Pride

Written in Copenhagen in August 2019

Pride

The old city is grey today,
dampened by summer rain.
The bells chime the hours
and a flurry of cyclists
sprays passers-by from puddles.

Flags fly with pride, in shops,
on buildings and buses.
The wind whips them into life,
the ubiquitous red and white
and the rainbow.

Music pounds as the crowds
gather in celebration.
All colours are welcome. The rain
cannot dampen the joy.

What are a few drops of water
compared to years of humiliation,
beatings, death threats,
secrets and lies?

Tim Fellows 2019

Snippets

Inspired by a tour guide in Bucharest and a colour from a paint palette

Peasant Bread

The people's palace
built by monsters
with no expense spared
for their opulent legacy.
The marble floors,
the chandeliers,
nothing but the best.
Paid for in full
by baby's milk
and stolen peasant bread.


During the COVID-19 pandemic


Isolation Haiku

The frog is awake
He sees the shallow sunrise
and breaks the silence

Blackbird on the lawn
Unaware of our lockdown
Sings in the clean air

Eyes dart back and forth
There is a predator loose
that we cannot see

Just before the 2019 election...

Tug Of War

Lean back, lean back, grip and pull
Each side with the strength of numbers
Well matched, convinced that they are better
Digging in with no surrender
On it goes, on and on
The handkerchief inching back and forth
Barely shifting for all that effort
As bystanders watch, they just get bored
Or laugh at the sweaty, straining faces
Perhaps one side will win
Gloating over broken losers
Or instead they could all collapse
A fruitless waste of grim endeavours. 

Just after the 2019 election...

The Masque of Apathy with apologies to PBS

Lie like pussycats after slumber
In easily vanquishable number
Tie your own chains round and through
The manacles that were put on you
By the lying, boastful, arrogant few.

Summer 2019...

September Haiku

It's that time of year
when smart new school uniforms
swamp my facebook feed

Summer 2019...



Nero


At least when Nero
picked up his bow and played
it was only Rome
that was burning.


Spanish Poem

I'm getting angrier and angrier
Because we've run out of
Sangria

Airport 9am

Another day, another airport.
They're on the beer at 9am.
"We're on holiday!" they say,
"Get another gin for mam."

Promises

Boris's promises
are not worth
the paper
they aren't written on.


Not Again, America


How many more of
your sons and daughters will die
in a hail of lead

before you decide
that chlldren's lives matter more
than your precious guns

Spring 2019...

Closing Time Haiku

Get one more in, Joe!
Just in time before the bell
Seventh foaming pint

Ding, ding - tolls the bell
Clinking glass on polished bar
Time gentlemen please!

Spilling through the door
Its chucking out time again
Neighbours bear the brunt

Winter 2018-2019...

Icy Cycling

Icy cyclist eyes an icicle
Cycles icily, eyes the ice
Ice is cyclically icy I see
Cyclist's eye sees ice is icy.
I see a cyclist cycling icily
Icy cyclist circles his ice
See, ice sickles the cyclist!
Silly cyclist ass over eye.

on Ian Parks reaching 60

Ian

Born into rain-drenched, grime-etched Yorkshire streets,
where expectations ended down the pit,
a boy, whose mind marched to a different beat -
his path by words of love, not lamp, were lit.


Tim Fellows 2019 - 2020

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Forþfæderas

I wrote this as part of our Read To Write study of Beowulf.

It's an Anglo-Saxon form but in modern English - the break in the middle
of the line is marked with the vertical line. The key elements of Anglo-Saxon poetry
are alliteration and, common in the language itself, compound words.

The Anglo-Saxon culture came from the Vikings, where bravery in battle was seen as
honourable and poetry was used to tell tales around bravery of forefathers, which is
what the title of the poem means. The þ is a "th" sound.

For comparison, here are some lines from Beowulf:

Gewát ðá néosian | syþðan niht becóm
héän húses | hú hit Hring-Dene
æfter béorþege | gebún hæfdon
fand þá ðaér inne | æþelinga gedriht
swefan æfter symble | sorge ne cúðon
wonsceaft wera | wiht unhaélo
grim ond graédig | gearo sóna wæs
réoc ond réþe | ond on ræste genam
þrítig þegna | þanon eft gewát
húðe hrémig | tó hám faran
mid þaére wælfylle | wíca néosan

I performed it at the National Coal Mining Museum in June 2019. I thought that my forefathers deserved commemorating as the Vikings would have. 

Forþfæderas

In olden days | those darkest times
Forefathers came | from many lands
wend from the West | where work was failing
breaking bridges | to bide in brick-homes
lads of land-craft | who learned the new ways
cutting coal | by candle-flicker
soon to settle | as strangers to
their northern neighbours | nights and days
of weary working | wives at home
as men are mining | their muscles pound
and sweat is sliding | sinews creaking
in the dust-dirt of | the Devil's homestead.

Where lamps are lit | and leather strapping
wraps the warriors | who wield their axes
hack and hew | and heed no fear
despite the danger | in the darkness
gas and groaning | of great wood-cages
black-rock bearing | in brutish nightmare
roof-rock falling | red blood flowing
a widow is walking | while in death-tears
black in binding | bitter her burden
comrades carry | the coffin onward
and lower her lover | his life-force rising
to heaven's heartland  | helmet shining.

Dust to dust | in Derby's county
songs of sorrow | sung in honour
of men who marched | in merciless worm-tracks
in throes of thunder | thirst and hardship
their form is fading | fast to past-times
the lives they led | in legendary yore-days
recalled in reverence | rightly cherished
our kith and kin | our kings and queens
blood that binds us | bound forever.

