by Robert Kingston
from a tent a man
stares into his hands
empty stomach
sharing a plight
on a distant shore
no justice
at the foreign office
an unpaid debt
lady in a lamp
no matter how hard
the rub
at home
an innocent child
with nowhere to run
Fight for Nazanin Zagari-Ratcliffe
Robert Kingston
By Barefoot Medic
It isn’t surprising that we are able to describe the people we are close to, in great detail.
Parents, brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, partners, children, friends can all be recognised by small physical attributes. Their voice, their gait, hairstyle for instance, especially their mannerisms. You can probably accurately predict how their thought processes would approach problem-solving.
When you’re separated from a person for a period, you can recall their habits, quirks, and their methods of persuasion. You know when they’re avoiding an issue or being frugal with the truth. You even know when they are about to do something of which you wouldn’t approve.
With the passage of time, you recall the texture of their skin, their little secret noises and sayings, their unique aroma, and how they would react in a given situation. All these little things add up, and you can find yourself mentally conversing and discussing with that person; in the privacy of your own mind; at such times it seems that their physical presence is not required.
When meeting a person after a prolonged period of absence, it can seem as if you’ve never been parted. Often you can continue a conversation you had as if no time has elapsed.
When they have gone, never to return, they still remain with us, frozen in time.
It’s the little things
that bind us inextricably together…
Peter Woodgate
His nose grew longer, will he
sneeze?
Oh no, it’s just the latest
slease.
A penalty, it seemed to most,
But just in time, he moved the
post.
Oh Boris, forgot there’s V.A.R?
You cannot move the posts that
far.
The referee, (the opposition)
Have caused this rather glum
position.
They have wingers who just dribble
Whilst the home team gladly
fiddle.
To think I bought a season ticket,
Come on you cheats it’s just not
cricket.
Your players other teams will
dread
Their dreadful tackles don’t get
red.
For a blatant fowl not even a
booking
After the match some books need
cooking.
I despair those calamities time
after time,
They are certainly not a team of
mine.
But worst of all in my throat
there’s a lump
As Boris has now morphed into
TRUMP.
Copyright Peter Woodgate
by
Richard Banks
They are all here now: George, William, Frederick, Herbert, Mary-Anne, Elizabeth, Esther and their mother. Hushed voices by the bedside and in the room beyond. Don’t whisper. I want to hear what you say. Come on, you can be candid, now that I can no longer see or speak, almost dead, but not quite away. What do you really think of me? What have you discovered? Have you separated out the myth from the reality, or have I covered my tracks too well? Speak up now, I won’t be around for the funeral eulogy. What’s that George? - “
Your grandfather also told a good story;
tales of Huguenot ancestors who fled from persecution in
In truth, we had outlived our usefulness. Machines now ruled - power looms that produced woven cloth more quickly and cheaply than we ever could. The old skills were no longer needed and we were cast aside to eek out a living as best we could. Many dropped down to become labourers or street hawkers. Others, like myself, stubbornly persisted in the old trade, hoping against hope for better times. Lucky the poor weaver who had only himself to feed!
Five good souls depended on me and a
sixth grew ever larger inside my wife. They were starving, and I was desperate,
too desperate to pass by an open window in a deserted lane. The sovereigns I
stole that day kept us in food and lodging for a month. It was my first robbery
and I vowed it would be my last, but in the absence of honest work I soon sank
into the residuum of
Three months later, I was seen leaving a
house in Stepney and pursued through the streets by a parish constable who knew
me by name. I gave him the slip in a warren of dark alleys and laid low in a
common lodging house, but there was little hope for me now. There was a price
on my head, and within days I was seized by thief-takers and taken to the
nearest police office.
The guilty verdict at my trial was as inevitable as the sentence of death which accompanied it. But the times were changing and capital sentences for robbery were often commuted on appeal. Accordingly, seven honest tradesmen of my acquaintance petitioned the Home Secretary and my sentence was reduced to one of transportation for life. At once I was full of hope and wrote to my wife, urging her to also petition the Home Secretary, asking that she and the children be allowed to follow me abroad. It was a forlorn hope, dashed almost as soon as it was conceived.
My brother came and gave me news that had
hitherto been kept from me; news that made me the most wretched man on God’s earth. There had been an outbreak of typhus fever in
the eastern parishes and two of my children, who had been lodged with friends,
were dead. My wife, despairing of the filth and squalor of Bethnal Green, had
left
I joined the ship at
At first there was much sea sickness and the medical officer was oft amongst us, dispensing calomel and other medicines. He bid us to be of good cheer and promised us fair treatment if we conducted ourselves like good men. Gradually the weather became warmer, our fetters were removed and we were allowed to exercise daily on deck. We had our sea legs now and were put to work swabbing and holystoning the decks, washing clothes and cleaning the privies. We worked hard and in return were given two meals a day, a gill of wine when the weather was inclement and lemon juice when it was fair. What greater irony could there be than we were now provided with the necessary things previously denied us and which we had sought to secure by our crimes.
On the thirty-seventh day of our voyage,
in worsening weather, we sighted the coast of
Occasionally, the tedium of our ordered lives was enlivened by the misfortune of others: two prisoners who fought at cards were consigned to the cramping box, a seaman fell from the rigging and broke a leg, an old pickpocket was found dead in his bunk and buried at sea. For the rest of us, misfortune consisted chiefly in the slow passage of time, which grew ever more oppressive to us.
At last, after one hundred and thirteen
days at sea, we arrived at Port Hobart, on the island now known as
My hopes were fulfilled seven years later
when I was given a conditional pardon and Johnstone took me into partnership.
He opened a new store on the far side of town, where I was not known, and put
me in charge. It was there that I met the young woman, a free settler from
In the next twenty years she bore me nine children, of whom seven have survived. As my business interests expanded I invested much money in their education. What clever children I have: two solicitors, a banker, an aspiring politician and daughters with wit enough to marry into good families. None of them know of my criminal past and none of them must know. God help them if it should ever became common knowledge.
They say that life is a journey. If that be true I have journeyed far. In my lifetime I have traveled from one side of the world to the other. I grew up in a country that denied me opportunity and condemned me to poverty and servitude. I prospered in one that valued the hard work of willing toilers. I exchanged the disease and destitution of the slums for the clean air and water of an unspoiled land. I have been a weaver, criminal, convict, shopkeeper, merchant and speculator in property. I was born a pauper, I die a gentleman. Much has happened. The journey has been a long one. Is it about to end, or is death just a staging post on some longer journey? Soon I will know what those on earth can only guess at; will see what those before me have already seen.
Not
long now. The voices by the bedside say their last goodbyes. A final prayer is
said.
Remember me, who journeyed far, and journeys on in hope.
Copyright Richard Banks
By Rob Kingston
climate change
the itch
I cannot scratch
autumn budget
heaps of carbon ahead
of the cop meeting
at the cliffs base
fallen rubble
keeps rattling
tired of the wrecking ball
the queen
issues a swerve ball
Autumn showdown
leaders at the cop meeting
spill the beans
in the green pages
who what when
an old man
a cross earring
waves in his bowl
Copyright
Robert Kingston
