Jean Bernard Parr

I worked out the odds
getting into a fight
mostly it was crafted
stage managed, if you will
...

The cat sits on the garden wall
and slowly licks his paw
there are things rusting in the garden,
some to do with ships.
...

you got a smack
the minute you were born
there was a lot of hooha,
screaming
...

blue hued world
an apology
for crude extraction
you're in the
...

this sun,
this high ball of yellow
soon to stoop, but for now
it's the bladed cliff that's
...

I study her jars stacked on shelves
in the plaster peeling downstairs loo
(space is at a premium in our house)
papyrus labels gone archaeological
...

I no longer am
in the world
I'm really out of it all
I don't know the rules
...

It starts with school railings
That's where fear starts
Not with nailing to a metier cross
Beware, my child, upward straining spears,
...

They were slow moving
waters I waded in
when I was young
a long time
...

I have to see it
the way someone
from Mars would see it
that means
...

I told her I was a poet
then tried to show it
really she said
thinking of Peter Rabbit
...

what can you remember
tell me
what is the first thing
tell me
...

like puppies
some wont make it
but there is joy
in those that do
...

In our street
They came and fixed her
A tin door, three times
She had bashed it in
...

A cloud wisp on widescreen blue
grounded hollyhock arcing to heaven
mystery hills of uncertain hue
the sharpness of things near
...

news of her death
makes big the clock
loud, the tick-tock
news that doesn't
...

They were twelve, and right there
the tall thin one, back to the window
in black- Judas or was it the Nazarene?
all wore security tags, for radiation,
...

a young fox too early dead
with yellow pelt, muddied by
those wheeled sofas
that ooze urgency
...

he was a boy
you could see that in him
he was always the boy
always on the lookout
...

Its sad hooking fish
in the evening
almost like the sun
daren't watch instead
...