Dean Norton
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zentinl.bsky.social
Dean Norton
@zentinl.bsky.social
64 followers 54 following 420 posts
somewhere between cold coffee
and used twist ties
is a paper life
in an automatic heart
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Reposted by Dean Norton
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
🙏 @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social #PromptCombo
Out of season & they nest under #eaves, rather than #OnRoofs, but fits, I guess. 😁

#poem: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

#swifts #swallows #NaturePoem #BirdPoem #poetrycommunity #bskypoetry
Swifts, Swallows Swifts, swallows: ghostly Doubles meeting at Whitsun - Sky god’s full-throated Season echoing the Abyss. Forebear tongues and Sagas revelled in Whirlpools and swallies, Devoured by the sweeping, Churning presences Glimpsed in sky and sea. Swifts, swallows: ghostly doubles, Aerial nomads, Custodians of Ancient songlines etched with a Thumbtack of neurons. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
November 24, 2025 at 8:56 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk
Hello #promptcombo crew Thanks Paul @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this week’s #onrooftops theme. I’m just about to go out, but thought I’d post my wee offering first. Photo by me, Jerusalem rooftops looking towards the Dome of the Rock.

#poetry #poem
A poem by Debbie Ross entitled, Domes Stars and Steeples text as follows From up here the churches, mosques and synagogues glint in sunlight, perfectly co-existing. Rooftop views can be deceptive. On the ground invisible barriers fracture communities. Nationalism, religion and fear keep people apart. Down in the narrow tangle of alleys and streets we found communities that mixed. A glimmer of hope in a desert of grief. A view across mostly flat rooftops - with TV aerials and shade shelters - towards the Dome of the Rock
November 24, 2025 at 2:02 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
Appreciate Paul @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for this prompt #OnRoofs. It got me thinking about the need to get out from under what hangs over us.

#PromptCombo #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 25, 2025 at 3:41 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
For #Emoetry #Ferocity I am hoping perhaps this one will fit. It a very early piece of mine from 1995.

#writingcommunity #poetry
@fafo-poets-society.bsky.social #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 22, 2025 at 4:54 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
johnchmura.bsky.social
I don’t usually post #PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk this early, but I’m taking some antihistamines and may sleep through a good portion of the night, or not. Will post a reel for #DogTags in the comments.
DOG TAGS Send them into space, all of the dog tags and toe tags, Trumps’ three Purple Hearts, and the mindset of men who pay dear and trade cheap that the God who abandoned this sorry blue world might see the joylessness of man’s desiring and act as a “signpost up ahead” so benevolent passengers may be forewarned drifting near our debris field on their judicious excursions coming from and returning to, hopefully, better planets smelling of ginger melon balls and mint, where space travel was a glorious culmination, not an escape or an escapade, where they needn’t keep people like me as pets or souvenirs anymore.
November 21, 2025 at 5:45 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
stacebot.bsky.social
This week's #PoemsAbout #DogTags got me thinking about what should the world know about you in an emergency?

Thank you to the host
@alanparrywriter.co.uk and
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
and to all of the other writers.

#poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets
Dog Tag On hold with the repair shop I draw concentric circles on a lavender piece of junk mail. I write my own name so many times it starts to feel vulgar— unspeakable. There’s a flyer telling me to be all I can be-- dog tags dangling. The small weight of a name you can’t put down. To pass the time, I make a list of the three things the world would need to know to save me. But nothing comes. Only my own breathing down the dumb phone and the blank page waiting.
November 22, 2025 at 1:50 AM
zentinl.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #DogTags I did not feel I had the right to write. Finally, a meager offering emerged. Thank you to all those who serve and have served.

Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk.

#poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 22, 2025 at 2:35 AM
zentinl.bsky.social
Thanks, Fidel @dragonslayerma.bsky.social
for #northstar and for anchoring #promptcombo this week.
November 18, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Reposted by Dean Norton
sarahclareconlon.bsky.social
✨ Hi Fidel @dragonslayerma.bsky.social I spotted @victoriaspires.bsky.social lovely beau présent (which I’ll try out) for #northstar #promptcombo – maybe my a e h i l n o r s t anagram (the 10 most common letters in the English language) fits, from the current issue of @manchesterreview.bsky.social
November 18, 2025 at 9:41 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
poetryman1.bsky.social
Here's to beautiful reading on an ugly grey wet day where I am!!😀🖐 All the best to Alan and everyone!! 😄

@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#desire #poemsabout #poetry
November 14, 2025 at 12:12 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
A second one for #PoemsAbout #desire. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 14, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Dean Norton
saintghost.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Desire ✨

for @thebrokenspine.co.uk
& @alanparrywriter.co.uk

I know I need to learn how to edit but this is another one of those that just burst out of me in a fountain of blood and snot. It kind of had to get out, I guess.
Desire She asks me, what do you want, and I say I need a raging cattle gun between my eyes. I say, I want to go crazy, like real crazy, not this choked silent suffering but a scream that will burst every seam-crazy, neon-crazy, heroin-crazy, woman with her head in the oven-crazy. The kind with confetti and ambulances. Chalk outlines. Hot as brimstone, emergency room-bright. Look here, I want to open this here window and jump the fuck right out of it. I want to cut deeper. Darker, more demented, more desperate. I want to hemorrhage. I want you to have to sew me back together from scratch, without all of the mistakes, the failure, the fear. Twenty-one stitches is not nearly enough. You ask me, why, and I say, desire desire desire. I am going mad with desire. for him for love for belonging for applause for a hand around my neck for fame for attention for death for cheating death for outliving for the blood of christ For the rush of losing your mind. The desire to cross that line. I want to be the lady in the park that coos at the doves and flaps her arms like wings. I want to dangle from the precipice like a leaf in October, I want to be a tightrope dancer across all of your edges. I want to be that patient on the ward who barks the whole day long like a frenzied dog. I want to stick needles into my arm until I squeal like a porcupine. I want my veins fat with methamphetamine. I want a harder door, a bluer bruise, a more brutal concussion. I want to bash my head against this wall until I laugh again. I want to tear this room down this skin this padded cell a world a girl a wound that hurts like fire that is too sharp to touch to kill to feel to fuck. I want to leave myself behind to become everybody else. I want to be a poet I want to be a lover rockstar priest saint cult leader a goddamn work of art I am possessed by desire and empty as all hell.
November 14, 2025 at 2:00 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #desire. Here's one from 1997 that has survived all this time without a re-write. Appreciation to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk and the other folks helping to support this community. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 14, 2025 at 4:14 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
First post in #BlueSkyRelay for #ascendant. Thank you for the prompt @telaranrhiod.bsky.social
#emoetry #rapture #writingprompts #writing #poetry #BlueSkyWriters #SkyPoets #WritingCommunity #PoetryCommunity @fafo-poets-society.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 4:26 AM
zentinl.bsky.social
#Emoetry #Rapture #WritingCommunity #poetry @fafo-poets-society.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 4:11 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
🙏 to @hool415.bsky.social #PromptCombo
#DeepTime take on #workinglove

