Olve the atmospher, the old farmer and all... I think it's possibly a little too preciously descriptive for my tastes, especially the clouds, but I'm an curmudgeonly old puritan about things like adverbs and adjectives. The casual cruelty of the farmer is very Heathcliffian in a bathetic kind of way. A nice touch.

Very graceful (though watch spelling - 'futres'). Lovely alliteration of t and l in the middle stanza, you realy feel the tension and equilibrium there.

'Smuggerly'- very good

The best thing here is the line 'I have no time to lend or borrow' - reminds me of a folk song or something - but the idea of time as a commodity is surprisingly deep here.

This is surely the work of our old friend Horus8? Hope you get your will back

You have to admire Hobsbawm for that And I like this haiku, it made me chuckle. Chuckling is good and a very neglected art these days.

The last 4 lines are really good, I agree, the rest just a little bald and declamatory.

Er, quite. Become a rap star maybe? Then you can spout this out and get to wear cool jewellery and stuff. Eek.

Good to see you at number 1, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And in this poem you've really let yourself go ans surpassed yourself. The sounds are brilliant, the mystery deep and the feeling of the earth is strong and elemental. Really, this is great.

Good to see you at number 12, couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And in this poem you've really let yourself go ans surpassed yourself. The sounds are brilliant, the mystery deep and the feeling of the earth is strong and elemental. Really, this is great.

This is more like it - a really singular poem, full of arresting images and visceral description. Your feelings of disgust and betrayal are palpable. Love the 'palsied old man'. Brilliant stuff

This would be great as prose, as it is the rhymes just make it all seem bathetic (the best lines are those where the boy reads Hemingway and the mother holds him close - non-rhyming and rhythmically perfect). The chess image is an interesting one which supports the theme of power.

I think i agree with poet andknowit, there's soemthing too highly-wrought about this. i think if it relaxed more there would be more tnederness to it; as it is, it plays like a very artificial masquerade of love's conventions. Individual lines I like very much ('Alive in something sacred' is great) but altogether I feel it's too forced and sometimes melodramatic (our names carved in a diseased sycamore/ Memories never felt this cruel before' - further weakened by the facile rhyme). But there is something real here which I think you uncover elsewhere ('The Blooding').