Money Poem – Feck Capitalism

Feck Capitalism - money poem

Feck Capitalism is a money poem, a celebration that there is so much more to life than owning stuff lest we forget.

Feck Capitalism – Money Poem

And another thing / the sugar you paste on them / how you sink a hole and pour oil on the monkeys / because peanuts are for protein balls / like an itch you rile / with the matt bling of a pig in blankets/ how your half-empty cup runneth over and into your vault / hinging on the shoulders of billions of minions / crumb-scrambling

but /

how chummy the sound of plastic film splitting / worth a trillion trickles of sweat and tears / finger-licking swatting cogs don’t plot / how a small pack of hoarders sow canes and split beets into the scattering beyond / if only to bulwark the vault / bait eyes away and play a honey rondeau on repeat / sleep / toil / swallow a grain of sugar / sleep / repeat

except /

how well the monkeys know how to pick a branch to swing from and the worth of wood / how they talk to parrots and hummingbirds / how they peel a banana in line with the sunshine / how squirrels stash nuts and badgers make dens to bear cubs and bears get a share of honey and how we can make a candle out of the comb / place it mid-way / and have it shatter any night

Migrant Poem – Litter Around a Rubbish Fire

Migrant Poem

Litter Around a Rubbish Fire is a migrant poem I wrote while thousands of people are stuck between Turkey and Greece and no one wants them.

Litter Around a Rubbish Fire – Migrant Poem

First, you take candle grease and old newspaper and then,
on the frayed inkless edge,
you etch a new you
basking in buckets of cash
stuffing some in an envelope
and bet Mother's eyes light up
she runs to the store and picks Chardonnay
for his dinner
and leans back on the settee, clear

why you're now here warming dirty hands on smouldering trash,
litter around a rubbish fire.
You hear pipes and trumpets,
bright tales of the unlived beyond the barbwire,
sons with prospects grandchildren barely born women more daughter 
than mother. And you do not know why the guards won't lee you 
passage, why your child gets tear-gased why no one will hand you a 
form. But you do.

Then, you loosen the soil and water the seeds and after that,
in the glaring blue above,
you rub out clouds
erasing tremors
oiling your skin
and hedge the kids lick icecream mid-glass-scaling square
for their breakfast
and hopscotch across the slabs, clear

why the stench of burning plastic is now choking the twigs inside,
a fence opposite a police cordon.
Sandwiched, we eat ballads and legends
cousin Ali is a bank manager and drives a Porsche,
decades ago, Grandfather's brother opened a food stall and
today, cousin Malala runs a chain of posh eateries. Yet the guy with
the puffer jacket says it doesn't matter if the wire cuts it,
first wage pack, he'll do better. Of course.

For weeks, the air thins and limbo narrows and on it goes
in the sunken cheeks of them and us,
you cast the last branch,
flesh gulping flames
whispers hatching,
and wager the family homes away happy to cook meat
for every meal
and twin stories from south to north, clear

why now we strip ourselves from the strip
the slither between one law and another.
From out of ashes, we run and squeeze between
spikes and wire thorns laced along the border
to keep us out, shots fired, mouthsful of gravel but
then, we slip through and run for the hills. True, the air is sweet
and the grass is long enough to bed us. Mother smiles and
Father sips what never skimmed his tongue before.

In the end, lesser beginnings and smaller balloons
above ground just,
you kick it when it begins sinking,
hatching, still hatching
hedging that one day very soon
and pledge one day we turn in
home with silver
and yield gold at the root of our tree.

Fairy Poems – Ploughing

Fairy Poems - Ploughing

Ploughing is one of my fairy poems, a celebration of all things gentle and delicate and of how the passing time springs bursts of colour and light.

Ploughing – Fairy Poems

Overnight, he went from babyface to tree-bark skin, and I wonder why the fairies ploughed his face, his three-day stubble pencilling a thin lawn and capricious red and yellow flowers blotching, him in the midst of squawls singing and a million fairies dancing. His heart – the passing beat whisking and wheedling the light his eyes are spilling onto the ground. Flowers grow. Orchids where he’s fattened calves and Jasmine in the furrow he’s been treading softly. Fairy fingers till skin, and no one knows they’re scattering flower pods and mulching the ditch. He raises the crystal wine glass to his lips, and I see fairy wings lightly tend kisses.

Ploughing, Anita Alig 2020

Forest Poem – White Noise

Forest Poem - White Noise

White Noise is a forest poem, a celebration of leaves rustling and the power of trees. Next time you go to the forest, listen.

White Noise – Forest Poem

Among weeping leaves, the wind drinks drops of rain and 
clads the oily greens with the sun’s golden glow;
Below the weeping willow, nothing but white noise and
the earth’s mulch and shoots. We lay on the flat of our backs,
our eyes sown on heaving leaves, out of the blue, gurgling droplets
gushing down our cheeks. Were we weeping when
we could have been sleeping? Maybe she did not let us, maybe
they longed for us to hear the grace of branches
lifting and shifting back and forth around the willow’s silken trunk,
her arms drooping
to draw stars on blades and sing along the bud’s turquoise hymn
in the rain. Still swaying, the twigs sweep away the webs in
through our windows, I spot a bird jiving, another
gliding on the crown, now leaning east, then mouthing south
toward our skin. In between the shades of green,
we can hear the peppered blue and now,
the leaves are sleeves.

Life Story Poems – The Drone

life story poem

The Drone is one of my life story poems, a tale about the meaning of life, human existence, and thoughts on whether we are of any use at all. This is about misfortunes, lucky coincidences, resistance, and family support.

