POEM - The Tawdry Reaping

In a time requiring judgement

for it to end in profanity, 

is a defect of my soul-searching 

but these are the cracks 

in the crazed pavements 

we walk upon

this is a time that is deluded

about its own delusion

it is the smelly slime

from a pond, aggressive jack boots

have stamped in, dredged out, 

then renamed it clarity, 

I swear, I do swear, it is the swearing, 

that I do, in order to release the constraints 

upon my tongue, the nervousness of lips

out of a charitable need for my mind

to speak free of polity, off message,

frankly, I cry out fuuuuck, far too loudly,

too often, with a rage ignored

by the la la la of eardrums

so I doubt these caustic words, 

their construct and cognisance

their sentences, can they ever match the mood

or capture the collective geist 

of a succulent stupidity 

already presenting itself for crowning 

what is it, that we think we are doing

hunting down the scent of a putrid lure

across wild clawed countryside?

nothing as laudable 

as an altruistic urge exists here,

I am left smoldering in regret

for we will be so double crossed

by the mean spiritedness

of their tinfoil minds, 

dressed soberly in pastel blue suits

those arsonists who point

at the fires they've ignited

then shake their moralising heads 

at the descent of England

as though they themselves

had nothing to do with the inflammatory fury

that they are merely pointing at

all destruction prefaces a future creature

and I fear the beast now being let loose 

to ethnically poison then cleanse the soil

preparing this land for the tawdry reaping

of a mutant political harvest.

Written June 2026
by Stephen Lumb 

POEM - Borrowed Words

I'm seeing myself through 

childhood's eyes my toys

cast across the bedroom floor

with the accompanying magical

folklore from my errant dreaming

my rolling chassis is still

as unsure as a newborn babes

for what appears purposeful 

and godlike has assumed this gate 

from the rubble I stumbled upon

the words that I say are 

half beliefs half cut with

bluster a type of blagging

obtained cheaply imbibed

from the erudition of libraries

this mind stuffed with pocketed

borrowings that I will leave behind 

as a trail of cellophane wrappers 

from around my humbugs

the legacy of having once eaten 

far more than was needed to survive by

Written by Stephen Lumb
March-April 2026

POEM - Collating Pebbles

I hear popular 

invidious distinctions 

made on the pages
of books and rhymes

reformulating history

as though belonging

a sense of place were a matter 

of the purity of its ingredients 

cooked in a mythic ancestral soup

selecting only the whitest pebbles 

from a beach of mixed aggregates 

wilfully ignoring the continental drift

the gravelled tides 

that brought everyone to an island

you really have to want to get too

our shingled beaches 

ever shifting in their formation

with each lunar cycle 

carry whatever flotsam 

the waves throw up

for we remain 

as ever we were

a resolutely mongrel nation 
our noble destiny our right of birth 

is to be cross bred 

via our estuaries and ecstasies 

by glorious virtue of evolutionary jism

with Neanderthal pebbles, 

Celtic pebbles, 

Roman pebbles, 

Scandinavian pebbles, 

Angle, Saxon and Jute pebbles, 

Norman French, Dutch and Andalucian

and any other exotic gene pebble 

we might pocket through our travails

through the gravel 

of this washed up lineage we have

absorbed cultures 

with the insatiableness of blotting paper

adventuring across seas

migrated seeking fortunes in 

foreign climes, 

conquered, quelled and capitalised

on the achievements of countless

civilisations whilst

we forged then forgot an Empire

that we ethnically cleansed 

of our sins and repainted beneficent 

should you chose to

though why ever should you 

define our nation by the narrowest alley 

travelled between one street and the next

then we all become foreigners, immigrants and refugees 

by virtue of crossing a road

become prey for territorial street gangs

lurking on the other side of an

invisible boundary line

someone thought up

on the back of a fag packet

we are all in a world wild search 

for a destination sublime

to find whatever our true home is 

and wherever we choose to land

humankind makes that 

into the flesh and bones of a nation

collated out of the inconspicuous ruins 

of our collective vagrancy 

our primary homelessness

we wander arrive

we settle 

and conjure

a less muddied destiny for ourselves 

with whoever we are with 

wherever it is that we are

nothing about a nation is eternal

nor sacrosanct 

we briefly share genetic time

together on a river

that floats us downstream

into a vast encompassing sea

into which we all become 

indistinguishable 

from water

in the end.

