Muse

I hear them speak of writer’s block. They say

they haven’t been inspired to write today.

The words just haven’t come, they grin and sigh:

‘We’ve plenty other days when we can try.’

I do not have those other days. No time

for luxuries like writer’s block are mine.

I cannot leave the page blank for an hour:

be silenced by disease or by its power.

I cannot wait for inspiration’s voice.

I have to write. I have no other choice,

or time, already cruel, will twist the knife

and cut me off before I’ve shared my life.

The words must come. There is no time to lose.

For me, the Reaper has become my Muse.

© Fran Hill

BBC presenter Rachael Bland in 'race' to finish memoir

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Home work

A girl with a ponytail, school sweatshirt and a future
sits beside Mum in a car in a Welsh layby.
They frown together over equations, world poverty
and the mysteries of the compound-complex sentence
while there’s light and a broadband signal.
Their Gwytherin rural idyll has won ‘best kept’ four times
although not for its wifi access, notes a villager
with an edge to her tongue at a residents’ meeting.

A Filipino boy, thin legs crossed and brow furrowed,
sits outside McDonalds (which has its own best kept secrets)
borrowing its glare to study verb endings, homophones,
and calculate pluses and minuses with a blunt pencil.
His desk a creaky stool, his classroom a junk food window,
his teachers himself, the textbook, his parents’ dreams.
He sees not as a couple passes, Western-clothed, stares unsubtle.
He’s battling long division and his stomach’s growl.

On the way back to Gwytherin, the ponytail girl and Mum
drive-in for salty fries and something frothy, sweet and light.

© Fran Hill

Poor broadband forces girl to do homework in lay-by

Filipino boy receives scholarship after photograph of him studying on the street goes viral

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

That Was the MUSE That Was

Butcher

I think my neighbour

is training to be a butcher.

I hear him at his work.

He leaves his door open.

I can hear

the systematic slapping of

large soft joints

against hard bloody surfaces.

He yells about his business -

coarse and vulgar words.

He is not the sort to wear protective gloves.

I think he enjoys

the chopping and tenderising.

His hands are stained

and his thick sausage fingers

grab hungrily at flesh.

His meat hangs about

in a cold room

looking something like it used to,

but less and less as the days pass.

© Fran Hill

Domestic abuse still under-reported in England, says Women's Aid

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Care

Most stretched afternoons we are sat

(don’t judge my grammar erroneous

because I mean someone sits us)

in front of Flog It, Homes under the Hammer,

and, particularly cruel for those of us

with months, not years, Countdown.

Tepid tea is served from a trolley

forgotten in a corridor while Elsie Brown

was rescued, trembling, from the lift.

A woman with a headmistress bark

speeds us through Bingo and crosswords

as though afraid she left her iron on.

Today, Prudence says, ‘Is that a baby’s cry?’

and the headmistress is left with 3 Down,

14 Across, and an ego like crushed fruit.

Double buggies arrive as if cavalry.

Dennis sings Old Macdonald to a toddler

in a rich bass unused since he buried Eileen.

© Fran Hill

The children keeping their local care home young and fun

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Two Slices of Cheddar

Cheddar Man

I know patience is a virtue, but, man,

they took their time.

In 1903, I thought, yay, here we go.

They’d got my hopes up,

as well as my waiting bones.

Earth feels the rumblings, you know,

of the pale menwomen and their

heavy stomp of prejudice.

No wonder my knee bone was dis-

connected from my thigh bone,

my thigh bone disconnected you know the rest.

Dig me, guys, my heart but not a heart

beat out as I lay hidden,

the ultimate housebound, shut-in.

Come have a face-to-face

with Jack-in-the-box, black-in-the-box

and race each other to a rethink.

Oh, and there’s Sinatra, thinking

he’s got the monopoly on

old blue eyes. Ha.Ha. Ha.

© Fran Hill

Cheddar Man: DNA shows early Briton had dark skin

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Cheddar Man Speaks

This country is not what it used to be.
These white folks just walk across
that damn landbridge from Europe.
They take all our best caves
And they decorate them with them
Horrible hand paintings.
They eat our Mammoths
And they even have the blasted cheek
To be eaten our Saber-toothed tigers!
I tell you I have had a enough!
I am joining the UPIP; the
The Prehistoric Inpendenance Party,
That will sort them lot out.
Just you see.

