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Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

This #vss365 is inspired by the touch of Keith Jarrett

The Köln Concert - 24 January 1975 Each descent of the finger,
measured.
Exact. Weight placed
and held. The left hand begins it: low tone, low tone,
low not insistence, not force,
simply there.
A ground that does not argue.
Again the low tone. The same,
but not. A slight brightening in the overtones,
a tremor in the wrist. The right hand enters almost plainly three notes,
then four, a line that seems to circle
what it already knows.
The pulse remains.
Low.
Low.
Low.
But now it carries light.
The right hand climbs without hurrying.
Each note placed
as if it had always waited there.
No rush.
Yet the air tightens. The pattern repeats, and in repeating
widens.
A shift, so small it feels imagined, and suddenly the harmony opens
like a window unlatched.
Still the left hand holds.
Still the pulse. But something is lifting through it now, threading brightness through the dark grain
of it. The climb continues, not wild,
not loose, precise as breath
deepening.
The room changes temperature. Wood and wire begin to ring longer
than they should. And when the phrase crests
it does not explode.
It sustains.
Balanced
at the edge of overflow,
radiant
because it is contained.

February 11, 2026 at 7:33 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Another Beckett inspired poem for today’s #vss365

Echo's Bones After—
voice.
Not silence.
What follows it. The bones
outlast the saying.
They have learned
not to answer.
Once, they carried breath, argument,
return. Now they hold
only shape. Stone remembers them
better than sound ever did. Just this:
support still doing its job, without meaning, structure after desire
has walked away. They do not move
toward him.
They do not turn away. They remain because remaining is what stone
does best.

February 9, 2026 at 7:43 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

This #vss365 is a reflection on the city of the pale (Dublin) #SpéirGhorm #SpeirGorm

They drew the line once with ink and fear, a pale,
a dark pool, a crossing of voices and feet, a thin bruise around the city: mud, timber, watchtowers,
permission disguised as protection.
Inside: bread counted, names recorded, bells that knew
who they were ringing for. Outside: everything else,
bog, language, weather, refusal.
But Dublin never kept still.
It leaned.
It listened at its own edge. The river kept undoing the map,
pulling salt and stories inland
Markets ignored the border.
Songs crossed at night.
So did hunger. So did love,
badly behaved. The city learned early that lines are temporary things,
chalk on stone, rules waiting to be bent
by feet, by mouths, by time. Every generation redraws it: tenements and tech,
prayers and punchlines, keys handed over, keys withheld,
rent climbing like a bad idea. Still, the streets remember what it is to be watched,
to be measured, to be told where you belong
by someone who arrived yesterday.
And yet, Dublin keeps stepping past itself, half-apology, half-laugh,
offering a stool, a story,
room for one more if you squeeze. Because this city was never safest
inside the line. It learned itself by reaching beyond it, by choosing, again and again,
to live where things meet.

February 8, 2026 at 9:41 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

This an older one but still worth posting #vss365

Bloody Phone
This Bloody phone.
Won't charge again.
Keeps freezing too,
and the screen's a bit cracked.
Typical.
Ah well,
I'll get another. My contract's up, there's a newer version, better camera,
faster load,
things I'll never need.
Kanku,
can you try again today?
Your small fingers,
so good for sifting slurry. I need a phone, to keep in touch with people I don't know,
for watching things I'll soon forget.
The water's black, I know.
The air burns your lungs. But still, it won't take long,
and I'll pay, $1 a day (or whatever it is),
it's better than nothing. There's no other work,
and it helps your family too. Just a handful of cobalt,
that shimmer in the mud. Enough to keep me charged,
connected. Kanku,
please,
one more time.
A child's life
This Bloody phone.

February 7, 2026 at 7:59 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

This #PoemsAbout #Mouths answers Beckett’s Not I by suggesting that while language may never belong to us, the body can still learn a minimal, ethical restraint, silence not as failure or abyss, but as practiced discipline after compulsion. @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Mouth
After- heat.
not blood. hinge remembers.
dullness
where effort lodged. Saliva, unclaimed. thin residue
of passing. Sentences went through
without stopping. walls
still listening. tongue,
slack, shaped what it could from breath
never its own. Silence,
after shouting.
Teeth meet. No argument. jaw sets, learning
weight. words forming, precise,
restless but tongue keeps them flat against the floor, where borrowing
ends. mouth closes
on nothing.