Written by Stephen Lumb February/March 2026

POEM - Shaking Our Superior Head

It appears we have presumed
the importance
of bringing to them a name 
to state there deviation
from acceptable to
castigate to the abhorrent core

the fault lines in their beliefs
being more important still not
to be listened too
to care for how they arrived here
what circuitous routes they took to
turning a deaf ear to our wisdom

nor can we allow one
free finger of thought
to touch upon the reasons
for bleaching their hair roots
lest accidentally to stumble upon a
need for stability and belonging

of a very similar cast
to your own to what
you demand and possess
for sure they are 
clinging to clearly
unconscionable conclusions

but all desires run hungry
for a clear cut gypsy globe
to gaze through for omens
to dispel the persistent misting
of tired rationales
cracked frameworks

and caged mindscapes
however incorrect we
conclude these to be
in the wrong they stain humanity with
a compromised existence squeezes tightly
around the neck of them

emerging from this murkier
less familiar end
of the shallowest income bracket
to be found near our neighbourhood
seeks favourable conditions beyond
the insecurity of plasterwork 

the surface mould on their
turned out to be
trashed horizons
and the ever advancing
pollution haze of grim prospects
and career potholes

they want what you want
to have what you have
even looking at
the same photographs
they perceive them in negative
with all faces blackened

teeth erased and backlit
skies thunderous in
a petri dish culture of grim
all moral prognosis
biologically dipped in fixative
declared superior via slogans

gestures and sounds that bite those
purely English apples of prejudice
tattooed upon their flexed arms
affinities cable tied to lamposts
that brings to them a pride
that puts all bread and

ambivalence to bed we fear
the fouling of fossil fueled ideals
seeping into our eco-cleaned carpets
because all this has seemingly
got far too difficult
for us to encompass to continue

being eminently reasonable about so
we slap a name upon them
and shaking our superior head
walk back to the car
fearing for our lifestyle sanctified through
our better taste and choice in shoes

 


Written by Stephen Lumb January 2026

POEM - The Gardening Of Time

I am not finished yet
I declare as I wash down
the path in the garden
the old arthritic man in me
gently fiddles ineffectively
with weeds
trims errant bushes
clears mounds of leaves things
that need attending to
are added to the
purposeful small garden of tasks
seemingly so I cannot say
this job is done
yet

and through these
insufficient deeds
the hours into days well
they pass peacefully enough
with only this gaggle of
humble activities of note
though there are days 
where I can't be arsed with
even this,
that or the other
luxuriating in my age
and indolence
because I can
and will given the time
lounge around sheepishly

deaf to plaintive echoes of my Mother
incanting disparaging phrases
of any notion that I
could sit around all day
doing nothing
when nothing can be
so delightful a frisson of freedom
from care about any
inculcated remonstrance
too old yes too bloody old
for any of that
I puff up some cushions to
let body mind and purpose
find some shut eye

existing can that really
be redacted to an exercise
in the time
and productivity
of a neat garden in winter
or did I miss some salient point
or sagacity along the way in
the meaning of meaning
is it in the doing 
or the endgame that
life is at its best isn't life normally a job
left incomplete abandoned to
the accompaniment of some tune
filched from Thomas Tallis
to activate all the tear ducts
of mourners in the perfectly
manicured garden 
of remembrance

Written by Stephen Lumb
November 2025

READING ALOUD - W.S.Merwin Reads - The Love for October

 

When you read W.S.Merwin's biography, you see very little that tells you what sort of a man he was. Extremely productive and driven as a poet, the delicate thoughtful nature of his writing, is often like turning over and examining a tumbling stone. A common trope in his poetry is to see everything as if viewed through the framing of a particular window. There is a certain unknowable insularity to his character and writing, I can't imagine he was ever the life and soul of a party, did he ever get drunk and out of control? Married three times might indicate he could've either been difficult to live with, or was drawn towards women that he really was incapable of fully meeting. 