© Phil Knight

Cheddar Man: DNA shows early Briton had dark skin

Phil Knight is poet from Neath in South Wales. His poetry collection 'You Are Welcome To Wales" was published in 2015 by The Red Poets.

Waiting for signs

I don’t like my walls silent, my floors untrodden.

Like a barren woman, condemned to waiting

for signs, I breathe slow in case chance slips by

ungrasped, or a doorway creaks, or the garden gate,

mossy and cracked, unhooks to let in a child’s voice.

My corners are damp, as lonely as the number one,

and a chair, left behind I don’t know when, mocks

from where it faces away from a black fireplace.

Something scutters, day and night – a mouse, a roach,

a leaf, a whisper, a tiny spectre in a nightgown.

The gloating wind sneaks in via the maws of keyholes

to gossip what it has seen abroad. I cover my ears.

© Fran Hill

Over 11,000 homes have stood empty for at least 10 years, data shows

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Dilemmas

It’s eight o’clock, reminds Chris Evans.

Katie’s teeth are unbrushed

and she can’t find legal school shoes

but there are other priorities.

She tugs Geography from her rucksack -

deadline the day before yesterday.

The last paragraph now,

then check for mistakes on the school bus?

‘Katie, Katie.’ Her mother’s voice,

thin with effort and gratefulness.

The last detention for late homework –

an hour in a classroom

cold under the glare of Mrs Cartwright -

meant finding Mum spread-eagled,

still clutching a saucepan handle,

her palm and fingers blistered.

Katie mopped up chicken soup,

tears, and adult dignity

while her friends’ eager Snapchats

stayed futile monologues.

She persuades her pyjama-clad mother

back into the rumpled downstairs bed

where she’ll be still and safe

while Katie learns the algebra,

coastal erosion and social care policy

her teachers say are essentials.

Out of the window, she watches

the school bus rumble past,

her classmates pressing gurn-faces

to its steamed-up winter windows.

Her mother’s expression is guilt-grey

as Katie tucks and smooths sheets,

says, ‘Spit the toothpaste into this glass,’

and lays pills in a row by the lamp.

On the doormat, a curt envelope

with the school’s frowning logo.

Katie slips it into her blazer pocket

and shoulders her rucksack

feeling its weight as she calls goodbye

and waits for an answer she’s happy with.

© Fran Hill

Young carers: 'I was tired when I was at school'

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Sunday 'Shorts'

Cricket bread

Though Mother’s Pride is so last year

and granary bread a stale idea,

we can go far too far, I fear,

and Finland’s brand-new loaf is

a veritable insect feast

which adds in crickets with the yeast.

They’re on a roll with mini-beasts.

Mind if I stick with Hovis?

© Fran Hill

Finland rolls out bread made from crushed crickets

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Sonnet for a Swastika

Digging foundations for a changing room

To be enjoyed for sporting purposes,

A German excavator exposes

A concrete swastika, symbol of doom;

More evil than a witches hat or broom,

Half a metre below calm surfaces,

That for several decades showed no traces

Of a twisted cross buried in the gloom.

Now in Hamburg hammers are assembled

To break up this great abomination,

And as in days when the Third Reich crumbled,

Tracked vehicles advance from their station

Crushing defences, enemies humbled,

Destroying all sign of opposition.

© David Subacchi

Giant swastika unearthed under Germany sports field

David Subacchi lives in Wales (UK) where he was born of Italian roots. He studied at the University of Liverpool and has 4 published collections of his English Language poetry: First Cut (2012), Hiding in Shadows (2014), Not Really a Stranger (2016) and A Terrible Beauty (2016) as well as a collection in Welsh: Eglwys Yng Nghremona (2016).

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, all she could do

was drift her hands along each silent spine

or turn hieroglyph pages like a visitor

lost in the streets of a foreign land,

her forehead a frown of lines –

a message of bewilderment she hoped

others could not read.

Then, like whispers, or baby footsteps,

or leaves dropping like scraps of tissue

kissed by an infitesimal breeze,

shapes on pages birthed sounds on her lips -

each day a new one, a tiny gift –

and in her mind, dragons, heroines,

castles, pirates, the sighs of reunited lovers.

© Fran Hill

Ursula Shepherd: The 88-year-old who has just learnt to read

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Temporary stay

Tactless poppies, there were, on the bed curtains in the ward.

At least, here, I thought, the walls are yellow-daisied

and a fresh vase of healthy freesias hopes on the windowsill.

One needs a sliver of joy when ninety-three and nomadic.

