The Wardown Poets meet every 2nd Saturday of the month at 2pm in the Quiet Room inside Stockwood Park Discovery Centre Garden Cafe, Luton.
Next meeting will be 13th Dec 2025 – for more information please contact Francis at – mcdonnell.francis@googlemail.com
Outside patio of the Garden Cafe
Posted on 23/11/2025 by The Hard Bard
I hand you a lemon coloured flower
I wish I had more so I could shower
You in fragrance and yellow energy,
To help remind me of what I really see.
I held your face in my warm hands
I listened to gathering happy bands
The air was still time had vanished
Just the look on your face remained.
Come rain or shine we will be camped
Inside the ring we call friends stamped
Is the sign that all is well no pressure
No expectation this is real for sure.
I don’t want a girlfriend it can all go wrong,
Your friendship is good this is a feeling strong
It is better than being lovers for your caring
I really appreciate, friendship is ever lasting.
I never look down on you my good lady,
Not do I raise you up on a pedestal really
You are you and I feel your friendship
Our friendship is being guided by spirit.
Our higher connection remains intact
I still pick up your thoughts that’s a fact
I try not to interpret the messages I receive
I just let them roll across me as they leave.
The signals from you are about being hopeful
Talking to you I hope you value as being helpful
When you need another’s support I am there
Not judging you but giving you all that I dare.
Friendship is precious I think you may agree
Learning to listen while we wait and see.
Friendship is solid throughout this last year,
We both recognise its worth for me that is clear.
Our friendship is now something we treasure
We can open up to each other without measure
Knowing our thoughts are wrapped in honesty
I have never before had a friend like you dear lady.
When we cry Justice!
Is the meaning at all clear?
Is the backdrop, that’s always so near?
The unworthy look of revenge?
The Old Testament vow
Shows the message here
A temptation, so simple, so clear
The worthless word is revenge.
The forfeiture is the falsehood
The damning of all people here
That stands watching death so near
The swinging feet is revenge.
When we cry out for justice
The moral audience will shrink
The on-stage ranters talk of fear
Too many throats have grinned revenge.
When I see the dark side
As the grip of temptation strangles
Words evaporate, although they are near
They don’t explain the feeling of revenge.
written 1989
Lacewing views oblivion
In the dew- planeted threads
of Charlotte’s house
the waves wish to be iced
the shores wish to be warm
the longest local road is a frozen Styx
and the raven thinks he’s Charon
carrying black the carrion-bird
cackles a claxon
for the silent maelstrom of emergencies
craneflies waltz in cathedrals of frost
sharpening the transient
infinities of mucus
in winter
the postman delivers gulls
disemboweled on the thorns of slow trauma
in winter
the policemen place live coals in their boots
which throb like the eyes of a baby
cold and cribbed and quacking
in a chemist’s dripping doorway
in winter
the cows gather in grey hollows
to tell tales of terror
their dreams of bolt-guns
conveyor- belts,the smiling of knives
and the rumble of exhaust
in winter
things kill
other things
this winter gives
written by Niall Griffiths
Source: https://internationaltimes.it/winter-4/?fbclid=IwY2xjawONQ0JleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe1dv_AOjDOv8P3YjFUVuFpX3HAveSVqmSvoPguTlBgq_iSOT9LUIZIzQg3co_aem_61MN5Bia_FYlYEe4IyiWjg
A question often levelled at writers is ‘why do you write?’ It’s one I’ve mulled over myself often enough (a compulsion, a fascination with language, a head full of stories I want to share, and the conclusion I come to most often, a simple need for communication). As I was writing The Aziola’s Cry, I started wondering what Percy Bysshe Shelley’s answer to that question would be.
He has the compulsion from childhood, clearly, as he and his sister Elizabeth managed to publish a small collection of poetry in their youth. But where Elizabeth seems to have left the hobby aside, it became a lifetime’s vocation for Percy Bysshe.
There are two significant answers to why Shelley wrote, and I believe they can be summarized in two of his most famous quotes.
