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My Abandoned Masks

Featured image for My Abandoned Masks
Poetry
By Paul Brookes
Poetry
By Paul Brookes

are empty rooms, empty tables and chairs.
Once occupied with breath and deep laughter.
While you draw your finger in their dust. Share
tales, to some living in them still matters.

Downgraded from war to conflict,
there are those still dying from it each day.
Downgraded from plague to living with it.
whose homes are bombed out shells,
where once was play.

Note, a virus does not negotiate.
only battles the defences you raise.
Bombs do not argue or discriminate
their message is a grief that always stays.

A pandemic is a tyrant who needs
your homesoil, your close ones and makes you bleed.

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Selected by Raymond Huffman

Published in Open Arts Forum on .

Selected by Raymond Huffman·
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AuthorArtistPhotographerMusician

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes

Paul Brookes is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull. His chapbooks include debut chapbook: The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). Collections: A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder (Afterworld Books, 2019). A poetry collaboration with artist Jane Cornwell resulted in "Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing", (JC Studio Press, 2021). The beginning of the "Ganders" septology, whose other books are: "As Folktaleteller" (ImpSpired, 2022), "These Random Acts of Wildness, (Glass Head Press, 2023), "Othernesses", (JC Studio Press, 2023), Wolf Eye (Red Ceilings Press, 2023), Wolf Eye Territory (ImpSpired, 2024), Ever Striding Edge (Dark Winter Press, 2024). "The Dude Work," (Sherwood Press, 2024). Не has had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self-Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions.

Recently his work has been broadcast on BBC Radio Sheffield. He does not believe in competitions, but has been nominated for the Rhysling Prize, and thrice for the Pushcart Prize. Recently, guest edited for Setumag "Some British Working Class Poets" for a second year.

He edits The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews and a new Substack webzine, The Starbeck Orion.

https://thewombwellrainbow.wordpress.com

https://substack.com/The Starbeck Orion | Substack

More by Paul Brookes →