I remove these boots, my long-trod armour, made in a tool-racked leather workshop; Goodyear welted, as craftsmen expect; always double knotted, like a tightly roped lover, that fuck-snug-fit, laced, too knowing, too close, until the rub is too much for me, then separated. Mike Bell Poetry Mike Bell aims to write 10,000 poems, stick...
Each imperial brick length required malodorous acid to be dippled, slow-brushed (avoiding the old lime mortar), applied to each unpainted face, covering the exposed wall: “Up, tight as possible,” she said. “Right to the [recently plastered and whitewashed] ceiling.” My red canvas was four yards wide (an old measure, antique, in keeping with the building’s...
Upstairs, steam-dripped by every breath, becoming condensation it sticks, a vertical film on the inside of the windows of the fan-packed top deck, aboard the lane-swaying Number 29 to Brighton: I sit, as usual, with too much of the bus-shift-and-tip; meaning that my forever poorly-travelled nausea threatens, from somewhere, to become a public thing, to...
Vous, petite douce chose, doit voyager, doit visiter, pour une journée, une dernière fois: Une dernière requête traduit comme décès: Pas plus de nourriture, pas plus de boissons, maintenant le temps s’est écoulé: Ces luxes égoïstes, une telle prière, cette demande: À tout moment de la vie, il est temps de vivre. Mike Bell Poetry...
Cher Steve Bannon, Comment redémarrer le mal? Vous l’avez trop facile mon altesse-droite, vous avez votre chemin, avec la haine, votre haine, votre politique de quatre lettres: Tenez leurs têtes courbées, prendre leurs cœurs sombres, et ensuite nourrir, si longtemps, sur leurs intestins bouillonnés, assaisonné de toss-politique, raisonnement c’est tout pour eux. Là, mon cruel...
Dear Steve Bannon, How to re-heat evil? You have it too easy my Alt-right friend, you have your way, with hate, your hate, your four-letter policy: Hold their bowed heads, bake their dark hearts, and then drizzle piss on their bile-boiled guts, seasoned with toss-politics, reasoning it is all for them. There, my cruel friend,...
I was taught to spot the imperfect years by measuring, with eye and finger the varied distances, the thicknesses of those concentric, almost-whirled, bark-marked lines in the bared-ankles of cut trunks: Dendrochronology. Counting back, to before I was born, my smooth fingers touched the years, and Dad recalled a distant summer without enough rain (‘see...
She is slow – the River Ouse – running muddied below Lewes – there a capricious millpond – but when she swells under storms – off streams Bevern and Northend and the quick River Uck – she reverts to ancient freshet – swift to rise to redress the forgotten flood meadows now supplanted by tarmac...
It exists today, another foul descent,
where thousands of sickening acts are set:
Saydnaya - Assad's concrete playhouse,
a lowly spectacle, directed from Damascus,
those dark rehearsal rooms set for Death...
They swayed on the deck under throat-music chants, heel-spun, with babies, holding hope in their hands: Welcome to Europe, across uneasy borders, where choices are streamed, and the future’s disordered. Mike Bell Poetry Mike Bell aims to write 10,000 poems, stick them up here one at a time, and then take a nap. By...