Fiftywords

@fiftywords

Thinks too much and tries to make sense of the world’s chaos, beauty, and commas; mostly through poetry.

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Fiftywords@fiftywords· 15h

For today’s #vss365

Wrong Life
Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen
The world divided before we arrived:
what mattered, what could be used, what could be lost.
It gave us the measures, then taught us to call them reason.
Soon cruelty required no cruelty, only a world in which it made sense.
And when evil came the world stood back as though
it had not made it.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 21h

Here’s another contribution for #PromptCombo #Maverick thanks to @janpsolivagant.bsky.social

Maverick
No mark on my hide to say
where I had come from.
Only the memory of other bodies close in the night, he press of warmth he low familiar sound before sleep.
I crossed fences where I could, followed water, learned the smell of strange grass, stood sometimes at the edge of other herds and waited.
Some let me near.
Some did not.
There were winters when shelter was enough, summers
when the open land felt almost like freedom.
I learned where to drink, where to sleep, which paths were safe, how long to stand apart before coming closer.
And still, some evenings, when the light fell a certain way,
I would lift my head towards a place
I could no longer see.
Nothing called.
But I listened.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 1d

A birthday reflection on words

First Known Use
In the year primordial soup
entered the language. I entered
by another route. Neither of us came with much meaning
attached There were launch windows, mixed-media, interrobangs, win-win, new combinations for a world discovering
it needed saying differently.
A word appears. The dictionary gives a date, a first known use, as though that were where meaning
began.
Words pass from mouth to mouth, gather weather, memory,
argument, are worn smooth by repetition, or suddenly become the only word
that will do. They mean one thing when we first hear them,
another when we have lived
inside them.
Home.
Work.
Love.
Loss.
Enough. None was new though each would become new
to me.
Perhaps words are a kind of primordial soup: things brought together before anyone quite knows
what will emerge. A launch window opens, an interrobang
hovers somewhere between wonder and doubt, and win-win still sounds younger
than I do now. Over years words acquired, misunderstood,
discarded, some returned to
with meanings I could not have known
the first time. And beneath them all, before definition, before certainty, the soup
still stirring.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 1d

Here’s one for #vss365

Toil The long apprenticeship of discovering that very little can be controlled,
And perhaps
that is the joy of it. To wake and find there is still something worth attending to, someone worth knowing a little better, some small corner
of the world that might be made kinder, some stubborn question
not yet exhausted.
Even grief asks something of us: to remember, to carry forward, to love what is gone without making absence
the whole story. Time does not lighten the load so much as teach
what is worth lifting.
Still learning the weight of things, what to hold, what to release, and what remains a privilege
to carry.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 1d

On the occasion of my birthday here’s one for #PromptCombo #Maverick thanks to @janpsolivagant.bsky.social As the great Samuel Beckett said “To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.”

Another year arrives
without asking permission.
No trumpet, no great inventory of victories and losses,
only morning coming through the window
as it always has. I have spent enough years being told where the road goes, which doors are meant to open, what sensible men believe when they have learned
to know their place. I was never very good
at knowing mine.
Not rebellion exactly. More the suspicion that the map was drawn by people who had mistaken their journey
for the truth. So I took the wrong turn
often enough, asked the unnecessary question, stayed when leaving would have been easier,
left when staying
would have made more sense.
Another Way
There were costs.
Every road collects them. But there were mornings too that belonged to no plan, people I would never have known, ideas waiting beyond the respectable edge
of certainty.
And now another birthday. I know less than I did, which may be the one achievement
worth keeping.
The horizon has not narrowed. There are still roads with no signs, questions that refuse the comfort of an answer, and somewhere beyond what l am supposed to be the faint outline
of another way.
I think
I'll take that one.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 4d

Emperor Julian aka Julian the Apostate (361–363 CE), attempted to revive traditional pagan practices after the increasing dominance of Christianity within the Roman Empire. Raised within a Christian context, he later rejected it, seeking instead to restore older religious forms. #vss365