The Love of October, reflects on youthful perception. saying in its first line

'A child looking on ruins grows younger
but cold
and wants to wake to a new name
I have been younger in October
than all the months of spring'  

As indeed he once was. Born right at the end of September, October was indeed Merwin's first month alive in this world. So his choice of this poem as one to read aloud, has some strong personal links for him.

POETRY - W.S. Merwin's - The Flight

The Flight

At times in the day
I thought of a fire to watch
not that my hands were cold
but to have that doorway to see through
into the first thing
even our names are made of fire

and we feed on night

walking I thought of a fire

turning around I caught sight of it

in an opening in the wall

in another house and another

before and after

in house after house that was mine to see

the same fire the perpetual bird.

Taken from W.S. Merwin - Migration - New & Selected Poems
Published by Copper Canyon Press, 2005.

POEM - I Know I Am Here

I see me every morning
as the setting moon of my face
stares backwards through the mirror

I see the refracted spheres of me
as the water ripples sloshing
in the bottom of a bucket

I see myself in rain gathered gutters
the passing cast of my existence
skipping across the road in puddled steps

I see as mine these holographed echoes
in dormer windows, glazed arches, car windscreens
the floating glare in darkened shopfronts.

I see that I am multifaceted, glimpsed
through countless distorted reflections
conforming to the shapely curve of any surface

I see how I appear in wide angles 
via the sentient lens of borrowed eyes
and their psycho-gothic projections

I know I am here, only fleetingly
caught in the gossamer light weft
of my own story and weaving

Written by Stephen Lumb -September 2025

POEM - No More Need

Do you need

to hear this,
to follow blithely
its particular poetic trail of crumbs?
does the world really need more intricate phrases
formed around a dysfunctional
shifting
sentence construction?
does it need to hear
any more from me or from you?
hmm, when does it ever!
what utility does this need possess?

could you easily do without it?
what would you cluster around
and be about then?
what is this urge anyway?
where does this need - lead
other then to another need,
a whole wagon train of successive needs
where does all this grasping get you?
whence does it take you?
dragging yourself to some far off hill
where imaginative fulfillment 

owns a big house, no doubt 

when was all that ever realistic?
tangible to your present senses
another fantasy flourish
among many
filling up the vacant spaces in time and life?
quickly buried beneath sorrow
and all sorts of other excremental refuse
that you produced, but discarded
do you recognise that here, 

that this is the nexus of your pain?
concealed inside
this self enveloping pit 

of unrequited desires
that this is where your promiscuous muse 

ends up?

Has there ever been a time, an emotion, one sequence of language
that does not need to be shed of its secretive shell
given an internet airing, a publicity shot face,
shamelessly prostituting its need
to be seen and heard and sold
out on the streets?
will there ever be a time of
no more need?

no more need for lucre?
no more need to find expression?
no more need to buy pleasure?
no more need to buy an indulgence
no more need to buy useless stuff?
no more need to keep being busy?
no more need to please?
no more need to blame others?

no more need to hate - them?
no more need to be productive?
no more need to control the daily agenda?
no more need to worry and fret about your needs?
no more need to feel concerned about your future?

no more need to run scared of not existing?
no more need to demand attention?
no more need to optimise each and every
bloody moment
for maximum enjoyment and fulfillment?
there will always be this momentum
and then that momentum
followed by further momentum
circling out like lonely satellites
multiple hands waving madly at the cosmos
to get their attention
sending your message out into the universe
for the approval of another indifferent nebula of stars
when will all this grasping
for those freak moments of attention
exhaust itself of all propulsion?
of all future possibility and direction of travel?
to have no more need  
of all of that? 

only when our need cracks itself apart
might it feel no longer frightening
to fall very quiet, 

to become anonymous
to be intellectually still

to inhabit the silence of a new born day
and those needs calmly will vanish 

slink off into the aura of what is past
then no more need
can give birth
to peace of mind.

