Best Larkin Poems

Maybe the old toad was right,
There really is nothing to be said
As a magpie picks its way along
Crumbling bricks which do little to conceal
Barracks demolished without a fight.
What once was alive is now dead,
Memories echoing like the last chord of a song
Beautiful resonance before they...

Continue reading...

To Midlander Phillip Larkin
modernity was always a sin
So influential in his time
with continuity his constant 'rime'...

Continue reading...

Abide
by Michael R. Burch

after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"

It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea

boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit...

Continue reading...

They eff you up, your Mum and Dad,
At least that's what we're told,
All your Dad's genes are hand-me-downs,
Your anger, spawn of old,
It's not your fault you can't fly straight,
it's not your fault you fail.
I'll blame it on my Ma and Pa,
It's the reason I travail,
I've...

Continue reading...

The rain. Unrelenting.
Cats and dogs. 
The dreary architecture of the souless
 grey-brown urban landscape 
worthy of the matchstick man fella
But. Hopeful.
The smokers hunched by the bookies,
 beside the battlecruiser. Handy. 
A cosy camaraderie with a common denominator
No judgement; but wonder or at least inquisitiveness
I envy...

Continue reading...