Good News About the Gods They've opened the temple out at Daphne
again. You pass it on the way out of the city, or you did,
before it was shut.
The doors were stiff at first. Two of them had to lean in
to get them moving.
It's a relief, if I'm honest.
You forget
how much easier things are
when there's more than one of them. If something goes wrong,
you can try elsewhere.
That was always the sense of it.
Now, well. Everything had to go the same way, as if the gods had come to some agreement
without telling us. Inside, it smelled right again,
oil, ash,
that edge of something burnt.
They've brought back the offerings. Not as they should be,
the emperor himself has said there aren't enough cattle worth the name, but a goat will do,
or so we're told.
The one last week
made a fair noise about it.
I took that as a good sign. There was a man there
trying to remember the words.
He had most of them.
No one minded the rest. It's not like the other gatherings
where everything must be exact. I never understood
how they could tell. They say Julian goes out to Daphne himselt, inspects things,
writes about it all.
That's fine.
Let him.
It's better
when someone takes an interest.
I've put a small figure back in the house.
Nothing too visible.
You don't want to get ahead of things.
But it's there. My neighbour says
it won't last.
He may be right.
But for now,
it's good to have them back.
Even if only
to spread the asking around a bit.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 4d

As it’s #PoemsAbout #thriftstore you can have 2 for 1 this week @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Inventory of Passing Through
The spine of the cookbook is broken at page forty-two, where someone's thumb left a ghost of vanilla extract.
This is how we remain: in grease-spots and loose threads, in the geometry of heels worn down only on the outer edge.
Here, the dead do not haunt houses; they occupy the rails and wicker baskets.
They reside in the faux-pearl clip that lost its teeth, and the ceramic mallard duck looking south for a winter that ended in nineteen-eighty-four.
We buy the wool coat to inherit the warmth of a stranger's posture.
We carry home the heavy glass bowl, washing away the dust of a family dinner we were never invited to, just to fill it with our own bruising apples.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 4d

Here’s my poem for #PoemsAbout #thriftstore and many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Pound Shop Pennies
For pennies it will write the letter, finish the sentence, plan the journey,
paint the picture, tell you what you meant before you have quite
worked it out yourself.
Such savings. Hours returned to us
in little plastic bags. No need to search, remember,
hesitate, sit with the difficult thing until it gives up
something of its own.
Just ask. The answer arrives
already dressed. It labels another million thoughts
it never owned Someone's paragraph, photograph,
voice, is broken small enough to disappear into something sold to us
for nothing.
Still,
look what we saved.
A minute here.
A thought there. The awkward labour
of choosing a word. Soon the shelves are full of things we might have made, had making them
not seemed so expensive. At the till we empty our pockets: attention, memory, craft,
doubt, the slow intelligence of getting something wrong
and staying with it.
Pennies, really.
Almost nothing. And such a bargain until we count
what we have spent.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 5d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Paternity
The poet sought fertile imagery
One found it in the earth.
and found only a word,
Another in the body.
which immediately began
A third produced evidence
producing metaphors of its own.
that it had always meant
something else. By morning there were fields,
rivers, pregnancies,
The word remained silent,
revolutions, rumours,
which was interpreted
all insisting
as confirmation.
they were its children.
Soon there were footnotes,
The poet tried
schools of thought,
to establish paternity,
a controversy
crossing out the river,
about translation.
qualifying the revolution,
The poet began to suspect
placing quotation marks
around the rumour.
he had not discovered the word
so much as left
the door unlatched.
It made no difference.
The word had already entered
That evening
several languages,
he returned to the page
taken root in a proverb,
and tried to remove it.
appeared anonymously
on a wall,
By morning
and been mistaken
there was another
for something someone
and another.
had actually said.
By afternoon
scholars were disputing
its origins.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 6d

I wouldn’t normally post things like this but this is a very perceptive, though not uncritical, review of my latest collection

they have stood on a touchline
in the rain
waiting for a match that may never start. Dermot Murphy's The Language of Place understands exactly that.
This is
not a book
about winning All-Irelands or
celebrating
sporting
heroes, although famous
victories and
figures
legendary
make
their
appearances. Instead, it is a meditation on what Gaelic games mean to Ireland itself: to villages, parishes, families,
emigrants
and memory.
Organised around Ireland's
32 counties, with a series of reflective poems linking the sections, Murphy attempts something
surprisingly
ambitious.
Each
becomes
county
less
a
sporting
historv than an emotiona. landscape. The poems rarely concern themselves with
scores or statistics.
Rather,
they
explore
belonging,
resilience,
disappointment,
identity and continuity -the invisible threads that bind communities together long after the final whistle.
That approach gives the collection
its
distinctive
character. Readers expecting page after page of nostalgic sporting verse may initially be surprised
how
restrained
many of the
poems are. Murphy is less interested in dramatic match reports than in the quieter moments:
volunteer
repainting pitch markings, the parent washing jerseys, the long drive home after defeat, or the child picking up a hurley for the first time.
It is in these ordinary rituals that he locates the true soul of Gaelic games.
His background perhaps explains
this sensitivity.
Having worked as a social worker,
management
consultant and now within hospice
care
supporting
young
adults
with life-
limiting conditions, Murpay writes with an awareness of human vulnerability that
frequently
elevates
these
podma nee nd sport area
endurance
shared
memory
recur throughout
the collection without ever becoming sentimental.
Some
of the strongest
pieces are the poems that
step away from
individual
counties altogether.
Ash,
which
traces
the
transformation of the ash tree into the making of a hurley, is among the book's finest achievements.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 8d

