Sound affects

I’m sitting face to the sun like a Spring flower listening to the sounds of south Shropshire. A wedge of cold air – a thin blue arrow at the horizon and as tall as the stratosphere itself above my head –  has lifted the rain…

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National Service

There was three things in Civvy Street wot gave me untold pleasure, Me Boston cut, me Windsor knot, and me creepers made to measure. On me first day in the Army, though, they gives me quite a scare, For a moosh they calls the Provost…

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Echo Chamber

His work hangs on the gallery wall. We hear its buzz. We’re in its thrall. Each piece still humming with the thrum. As strong as when the work was done. That clay was soft and took the mould Of artist’s hands and brush strokes bold…

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Crosshands Cottage

Now as the dusk is drawing in Around these weathered cottage walls The birds sing out an evening hymn Their last before the darkness falls And carried on a gentle breeze Which shimmers through the grass and trees A haunting curlew calls. Farmland and hills…

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Paris in Springtime

ISIL I whisper je t’aime. You shout hate. I hold hands. You hack them off. The stain on my tablecloth is wine. Yours is blood. I bare my throat for a kiss. Not a knife. Strap children to my chest. Not explosives. Shoot pictures. Not…

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Unheard symphony

He’d forgotten how to listen. To still his knotted mind until the sounds untangled. Untied one by one from the thrum. Listened. Registered. Identified. Appreciated. More, much more than mechanical. No eardrum beat alone. But notes in a symphony. The orchestra all around. Violin, horn,…

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