February 6, 2026 at 5:51 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

For St Brigid’s day, this piece is a meditation on quiet resistance, collective care, and the sacredness of making space. It sees Brigid not as a symbol of purity, but as a force of shelter and stubborn hope

St Brigid
A cloth on the ground.
Not a claim.
Not a banner.
Just something laid down
where the world was already tight.
Wind catches it.
People gather at its edge.
A woman rests her package.
A child sits.
Figures gather where the pavement hesitates, coats too thin for the weather,
hands that know the weight of waiting,
eyes trained on whatever might not turn them away. They bring only what will not be missed: a bag, a breath, a story folded small enough
to carry. Rooms appear
without being built.
A corner holds.
A doorway stays.
Food finds a surface.
Names find breath.
Sleep tests the air. The city does not notice at first, it rarely notices
what is not for sale.
Pressure moves.
Borders soften. The space between bodies
learns a new shape. What was meant to be temporary
starts to feel like shelter.
This is her holiness.
Not purity.
Not obedience. But the quiet, stubborn art of enlarging the world until the ones it tried to erase
can finally lie down.

February 1, 2026 at 7:43 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

A challenging write for this #vss365
(Content note: raw depiction of sleep-deprived parental anguish and the scary edge of intrusive thoughts.)

Hold
Nothing works
No soother
No lullaby Your cry
inside my skull can't find the place to touch you
that makes it stop. hands still body screaming: enough enough
enough. A thought
flares make it stop make it stop
make it stop hold you harder
pressure
make this noise go. a second
a small
terrible
second
where where pressure
almost
becomes something else

January 31, 2026 at 8:40 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

This #PoemsAbout #BlackVeils is inspired by a modern take on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil. Many thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Black Veil
He did not hide.
That was the mistake. He wore what the rest of us learned to keep indoors, the long black weather
of doubt, the private mildew of fear,
the unswept corners of the soul.
We have rules for sorrow.
Dress codes for grief.
Approved angles for remorse. A sin must either be confessed
or monetised.
Never simply worn.
His veil broke the contract.
No apology.
No arc of redemption.
Just a dark square
where a face should reassure us. They called him strange, then dangerous, then cast out,
the old three-step
for those who won't pretend. But he was only saying what every screen works so hard to erase: that virtue is a costume,
and honesty is not photogenic.
So he kept the veil. A small, stubborn refusal
to be marketable. And the town, bright with moral slogans, smiling with perfect teeth, crossed the street to avoid the one man who wouldn't sell them
their own reflection.

January 30, 2026 at 6:05 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

I couldn’t ignore recent events for today’s #vss365

The Ruse The body is still warm when the story is already dressed: jacket of necessity, collar of doubt,
pockets full of maybes.
Power does not need to lie. It prefers the softer art:
rearrangement.
Move the verb.
Blur the subject.
As if grammar could cauterise a wound.
A man becomes a headline.
A phone becomes a weapon.
The video shows the truth
But you must not believe your eyes This is the ruse: not the bullet,
but the press conference.
Not the gun, but the sentence in front of it,
hands raised:
Nothing to see here.
First they kill the man.
Then they kill the words. Then they teach the words
to kill for them.

January 25, 2026 at 8:21 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Given this renewed obscenity I will repost this poem

Blueprints for a Riviera They speak of turning Gaza
into a Riviera, as if blood is washed clean in the crystal waters of infinity pools, as if history can be bulldozed, piled into neat dunes, the echoes of the displaced
drowned beneath resort waves.
But this dust,
this dust is not empty. It holds the breath of generations, lullabies woven into cracked walls, the scent of cardamom, stubborn
even in the ash. It is bruised, broken, burning
but it is home.
What is a paradise
built on bones? Will the laughter of tourists drown the voices still calling out
for what was lost?
Can luxury bloom
over soil thick with grief? They propose skylines and marble facades,
luxury stitched over scars,
as if grief can be landscaped, as if the sea has not already memorised the names of children it cradled when the earth
offered no refuge. But you cannot evict a soul
from where it belongs, no matter how many cranes you raise,
no matter how bright the neon glow. Home is not fragile enough to be erased by war,
nor foolish enough to be bought with promises of luxury
for those who never bled here. Call it what you will, vision, plan, opportunity,
but know this: you cannot build paradise on top of a hell you created
and expect it not to burn. You cannot pave over a homeland and expect it not to rise
through the cracks.

January 24, 2026 at 10:59 AM

Reposted by Fiftywords

Rosanna McGlone

@rosannamcglone.bsky.social

A city stretched between
Mass and mischief,'
Couldn't this be any Irish city?
I can't tell you how much Dermot Murphy's collection, The Drift of Memory, resonates with me.There is such a sense of intimacy & I've just found the Clancy Brothers! @fiftywords.bsky.social ❤️ #Poetry #poets #Ireland #Irish

Two stanza from Memory Map by Dermot Murphy's poetry collection The Drift of Memory.