Here’s one for #PromptCombo #Stand @jenthorne.bsky.social

The Stand Up
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
My mother-in-law.
My mother-in-law who?
My mother-in-law who says:
What the world calls necessary it has merely arranged, a soft machinery that cages truth.
The joke,
a small act of refusal, keeps open
what the world would seal.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 10d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Il Bambino Infantino
Little Gianni wanted everything. The ball,
the whistle, both sets of shirts, the gate money
and the gate. He sat at the centre of the playground with his pockets full,
crying because
someone else had a sweet.
So they gave him another.
Then another.
Soon there were games in places no one wished to play, cups inside cups, matches bred like rabbits, summer sold to winter, winter sold to whoever
bid highest.
Still Gianni stamped his foot.
More. The other children
had once played
because they loved the game. Gianni loved the box it came in, the ribbon, the price, the hand reaching
to pay for it. When there was nothing left to sell, he looked around the empty playground, the grass gone, the goalposts gone, the children gone, and hugged the ball
to his chest.
Mine, he said.
Mine. Then asked who would like to sponsor
the silence.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 10d

"Byddwch lawen, cadwch y ffydd a gwnewch y pethau bychain a welsoch ac a glywsoch gennyf i" (Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do) @bookwormsat.bsky.social

Gwnewch y pethau bychain
(Do the little things)
The world presses in, too much, too fast, thoughts tangle like brambles, news scrolls on without end.
Step outside.
Feel the air shift against your skin, watch how the trees move, not in urgency, but in time.
Breathe.
A bird lifts,
a river shapes the land without force, the sky does not ask to be noticed, yet it holds everything.
Do the little things.
Place your hands on the earth, drink slowly,
let silence settle where it will.
Not everything must be carried.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 11d

Here’s one for #vss365

Pilgrimage
I thought the road would lead me there,
to the chapel on the hill, the stone worn smooth by other hands, the candle waiting to receive my need.
At the shrine there was no answer,
stone, flame,
the breath of strangers kneeling beside me.
I placed my hand where countless hands had rested, and felt nothing outside myself
that had not already begun within.
The journey home was the longer one.
The same road, the same dust, but every step leading away from the person who had set out.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 11d

Here’s one for #PoemsAbout #LastTrain Many thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Last Colliery Train The future had gone
before the train did. I climbed the same steps,
laid my hand
on the same worn controls. The rails were rusting beneath us, as if the earth
had begun
to take them back. Behind me, the black wagons drew slowly
from the pithead.
On the bridges, men who had worked below, women who had waited children lifted high enough
to remember.
Nobody cheered. They watched us pass as they had watched their fathers leave for work, their husbands return
with darkness
worked into their skin.
For years, these tracks had carried coal from beneath the valley
and wages into its houses. That morning
they carried neither.
At the main line I brought her to a halt
and shut the engine down. The cab trembled,
then settled. And in the silence
that followed, it seemed the whole valley
was listening
for a pulse
that did not come again.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 12d

Diogenes of Sinope rejected social convention and material comfort, living publicly and often provocatively. Much of what is known of him survives as anecdote. #Cassiopeian #wisdom @yeehawpoems.bsky.social

Following Diogenes
I decided to live as he did.
I began by giving things away.
My cloak, my sandals, a perfectly good bowl.
It rained immediately.
I attempted to drink from my hands.
This requires more practice than one might think.
Most of it ran down my arms.
A dog watched.
Diogenes did not look up.
When people came to ask him questions, I positioned myself nearby, nodding.
A man spoke for some time about virtue.
I nodded longer than was necessary, trying to look severe,
when the figs began to work.
This was not interpreted as philosophy.
Someone offered me money.
I said, as I had heard,
"Where would I put it?"
He answered less politely than I expected.
I slept outside that night.
There are, I discovered,
many creatures who also prefer this arrangement.
At one point I woke to find a goat
eating what remained of my dignity.
I shouted.
Diogenes slept.
Later, I asked Diogenes how one knows when one has enough.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 12d