The Drone – Life Story Poems

 First, he lay in a cardboard box, and then after that,
He went to school with his toes sticking out.
His mother and father did very little only
Work their fingers to the bone to scrape together
The price of a pint of milk every day. No Sunday roast
No beach holidays, nothing to show for, except,
Perhaps the big old oak tree in the back garden
Behind the house, his great grandfather built
With layabout-bricks and concrete knicked from
the factory down the road.
In the middle of the night, I’d climb the wall
Barefoot
, his last words. And now,
The boy is sitting on the tree about to
Be a grown man having spent his school years
In the same place or tucked away beneath.
He did not see it coming, the drone that nearly
Killed him belonging to the guy at school
He’s never talked to even once. As it happens, it only
Knocked him off the top branch. To be fair,
Hospital food is not that bad and some of the nurses…….
He's thinking, sinking into the snow-white cotton sheets
For one more night.

Strength Poem – Still, You Rise

Strength Poem - Still You Rise

Still, You Rise is a strength poem, inspired by a video of African kids working in a flooded classroom circulating social media.

Still, You Rise – Strength Poem

 If I could I would
drain the water from your front room
and fix the holes in your ceiling
I'd dry your feet and slide them into warm socks

but my arms are short, and I cannot stop the pouring,
so I bathe and gaze

as knee-high waters




don't impress.



And you draw me a fire,

on limp paper, the brush glued to your
damp hands trailing up and away
from the brown water's surface swallowing


and you don't wilt,
and still, you rise

Relationship Poem – Ode to My Green Mohair Gloves

Relationship Poem

The Gloves is a relationship poem, a reflection on the impact of meeting someone, anyone, and a celebration of the joy of togetherness. The inspiration for this came from Pablo Neruda’s Ode to My Socks.

The Gloves – Relationship Poem

My love lent me
The hours it took
To knit a pair of
Green mohair gloves
Green as the leaves
In spring, spilling
The bark’s light, now
Dripping onto
My grey-blue fingers and
stained glass skin,
Unbending digits surprised
By flowery fluff and
Cherry blossoms
Whisking me away
From the canvas.
Seven balls of yarn
It took and many
A mouthful of green grass,
I look at my
cradled fingers,
The skin’s no longer
Crawling,
The paint is fading
And the tips
Lengthen into
Brush-strokes
Shaping in colour
Fat-trunked trees
And bees bathing
In the sun.
All surfaces are
Soft now, the
Clock’s ticking is
Licking the nape of
My neck and
All because of the
Sprouting
hand-knit
Hollow gloves
My love knit
For my
porcelain fingers
A whole month
Long

When leaves
Needed raking
For the grass to
Grow once more
In spring.
Like piecing a pie
My love sliced
Me many a stitch
Twining the yarn
Fibre by fibre
Until the last inch
Lay flat on the tip
Of my thumb
From where now
A snowflake
Dives
Head-first
Onto the page
And smudges
The hours I spent
And the brushstrokes
It took
To draw
My winter garden,
Grey clouds now with
a tinge of scarf crimson,
the snowy lawn bark brown
And the snowflake
has a blade of grass
Running through.

I measured
Your fingers
On mine

My love told me

September Poem – Heroics

September poem - Heroics

Heroics is a September poem, a celebration of porridge, blackberries and human resourcefulness and boundless love and energy.

Heroics – September Poem

First, on rising, she puts down a fire and heats
the slate slab and then, using her mother’s rolling pin
she rolls oats stolen from the horse’s trough next door
right after pinching a pail of milk. The wood and heat
crush the grains, the slab shares the fire's heat, the flakes
soon jumbo, the kids, still and tucked up, each little body
beside a hot water bottle, cold drops leaking but dawn
is giving way to the day, socks need pulling up, she steps
down the lane where in September, blackberries tower over
wilting trees and take from greening hedges. The moss
beneath her feet feels soft in wellies, the berries need
a good eye and nimble fingers. Squashed or half-pecked,
they won’t do. And she can tell by the stretch of the rays
how much time before the sun will tickle her little ones
awake, wants them woken by the smell of porridge with
berry high-notes and honey’s joining, still. Picking, she fills
the bowl with the hole, the chill is biting her fingers. Once,
she saw her little girl crushing a berry between her thumb and
index finger and rubbing the red on her lips, and she wears
lipstick stirring the loot and watches the steam rise and
wind its way on up the stairs and into tiny nostrils.

Woman Poem – Perfect Noise

Perfect Noise - Woman Poem

Perfect Noise is a woman poem, a depiction of the manner in which we choose to express ourselves and on how we must.

Perfect Noise – Woman Poem

My mother perfected noise when my Father lay on the couch napping, 
the daily paper heaving in tandem with the clattering of dishes being
hopped into the dishwasher, his snoring amplifying, so she'd screech
her scrubber up and down the grater or bang down a lid on a pot,
seething at his creaking bones, wrawling to the squawling tones of his
angina. When boiling his thinning overalls, she'd run a dripping cloth
across the glass door listening out for rising steam. Outside, her
whistling would bounce off birdsong, never once getting swallowed by
the roar of a passing truck. Come half-past one, Mother would drum
our voices nudging Dad back to clocking in, his smile a chime on
waking. She had little time for cross words or howling vowels,
sometimes, you'd think she was in a songless musical, and yes, she did
love Doris Day and her swagger and sway