Written by Stephen Lumb July 2025

POEM - Parchment Days

This day, of all the days
ought not to wear a mournful frown
and yet, though
it's sky bears a virgin blue
it's sun lifts its golden face
and all its shadows
form brief but shifting halos
scuttling around my feet
like faithful lap dogs
in the cupped hands of my mind
sits this weightier anniversary
that sports a phosphorescent
yet darkly walking scar,
it was a summers day
exactly like this one
the promenade struck out along the cliff
with its usual provocative invitation to walk it
my body felt much heavier
than was usual
chest pressed in upon itself
as though it were an orange
being tightly squeezed
this presentiment, this estranged oracle
has etched a long long shadow since
and makes any day
a year later, feel all the more portentous
when placed in the shade of its recollection,
the story, is hence, carefully written out on parchment
in the thick strokes of a gothic hand
what runs through it, is desperately mortal
in the way it chooses to paint itself
more needy perhaps than is its due
pushing gratitude to one side
and saying, just wait your turn
you sunny faith-filled boy
for goodness sake
will you let me grieve first
for the end
of my being carefree and spontaneous
and flip and ….open-ended
where every action now
when it ventures a step into the future
has this contractual obligation to
mention the distinct possibility of death
of there being a bus terminus
life is now stretched out against
cut according to
the limit of a fabric tape measure
with its tiny brass sunset
every day, has now to be ‘blessed’
with life, it can no longer be forgetful
or mindlessly at ease with itself, nor flagrantly casual
simply just living, has become this precious princess
to be carried across uneven stony ground
with care, and love,
but also with sadness in its tow
for the loss of its naivety, is gross
one year on
that I feel grateful to be alive
still doesn't quite cut the full mustard
as a description
its a bit fucking weak.



Written by Stephen Lumb
10/07/2025

POEM - A Plea To Whatever Is Transcendent

Whatever exists
beyond the corporeal
beyond
whatever the outstretched arms
of my imagination
can inadequately touch upon
whether 'you' can even be you'd
or gendered fluidly
I prey upon this with my mind
pray for it with my heart
and this minor souls bereft nature
pleads, like a starving man
surrounded only by pictures
of bread and wine
for one vivid experience
of it
so the ache
with which this hiatus
bores into the side of my stomach
might finally be settled
and be soothed
to at last
feel at ease
with the inherent
human state of aloneness
for whatever I do
whatever I chose to believe
whatever picture I wish to paint
of the transcendent
feels a few sketchy lines
skimmed across a page
a cartoon version
of divinity
of omnipotent original cause
conceptually aloof
and alien to feeling
all arising
out of a personal inadequacy
from base greed
a craving need
to fill the gaping hole
in my fragile belief
with a conveniently shaped
plug
which when bedraggled in doubt
can never be adequately filled
anyway
no wishes can be complied with
intuitive sense informs
me to not demand intervention
advance order a response
through arrogant temper
just align or not align
whilst staying calmly benign
if any of this is indeed true
and no delusion
then help me dream of it better
if this desire will be of benefit
transform my senses
transform my vision
transform my mind and heart
to be a fit receptacle
for small jewels
the golden amulets
to bedeck my shrine with
perfumed incense
to adorn the air with smokey swirls
light transient candles
to display
the present way forward with
for my arms they are open
and receptive for
whatever can be offered
in a kind act of reciprocity
do not remain hidden
any longer
before my human time
and hence opportunity
for comprehension
finally escapes
the cup of my fingers.

Written by Stephen Lumb
17th April 2025

READING ALOUD - Tenuous & Precarious by Stevie Smith

 

One of the UK's most beloved cantankerous poets, Stevie Smith was born in Hull, but spent much of her adult life in Palmers Green, London. That she briefly, til the age of three, inhabited the same city as Phillip Larkin, seems remarkable, but I suspect they'd never have got on.  A bookish curmudgeonly batchelor meets a semi-depressive spinster obsessed with death and a mordant sense of humour. Far too much feline levity on show. 