January 23, 2026 at 10:47 PM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

In a time of rising fear and fragile freedoms, this #PoemsAbout #FalseCrowns speaks to the quiet strength of people who refuse to bow. Many thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk

$No Kings A nation made a promise no kings, only people. But a rotting pumpkin idol dreams, of crowns, of chosen blood, of borders turned to hate, speaking the language of order and vengeance. Enforcers come at dawn, armoured in law, naming neighbours scum. Doors splinter, papers scatter, children shiver in the blue light of their screens. The state calls it duty; the people call it fear. They speak of enemies within, of traitors in the crowd, of patriots betrayed by truth. Each charge, a warning; each trial, a performance to feed the faithful and frighten the rest. They do not seek justice, only vengeance dressed in law. Yet defiance moves unseen, burning through the fear, through streets and silent rooms where courage still whispers. The crown will crack. The lie will fracture. There are no kings in what is coming, only people, bound by common breath, reclaiming the republic.$

January 23, 2026 at 5:58 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

For today’s #vss365

Hymn for the Unmoored
Where does a place end? At the edge of a map, or where language
no longer names you? Some carry home
in their voices, a vowel softened by distance, a hunger held
just behind the teeth. Some leave with nothing, yet find absence grows louder
than any belonging. We walk with old streets in our bones, along forgotten paths
the body remembers. What name can hold
the self in motion? We are stitched from crossings, harbour, hallway,
ferry, field. There is no compass
for return. Only the pull of half-formed prayers, the scent of a place you no longer live in,
but know intimately. Not lost, not home, just drifting between the two, memory both anchor
and wind.

January 22, 2026 at 5:51 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Given recent events it seems the world veers and teeters on the edge of chaos based on the whims of one man #vss365

Before the Orders
One man-
a man of moods and menace. This is how power sounds
before it gives orders. In Nuuk's streets they march,
in Minneapolis they rise. The Arctic crackles,
the rivers tremble.
Markets shiver.
Borders hold their breath.
Allies blink.
Enemies pause. No one knows
which wind will blow.

January 19, 2026 at 12:14 PM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Here’s one for #vss365

The Murmur of Wind There is no clamour here,
no voices to shape the silence. Only the breath of trees,
the low murmur of wind threading through bare branches, and the quiet pull of time
slipping through open hands. In solitude, the self expands,
unfolding into what was once hidden. You see the edges of yourself, sharp and unrelenting, and the softness too,
fragile as frost on glass.
Unobserved, the world takes on a strange light: shadows stretch, water slows, stars drift apart, an unravelled constellation,
no less beautiful. The weight of solitude is not heaviness, but gravity: a pull toward the quiet centre of all that you are,
and all that is. Here, you are enough, untethered, unadorned, your pulse in rhythm
with the turning earth.
This is not loneliness. This is the gift of being whole in the company of yourself,
and everything that holds you.

January 18, 2026 at 2:26 PM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

I’ve been a little quiet on here for a while as I’ve been travelling but as I’ve just returned so here’s my initial reflections.
A Hymn to the Sublime Intraordinary

$We went where we planned. The trip happened, booked, boarded, walked, remembered. The monuments were real. The cities held their shapes. The maps did their job. Nothing extraordinary interrupted the structure of the journey. But the experience of it, that was something else. What we saw was familiar. Human ambition. Human failure. The beauty and force of nature. The fractures in each place, visible and invisible, showed themselves clearly. Inequality moved with us. The world didn't pretend to be whole. And the small moments we witnessed didn't try to mend it. And still, it was extraordinary. Because it began long before departure, in anticipation, in the imagined shimmer of far-off cities, in the widening of attention that happens when you are preparing to look. The awe mattered: the harbour, the skyline, the mountains, the impossible engineering of flight. Natural and constructed beauty opened something in us. It made room. It gave context. And into that space, the ordinary stepped forward and sometimes, just sometimes, it gained more meaning: the unguarded gesture, the irreverent joke, the rhythm of life continuing without permission or performance. On beaches, in cafés, in the soft noise of daily commerce and the hum of tired bodies at the end of the day, something generous kept revealing itself. Not polished. Not profound. Just present. These are moments of what we might call the sublime intraordinary, beauty and meaning arising within, not outside, the everyday.$

And yes, those moments could have happened anywhere. But, as
someone once said, it's the difference that makes a difference. Seeing the same gestures, kindness, fatigue, joy, care, in new languages, new streets, new hands, sharpens your sense of what's shared. It clarifies without simplifying. The familiarity of those
small moments didn't make the world smaller. It made it more
human. Those moments didn't offer answers. But they did offer energy, the kind that comes from feeling the world up close, not as theory or news
or commentary, but as lived experience shared briefly with strangers. This wasn't a journey that changed everything. But it sharpened something, our sense of what matters, what stays, what's worth noticing. And the world did surprise us, often. It did speak, in flashes,
in fragments, in the language of cities still inventing themselves. We came back carrying all of it, the brightness and the contradiction,
the fatigue and the wonder.
It was more than we expected.
It still is. All this,
and more.

