A killer on the loose

There's a killer on the loose and it's heading your way,

Temperature hits -11

Be prepared you'd better be prepared,

No care on who goes to heaven

Jumpers, gloves and scarves are a life saver,

Don't spend too long outside

Roads and streets become impassable,

Time to hibernate or just wrap up and hide

There's a killer on the loose and it's heading your way,

Taking the old and the young

Everything glistens innocently,

With the power to freeze the heart or the lung

Such awesome beauty with a death touch,

No one can deny its wonder

Always respect the strength of mother nature,

Or you will end up six feet under

There's a killer on the loose and it's heading your way,

We must protect the vulnerable and needy

Don't forget those living outside,

Homeless because of the greedy

They will struggle more than most,

In these harshest of times

I'll leave a thought for them or even a blanket

As I want no more victims of these wintery murderous crimes

© Robin Welsh

UK weather: Worst winter for 5 years on the way with temperatures set to plummet to MINUS 11

Robin Welsh writes poems and rhymes daily about all life in general...but mainly politics, human rights and world affairs. Performing at every opportunity he can get, not yet published because of procrastination.

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.