@paulrapley.bsky.social
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paulrapley.bsky.social
#LiftToTheSky : the Misty poets, pre/post Tiananmen Square, outspoken, exiled...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_P...
"Conventional but dispensable grammatical forms & punctn disappear betwn intensely compressed images; subject, tense, number elusive; transitions unclear"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bei_Dao
Bei Dao - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
paulrapley.bsky.social
Thank you, Debra.
Funny how in a poem one thing can lead you to another...
paulrapley.bsky.social
My pleasure. Thank you for enabling my reading.
paulrapley.bsky.social
"without the threat of violence"?
I haven't read the article, but the headline writer certainly doesn't understand boys (including the less noticeable ones, like I once was).
paulrapley.bsky.social
"without the threat of violence"?
I haven't read the article, but the headline writer certainly doesn't understand boys (including the less noticeable ones, like I once was).
Reposted
houseofbast777.bsky.social
'A Shred of Dignity', 2021
Bowie Bernstein-Morrow (b.2020)
Mixed media on drywall
🤩😻😽
#Caturday
paulrapley.bsky.social
spell/wish/dream/nightmare/desolation
your imagery: disturbingly powerful
correspondences: bigger than a life, or a couldn't, or a death.
how I mistook... blood for godly devotion
allusion: baptized in a river's edge
p... p... p... p... p
alive in your glimpse only
usw...
agony put into words
Yes
paulrapley.bsky.social
These creatures have never confused me, but they've often gulled me.
paulrapley.bsky.social
Care for yourself a little, Alan.
I'd been wondering how you cope with so much...
As s.o. who's experienced what it's like to be in your present gen ballpark (though, obvs, not being you or yr life), I'd recommend you try to
cut down the no of things yr trying to do
find some way of delegating parts
paulrapley.bsky.social
Sorry not to have responded sooner.
This is very rich.
I'll come back & read it slowly.
paulrapley.bsky.social
Yes, I once was quite complacent about my good-enough...
Ha!
paulrapley.bsky.social
Ahah.
I was very deep into Charlotte Brontë at one time: moon v significant, but as a steadying & supportive (female) force.
And, despite his superficial persuasiveness, I do disagree with Riffaterre: the connotations of literary symbols are neither universally accepted nor set in stone.
paulrapley.bsky.social
Thanks, Alan.
Guilt, yes. And regret.
paulrapley.bsky.social
Ah, upon re-reading, maybe Cain has a species-wide reference?
Now I'm picking up on the Moon: could help... doesn't?
Thanks for offering this...
Reposted
johnchmura.bsky.social
I have no idea why something in that fourth line made me think of Wish You Were Here. Maybe making tradeoffs. Those rhymes must have taken a bit of elbow grease!
paulrapley.bsky.social
Funny thing: it was an indistinct sense of quite a long & fuzzy part of my life - but Occam sliced it down to five feet in a trice.
As for rhymes, school, fool, and time were pre-pasted in, so sin merely had to become crime.
I checked out Wish You Were Here: SB far deeper than me, poor sod.
Reposted
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
Love the granular quality of the psychological insight on display here. Great work! 🏆🌠
paulrapley.bsky.social
Thank you, Jan Peters.
But I'd prefer not to have made this kind of a past and, so, not been able to put it into verse.
paulrapley.bsky.social
What a tragic life!
Da bin mit meinem Mörder ich allein.
Are we to take his murderer literally as cocaine - or are there deeper and wider allusions?
Trakl seems to have been too acutely empathetic to have survived such trauma; he's served us by chronicling it.
Powerful English rendition.
Reposted
kyivindependent.com
⚡️ Venezuelan opposition leader awarded Nobel Peace Prize, Trump loses out.

The committee described Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as "a brave and committed champion of peace."
Venezuelan opposition leader awarded Nobel Peace Prize, Trump loses out
The committee described Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as "a brave and committed champion of peace."
kyivindependent.com
paulrapley.bsky.social
Yep. Indeed.
Plus another of your apt similes to round it off.
Reposted
johnchmura.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I will put a reel in the comments.
IMPERFECT ME

On days my son was measured
in length rather than height
I held him shirtless in one arm
while I lathered my face to shave.
Leaned on my chest, warm,
he plunged an explorer’s hands, decisive,
into my foamy cheeks, gaining agency,
the intimation of form, and play
affirmed in his corporeal birthright.

And me, significant, generative,
like the god of the psalmist,
I could do no wrong.

Whiskey it wasn’t that imperfected me
in his eyes. I may never know
which particular betrayal
inspired that loss of grace.
But it did boost his swagger to say
for the first time fuck you, Dad,
and I absorbed the preordained assertion,
concussive, cracked like a plastic bucket
abandoned on the back porch
when water expands into ice.
Reposted
fiftywords.bsky.social
Here’s to the imperfect, the mislabeled, the beautifully unfitting. This piece is for all of us who will not be named by other people’s judgment. #PoemsAbout #ImperfectMe Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and this wonderful community @thebrokenspine.co.uk
The Name You Gave Me
You gave me a name I never asked for,
a word carved from your slant of sight,
what you call incomplete. But 1 know no lack, my world hums with fullness, my life lived in a key
you refuse to hear. You measure in steps, in movements that conform, while I am content in the spaces
where stillness grows its own rhythm. I carry no burden, but your gaze is heavy,
my being
a question left unanswered. Yet I move through my days
whole, free of the silence
you called a name.
paulrapley.bsky.social
#poemsabout #ImperfectMe #KeepWriting
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poetry #PoetsWhoSupportPoets #PoetsOfBlueSky
matters of the clock

Flower power liberated me.
Smart suit and tie, straight job: the movies preached
those made a man. Impossibility.
My trade-off: sanity for duties breached.
Our first-born, anxious she’d be late for school
aged only six, delayed by me—dumb rules
go hang, they know you’ll miss no class—blind fool
I was, now watching as her play unspools
and mark my irresponsibility.
Base theme: her stumbling over keeping time
since angst subverted punctuality.
Though I’ve rebuilt my views, that early crime—
plus many others flickering her screen—
she’s worked to straighten, made her clock run clean.

Paul Rapley 2025				       #ImperfectMe