TRUMP DREAMS

by Paul Freeman

Poor Donald’s at home, feeling slighted;

to China he wasn’t invited.

Yet still there’s a boon,

his UK trip’s soon,

and there, in his dreams, he gets knighted.

Paul A. Freeman is an English teacher. He is the author of The Movement, a dystopia-Americana novel set in a future United States. It is available from Amazon as an ebook download and as a paperback. His first book, Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel taught at ‘O’ level in Zimbabwean high schools, was also translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of numerous published short stories, poems and articles. He works and resides in Mauritania, Africa.

NOW THERE IS NOTHING NEW

by Eric Nicholson

Keir Starmer has announced that Britain will “fight for peace in Europe” with a generational increase in defence spending paid for by slashing the foreign aid budget. The move, just two days before the prime minister is due to meet Donald Trump, raised immediate concerns that he was pandering to the US president, and fury from aid groups that say it could cost lives in countries that rely on UK support. —The Guardian, February 25, 2025

Now there is nothing new,

The Minister of Fear has spoken,

We are vulnerable, we must meet force with force

And station Destroyers on the Thames.

Now there is nothing new,

We stand naked on the beaches, in the fields, in the hills

As icy gusts of fear whip across the seas.

Now there is nothing new.

Footsoldiers and tanks must protect our shores,

Drones and jets must command our air space,

Battle ships defend our coastline.

Now there is nothing new.  

Factories must go into overdrive,

Re-armament is good for Growth,

Our conveyor belts must convey security,

Fear must be assembled night and day.

Now there is nothing new.

Office windows must be blacked out,

Street lights switched off,

The London Underground prepared.

Now there is nothing new.

Rule Britannia.

Let the younger generation 

Fight the good fight,

MAD is might is right:

Now there is nothing new.

Eric Nicholson is a retired art teacher residing in the UK. He remembers protesting as a member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in his younger years. He does not often write political poetry but in today's climate finds it difficult not to.

I’M UNDOCUMENTED

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Metro UK, November 25, 2024

I pass you on the street. I can't be missed.

My presence is as real as yours to see,

Until you tell me that I don't exist:

Not dead, and not unborn, but sans ID,

Denied a passport by officialdom—

Officialdom whose rules insist that I'm

Called immigrant, and hence that I am from

Un-British parts where I've spent zero time.

My twenty-six long years of legal non-

Existence in my country will retard

Not only me: a nation prospers on

The worth of all, like me, who can work hard...

Except that I'm undocumented, and

Don't qualify—nor do I understand.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic poems have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

POST-ELECTION BLUES

by Peter Calder

after seeing a small rally of people in George Square, Glasgow (file photo above) following the recent election results in the UK

He says they’re
all in on it.
Every single 
bastard one.
 
They know what 
they are doing.
Death of Scotland.
That’s what he says.
 
Politicians. Scientists. 
Journalists.
All of them—
Liars.
 
A ripple of hands
startles a pigeon
and sends the flock
soaring above the square.
 
But this Rally—he says
is rewriting history.
A pocket of truth 
in a new skin suit.
 
And I guess he’s right.
It is just skin 
holding us together.
We’re all in on it.
 
The left. The right. 
The indifferent.
Every single one of us 
wrapped up in it.
 
From Westminster 
to Glasgow lies
a body, bruised 
in patches of blue.
 
It happens almost
unnoticed. The birds
loop and scatter 
on the ground.
 
An old man
tosses crumbs—
and the flock
follows.

Peter Calder is a Primary School teacher living and working in Glasgow. He is the co-founder and editor of the Hull based magazine Descent Spread and has had poetry and short stories published in various UK-based magazines.

THE DAY AFTER THE UK ELECTION

by Stuart McFarlane

No, this is not Nineteen-ninety-seven,

a new Labour, new dawn, a new Heaven.

We've still not forgotten the stain of Iraq.

For you, Tony Blair, there was no way back!

We are, rightly, sick of all politicians,

we know, only too well, they're not magicians!

We hope there is but minimal disruption,

a growing intolerance of corruption.

Time to govern boldly, to influence our fate,

to shake the wrinkles out of the garment of state;

to pluck the jewel of meritocracy

from the tired, tattered threads of democracy.

Yes, there's jubilation outside Number Ten,

but we, the people, will not be fooled again.

Starmer proclaims 'The economy must grow!'

Tell us something we don't already know!

We're aware your tax plans don't make any sense.

We're all aquainted with pounds, shillings and pence.

We don't celebrate the dawn of a new day,

do not so much cheer, as desperately pray.

You are seeking growth, a spike in GDP?

Then why not start by contemplating the sea?

Europe is still there; a constant underpinning;

panacea, no; but, at least, a beginning.

Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.

OVERTLY POLITICAL

by David Dumouriez

in response to the announcement of the UK general election.