Today’s #vss365 is inspired by someone who like to think they live life with no brakes

No Brakes He found the starving too expensive, the sick
a poor investment.
Stock prices rise With one hand he closed the clinics; with the other opened the gates
to every ancient hatred.
Satellites circle the earth
The dead became savings.
The frightened, engagement.
The lie, free speech.
The mob, the people.
The billionaire,
once again, the victim.
Rocket and robot dreams Then he taught democracy to turn upon itself, sold fear back to the frightened, and watched
the numbers climb.
An IPO. A Trillionaire When the bodies rose beyond counting, he demanded proof from those whose names his efficiency
had erased.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 13d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Malahide
The tide turns.
Boats lift, ropes ease,
the estuary rearranges itself without alarm.
For a while, nothing in me needs to be solved.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 14d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Falling Asleep
At last the body yields: the jaw releases, the hands uncurl.
Breath by breath we descend, below the counting, below the mind standing guard over dangers
it has partly made.
There, the self we do not command takes over:
unbars the door, sets the chairs back, gathers the broken glass the day left scattered across the floor.
By morning
the world has not changed, but we have fallen far enough
to find the ground beneath it.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 15d

After Mayo’s victory yesterday this needed a rewrite

Mayo, 2026
After the whistle, release
joy can also bring a man to his knees.
Around them,
green and red breaks open.
Seventy-five years find a single voice: its soft and craggy boglands, ts tall, majestic hills rathered in one great roar
When Coyne lifts Sam, he turns first to those who carried the hidden weight,
while the county held
the memory of souls it had lost.
Then he calls Mayo upright:
faces raised, proud now
of every year it hoped beyond reason.
Across kitchens, pubs, hospital rooms, airports and ferries, the scattered west comes home at once.
And Sam leaves croker, to visit every town and parish, past doors flung open, horns calling across the dark, the green and red no longer waiting for permission to rejoice.
After seventy-five years, not someday-today.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 15d

Here's one for #PromptCombo on #Perseverance Many thanks to @emteepoetry.bsky.social for hosting

The Work of Returning Love is not proved by how carefully
we avoid the wound. Sometimes the kitchen must fill with weather, a cupboard closed too hard,
two voices striking
against the same old stone.
We have both said
what silence would have spared us. Still, neither leaves the other alone
inside the damage. We let the metal cool inside the mouth,
let anger loosen
its grip upon the facts. Then comes the harder courage: the door reopened,
the room entered again.
The stubborn faith that what has been disturbed
has not been destroyed This is how a life together endures, by crossing the distance
we have made.
wo cups. A hand placed down
between us.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 16d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

The Rhythm of Joy It begins before thought: a hand on a shoulder, two voices missing the note
and laughing into the next. In the kitchen,
music loosens the room. A daughter crosses the light and the day, briefly, forgets where one life ends
and another begins.
Joy is not escape. It is the body keeping faith with the world: skin answering skin, breath entering song, the self given away
without being lost. Sometimes it arrives
unearned, sunlight warming the knife beside the bread, a blackbird lifting
from the hedge. Sometimes we practise for it
for years: the difficult chord, the long forgiveness, the courage to keep
the hand unclenched.
Death keeps the measure. We hear it beneath the music, which is why we dance before we are asked, why we pass the cup, why love moves outward
as if it knows
there is no time to keep.
And joy neither ours nor the world's, but the bright threshold where each enters the other, beats once,
then again, and teaches the heart to spend itself
without fear.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 17d

Here’s another for #vss365 After the majestic ride by Tadej Pogačar yesterday

Alpe d'Huez, 24" July 2026 After the Gods The mountain raised him into legend, past argument, ast comparisot o where the grea stand silently
beside their names.
For one moment there was nothing above him
but sky.
Heat rose from the road.
His breath came raw. The crowd roared as if immortality
were an ending. But gods are not permitted
to arrive. They must return, year atter year, to prove the miracle
was not an accident.
Another road.
Another summit. Each victory already diminished
by the past. What can the immortal
still desire?
To win is only to remain
where memory has placed him.
To lose
is to become human again. He raised his arms on Alpe d' Huez, salt drying on his tace, and beneath the noise the harder climb began: not towards greatness, but away from it, towards whatever life might still be possible
after glory.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 17d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

