hear…

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Goldfinch

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Wagtail

He works the wall in hops and darts, the pied wagtail, a flicker of black and white,

picking at midges in the stillness between rain.

Below the moss-pocked granite courses, nettles lean like old men against the ironstone’s warmth. Weeds—dock, ragwort, chickweed— knit their rough green alphabet into the footings.

Above, coarse, thick-lipped, slate— blue-grey, hewn at a time when things were meant to last— dark where another slate has slipped, shiny where the weather’s polished the edges smooth as spoons.

He flits, eaves to sill, sill to roof, his long striped tail a metronome, his cap as black as ink. Cheeks pale as the milk I don’t take in my tea, wings edged with light.

And then the swifts, dull shrieks and razor arcs, sling past in tightening spirals, furious at his trespass.

But he does not yield. He wavers a moment, resettles on a shard of slate, eyes a speck of motion, drops down, snatches it like breath.

Behind him, the wall keeps its silence. Above him, the sky wears grey like a rumpled suit. And all the while, he flickers, flits, returns: too quick for shadow.

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Layby Baba