Link here to Xwitter.

Election sickness
is on us once more,
with a worse set of symptoms
than ever before.

There’s the hoard of campaigners
who will burst through the gate
intending to give us
the bullshit we hate;

there are more of them still
who will tramp till they bleed
to deliver those leaflets
we don’t want to read.

There’s our constituency member
whose job-losing fears
make him visit these parts
for the first time in years.

There are those who oppose him,
who want what he’s had;
they claim to be better

but they’ll be just as bad.

There are three party leaders
who each boast they’ll win
(though two of them know

that they’ll never get in).

There’s the phony sincerity,
the well-rehearsed lies;
there’s the promise of everything

under the skies.

There’s debating and speeches,
many words are received;
but it’s air and not action,

so there’s nothing achieved.

There are infantile adverts
meant to mask what’s unsound
about the party elites

and the guff they propound.

There’s the media coverage
where, with serious breath,
overpaid people
try to talk us to death.

There’s the collection of ‘experts’
from colleges wide,
who make duff predictions
then run off and hide.

There’s the feeling in voters,
drawn from years in the past,
that the parties betray them
when the votes have been cast.

So discuss all the options—
that won’t tax your jaws—
half think about stirring,
and then stay indoors.

David Dumouriez wouldn't be tempted to blow his own trumpet even if a) he had a trumpet or b) he knew how to play one.

THE MICKEY MURAL

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Murals of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Baloo from The Jungle Book painted on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre to welcome children have been removed on the orders of the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick. The murals were painted over because he thought they were too welcoming and sent the wrong message. —The Guardian, July 7, 2023

The Immigration chief on Team UK 

Has ordered: Whitewash walls—kids shouldn't be

Encouraged to feel welcome here if they

Migrated in small boats across the sea.

In Dover, staff demurred at playing ball.

Cartoons of Mickey Mouse and bear Baloo—

Kind gestures in a mural on a wall—

Extended caring hands of friendship to

Young kids, alone. But now those pictures are 

Misguidedly effaced. What art will go

Up in their place? Cruella? Scar? Jafar? ...

Right minds must feel embarrassed, since they know

An action that's appalling and absurd

Lets Britain down—and no child is deterred.

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

LIZ THE TERRIBLE

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Liz Truss is Brits' prime minister du jour.

Inquiry's overrated in her book.

Zetetic minds were offered Liz's cure—

The Trussonomic leap before you look.

How Kwasi's top-rate tax cut tanked the pound

Escaped her, since she didn't do the sums

That would have shown her growth plan was unsound—

Except for Liz The Terrible's rich chums.

Research on trickle-down had long debunked

R. Reagan's fantasy. Though not for Liz.

In Economics One-Oh-One, she flunked,

Believing if you just say growth, growth is...

Liz did not last: her hare-brained stratagem

Exemplified how not to be PM!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

GROWTH IN PARTY UNITY

by Jerome Betts

Available from RedMolotov

Liz Truss has attempted to unite her party around a common enemy of the “anti-growth coalition” of unions, remainers and green campaigners… —The Guardian, 5 October 2022

Inspired by some words from Liz T.

And her mantra of ‘Growth’, triple G,

    Green, Lib Dem and Labour

    Can now nod to a neighbour

 Enrolled in the new AGC!

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

LIZ’S FIRST DAY

by Annie Cowell

In an overcast Scottish sky, a plane circles

like a call on hold, carrying a lady in waiting.

Below, at Balmoral, the self proclaimed 

booster rocket splashes out. 

It is unlikely we will see photos 

of him ploughing. A chorus of low thunder 

fills the short interval before the Queen 

offers her hand for the fifteenth time. 

The kiss is symbolic.

Instead, a small handshake suffices

to greet the latest Prime Minster. 

She bears the same moniker, but 

unlike Elizabeth, she uses the diminutive.

Liz. 

She promises to deliver a better future,

to be like Hera, protector of children.

Yet I wonder if that night, as she closed the door

on the first day of her government

whether she held her breath and listened

for noises in the street?

Or did she simply kiss her children 

good night 

and toddle off to bed?

Annie Cowell is a former teacher who lives by the sea in Cyprus with her husband and rescue dogs. She is widely published in Popshot Quarterly, The Milk House, Paddler Press, and more. Her debut chapbook Birth Mote(s) is now available.

CONJOINT

by Imogen Arate

When the waves come

you will remember my name

When the mountains melt

in the blaze of your misdeeds

you’ll beg for another chance

though you squandered them

in your privileged stance

calling your destruction 

into being you sealed every

egress to my escape and

annihilate yourself in turn

Then our gaze will meet again

and you’ll recognize your

anguish in my eyes

Imogen Arate is an award-winning Asian-American poet and writer and the Executive Producer and Host of Poets and Muses (https://poetsandmuses.com), a weekly poetry podcast that won second place at National Federation of Press Women's 2020 Communications Contest. She has written in four languages and published in two. Her works were most recently published on The New Verse News and in Consilience and Rigorous. You can find her @PoetsandMuses on Twitter and Instagram.

