~

I look but do not 

yearn to see

I see but make

sense of nought,

does my knowing 

change a thing 

my knowledge is

scant and futile, 

my rich empathy 

is poor nutrition 

my compassion 

not clean water,

what good is my

knowing other than 

to rob me of sleep

feeling helpless.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 7/25

~

my rosary, a 3b pencil

rolled slowly between my

thumb and forefinger,

four inches long its

size does matter, 

needing to fit my palm,

mindlessly I count off poems

a form of giving thanks

whilst always expecting 

further inspiration,

I believe poets should give 

praise, be it to their god 

or to a dedicated muse,

a gentle supplication

to feed their hunger. 

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/25

~

usually in one’s early teens 

that unsung beauteous age,

a predatory virus infects

the naive young heart, 

there is no defence, 

resistance being futile,

a music ear worm burrows 

deep within the helpless young, 

becoming resident 

a lifetime’s gift or curse,

music free to be sung unbid,

hummed, whistled, foot-tapped

widely played throughout

one’s life, funeral too,

the music never dies but

ravenously seeks another 

host so the beat goes on.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/25

~

visitors to Coalbrookdale

now stroll idly by inquisitively

peering into gift shops,

where busy flat-capped workers 

once scurried up the hill

to clock-on,

today the mighty river Severn 

is a languid tourist too, 

a redundant milked tea hued

serpent, on which yesteryear’s

heavily laden barges once 

plied a global trade,

the old steam rails now hide

beneath a verdant footpath,

and the rust-red skeletal bridge

that gave this place its name,

still proudly spans the gorge

iron legs akimbo like a

schoolboy intent on

catching sticklebacks,

whilst a resigned sadness

clothes this tiny place

its pride shines through

and if the solid buildings

could talk they would shout

‘we made stuff here’

*

© Graham R Sherwood 06/25

~

A cold, unforgiving 

cultural wasteland,

a monotonous desert,

staring into the void

two weeks pass and

no word of viable use 

directs my hand,

I have water to sustain 

me, colourless, bland, 

essential but I am still

consumed by blindness,

everything depends on

the night, as I wait alone

in the dark.

~

it’s the simple things 

that draw me to a halt, 

stop me in my tracks,

today an unmown field 

of buttercups, proudly 

stretching their necks 

colonising a paddock

we skirt around on our

daily constitutional

picture the scene, 

a beautiful acre

surreal, tiny golden faces, 

chin-up to the sun,

smiling coyly, as if butter 

wouldn’t melt,

such breath-taking beauty

is cruelly transient, 

a heavily blossom-laden

bush, like an exploding 

firework display 

two days previously,

now already spent

colours dulled.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/25

~

day to day

week on week

six soulless months

have ambled by,

reluctantly the

family buzzards

have circled, landed

and finally picked

the carcass clean,

next week

new folk arrive,

children’s voices

trilling, trailing

around their feet,

the sad thing is

for evermore, it

won’t be Joe’s,

just them at No 4.

*

© GRS 5/25

~

multicultural

hyper-televisual

controversial

*

© GRS 5/25

~

an insidious dementia 

a generation infected, 

the brains of our beautiful 

youth, once vibrant thirsty 

sponges, now lame and 

parched with inertia,

~g~

a voracious machine 

feeds our children behind 

our backs, suckling their 

grateful inquisition with a 

plug-in rechargeable 

intellect, whilst milking their 

desire to seek out learning for

themselves,

~g~

their once insatiable thirst 

for knowledge replaced 

by an ‘always on’ show and tell,

with a ‘suck and fuck’ artificial 

intelligence duping all,

~g~

carrying global libraries 

in a back pocket and a head

in the euphemistic cloud,

learning becomes leisure 

simpletons are made professors

no retention required,

~g~

the search for knowledge is 

now a push-button algorithm

a question answered 

before a question is asked,

young cerebral cortexes

crammed full of thinly-veiled

conman confidence, and a

litany of smart-arsed answers 

rattled off and promptly 

forgotten in a blink,

~g~

the age of mans’ intelligence 

is finally laid to rest.

© Graham R Sherwood 05/25

~

it’s the closest thing 

to bloodletting or self-harming,

there’s little choice in the matter,

it occurs at any time day or night,

call it word incontinence, 

they expel themselves with very little notice,

leaving me drained, wrung out, bone-dry,

desiccated and parched,

bizarrely it’s painless albeit

there’s always an emotional toll to pay,

people think writers are masters of words, 

not so, the opposite is true, as words

prod, arouse, question, suggest, tempt

but most heinously they

sacrifice themselves to my page,

leaving me to witness their final end,

their lyrical demise

a death from my hand

laid out in stone cold, printed perpetuity, 

I plead guilty

*

© Graham R Sherwood 05/25