In this poem Tenuous & Precarious, Smith plays with ordinary words that sound like they aught to be Roman names, but are not. And they are words that become in some way critical of family life. As in her most famous poem Not Waving, But Drowning, it is a mistake to judge the outward appearance of this poem as lacking in seriousness of intent. Its needling and has sharp edges, her delivery has a tone that stops short of scathing, but only just. Here is a woman who had her struggles with being visible in a male dominated world. And so she chose to write poetry? Always the disparaging ironic lilt, its to keep you at a distance. 

All the figures in the poem appear to be male, with the possible exception of the cat. They all have their dangers and downsides that a woman is often made most aware of. They all appear to be dead, which sort of leaves you with one Roman Finis, the end of the genetic line. It maybe that this was how Stevie Smith viewed herself and her life, as a type of reduction to what seemed possible given her circumstances.

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.

My father was Hazardous,
Hazardous
Dear old man,
Three Romans.

There was my brother Spurious,
Spurious Posthumous,
Spurious was Spurious,
Was four Romans.

My husband was Perfidious,
He was Perfidious
Five Romans.
Surreptitious, our son,
Was Surreptitious,
He was six Romans.

Our cat Tedious
Still lives,
Count not Tedious
Yet.

My name is Finis,
Finis, Finis,
I am Finis,
Six, five, four, three, two,
One Roman,
Finis.

written by Stevie Smith

READING ALOUD - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

 

Thomas was the first poet I became a fan of. The verbal power of his words is further amplified in this recording of the poet performing one of his most famous poems. It has all the sing song quality of a Welsh priest intoning from his Sunday pulpit. Clearly enunciated, emotionally over heightened, muscularly musical in its delivery. In many ways Dylan Thomas heard today, you could easy hear this as a parody of the poet. As though this was recited in another epoch.

But imagine it being read in a club or small assembly room, and how overwhelming the imaginative power of it could be. The rolling cascade of its rhetoric coming towards you. This is baroque poetry born from a robust and richer valley, than the conversational plainsong of many contemporary writers. 

And Thomas here is raging famously - against the dying of the light - the futile fight we put up against our mortality, the decay of our minds and bodies. And in Thomas's case, he raged against that which he most feared, the dying of his talent and creativity, that his best work was behind him. Something which. in part, drove him to drink.

POEM - Harvesting Couch Grass

Dawn was an apricot moose

this morning 

of the pinched shoulder 

if you read the outward signs

there was nothing wrong

nothing to bare being written

home about

but behind that sensationless 

'nothing to be seen here'

was one taught strung muscle

pulling at one's well being like

a child tugging at the seams of clothes 

it wanted attention

a sweet to be sucked on

more likely

a healing hand to smooth

it all away, and

though I am an elder

my Mother long long gone

I'm holding out just in case

she'll turn up 

unexpectedly 

knowing what to do

what salve to use

to make it go away

and if she found she'd reached 

the end of her knowledge 

would walk me down the hill 

to Doctor Lister's

surgery, and deal with it

her prolonged abandoning 

of that Motherly space

means I wallow

in a distinctly male strategem

of misapplied stoicism

as though bearing with it

was the tried 

and trusted cure all

for every bodily ailment

known to mankind, so

the impingement continues

the need to embody care 

for who I am

instead fertilises a harvest 

of couch grass

that no one can reap

pivoting into an

unfiltered masochism

whose feeble integrity lies

in an illusory fit

of will to power 

theosophy

Written by Stephen Lumb
January 2025

READING ALOUD - Bluebird by Charles Buckowski

 

I think the most disarming thing about the sort of man Charles Buckowski was, is that he liked to let you know he really didn't need your approval of him, nor the life he led, nor like the poetry he wrote.  He wrote because he needed to. For a large part of his life he worked for the Post Office, he came home, started drinking and wrote into the early hours of the following day. Underneath his carefully maintained bar fly reputation, bad temper and fights, lay this deeply damaged man. Read his autobiographical book Ham on Rye, and you are shown what having fucked up parents in your childhood can do to you.