THE BIRD IN A BUSH

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

A gardener who trimmed a 10ft hedge into a hand flipping the middle finger has been warned he faces police action if he doesn’t chop it down. —The Independent (UK), October 19, 2021

Throughout the lore of English countryside,

Home topiary's an art that has been prized—

Except by one whose eyes were mortified

By what a green-thumbed gardener devised

In Warwickshire: a middle-finger shrub

Raised 10 feet high to flip the bird, in jest,

Directly opposite a village pub

In Warton. For two decades, it impressed.

Now someone wants to kill the goose that laid

A golden egg—more tourists at the inn—

By chopping down the shrub. So calls were made

Upon the gardener. But he won't bin

Street art he's groomed for decades as a joke—

His bush still flips the bird at prudish folk!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Daily Mail, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, The Satirist, The Washington Post, and WestWard Quarterly.

GERONIMO THE ALPACA

by Martin Elster

GERONIMO the tragic alpaca was dragged from his paddock [on August 31, 0221] and executed by a team of [UK] government officials. The eight-year-old animal, whose plight touched the nation, was shoved in a horsebox and killed with a bolt gun after 25 cops and four Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] agents descended on his farm. Geronimo, who Defra claimed had TB, kicked out and appeared distressed as he was pulled away with a rope round his neck at Wickwar, Gloucestershire [UK}. His furious owner said the tragic alpaca’s “barbaric” execution was murder. The eight-year-old animal was dragged to his death by a team of “bully-boy” Defra ­officials after he tried to make a last dash for freedom. The Government claims he had TB but Helen Macdonald, 50, said he was perfectly healthy. She previously vowed to “take a bullet” for her beloved alpaca. —The Sun, August 31, 2021

I felt healthy and hardy.

TB? None, for sure!

Why the gun to my head?

Does that make you secure?

Sniffing hay-scented air,

I was glad when I saw

my owner each day;

but condemned by your law,

a scapegoat alpaca,

I paid a big price.

As for your cold heart,

try melting its ice.

Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. His career in music has influenced his fondness for writing metrical verse, which has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the US and abroad. A full-length collection Celestial Euphony was published by Plum White Press in 2019.

MS. SOPHIE PENDER

by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Sophie Pender started The 93% Club when she was at Bristol University for students who felt discriminated against for not being rich and from private schools. Photograph: Graeme Robertson / The Guardian, March 6, 2021.

My name is Sophie. Don't look down on me!

So what, if you talk posh, and scorn low-cost?

Since I met you, at university,

Our paths have never frictionlessly crossed!

Posh accents and the privilege they buy

Have short-changed us poor chavs for far too long.

It's time the ninety-three percent decry

Entitlement for private schools as wrong! ...

Pooh-poohing state-school kids as unrefined,

Excluding us from chances to succeed,

No longer will be suffered by my kind——

Determined, as we are, that you will heed

Elitist education taught by me:

Remember to respect the Ninety-Three!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, The Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, and The Tallahassee Democrat. His limericks have appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail.

FOR THIS RELIEF, MUCH THANKS

by Jerome Betts

The UK is the first country in the world to start using the Pfizer vaccine after regulators approved its use last week. Second in line for the jab at University Hospital in Coventry was 81-year-old William Shakespeare from Warwickshire. —BBC, December 10, 2020

 

Virus malign, the clock is ticking,

Don’t try to dodge the needle’s pricking

   That can end pandemic woes.

Spread no further, start retreating,

Journey’s end is Covid’s beating

   Mr  William Shakespeare knows.

 

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

ANOTHER BREXIT POEM

by Freya Jackson

Three years on & Brexit
is still hypothetical, defined only
as itself, by itself. Brexit is Brexit.
It has been measured, weighed.

It is no heavier than
the glue on the back of a postage
stamp (and tastes like God save
us all) and it is no lighter than

the shield of Saint George,
built from jingoism & thin plastic
painted to look like bronze;
it is ungraspable: too like itself to hold.

This land inherits division
from itself. Brexit, Brexit, Brexit,
something is chanting in the street,
I am not sure who is speaking

or what they want from me.
Every day thousands of calls
gush into the home office, each
orison: all these years, I’ve been here,

lived here, pay taxes, have loved,
even the rain, isn’t that what home is:
the sound of your keys dropped in
the bowl by the door, I need to know,

how much more, please, hold,
please, hold, please, please,
listen—isn’t the definition of citizen
those who live inside the city?

