Bible reading reveals God* to me
builds up my life with divine love
braces spirit from fright's woes
breaks pride and selfishness
bolsters faith to serve
buttresses heart
bids me to
bloom well...
blest!
*2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
March 21, 2026
3rd place, "A Single Nonet on the theme of a hobby or anything you like..." Poetry Writing Contest
Sponsored by Tania Kitchin; judged on 4/5/2026
Decay gnaws at a country church.
It's homeless; it's lost its congregation.
Molting stones crumble, eroding away.
Mice nibble at the altar.
Winds twine through cracks.
Rain and dew drip through.
Roof slates slip down.
Each year it's more decrepit.
As nature slowly moves in.
Edges made to endure,
fracture, collapsing into rubble.
Plinths and buttresses
forsake their faith.
Agnostic shadows creep in.
As nature resumes,
its inscrutable ways.
Bells corrode into silence.
Tongues stilled in the throat of dome.
Hymns survive only as echoes in
whistling drafts through splintered rafters.
The pews sag like tired suspenders,
long unbent in prayer.
Rain scrawls psalms on walls,
scripted in mildew and moss.
Stained glass panels drop down
into the rubbish and weeds.
Crossbeams become bird-nest perches,
for swallows and doves, now the choir.
This homeless house of God laments
in the nettles, thorns and briers.
Seeking nature’s absolution
for its forsaken ruin.
A scar upon the land.
A desolate homeless being.
A blot on the earth.
Ruin gnaws a country church,
its eroding stones ever molting.
Mice nibble; winds whiplash,
roof slates slide slowly over
each decrepit year.
Edges made not to crumble,
return to rubble.
Plinths and buttresses
fade in their faith,
agnostic shadows stretch.
Bats and owls
sweep away as they shelter.
Masonry moves
its mysterious ways.
This downcast day
fleet House Martins,
seek out ways to slip through
every vacant widow,
in this rumbling
cloud-walled sky.
Searching the smoking ruins
of Notre-Dame cathedral,
on the Paris Île de la Cité,
one of the finest examples medieval
of French Gothic architecture,
with flying buttresses, rib vault, immense bells,
enormous colourful rose windows
all of which went through hell
during the fearful fire of 2019,
and the No Bell Prize winner was seen to have been
mangled through the proverbial wringer
as, when looking for Quasimodo,
they found a dead ringer.
I love how wè live faraway
From the noise and voices
Echoing like dominoes falling
fast and faster into the abyss
Of destruction.
I love how we live safely,
We think, as long as the world
Stays confined within electronic
Devices like caged birds, wings
Beating breezes into deluges.
I love how we live unmolested
By the sharp edges of violence,
The softness of sun when it rises
And when it sets buttresses our fortress
Of blindness.
Standing for freedom’s supremacy
Legitimately granted to be enjoyed
I am the "Freedom Pub*"
Tenaciously upholding what I believe is lawful
Anchored by the Constitution
Which strongly buttresses this nation I am part of…
Speaking for humane practices
That exposes unlawful mandates
Imposed by the government
I am the "Freedom Pub"
And I refuse to discriminate against anyone
Who is fulfilling his/her granted role with peace.
With this declaration
I am the "Freedom Pub"
Inviting all to feast rightfully inside my building
Against fear of being segregated or neglected
While welcoming the vaccinated and unvaccinated
To dine in, celebrating good health… blest by the Almighty**.
*Caledonian Hotel of Singleton NSW, Australia
**Psalm 91:1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
January 7, 2023
2nd place, "Freedom Pub" Poetry Writing Contest
Sponsored by Joe Maverick; judged on 1/9/2023.
Edited on January 14, 2023
A couple of ruins leave the cathedrals
nave and portico;
it is always molting season,
mice and beetles help
they nibble and gnaw,
wind-laborer’s, labor,
their whiplash backs bent,
to lever slates and all things loosened.
The sanctified, they guard their stony hearts
but the edges were made to crumble,
made to be returned to rubble.
The two twined ruins
exiting these ancient piles
were created to be spans and transits
for the upliftment of saintly figures,
no one will miss them, yet their
plinths, their buttresses
their embossments
until recently
held a small alcove heavenwards
a niche, that will probably
lose its faith soon,
toppling one year at a time
into an agnostic downfall.
The two ruins are so disfigured
as to be nothing at all,
but they are moving in mysterious ways
to where a tireless worker
will help them rise again,
but of course dust will stir up dust,
the mice and the beetles
will continue
to nibble and gnaw, however
the Maker will be ready
once more
to return dust to cathedrals.
Often, I have to challenge the words,
after they’re written
Often, I struggle to understand,
what the Muse is trying to say
Often, I have to cede the ground,
that buttresses my thinking
Often, the voices calling out
—are strangers to my ear
(Villanova Pennsylvania: January, 2020)
Beside a babbling brook I browse
By a bridge braving bleak winters breeze
Beaver is busily burrowing beneath
Before bitter blizzards batter beaver’s bunker
Beaver beavering as he barricades the breach
Bedtime beckons before darkness befalls, but my
Bright my blue backpack bounces into the babbling brook
Begetting a bung of blue, Beaver buttresses his breach
Bewitched by Beaver’s busyness and bidding him bye bye
Before a blizzard begins bouncing big ice balls from the sky
Back inside my bungalow beside a burning fire
Buoyant my backpack had blocked Beaver’s breach
Bedtime was beckoning as I began to fall asleep
But beaming - for my backpack had really worked a treat
By bunging Beaver's breach beside a babbling brook
Burgeoning with self-belief I’ll write a ‘Beaver Bedtime Book’
Written: 1st April 2019
2nd PLACE
Contest: Pick A Title, Vol 3 Alliteration - By The Water's Edge |
Sponsor: Edward Ibeh
3rd PLACE
Contest: CONTEST no 620 in alliteration style,any theme ,any form
Sponsor: Brian Strand
Contest Name Alliteration 004
Sponsor Poet Destroyer
22nd October 2020
I reposted this poem because I just ca't get those young boys out of my mind.