January 18, 2026 at 1:21 PM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Been travelling for the last month so here’s a quick #PoemsAbout #TimeSlips.

Baggage Claim
The belt begins, unannounced.
A low murmur of rubber, a circle learning its lines.
We step closer without deciding to.
Hands loosen.
Eyes rehearse recognition.
The belt keeps faith with rotation, not hope.
It does not pause for names.
Relief lifts one case.
Another keeps circling, learning patience.
What fails to arrive grows heavier by the minute.
At last, a familiar damage.
Recognised by touch.
Lifted carefully, as if it remembers who we were when we left.
What did we bring.
What will we claim.
What have we learned to leave.

January 16, 2026 at 7:12 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Just wanted to wish you all a happy new year and a big thank you to this community.

$Fragments of the Turning Year Time does not step; it spills, a cascade into shadow, moments adrift like ash, caught between forgetting and the sharp edge of memory. The year bends behind us, its fractured mirror reflecting what we will not name: a hand unclasped, a voice stilled, a world leaning deeper into its own dark. And still we dare to own it, hang calendars to tether stars, as though the turning earth might tilt toward our smallness. We toast the ruins, raise glass to the vanishing line, believing the future might kneel to our rituals. What is this hubris, to carve meaning from the tide as it slips from our grasp? But beneath the fracture, something endures. Not ours to hold, this world flickers, while stars scatter reckless above, a quiet rebuke to all we claim to know. Time does not heal or hurt it is a reminder us to hold what we can, release what we must, and move forward not triumphant, but awake. And here, within the fracture, lies the gift: not the year behind, nor the one ahead, but the quiet, fragile now, a breath, a spark, a fleeting flame against the endless turn.$

December 30, 2025 at 5:55 PM

Reposted by Fiftywords

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

At this time of year I think the #PoemAbout community deserves a collective pat on the back and to offer a heartfelt thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk for his wonderful work

For the #PoemsAbout Community: Christmas 2025 Not a contest,
but a gathering - lines offered like an unasked question, finding an answer
simply by being there. A year has passed in Friday prompts, week turning to week, theme becoming occasion,
occasion becoming community. We came with drafts and half-shaped thoughts, and found something steadier,
not school or stage, a circle that let thoughts speak
and wisdom listen. Encouragement arrived in small gestures: a like, a repost, a gentle reply,
words leaning closer without needing to touch.
Christmas now,
and the year exhales, reflected not in gaudy lights or inflated Santas, but in the glow of many separate hands
holding up one another's lines. So let this gratitude travel light,
untussed, unforced, ungrand, thank you for the year, the words, the witnessing,
and the shared act of showing up again.
A season turns.
Another will begin. And when it does, we shall meet again,
pens ready, voices unbowed,
a little kinder for having passed this way together.

December 24, 2025 at 4:46 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

At this time of year I think the #PoemAbout community deserves a collective pat on the back and to offer a heartfelt thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk for his wonderful work

December 24, 2025 at 4:46 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

Here’s one for #vss365

Why the Heart Beats
Why does it beat?
Not for the machinery of breath. It beats for the unnoticed miracles: laughter that lingers, unbidden and unbound, voices, carrying the music of shared existence,
the grace of purpose fulfilled, the infinite calm beneath a sea of stars,
the small treasures that mark our life. It beats for what is fierce and ephemeral, for the ache and exultation of being alive, for the honeyed breath of twilight,
for the fragile privilege of presence. Each pulse is a vow unspoken: to see more keenly, to feel life's wonder, to cherish what lingers
as all else slips away. And when it finally falters, as all hearts must,
let it be full. Full of the love it carried, the meaning it forged, the hope it dared to shelter,
the joy it dared to claim. Let it also carry the debts I owe, to those whose hearts beat no longer,
whose lives still guide my own. Let its silence resound, an echo of a life
grateful and true.

December 19, 2025 at 11:00 AM

Fiftywords

@fiftywords.bsky.social

As I’m heading off to Singapore where the twin cinema form is popular, I thought I’d try this for #PoemsAbout #Money @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
(Each column reads as a complete poem vertically, while each corresponding line reads horizontally as a coherent poetic unit)