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022-24

#poetry #JohnCage #MechtildOfMagdeburg #AsSlowAsPossible #orgelprojekt #MysticMonday #thework
Fatal Day in Halberstadt 1361 Decameron‘s Twelfth Night. Lollards hitch their prayers, their Plight to the Morning Star. Pestis Secunda scourges Plantagenet England. Giotto’s Last Judgement Slumbers in umbrage on the Cusp of the Quattrocento. Halberstadt, Flush, bustling prince-bishopric - its Cathedral-treasure stash of Relics looted at the Sack of Constantinople – hosts the First of its Kind: Chromatic keyboard, Twelve half-tones arranged in Octaves. Halberstadt - where, at St. Burchardi’s Monastery, Cistercian Sisters Scale the canonical hours: Minor - Terce, Sext, None and Compline; Major - Matins, Lauds and Vespers, in Perpetual rounds of Work, prayer and Lectio Divina. A century before, They nestle in a fecund vessel of Mystical vision, where Mechthild of Magdeburg - Fluid, erotic, vernacular - Lights the way for Meister Eckhart; where Mechtilde, Helfta’s Nightingale, Dispenses Special Grace to Dante as Matelda. Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine years Slip by. Millennium tenor Deeds St. Burchardi’s to Zen musical maverick already Eight years passed: Bird now uncaged - Purposeless, intentionless - Pecking away at membranes - Temporal, musical – from the Beyond. The Six-hundred-and-thirty-nine-year Lease unfolds As Slow as Possible on an Organ fashioned for this purpose. Hiss of compressors, taut notes Coasting over billowing groans until 2640. Pauses a week before 9/11: seventeen months of silence, then Nine movements, each lasting Seventy-one years. Chord kept up over seven years, between Benedict’s flight to Castel Gandolfo and Second Lockdown. Austere piety, Avant-garde whimsy - ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 Spurning utility, instrumentality - Partaking in visions that far Outstrip lifetimes, Current-day zeitgeist confines. Contemplative prayer, Playful contingency - Tentative forays into Deep Time, Possible only when one Listens closely with Open heart, Open mind. Eternity disclosed in Nugacity, ephemera: Birds, lilies, Mustard seeds. Cloistered life, Choral work Whetting one’s Keenness for the Core - Still and small. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2024 Highly contrasted monochrome image of a statue by Susan Turcot (2007/8) of mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282) ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022 Poster-sized mural of US avant-garde composer, John Cale (1912-1992)
November 10, 2025 at 7:37 AM
zentinl.bsky.social
Thank you Julian @hool415.bsky.social for this week's #promptcombo prompt #Workinglove. Sharing one from 2014.
November 10, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by Dean Norton
stacebot.bsky.social
Locked Thing is inspired by #poem + #prompt 044 hosted by @neonpajamas.bsky.social @bartonsmock.bsky.social and also this week's #PoemsAbout #LockedDoors.

#writingcommunity #poetry #poetrycommunity
#writing #writercommunity #blueskypoet #poetsofbluesky #writingprompts
Locked Thing The door forgets it’s theoretical. The cat, a lonely hourglass. I’m always going to be a disappointment.
November 8, 2025 at 8:48 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
Finally a breather to be here with #PoemsAbout #lockeddoors. can't wait to read everyone's work. @thebrokenspine.co.uk. @brokenspinearts.bsky.social @alanparry83.bsky.social @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social cial #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
November 9, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Dean Norton
robgalpin.bsky.social
Hi @rfsmith.bsky.social and #PromptCombo - here's my offering for #Storm, based on notes made after our summer wind storm
#poem #poetry
The Wind-lover I’m balanced on a bicycle, motionless, halfway up the hill in the mountain wind, face full of oxygen I can’t breathe in— the slap, slump, and wallop increasing with every upward inch. Below, the storm is rolling its palms across the scrubland. Sycamores are stripped, and willows cracked open. Huge, astonished lime trees lean east. The lake shivers, lifts, resettles, edges for the exit. A greenhouse catapults a fence. Even the daws are not so cocksure now. The gulls have gone to ground, or decamped to the river and its ghosted granary towers. The storm has blown us back in time. It’s autumn, and the ships will not be sailing. They roll, maddened, in the docks, pouring their North Sea spill over the white-washing-line terraces, sending the black and white kids in wellies running for safety up the valley… Night. The wind begins to walk away. There’s the sound of someone opening and closing a door, softly, repeatedly, dementedly, again and again— My son, the wind-lover, windows open— and unbelievably asleep.
November 3, 2025 at 3:38 PM
zentinl.bsky.social
#promptcombo. Thank you @rfsmith.bsky.social for a great #storm prompt. #poetrycommunity #poetry #poems #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry #poetry. This one has no title. It was written after a real event.
November 4, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Dean Norton
stacebot.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout #Blood, I'm thinking about the blood list.

Thank you to the host @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk and to all of the other writers.

#poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets
blood list i keep a list of every time love drew-- paper cuts and split lips, small evidences of wanting. each entry inked neat as inventory. what was given, what was taken back. the margins fill-- notes for pleasure some for regret. a map of each wound, even ones that never stopped bleeding.
November 1, 2025 at 3:41 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
lozzawriting.bsky.social
Slightly cheating today as this has been published before but there's a poem for #blood and @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

I'll pop back in later for sharing and reading.
October 31, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Dean Norton
fiftywords.bsky.social
Do we know the true cost of our phones #PoemsAbout #Blood @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
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.
October 31, 2025 at 5:57 AM