I thought of home: my flat and its three steps up

that hadn’t yet been assessed for Health and Safety;

its cooker with the knob dodgy since nineteen ninety-six;

and the TV I don’t remember turning off before I fell.

‘I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ she said, pointing to the basin.

‘Can I not sleep in the bed?’ I said. It took a while;

no one expects the recently-cancerous to lob in a laugh.

Her smile was nervous, as though she were the stranger.

I sat on the bed, polite while she blubbed about her own pains:

the shitty husband, payday loans, grandkids in New Zealand.

‘I hope they’re paying you well,’ I said, ‘for hosting a near-corpse,

rotting under your pink eiderdown and sloughing onto feather pillows.’

She laughed. Her face cracked like my cancerous hip last February,

unusual activity resulting in a surprise separation, an ‘oh’ of the lips.

© Fran Hill

NHS Airbnb-style scheme 'not ruled out' by minister

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

This is the brake

This is the brake, he told me.

The accelerator, here.

This stick in the middle?

We use that to change gear.

This is called the steering wheel.

You turn it left or right.

This is called a clutch, my dear,

and this turns on your lights.

He carried on mansplaining

and, at each child-simple word,

I smiled and nodded briefly

to show that I had heard.

He didn’t know I’d studied

the manuals night and day.

He didn’t know I’d sat inside

the car and learned its way.

He thought this was the first time

I’d heard of brakes and gears,

but I had dreamed that language

and practised it for years.

Not only I, but all my friends.

We’d gossiped hopefulness

and fuelled ourselves with faith

that we would drive the men to yes.

© Fran Hill

Saudi Arabia driving ban on women to be lifted

Fran Hill is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Insult

I’m not, admittedly, the world’s most handsome

of lizards, so my mirror tells me daily.

I’ve never been approached to be a model -

not that I’m overweight, just – over-scaly.

My eyes are on the sides which makes things awkward

when chatting up a female in a bar.

She’s never sure I’m paying her attention

while all the other girls around her are.

Despite all this, however, it’s an insult

to read the news today. Well, what a shock!

However could a lizard be mistaken

for a smelly, crusty, old discarded sock?

My eyes – they may not do me any favours,

But they should have gone – that family – to Specsavers.

© Fran Hill

RSPCA called to rescue lizard that turns out to be a sock

Fran is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

Inspiration

I watched him as he huff-puffed past my window

those first few days when on his new regime

and watched again when he returned, now slower.

I reckoned that by Tuesday he’d give in.

But day by day he passed my window faster,

his face set in a grimace that said 'More'

as though he knew to give up was no option.

He’d seen a sign – the type you don’t ignore.

As weeks went by, he huff-puffed less, walked stronger,

his new legs striding through the morning light,

his body firming up as his resolve did - 

a future that had gone to seed, in sight.

            I watched him as I too had much to lose

            and tugged on my neglected walking shoes.

© Fran Hill

'A pedometer saved my life': How I became fit in my 60s

Fran is a writer and English teacher based in Warwickshire, UK.

My mother read Plath

My mother read Plath

with her toes curled up,

spilling her sherry

as knife slit skin from skin.

She turned the pages quickly

to find bloody bits

and underlined any

reference to whiteness.

She studied a photograph

of Sylvia in a dirndl skirt

and compared the blueness

of their eyes in a mirror.

She kept wide masking tape

in a dark cupboard

and always made sure

there was bread and milk

for a rainy day.

© Fran Hill

Remembering poet Sylvia Plath

Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.

A rubbish choice for a hat

I needed a hat as my old one was fraying and tatty.
I went in a shop.  They said, ‘Sir, we’ve a new one outside.
Just step out the door and you’ll see it right there on the pavement.
The latest design, it is one you can wear with much pride.’
I asked, ‘Can I try it?’  They said, ‘Sir, our aim is to please you
and we’re sure it will look really wonderful on you, it’s true!
It’s not like a normal hat.  Just bend down here.  Put your head in.
Oh yes, what a fit!  It’s so snug, as if made just for you!’
I put the hat on and then wondered, from inside the headgear
whether hats that you couldn’t take off were a new current fashion,
because, try as I might, I could not free myself from its ‘snugness’
and was further upset, too, to find that it had lots of trash in.
        I heard them all laughing as I shouted ‘Help!’ from within
        the worst kind of hat that my poor head had ever bin in.