The first is a bold statement that occurs in his essay Defence of Poetry: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
This is perfect for a poet so political and philosophical. We see him picking up his pen time and again when he sees something amiss in the world. The publication of his that had the most impact in his lifetime was probably the pamphlet he published while at Oxford, The Necessity of Atheism, and the person it impacted most was himself, seeing him expelled from university and branded a dangerous radical for the rest of his life. On closer inspection, the title is probably the most shocking thing; Shelley talks earnestly about the dangers of corruption and hypocrisy in the structures of Christianity. Although he maintained an antagonistic relationship with the church, he greatly admired the actions and teachings of Jesus Christ, and was spiritual in his way, later saying he was a Pantheist rather than Atheist, and often talked of the ‘spirit of the universe.’ For more please go to - https://www.historythroughfiction.com/blog/the-radical-spirit-of-shelley
The open open snow laden hill
Waiting for the wind to kill
The only remaining tree
The melting memory
The ever-widening space.
The wide valley of virgin snow
Aching as if wanting to know
The coolest deep sorrow
The landing of tomorrow
To the endless useless race.
Deepening furrows lie stark
Whilst the body feelings turn dark
The blackest eye resting
The cold thought nesting
Waiting for its lonely place.
II
Beyond the peace that is loneliness
Is an urgent maddening mess
Where the collected tears fall
The briefest look is small
Darting a print into the snow.
Behind the unblinking eyes
Caverns echo to the surprise
Of finding the lonely tree alive
The hill will always survive
For the wind will never know.
III
The pitiful well laden tree
Is the thought of wasted time really
The hill will rise slowly
And the snow will melt eventually
And the sky, blue looking cool below.
22Oct90 (updated 1Nov25)
They came crashing in my door
Machine guns in my kitchen
Blasting blood onto the wall
Coming and fetching
The actively mobile and the poor
Boots in the throat-my-eyes
Rifle in the groin in my kitchen
- Igniting flames in my legs, my head
Retching and fetching
The victims, the prisoners, the dead.
Grim faced soldiers salivating
They riddle the bodies with holes
Shit on the kitchen wall creating
Patterns give us the horrors,
Children crying, mothers dying.
Blast a grenade into the stomach
The shit is on the kitchen wall
Soldiers dance as they celebrate
deleted those called human animals,
You see all this on TikTok mate!
The newly damp
Unkempt road where layers of darkened leaves lie
Seems to invite the emerging sun
For it to burst into brilliant calendar colours
As beams shoot their laser light
Into the trees
Crossing the deserted lanes
Marvelling at the aroma of rain
Waiting for it to begin again.
The unkempt damp of a new road
Where the travesties show
In large potholes.
Letting the light win the battle in time
The evening rain was brief the colour aroused
The towers were bristling with leaves.
No one was sure of the travelling
For no one knew the secret of moving,
In times and places when it was raining.
The newly damp
Unkempt road where layers of darkened leaves lie
Seems to invite the emerging sun
For it to burst into brilliant calendar colours
As beams shoot their laser light
Into the trees
Crossing the deserted lanes
Marvelling at the aroma of rain
Waiting for it to begin again.
The unkempt damp of a new road
Where the travesties show
In large potholes.
Letting the light win the battle in time
The evening rain was brief the colour aroused
The towers were bristling with leaves.
No one was sure of the travelling
For no one knew the secret of moving,
In times and places when it was raining.
Leaning into the void
We sweep our daily cares away
Listening to the trees
Letting the leaves have their subtle say.
Learning of the inner light
Brings a warmth, a deepening quiet
Away from the ravages of living
Away from the daily misgivings.
Listening to the inner quiet
Brings us rays of joy and hope
The days seem much longer
The sky fills with the wonder of love.
Wanting to be in the quiet
Lifts the heart into its perpetual toil
Within us nothing can seem right
Lifting heartaches out of the embroil
DISSENTERS VOICE 