Tim Fellows 2019


Image by Arthur_ASCII from Pixabay

Birth

In February I visited the Pima County Air Museum in Tucson, Arizona. One of many splendidly preserved aircraft was a B-29 bomber, Sentimental Journey, like the one in the image below.

The atomic bomb known as Fat Man exploded over Nagasaki on the 9th August 1945 at 11:02 a.m. at an approximate altitude of 1,800 feet. Less than a second after the detonation, the north of the city was destroyed and 35,000 people were killed. It was delivered by the B-29 bomber Bockscar.

Birth

In the cavernous hangar
the silver beast is silent.
Its belly gapes
and I imagine
Fat Man hanging inside,
primed and bloated
with a deadly load.

The belly is opened and
the beast gives birth,
a bastard child falling,
screaming its first breath
with the light of a thousand suns.
Blistering meagre cloud.
Nagasaki opens her arms
and takes it into her soul.

Tim Fellows 2019

Image by guralski from Pixabay

Where Pocahontas Died

The town of Pocahontas in Alberta, Canada, existed briefly for miners to extract coal for the First World War.

Where Pocahontas Died

A wapiti, heavy with calf, is grazing
near the place they called Pocahontas.
Where they came to plunder the treasure
beneath the ground, tracking north through forest
on bear-trails.

The great mountains,
grey faces covered by shrouding cloud
and topped with white,
roared their anger as their hoard
was pillaged. They sent fierce winds and snow
that lay in thick slabs. Tendrils of ice
like frozen tears began to trickle
and formed gushing rivers.

The air and forest blazed with fire
but the precious lode was scoured
until that day when all was empty;
the earth and the ghost shacks, the bones
of another age.

The cow-elk turns mournfully to me, its eyes
dark and wet, then back to gaze upon the place
where Pocahontas died.

Tim Fellows 2019

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

The 18 to Euston

The 18 to Euston

A true story...

Stop-start through the London night, winding towards Euston station
I sit, on the bottom deck, observing my fellow travellers.
There are many languages, Portuguese, I think and one side
of a phone conversation in an African language peppered with bits of English.
Hindi too, probably, and something from Eastern Europe.

Across the aisle is a man - thick set, silent, unsmiling - somewhere Asian? Not sure.
The bus stops and a man gets on, carrying a plastic bag. He sits opposite me.
He has a magnificent moustache. He takes out a small comb and grooms it. He smiles.
A broad smile - his eyes twinkle and his moustache bristles like a small bush in the breeze.

The Asian man sees the moustache and smiles back. "This is a great moustache", he says.
"Ha, ha", says Moustache Man, "Yes, sometimes people ask if they can touch it!"
I don't think I will ask that, but I feel that the Asian man might. He doesn't.

"I am from Mongolia!", he says. "Oh!", I think, "Yes, it's obvious now" - even though I've never
met anyone from Mongolia I have seen documentaries.
I wonder if Moustache Man will reveal his nationality. He does. "I am from Sudan", he says. His accent is difficult to follow from behind the facial forest and I think The Mongolian has
failed to pick this up. He doesn't seem to care and says "This moustache - very good!".

Then, from nowhere, he beats his chest with one fist - "Mongolian, strong!"
He laughs, Moustache Man laughs, I laugh.
"We are all happy!", says Moustache Man. "Yes, happy,
this is good!" says the Mongolian.

We discuss the climate and geography of Mongolia.
I tell them I am English and the Sudanese man asks me if I am from Newcastle.
I say no, but it seemed a bit random. I certainly don't think I sound like Jimmy Nail.
At 10pm it is 29C outside the air conditioned comfort of the bus.
Moustache Man points outside and says - "This is winter in Sudan!". We all laugh again.

"I live here now," says the Mongolian, "and sometimes go back.
I am happy." "I am happy", says Sudan Man, "I have been here 27 years".
I think he says 27 but the moustache has freed itself
from its earlier combing and is now interfering with his audibility.

"Why you have no beard!" says The Mongolian. "You could have
a fine big beard!". "No", says Sudan Man, "that is like the people
who make bombs. I don't like them and I am Muslim."

We nod awkwardly at this serious turn of events and Sudan Man realises he needs
a course correction and asks the Mongolian why he has no moustache.
Actually he points at him and at the mighty tache and says "You, moustache?"
The Mongolian shakes his head and indicates with his hand a pathetic straggly
moustache and beard would result.

The Mongolian indicates that it is his stop and gets up - he shakes our hands.
"This was good!"
We agree. It was good. He leaves at Paddington Green.

Sudan Man turns to me - "I love football. Who is your team?"
I try to explain Chesterfield FC to him but they are beyond explanation.
"My team," he says, and I expect Chelsea or Arsenal or Spurs, "is Newcastle
United!". Ah, that explains his earlier question. He has never been there,
but he has always liked Kevin Keegan. Actually, Keegan's perm
and the 'tache are of similar magnitude.

"1996" he says, "we should have won! But that Manchester United, they don't let us!!"
"What about Alan Shearer?" I ask. "Yes!" he shouts and mimics Shearers goal celebration.
He too realises he has to get off - "Goodbye friend!" he says. "Goodbye", I say and he
and his moustache disappear into the night.

I sit there in the last few minutes of my journey with my faith in humanity restored
by a proud Mongolian and a Sudanese with ferocious facial hair.

I would love it if all conversations between different nationalities were like this. And I hope,
if Kevin Keegan were here, he would love it too.

Tim Fellows August 2018, London, England, Europe, The World...

Image by Steve Watts from Pixabay