What have we lost? What would the world have become had they lived? Why have we not learned anything? Please read with a gentle heart for all those whose spirits are still fighting and dying even now.
they can’t find home
trees trunked as pillars
a cathedral gallery
edges my road
through french farmland
waking in mists of spring
brown arched buttresses push green
into the face of god
a somber holiness escapes,
the sound echoed
among foliage floating above
I sit to rest
and there silently arise
between rough bark
men, grey as leaf mold
approach to offer
their deaths carried gingerly
in cupped hands
taste this, our tales of mortar shelled
star burst murder
on nights yellow with gas
lungs choking closed
blown into eternity
by mined field’s crop of demise or
whining whistle of rifle spew entering
warm sacred bodies oozing life their beauty,
sweet youth gone to earth
beneath grasses where they should be
lover’s heat now
all, wander still
those blood soaked fields of mud,
noise and death
laid down
to pave a path
for old men counting green
and dreaming glory.
an’t find home
trees trunked as pillars
a cathedral gallery
edges my road
through french farmland
waking in mists of spring
brown arched buttresses push green
into the face of god
a somber holiness escapes,
the sound echoed
among foliage floating above
I sit to rest
and there silently arise
between rough bark
men, grey as leaf mold
approach to offer
their deaths carried gingerly
in cupped hands
taste this, our tales of mortar shelled
star burst murder
on nights yellow with gas
lungs choking closed
blown into eternity
by mined field’s crop of demise or
whining whistle of rifle spew entering
warm sacred bodies oozing life their beauty,
sweet youth gone to earth
beneath grasses where they should be
lover’s heat now
all, wander still
those blood soaked fields mud,
noise and death
laid down
to pave a path
for old men dreaming glory.
Perhaps I am the privileged one
Perhaps the one who disqualified your vice is one like myself
For after all, if equality is truly to be achieved
We are to see the weaknesses and the strengths
In the potential of all in harmony
Am I wrong?
Perhaps you are criminalized for your own sake
For you inhale to stifle; I swallow to expand
But buttresses are buttresses
Am I wrong?
I am the maximized self; you are yourself without reserve
My standing comes from those who chose your vice before me
But who am I to choose?
My vice is not condemning; my humanity no greater than yours
But any time a man is placed above his brother
That man’s flaws are revered
Not by human nature, but by condition
Perhaps that man was me
Guarding over you, my brother
Perhaps we can agree that he is all of us
Am I wrong?
Inhale; I swallow
Release; I regain
For the one who has known despair will choose a path of consciousness
Your awareness is my degradation
Am I wrong?
Should I apologize for my antecedent insult to your reliance?
In all insults are a hope for harmony
Can we live in harmony with our sins?
My Home Is No Fortress
Speechless thoughts flow out as words when the drawbridge is upended
From turrets they wind down and spiral into a stream of consciousness
Gently wind to and fro processions of images narratives a dreamy river
Drought happens as I resort to the keep when beleaguered by onslaught
of foes breaking barbicans collapsing foreign walls in the most barbarian way
Crowded rampage seizes ramparts and bulwarks of my own defences
Baileys and mounts scream battle cries of injustice injured in ignorance
Thus I decide there’s no longer a need for arrow loops since my truths
reject the heart ache of anger and would much rather be conquered by love
I conclude therefore to raise spiky stakes portcullises and misconceptions
and suppose that it is not me who built their house on evaporation and sand
When my thoughts slide up and down buttresses and find their words
vulnerable projections dissolve and my home is once more a wide open space
16th November
Cronking ravens’ aerobatics
between rock-pulpits leaning over,
grey disdainful gate-posts.
Our shouts echoed
as we clambered like ants on a wall,
the lake a far glittering pool
in the dark sunken floor of the world.
On the saddle
buttresses of old hostile crags
hung vertiginously over an empty valley
where brown snaking streams reflected the sky.
When the fire died the night wrapped us in cold arms
and stars like dust convened,
aloof to the elegant comet and its silver veil.
Next day, glad to be warm again, on a pass,
the summit of the piled massif
was a distant view in the sun’s torrent,
another world visited, lonely,
while people toiled earnestly up and down the tracks.
When we’ve gone like empires before,
these mountains would still be hunched under the rain and sun.
But we ventured, searched from view to changing view, conquered, grew,
and came back a little wiser
to explore the wider wilderness
6.97
...a prose poem
Standing at the edge of the canyon,
its crest wreathed in swirling clouds of fog
the tower looms on the plain,
incongruous, like blood on a bridal gown.
Zedar has come to investigate.
As Grand Sovereign of the New Republic
he takes his responsibilities seriously,
and besides, he wants to take charge of this
mission personally, to remove all doubt
concerning his effectiveness as a leader.
Not much is known about the tower.
It is an architectural curiosity, constructed
from sheets of metal and wood with ornamental
granite buttresses. Built in the Seventh Epoch
it was thought by some to have religious significance,
but Zedar thought it might be used for munitions storage
for the Deviants to mount attacks against Moqaffa.
The monolith intrigues him.
It sucks him in and swallows him whole.
Feeling his way he finds a staircase
spiraling upward, disappearing into darkness.
He begins to climb.
One, two, three, four...
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