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Steve Page Apr 20
I come from inner-city, stand-up strong tea, delivered early with grumpy care, and a ‘don't think about sleeping in’ fading down the stair. I come from cornflakes with full cream benefits and fuller if you get down at full tilt, before Dad manages to shake the delivered milk.

I come from warming up the telly in time for Crackerjack and Crossroads and the nearest of us having to get up for the lack of a remote control. I come from snooker in black and white and the thrill of home-grown wrestlers' faux fights. I come from aerial adjustments, the unity of the family three-piece, paying homage to the three-channel Buddha TV.

I come from tempers and broken locks, with after-work threats to knock your block off. I come from seeped in feelings of coming up short at each and every blue and white sport. I come from hereditary parenting, watery eyes, and the upholstered cushion of mum’s white lies. I come from long family road trips with back seats sun-baked, and car sickness triggered by wafts of St Bruno Flake.

I come from first gen suburbanites, budget tensions and dad's got three jobs cos things got tight. I come from the garden turned vegetable patch with biting rhubarb, rubber runner beans and the Sunday stench of stewed-to-death cabbage. I come from a street in open plan, holding homes and gardens in common, one big for-good-or-ill clan.

And if I could, I’d plan a street-long celebration: Party Sevens and Tizer and shades of beige food for every occasion. I’d put on the gramophone with the Joe Loss Band’s All Time Party Hits, and no room to spare, with the kettle on repeat and biscuits bits in mum's faded Tupperware.

And over mis-matched tea mugs, I’d tell them I’m okay, I’ve moved across this city to find my own way.  I’d assure them that blood is still the thicker, but please do me a favour and get over me and mine living north of the river.
From an exercise suggested by The Poetry lounge, London.
**** you thieving gulls,
bold and noisy bandits of the air
you will not still my thoughts,
I need to sit on a shiny plastic chair
scrape the legs across a bumpy concrete floor,
drink a cup of steaming words,
lose then find myself within the oceans roar,
come foaming water take me
wash my head
fold me and remake me
send me tumbling to the beach
to roll and scrape along the sand
throw my worries out of reach
snack on them for just a little while
swallowed whole by heaving marram grass
trapped within your ever shifting smile
I have this picture of you—or should I say, I own this picture of you—
that I have kept hidden in my chambers,
neither inside my diary nor within a vault,
but frozen in time within my mind.

It is both painful and lovely to watch,
my lingering feelings keeping me tied to it.
Yet, all it brings me now are memories that ache.

"You're sitting and smiling, posing for a picture,
your eyes concealed behind silver glasses.
This poem is part of my "I Sent The Text" Poetry series.
Immortality Apr 21
And at last—
the candle realized
it had burnt
by the thread,
it had kept safe
inside its heart.

But even in death,
as it watched the thread
burn along—
longed to protect it.
well, the candle was either the greatest fool or the truest lover
Maria Apr 16
You packed in yesterday
And all that you left
Is your touch on my hair
And only your breath.

You packed in yesterday
Just leaving behind
Kisses of your lips
And your cool "Unwind".

Maybe you want that
I'll entrust wholly
All my desires
To this night truly?

Just say me that!
And no other cue!
Nothing else matter
But being with you!

You packed in yesterday,
Leaving me memory
And this dead night,
Without you, but me.
This poem was born under very strange, not at all poetic circumstances. I was waiting for a medical procedure at an ophthalmological clinic. My eyes couldn't see. So I began to dig into my memory, into my past. I remembered a sad story from my life.  And that memory took the form of this poem.
Thank you for reading this poem! 💖
Dianali Apr 14
And I’m going to make you
so much of a memory,
That you’ll be more of a myth.
Linked somehow,
to the subtle pain
woven in
some parts of my voice.
Barely noticeable,
yet still lingering there.
Legend has it,
every now and then,
just between the happiest
and saddest
words I say,
If you listen carefully,
I’m just
Whispering your name.
A folk tale in my lore
I left my phone in the fridge again.
Texted my dead friend by mistake.
The dream said turn left at the red door
but every door was mauve and melting.
I wore the wrong shoes
to the right breakdown.

God, I’m tired of being
the lesson in someone else’s flashback.
Of saying 'I’m fine'
like it’s a good thing.

Sometimes I bite a fingernail off
and flick it to the ground,
just to prove I was here,
just to pretend my DNA
is not a walking lie.

Sometimes I talk
to the dogs with TikTok accounts
like they’re holding something back.

Sometimes I rehearse my disappearances
in liminal spaces:
parking garages,
abandoned malls,
group chats I left on read.
Now I RSVP to nothing
and they still say
“you’ll be missed.”

I keep meaning to heal,
but the plot keeps thickening—
And my name—
God, my name—
it echoes like a spoiler
in a house that isn’t mine anymore.
A trivia fact
no one got right.

My memories keep getting
auto-corrected to get over it.
I don’t.
I alphabetize the wreckage.
I romanticize the ruin.
The rot is getting readable.

Anyway,
I’m late again.
Time got weird in the hallway.
I swear the mirror
was trying to warn me—
but I was too busy
checking if my under-eye bags
made me look exquisitely exhausted,
or just ordinary and old.

I wanted to scream  
but the hallway  
was practicing silence.  

I wanted to run,  
but the rug said stay  
and the mirror said  
be still  
and beautiful and
unavailable.

The mirror said:
this is what longing looks like
when it runs out of places to go.

So I stood there—
a half-wreck, half-reflection—
trying to decide
if disappearing quietly
still counts as survival.

Somewhere,
my phone is defrosting.
Somewhere,
the red door is waiting.

Somewhere,
my dead friend
is laughing
his ghost-laugh,
mouthing: same.
Aaron Beedle Apr 12
You'll love me as long as I say
the things you want me to say.
And if I don't tell you you're lovely,
your love seems to fade away.

But you'll love me if I know the way,
the way that I've learnt to convey,
to speak in the way that you taught me,
so your love isn't taken away.

And it's making me feel quite lonely,
all these words that you're making me say.
I don't even think that you'd know me,
if we spoke when you couldn't see my face.
This one is a memory.
Immortality Apr 12
Woke within a dream,
amidst dense forest.

a tree stood,
older than time,
casting its shadow.

a touch of it,
showed all it had lived—
bloodied sword clash,
clouds that wept for years,
flora it wore,
wildflowers it shielded,
the warmth it once kissed.

yet it stood still.
as I faded,
back into the dream.
it had lived all, known all.
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