street

 Seen through the windscreen of a moving car,

This suburban street flashes past,

Lined with similar semi-detached,

Housing ordinary England

Not at all bizarre.

But walk its pavement,

Looking out for cracks,

Or protruding tree roots,

That might trip you in your tracks.

You might see a street stranger than it seemed.

Someone, maybe drunk or in a dream

Drove a vehicle through a front garden wall,

Almost crashed it into a front room.

Then did renegade scholar or maverick teacher

Decorate a grey metal electricity cabinet.

With a quotation from Frederich Nietzsche?

I read this with puzzlement

Then go on as best I can,

Past piles of soggy leaves,

As I am no superman.

A magpie cackles at me, so I retreat,

Through my front door

And off this strange street.

one big twig

 In the valley, below the melting glacier,

Under vast mountains that stab the sky,

People, tiny as ants by comparison,

Are practicing and preparing.

Learning how to carry stretchers,

How to search the rubble of fallen houses.

Seeking out places that might be safe,

When the glacier fills the lake

So that the flood breaks.

Meanwhile, on a pimply little suburban hill,

An old man hobbles up his street,

Coming back after visiting a cash machine.

He talks to a neighbour,

Who is sweeping the leaves

Stripped and scattered

By last night’s storm.

This, they agree, blew down a plane tree

Up by the park.

They hope such would never fall on their homes.

This is nothing

Compared to the valley below the melting glacier,

But a twenty-foot plane tree

Is one big twig floating in a stream,

Before an impending flood.

 

VIRTUAL DODO THIRTEEN - open mic slots

 

VIRTUAL DODO THIRTEEN -  open mic slots

Deadline Friday 10th January 2025

We  invite you to contribute a poem on any theme to Virtual Dodo Thirteen, our first online event of 2025

Please send a video of you reading a poem using a computer or mobile to Peter Murry (email yrrumuk@googlemail.com). If you can’t manage a video, a manuscript will be fine. Please include your name. In case you missed it, here's the last Virtual Dodo.https://dodomodernvidpoets2022.blogspot.com/

The previous 12 events attracted around 300 contributions. We thank all participating poets for sharing their work with our audience.  Virtual Dodo Thirteen will include two featured acts as well as open mic contributors. The finished show is sent to our mailing list

We look forward to your submissions. Regards

Patric Cunnane/ PR Murry

DODO MODERN POETS

07769 777022 /01303 243868

ARCHAEOLOGY

 Nowadays I get the news from archaeologists

Who, with scholars of archaeology

I see like talking postage stamps,

On my computer screen.

They talk of really digging the dirt

Of sieving through bones and theories

Of finding flint flakes and clues,

As to who walked how, when and where

And how we ended up here

In this time when news seems only of

Death from above

In Russia, Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine,

Of wars dragging on and on in Sudan

Holy lands made unholy by slaughter;

Whilst climate change never goes away.

The now news makes me feel like ant

Crawling along the ground

With an impending descending boot above me

Whilst I take some slight fleeting solace

From learning of archaeology.

WATER

 Jam a dam into a valley.

This edifice gives an illusion of control.

The water rises behind the dam

A lake expands.

Apparently water obeys

Our concrete and steel commands.

Land is drowned

Because experts think

This is how our cities will drink.

And enslaved water will wash away

Skin detritus, shit, piss, soapsuds and more

Again and again and again and again

Through the prisons we have made for it

Sewers, conduits, gutters, canals and drains.

Until the day when  water rebels

And washes us all away.

MISERABLE OLD PISS ARTIST

Carry the past on your back,

Like a rock-filled rucksack.

Carry it until your bones groan and crack.

Carry all those indexed texts,

Directories, dictionaries and holy tomes,

All heavier than any stones;

All along a seemingly endless uphill track,

When nothing must be dropped,

And you cannot slack.

Then pull sodden cloth from washing machine,

As you dream about

What might have been.

If, and only, if you had been able

To completely control the movement of water.

But it was always too fast, too free, too unstable.

It suddenly fell from the sky.

At school they taught you why,

Yet it broke any riverbanks, sea defences

Rules or theories placed in its way.

And sometimes flowed uncontrollably,

From your eyes.

Then what made you even madder,

Than when emotions flowed

Making you happier or sadder

Was when you could not stop water

Exiting your bladder.

VAN GOGH SOUP THROWERS

Van Gogh soup throwers

Shower sunflowers

With gazpacho

And spatter cultural artefacts

With consommé,

All for the sake of political impact.

Lock up these insolent pups!

Wipe the additive laden orange liquid off

The picture glass

Wipe art’s arse.

There, there it’s all clean now,

Culture can the safely consumed again

This culinary gesture can be ignored

And gallery goers can file around exhibits,

Feigning fascination whilst secretly bored

But climate change will go on and on,

Until it’s too late

And shit-enhanced Thames water soup

Floods into the Tate.