Buchowski was frequently defensive or guarded, but in his poetry something wiser and kinder would occasionally be allowed to blossom. In the rough hewn conversational style of them, a perceptive insightfulness catches you unawares.  Here in this poem Bluebird he lets you glimpse one fragment of the sensitive fragile bird of the man, held captive by the controlling, alcoholic, life coarsened persona.  It shows you something, not just about the psychology of Buckowski, but of most men.

READING ALOUD - Kae Tempest - Europe Is Lost

If any artist caught the zeitgeist of the UK in the time of 2016 - post financial crash, post Brexit, at the dawn of First Term Trump, the pandemic not even dreamed of yet, it was this poem by Kae Tempest. As ever, they write accessibly and yet at the same time surprise you with the sophistication of the imagery they use. It's both ancient and modern, both of the street and of a tradition. Tempest never forgets where the poetic form originated and where they want to take it now. Its political, personal and punchy.

This live recording on KEXP captures the ongoing rolling syllabic momentum of Tempest at their performing best. There is a central character, there is Tempest there too observing, there is the world outside barren, hostile and alienated from the humanity it houses. And then there is us watching, caught up in the listening of it too.

READING ALOUD - David Whyte - Everything Is Waiting For You

 

Good poetry often misses its point with deliberate ease. Modern poets can tend to disguise their meaning behind an artifice of obscurity and erudition. It maybe clever, but its rarely wise. You often find, like the tombs of Muslim heroes of old, that there maybe an elaborately wrought coffin to view on the surface, but there is no body to be found within. It's symbolism is an empty one, an echo without a resonant chamber.

David Whyte's poetry, at its best, will never be found empty of meaning or potency. But neither is it weighed down in a clumsy, portentous or leaden way, nor by expressing itself within the easy understanding of a flowery sentiment. It is the embodiment of its depths that strikes you about Whyte's poetry. One that is never so obvious, that its understood in the moment, you grasp it and quickly move on. There is still an air of mystery in the elucidation to draw your return to it. Here poetry encapsulates, it strikes a vein of recognition like a vestigial bell.  

Gaston Bachlard once described poetry as being like throwing a pebble into a deep pond - that it touches the depths before the ripples of it break the surface.

FEATURE - David Whyte - The Conversational Nature of Reality

I found this You Tube conversation between David Whyte and Tim Feriss. It's over two hours long, but it does go deep and broad into Whyte's writing and philosophy. I found it it an invigorating and frequently inspiring listen. Give it some time, if you will.

POEM - Seed

SEED

The returning seed of sycamore

twirls to the ground

a soul arriving via helicopter

fresh from the highest blue 

the conclave of heaven.

Written by Stephen Lumb
November 2024

POEM - An Irreparable Separation

I bear a face that would not want to recognise itself it is not pleasing nor pleasant it can no longer smile nor laugh at your jokes cry along with your suffering my cheeks once jocular are now bereft of colour cold hearted to the affectionate brush of a hand for a while on the surface I look exactly the same but slowly their is an altered state there is a smell about me of a form being eaten away from within a body corrupted inside to out slowly breaching the chill flesh drained of blood translucent and whitening all the signifiers of my former essence these deserted portraits of what was once a gratified soul I am not the face you'd wish to recognise the body the mind the heart and spirit that you may have once romanced that face is now impassively a loveless one a joyless one distressing to be onlooker of one you would not take a selfie of unless you we're rather ghoulish with no respect for the dignity of repose of me ensconced upon my catafalque that final divorce from all affection all memory all you may have once associated with me given my former outline is erased like a chalk drawing in the rain that brief incident of weather when I still contained a vibrancy alive to the precious gift of it all, of friendship a bond to my present state that has been permanently sundered given up to who knows where from whence it can never be reclaimed or re-membered through the face for what you now see is and is not me it bears an unpalatable truth within the ruby cluster of bruises around the sunken sockets and the rictus grin of flaring lips what you imagine still as me always was this necessary fiction, a function of practicality, a useful baroque phantasm that got us through the unfolding exposition of a rather low key drama series where we once tried to ride bare back on the pure bright horse of love.

Written by Stephen Lumb 

June 2024