© Fran Hill

Man freed after getting his head stuck in bin in Aberdeen

Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate. 

Towards the exit

I find a book on Shakespeare’s life, misplaced
in the Cookery section.  No worries.
Here’s a blue corner chair, a vase
of optimistic daffodils on a windowsill,
and an hour to laze through glossed pages.

A woman with a stick and a wheeze tugs
herself up the ramp to Fiction.  She smiles
to find new romance in ‘Recently Returned’
and leans against a pillar for the first pages
in which Marion flies to Morocco with a sad heart.

A young man, tall, unshaven, taps
his dreams into an online form. He bends
towards the screen as if in prayer
to a fickle deity, scrolling up and
down for errors, for slips, for what’s missing.

A child in denim dungarees, perches
on the chair opposite me.  The mother
browses the shelves while his fat fingers
trace a dragon’s tail across the page
and he points out green and blue to us all.

Two men, both in sturdy boots, shed
mud in ‘Crime’ while swapping views on
Rankin -

- The library will close in five minutes -

Clutching Shakespeare and Marion
in Morocco and dreams and dragons
and a Rebus mystery (and a leaflet on cuts
from a table near the door)
we all sigh towards the exit.

© Fran Hill

Laureate issues library challenge to Culture Secretary

Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.

Yeats had the same opinion

Well, it’s no surprise, really.
Yeats had the same opinion about me.
‘I’m not having you in the book of poems I’m editing,’
he said.
(I’m paraphrasing him.  Call it revenge.)
‘I’m not sure I like the way you write about war,’
he said,
(only he might have said ‘loike’,
so you see,
in lots of ways, we were different.)
‘A bit too much suffering for my loiking
and not what we’re looking for in poetry,’
he said.
(Oh, forgive me, Mr W B Yeats,
for daring to mention the blood.)

And, now, here come Shropshire Council,
borrowing from Yeats’ ideas.
(Don’t they know that’s called plagiarism?)
'We’ll just pretend that what he had to say
isn't as important as people thought,'
they say.
'We’ll just, while no one’s looking,
pile up bricks and roofs and window frames
in the apple orchard where he played
and surround his birthplace with other noise
until his voice is silenced,'
they say.

(Gosh, I hate to point it out,
you being wise councillors, and all,
but it didn’t work for Yeats,
and I don’t see your council documents
on every exam syllabus....)

© Fran Hill

Wilfred Owen: Call to protect WWI poet's home

William Butler Yeats - On Being Asked for a War Poem (1915)

Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.

That first night

That first night we knew,
we turned over and over, hot and
restless with the weight of it,
the passioned love or hate of it,
the vague uncertain shape of it.

That first night we knew,
we lay, blinking into our moneyed dark,
troubled what to do with it,
how to share, and who, with it,
whether we’d stay true, with it.

That first night we knew,
we waited for an unfamiliar dawn,
wary of the form of it,
the heat or torrid storm of it,
the all that glitters norm of it.

© Fran Hill

Euromillions: Adrian and Gillian Bayford win £148m

Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.

The kitchen lads

The kitchen lads had eyes as wide as skies
The day I said what I was going to do.
They said, ‘In front of international eyes?
With all the nation’s cameras turned on you?’
They didn’t seem to see: that was the point
Of planning to spill beer down Merkel’s back;
Of making it seem just a newbie’s gaffe.
Pff.  What did I care if I got the sack?
I’d always be ‘The one who spilled the ale’.
I’d have a scrapbook stuffed with every pic.
They’d know me on the street.  They’d point.  And stare.
And get out all their camera phones and click.
               
The kitchen lads had eyes as wide as skies
The day I planned the Merkel beer surprise.

© Fran Hill

German Chancellor gets drenched in beer
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Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.

Respectable receptacle

I was a bin.  Yes, just a bin,
ignored by all who passed,
but one man – Oliver Letwin –
has brought me fame at last.

My picture has been taken
and I’m in the national news.
No longer am I just a bin
For packets and dog poos.

For Oliver, he shared with me,
His letters day by day.
Now the letters aren’t the only
things which he has thrown away.

‘Cause he thinks he’s kept his dignity
and people still respect him.
While I, though just a humble bin,
Say, ‘RUBBISH, MR LETWIN!’

© Fran Hill

Oliver Letwin apologises for dumping papers in park bin
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Fran lives in the West Midlands (UK). She teaches English in a local secondary school, writes, performs, blogs, tweets and tries to resist chocolate.