in another middling script;
spear-carriers and walk-ons
of the tiny screen, emptying
themselves into their roles,
immortal and obscure.
Friday, 26 September 2025
Norman Eshley - d. August 2nd 2025
in another middling script;
spear-carriers and walk-ons
of the tiny screen, emptying
themselves into their roles,
immortal and obscure.
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Alan Bergman – d. July 27th 2025
with the senses, to summon rhyme
to do the job of memory, to light a fire,
to be the voice heard above the choir,
words jangling, to fix in us a place, a time.
Tom Lehrer – d. July 26th 2025
alacrity, sagacity and mockery and repartee,
There’s plenty of absurdists and they come at ten-a-penny.
There may be one as sharp as him but I can’t think of any.
Cleo Laine – d. July 24th 2025
afraid they might taste of vanilla
without your drizzle of hot honey,
that easy contralto into glissando
up through four octaves to a trill
like an insistent lover’s tongue.
Hulk Hogan – d. July 24th 2025
brutality as a trompe l’oeil,
muscle tears and dislocations
mere Grand Guignol. You were
the bronzed heel/hero dying of
surprise in every bout, only
to be resurrected as a cartoon.
Ozzy Osbourne – d. July 22nd 2025
born from a cauldron of riffs,
who duetted with the Devil.
Happiness he could not feel;
he breathed sulphur, and
when he bled, he bled metal.
Kenneth Calman – d. July 21st 2025
takes a scalpel to itself,
yields its uncertainties,
admits the things
it does not yet know:
what dreams are for,
where poems come from,
how the heart
chooses its disguise.
Connie Francis – d. July 16th 2025
and they are few, is an ideal:
my swoonsome parents
queuing outside The Broadway,
their love as pure as your voice.
They, like you, had their day;
now I, over the years, must pay.
Shunsaku Tamiya – d. July 11th 2025
but couldn’t hold them in place without glue.
It was never the same as the picture on the lid.
I tried to finish what I started; I never did.
David Kaff – d. July 11th 2025
the follow spot settles on me,
more than half way through
my brief solo, spaced out
and smiling, finally having
a good time all the time.
Norman Tebbit – d. July 7th 2025
to search for the sleeping Grandees
of Little England, those cadaverous
few, still mumbling articles of faith
in their deathless slumber, still
wondering why we cannot forgive.
LuÃs Jardim– d. July 4th 2025
are curious ornamentations
of conga and clave, supple
fingers picking out a pulse in a
register somewhere between
heartbeat and wingbeat.
Michael Madsen – d. July 3rd 2025
that
you cannot tell their colour,
when
a dog barks in the alley
and
it sounds like a gun, when
he
asks you ‘what did you say?’
and
you know they heard you:
Something’s
going to happen,
isn’t
it?
Gerald Harper – d. July 2nd 2025
lifted from one time and dropped
into another. Each performance
is a frozen hour, each character
a mere imitation of life in 625 lines.
Jimmy Swaggart – d. July 1st 2025
between torrid tent revival and
threadbare motel. Sinners look
so small from the pulpit, willing
to pay for an absolution, even
a hollow fraudster’s blessing.
Sandy Gall – d. June 29th 2025
Mau-Mau, Kabul, Kampala, Saigon,
burning vehicles on the skyline.
Not all copy respects deadlines;
sometimes we need to hang on
for straight words from the frontline.
Lalo Schifrin – d. June 26th 2025
the scream of rubber on boulevard,
Broadsword crackling on the radio,
the .357 magnum emptying into my
imagination, chamber by chamber.
Wincey Willis – d. December 19th 2024
because this is changeable England,
showers turning to cats-and-dogs,
remaining cloudy later on. Weather
does not follow its own forecasts,
and we must all make our own rain.
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Brian Wilson – d. June 11th 2025
beach today. I could hear music far out
in the depths; a siren with hair of gold,
calling me to follow to a place that few
could ever go, not waving but singing.
Sly Stone – d. June 9th 2025
a stoned prince high on his own supply
of uncut soul, wearing euphoria as a robe.
Here you come with mud in your veins;
thank you (falettinme dance again).
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