R.J. Davey

I write poetry. I also like cats. Nottingham, UK. I have a book out - https://www.amazon.com/Road-R-J-Davey/dp/1977969461

[squeakowl]

Poetry by Joseph Fasano (source)

[regdavey]

Untitled Haiku

Fresh laundered sheets Moonlight filters through shades - An evening in repose.

[regdavey]

A Midnight Train

Out of a molasses night The lonesome approaching Low whistle and rumble of a midnight train Approach lingering long in the night Trembling the world to its foundation As the train rumbles onward Over level crossings and past Hunkered Victorian terraced houses Dim light of its lamps illuminating skeletal trees Creating dances upon red brick walls

And on again around the corner To a destination hidden from idle sight As it does every night at this time.

[regdavey]

Our Gods are dead. There will never be others like them. All we can do is read their tombs...

Hi all. I’m starting a poetry blog you can submit poetry to with my good friend Oscar Atherton called “All Our Gods Are Dead” We are looking for poetry which is surprising, leftfield, full of multitudes. Send us your best poetry by messaging us on our blog using the messaging feature or tag your best work #poemsfordeadgods

 Some writers we like to give you an idea of the kind of stuff we’re looking for: Beckett, Corso, Kerouac, Plath, Rhys, Burroughs, Dickinson, Auden, Sissay, Ginsberg, Yeats, Hughes, Eliot, Angelou, Atwood. 

Themes: Any. Write about the sound of the moon and the colour of music. The rain upon the eaves and the silence in the alleyway.  Nothing homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic. racist or sexist and so forth. Don’t do that.

Don’t be boring. Write words to rival the honoured dead.

[regdavey]

Now open for submissions. Follow the blog for upcoming poetry.

[regdavey]

Our Gods are dead. There will never be others like them. All we can do is read their tombs...

Hi all. I’m starting a poetry blog you can submit poetry to with my good friend Oscar Atherton called “All Our Gods Are Dead” We are looking for poetry which is surprising, leftfield, full of multitudes. Send us your best poetry by messaging us on our blog using the messaging feature or tag your best work #poemsfordeadgods

 Some writers we like to give you an idea of the kind of stuff we’re looking for: Beckett, Corso, Kerouac, Plath, Rhys, Burroughs, Dickinson, Auden, Sissay, Ginsberg, Yeats, Hughes, Eliot, Angelou, Atwood. 

Themes: Any. Write about the sound of the moon and the colour of music. The rain upon the eaves and the silence in the alleyway.  Nothing homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic. racist or sexist and so forth. Don’t do that.

Don’t be boring. Write words to rival the honoured dead.

[regdavey]

Our Gods are dead. There will never be others like them. All we can do is read their tombs...

Hi all. I’m starting a poetry blog you can submit poetry to with my good friend Oscar Atherton called “All Our Gods Are Dead” We are looking for poetry which is surprising, leftfield, full of multitudes. Send us your best poetry by messaging us on our blog using the messaging feature or tag your best work #poemsfordeadgods

 Some writers we like to give you an idea of the kind of stuff we’re looking for: Beckett, Corso, Kerouac, Plath, Rhys, Burroughs, Dickinson, Auden, Sissay, Ginsberg, Yeats, Hughes, Eliot, Angelou, Atwood. 

Themes: Any. Write about the sound of the moon and the colour of music. The rain upon the eaves and the silence in the alleyway.  Nothing homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic. racist or sexist and so forth. Don’t do that.

Don’t be boring. Write words to rival the honoured dead.

[regdavey]

Secrets Beneath the Wallpaper

There are secrets here Scratched into the bare brick Hidden beneath hardened layers Of old patterned wallpaper.

If those layers were removed, Initials would be revealed. A date out of time and place. Incomprehensible now. Unreadable. Unknowable.

Just faded scratches left behind By a person dead for a hundred years Desperate to leave something to history, for posterity To be known, to be noticed To say they existed. They were here.

Not knowing the tragedy of their existence -- That time keeps all secrets And words crumble away like falling brick dust.

(c) R.J. Davey 2020

[regdavey]

It’s All Going to Shit, Jimmy, but Doesn’t it Look Stunning This Morning?

Small, fast, impatient clouds Whip past sedentary and watchful ones And behind the shivering trees - something else Hidden for now but not for long.

Do you see the city as it sleeps? Windows shut tight to keep out That which is outside.

And still The world turns imperceptibly - Out of earshot a mother’s voice cries out

But here there is only silence before the dawn.

(c) R.J. Davey 2020

[regdavey]

Before the Day

A sliver of dawn - I stand alone Like Sisyphus upon the summit.

(c) R.J. Davey 2020

[returningtothecave]

“She laughed. ‘It won’t last. Nothing lasts. But I’m happy now.’ 'Happy,’ I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words don’t have much faith in them and I am no exception–especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far too relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because they’re scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.”

- Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

[returningtothecave]

Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.

Robert Higgs (via returningtothecave)

[regdavey]

The Observation of Clouds

A plain sky is so dull, so lifeless. One with clouds upon and within it is much more enigmatic. They are like the faces of lovers, friends, family, the faces of those that have passed on from this world - shifting and decaying like islands in the sea of time. Ephemeral and eroding, achingly transient.

[returningtothecave]

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed  (via returningtothecave)

[returningtothecave]

Sometimes, choosing a random direction can lead to the most surprising discoveries. Always look to discover what new vistas lay in wait beyond the horizon.

(via returningtothecave)

[returningtothecave]

Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the brakes went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poignant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting.

Albert Camus, The Plague (via returningtothecave)

[returningtothecave]

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (via returningtothecave)

[returningtothecave]

“What we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”

Albert Camus, The Plague (via returningtothecave)