National Poetry Day in the UK

johnny73

Have seen some of you promote what you do so i thought as today is national poetry day in the uk i'd give it ago.

I run a poetry community website at http://www.coffeeconnectionpoets.com

I know it's not everyones cup of tea and i'm prepared to be shot down but if anyone does like poetry then your welcome to visit.

thai malaysia addick

Johnny Seventy Three
Thought poetry was not eveyone's cup of tea
So to help everyone to understand and see
He set up connectionpoets with coffee

Low_Ears

Thai Malaysia Addick had a plan
But his poem didn't scan
Though it did kind of rhyme
and not a total waste of time
Don't give up the day job in a hurry, my man.

Floyd Montana

Charlton in winter
There is little accord
Among Charlton Lifers

(is this Haiku?)

Dave Rudd

"I wandered lonely as McLeod ..."

thai malaysia addick

There was a young man from Algiers
Who apparently liked a few beers
After drinking quite a few
His forehead suddenly grew
And he consequently had very low ears

soapy_jones

Johnny73, I have bookmarked it. The last few years I have struggled health wise and this year financially too, so it's been a double whammy for me 2010. If only my football team were seventh in the premiersh!p again eh ? But no chance there of cheering me up. I found myself writing in the weeks preceeding a recent operation and since then I have been actually either writing down my ideas on a handy notepad or jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to get them into a word document. I find it very theraputic in my fragile and worried state of mind. I suppose to the average person in the street what I write may be considered a touch soft, something I assure you I have never been myself. My question is, what makes someone have enough confidence to put their writing out there? I'll check out the site more thoroughly and maybe sign up. Very good job.

johnny73

Thanks guys. Never written a poem about cafc but thought it might help to convince.

Mum brought me an Arsenal bag
Red and white with a gun
Something did not settle right
They would not be my one.

At School it was Arsenal, Spurs or Man U
But mainly Liverpool with their Kop roar
I'd ask my mates why this red?
'cause they was on tv' they said.

Something did not settle right
I had not found my home
Until Des came on and played that tune
Lynam I mean not O'conners croon.

Bruce Hornsby and the Range
Blarred from our little box
And week by week Lennies boys
Would move closer to the top.

Without a home the end is nigh
The news was all around us here
Chaos caused the lads to bond
Even if the sound was a distant cheer.

So in the summer i got on my bike
And weaved through roads and streets
Until I came upon this land
Empty overgrown and incomplete.

Some kids warned of the ghost
The burnt shell of a caravan
A vague shadow of the past
An old lady burnt to roast.

I continued on my trek
Fought under wire fence
Traversed cracked stone steps
And head high i glimpsed the truth
of neglect and pride
Not dismantled but left
slowly to rot and die.

If i was older with true visions of the past
I would have cried lost in a sea of memories
But I was just a kid no words but silence
As weeds wrapped around cement and reclaimed my home.

johnny73

The poem i wrote above would be considered bad for a lot of reason and I put it together in a rush. Probably end up being a first draft only.

stilladdicted

[cite]Posted By: windscreen[/cite]Great thing about poetry is anyone can do it...sadly most of mine are not for public consumption.

Writing poetry that is half decent takes a lot of practice and time. I'm enjoying the journey and the new poets that it has uncovered for me. I'm not bothered about getting published as I know that I'm not good enough, but everyone can enjoy just trying. Poetry opens the mind to imagination, and that's what I most love.

Just something like a simple clothes peg led Michael Laskey to this

How it had happened they neither of them knew
but it only got worse. He hated the blank
blue ice of his stare and she couldn't bear
her thin voice telling him to turn
down the TV please, to stop diddling
with that clothes-peg, which without thinking he
clipped to the hem of her cardigan hanging
over the newel post as he mooched past.
It was Margaret at work who pointed it out
and all day it kept on taking her hand
by surprise, a bump in her cardigan pocket.
So naturally closing his old Noah's Ark
curtains that evening she pegged them together.
A few mornings later it waylaid her
inside her shoe. She snapped it on the end
of his toothbrush handle, so it wouldn't pull through
the holder, and found it next clipping the ear
of Humph, her venerable bear. For him she left it
dangling in the dark from the plastic light pull
in the bathroom, where he lit on the pot
of Paracetamol and dibbled it in.
It felt like a biro caught in his train pass
as he brought it out to show the guard,
and tugging a Kleenex out of the box
she spluttered at the clatter, but said nothing,
just hung it from the lining inside his tie
ready for the morning. And now the drizzle starts
as she's driving to work, she laughs out loud -
lifted by it skimming back and forth
riding on the stalk of the wiper blade.