Even the smog outside us is swollen
with conjecture. Doubt distorts
thought. Every time we attempt
to perceive the word

it loses some part of itself:
look at a thing often enough,
it loses definition, becomes
sharp toothed & meaningless.

Strip the bones off of a ghost
& you are left only with hot air.
Bodiless, it winds around us all—
certain only in its uncertainty.

Freya Jackson is a writer from Leeds. Her poetry has previously been published in places including Magma, Arc Magazine, The Cadaverine and The Interpreters House. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her graphic short story “Joy” in 2016. She is a winner of one of New Writing North’s New North Poets Awards for 2019.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY!

by Jerome Betts

Theresa May has announced that she will resign on June 7, 2019.

The Brexit poisoned chalice
Releases bile and malice
While people, pub to Palace,
   Ask what on earth it means.

But now, to add confusion,
With her plan proved mere illusion
May's reign has reached conclusion
   So they plot behind the scenes.

Her power in transition
Sees the country facing fission
And has triggered mad ambition
   In buffoons and drama queens.

Referendum or election
To stop Britain's vivisection
And its chronic misdirection
   As it plays out on our screens?


Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, and edits the verse quarterly Lighten Up Online. His work has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus,  TheNewVerse.News, Better Than Starbucks, Parody, Per Contra, and Snakeskin.

AN AGING IRA FIGHTER REFLECTS ON BREXIT’S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

by Mary K O'Melveny




Borders are on everyone’s mind these days.
Not just the ones where two-year olds
are stolen from their parents and sent
to courtrooms to plead their cases.

I’m thinking back to how the way one prays
could turn quite deadly if one strolled
down the wrong street, or someone’s accent
might cause them to vanish without traces

of guilt on men wearing soldier’s berets.
I used to live in Derry’s bogside, patrolled
night and day by those who aimed to prevent
our claims to history’s rightful places.

More than most, I know there are multiple ways
for lines to be drawn. Then, as truth unfolds,
we seem surprised at first, before we lament
our decisions. Occasionally, we wonder if grace is

a solid thing we can retrieve. I am amazed
still at our will to oppose treaties to control
our destinies. At first, peace arguments
made us skeptics. We stared at those sad places

where rigid boundaries left us dismayed
and divided, household from household,
and our viewpoints stiffened in dissent.
We fervently believed that no place is

safe except the one that meets our gaze
with like-minded visions. As tales were told,
we often found it necessary to augment
details that would emphasize the basis

for the walls we built. Soon, malaise
transformed us. As barbed wire unrolled
to top our fences and gates, we vented
and raged while men with briefcases

drew up documents filled with clichés
that some judge would use to uphold
our divisions. Eventually, if we went
on this way, we would be locked in stasis,

staring out from colored passageways
of green or orange, martydom tales retold
until it was time for us to invent
new heroes to take up their places.

The Good Friday accord was praised
for pushing back against the grief we hold.
We hoped it would allow us to reinvent
ourselves after the Troubles had disgraced us.

I am not eager to return to those days.
I drive tourists around now. I’ve been long paroled.
Yet, my days on the blanket can still disorient.
My tribal thoughts will fill in bordered spaces.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age will be published by Finishing Line Press in September, 2018.

TUNE ARR. FOR TONGUE IN CHEEK

by Jerome Betts

Image by The Telegraph (UK) on Twitter

The UK passport is an expression of our independence and sovereignty—symbolising our citizenship of a proud, great nation. That's why we have announced that the iconic #bluepassport will return after we leave the European Union in 2019. 

—Tweet by Theresa May, December 22, 2017

I’m dreaming of a blue passport
Just like the one I used to know
When border crossing with Britain bossing
A good deal more of the show.

I’m dreaming of a blue passport
With every foreign trip I do.
May, your words are strong and true,
And, May, all your promises are too.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, but comes from Herefordshire, and edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web publications such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Better Than Starbucks, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, TheNewVerse.News, Parody, Per Contra, The Rotary Dial, and Snakeskin.

QUESTION TIME

by Jerome Betts

Theresa May Caricature by Masakonen

T. M. still PM? Why is this?
The leader Fortune gave a miss
A faded star that’s on the blink,
A stock which now can only sink,
A Premier who’s lost the plot,
Majority and trust, the lot,
But carries on, a headless hen,
Behind the door of Number Ten?

Not hard, perhaps, to read the runes.
The five-watt bulbs and weird buffoons
The Tories muster to compete
To win her hot and thorn-strewn seat
Prefer to leave the Brexit folly
To blow up on some other wally,
And so until that dismal day
We’re stuck with hopeless hapless May.

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up On Line. His verse has appeared in a wide variety of British magazines and anthologies as well as UK, European, and North American web venues such as Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Light,  Per Contra, TheNewVerse.News, The Rotary Dial and Snakeskin.