Thread by @TomLondon6

#UKIsolatepoem 43

This poem was written during the lockdown by Sarah Woolf

The Cycle of Life

Now we are stilled what has become of the rhythm of our lives?
Once dictated by the time on the clock,
A meeting, celebrity programme,
The catching of a train.
What now marks the passing of our week?
Thursday clapping, the weekly shop,

2/?

Friday candles, Wednesday quiche, another Sunday roast.
How do we notice the day going by?
A daily walk
The 5 o clock briefing
Or the gently shifting arc of the sun...

Now we are stilled what are we learning of the cycle of life?
The loss of our loved one,

3/?

Longing for shared comfort and rites of passage for precious life passing,
While seedlings emerge anew.

We live with loneliness
While people reach out with love in new unexpected ways,
Tendrils reaching for the light.

As the sun sets, it also rises again.

4/?

The dark night is peppered with bright stars. The sparkling sun's rays cast dark shadows in patterns never seen before.

Dustmen are heroes and holidaymakers, enemies.
Cars and planes are quietened leaving space for birdsong to fill.

5/?

Football pitches fade replaced with the light tread of family groups.
Birds sing sweet tunes as they fight for space and food.
Tulip petals fall and rot as buttercups smile from verdant grass.

We breathe out, we breathe in. The earth breathes it for us.

6/?

Tiny shoots emerge from the dark earth watered by rain
The sun sets, the sun rises.
The blackbird signals the end, and the dawning of each new miraculous day.

7/8

What are we becoming now that we are stilled? Now that the air is cleaner, is there now more clarity; new love for Mother Earth's seasons and the rhythmic cycle of death, and of life.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 44

Salena Godden is one of the UK's foremost spoken word artists and poets

There are plenty of reasons for pessimism right now. Here's a poem to help counter-act those understandable feelings

Pessimism is for Lightweights by @salenagodden

Pessimism is for Lightweights

Think of those that marched this road before
And those that will march here in years to come
The road in shadow and the road in the sun
The road before us and the road all done
History is watching us and what will we become

2/?

This road is all flags and milestones
Immigrant blood and sweat and tears
Built this city, built this country
Made this road last all these years

3/?

This road is made of protest
And those not permitted to vote
And those that are still fighting to speak
With a boot stamping on their throat

4/?

There is power and strength in optimism
To have faith and to stay true to you
Because if you can look in the mirror
And have belief and promise you
Will share wonder in living things
Beauty, dreams, books and art
Love your neighbour and be kind
And have an open heart

5/?

Then you're already winning at living
You speak up, you show up and stand tall
It's silence that is complicit
It's apathy that hurts us all

Pessimism is for lightweights
There is no straight white line
It's the bumps and curves and obstacles
That make this road yours and mine
67

Pessimism is for lightweights
This road was never easy and straight
And living is all about living alive and lively
And love will conquer hate.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 45
Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.

1/?

"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in.

2/?

The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.

3/?

Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet.

4/5

My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 46

"SEEN FROM ABOVE"
By Wislawa Szymborska

A dead beetle lies on the path through the field.
Three pairs of legs folded neatly on its belly.
Instead of death's confusion, tidiness and order.
The horror of this sight is moderate,
its scope is strictly local, from the wheat grass to the mint.
The grief is quarantined.

2/?

The sky is blue.

To preserve our peace of mind, animals die
more shallowly: they aren't deceased, they're dead.
They leave behind, we'd like to think, less feeling and less world,
departing, we suppose, from a stage less tragic.
Their meek souls never haunt us in the dark,

3/?

they know their place,
they show respect.

And so the dead beetle on the path
lies unmourned and shining in the sun.
One glance at it will do for meditation --
clearly nothing much has happened to it.

4/5

Important matters are reserved for us,
for our life and our death, a death
that always claims the right of way.

THE END

#UKIsolatepoem 47

FASCISM: I SOMETIMES FEAR... by Michael Rosen

I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

1/?

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

2/3

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution."

THE END