The Mountain Remembers
The climb spirals inward. Each turn strips another layer
until the body becomes raw,
a fragile truth pressed against the sky. The stones are white with silence, older than the wheel, older than the idea that we must conquer
to matter. At first, it was about the summit,
the thin line between earth and air.
But the mountain is patient. It waits for you to understand: the ascent was never about height,
but depth.
Each pedal stroke unearths you,
a rhythm echoing through bone and breath. You carry every failure on your back,
but here, where the air cuts thinner than memory, you feel their weight
begin to fall away. When you reach the summit, it is not triumph you find,
but the stillness
of a wind that knows your name.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 19d

This #PoemsAbout #BadHabits is taken from my current collection looking at the importance of Gaelic sport in Ireland. Many thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk (The curse of Mayo is explained in the comments)

Mayo Keegan goes down after the whistle, hands flat on the Croke Park grass, as if the ground itself
might steady what is left. Around him, green and red do not move,
no anger, no leaving, only the long habit of staying
when there is nothing more to say. Since '51 the years have gathered, hope stretched across generations,
children grown old
before the dream was filled. They call it a curse, but what endures so long can only be devotion:
to believe again, still. Green and red against grey skies,
fields broken by stone. The Atlantic always pressing, a county that leans westward,
yet never falls.
Exile has thinned it, but the voices return each summer,
airports and ferries full of those who never lost the pull
of pitch and parish. In Mayo, the game is the rosary recited on Croagh Patrick, the fiddle in a quiet kitchen, the sea-wind carving faces,
the cheer that refuses silence. A grandfather folds the paper,
knowing the score before he looks. A son stands at the door,
keys still in hand, listening. A child is lifted onto a shoulder,
told it will come right someday. All of them carry it, not hope alone, but habit, the weight of returning again,
and calling that belief.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 23d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 25d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

Galibier, 1998
after Pantani
He rose not with tactics, but with need, as if the mountain
owed him something. Rain blurred the road
into memory. Mist licked the hairpin bends
like breath
on an ageing mirror He was out of the saddle, but never out of pain, only deeper inside it, driving toward some clarity
the flat could never give. Behind, the peloton twisted,
calculating.
But this was not maths. This was poetry
on a gradient. He vanished into the cloud, a wraith in rain, all ribs and rage and the hunger to be more
than what they saw. He reached the summit
alone.
But glory is not shelter. Headwinds met him on the descent, and the storm
waited
on every bend.
The Galibier gave him one day
when nothing touched him.
Not the rules.
Not the whispers.
Not even gravity.
And then, as all gods do,
it let him go.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 26d

Here’s my contribution for #PoemsAbout #ExitWounds Thanks as ever to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Créacht na Staire
The Wound of History The empire sailed away, or so the history book said, a small engraving of ships
diminishing into weather. But it had already hidden
inside the mouth.
Our rivers answered
to names they had not chosen.
Mountains were corrected. Fields divided themselves
obediently on maps.
At school, we were given rulers. We learned to draw straight lines, to underline the subject, circle the object,
and call possession grammar. The old words survived
as contraband: in kitchens, at wakes, under the breath of women who knew a language could be beaten
without being killed Still, when we speak,
the wound opens: claim, clear, settle,
own. A conqueror's verbs, passed down
as ordinary speech.
The flag was lowered. The alphabet remained, some letters missing,
others drilled into order. And somewhere beneath each careful sentence, the tongue remembers
what was taken from it.

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 26d

Here’s one for today’s #vss365

$Stage 1 The illusion of control They roll out as if motion were harmless, just another flat day in a land that never forgets what wheels can do to flesh. The roads are clean now, but memory sleeps beneath the tarmac: the rattle of cobbles, the teeth of wind, the instant a wheel slips, and time fractures like a myth exposed to weather. It is too early for victory, too late for innocence. Everyone knows you cannot win the Tour today, but you can lose it in a blink, in a rut, in someone else's fall. Elbows sharpen. The peloton bunches, breath held like a verdict. And up front, the sprinters smile, marking time. They've waited all winter for this one clean cut through chaos.$

Fiftywords@fiftywords· 27d

Here’s one for #vss365