Blog Archives

The Guitar In The Loft, by Guy Fletcher

26/6/2017

The guitar in the loft lies forlorn,
dusty and stained ignobly with bird droppings,
out of tune long ago like his dreams
as he thinks of the band and where they are now:
one is dead, the others? who knows.
Oh, they were going all the way to the top,
world tours; Japan, USA
but they only made it to Pontypridd.

He thought he was Hendrix and the lyrics profound
but it's like comparing Pam Ayres to Ezra Pound.

Yes, the guitar in the loft lies forlorn
yet it was such a different story then,
caressed tenderly like a lover
taking him from the asylum of life.
He found a photograph of the band
with Zappa moustaches and flares,
optimistic behind a moody façade.
He tunes the guitar and a string snaps

but close his eyes and begins to play
transporting back to days far away.

Summer Twilight, by Guy Fletcher

19/6/2017

The red roses fade as I write
barely seeing the paper beneath
for the sunset which turned dark clouds
into flames has now gone
and a gloom descends across the parched land
before the black star-freckled night
makes its late entrance.
Trees become menacing monsters,

there's something sinister about this time,
I picture murder or some other crime.

Laughing children have left the park
and a ghostly silence prevails
but the oppressive heat of the day
has relented and a cooling breeze
refreshes my fevered brow
as I reflect on the bright hours earlier.
Many cover up the eerie twilight
with TV screens in illuminated homes

but I enjoy the changing of the guard
feeling our petty lives are a façade.

Parlour Socialist – Note to Myself, by Ian Fletcher

18/6/2017

You’ve watched the world
go by, grown prosperous
by your staid profession,
your stocks and shares.
Your care for your property,
your immediate kith and kin,
has overridden old empathy
for those affected by austerity.
Though, in principle, against
dwindling of the welfare state,
you baulk inwardly at increases
in your own income tax rate.
You’ve humoured friends,
activists who never gave up
the cause, ‘liking’ their posts,
their rants, while thinking
don’t they have anything
better to do with their lives?
Has it thus taken this fire,
this horror in Kensington,
to awaken you this late hour
from your lifetime’s slumbers?

2711, by Guy Fletcher

12/6/2017

Relaxing in the Tiergarten
now seems a lifetime away
as I enter the Holocaust Memorial, Berlin:
2,711 concrete blocks,
various sizes to denote
the difference of those who perished
in the horror rooms where pitiful voices
screamed in vain as another train arrived.

I am perspiring in the humid air,
disorientated in this monstrous, monolithic maze:
slithers of Heaven, blank skyscrapers, a wave,
feeling the ghosts of the innumerable
victims of industrial genocide.
It silently implores us never to forget
and I step back into the modern world
to the Gertrud Kolmar Strasse

relieved to be free from this haunting place
yet with images of a child's doomed face.

Graduation Day At Wagor High School, by Ian Fletcher

7/6/2017

On this glorious summer’s day in Taiwan
the graduates bathed in golden sunlight
and caressed by the gentlest of breezes
celebrate a landmark in their young lives.
In unison they throw their caps into the air
as if they would forever rise and never fall
their hopes and dreams without boundaries.
Looking back across the vast abyss of time
I wonder whether my own were achieved.
Partly, perhaps, yet it matters little right now
for this is their day, their world, not mine.

Sunrise Over Dawlish Beach, by Guy Fletcher

5/6/2017

I am alone with the dawn sea
apart from screeching seagulls
mixing with the muted roar,
sunrise producing a road of fire
in the ocean, dull skies of yesterday
have now drifted away as if a ghost
as I admire the beauty of the coast.

It's fine to be alive on such a day
inhaling the salty air
and strolling down the untroubled causeway
hours before the tourists arrive.
This is my favourite time, the silent hours
throwing a pebble into the calm sea,
the sound of the waves and tranquillity.