Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Ronnie Smith

Francesca L Rolle @francesca-laura.bsky.social · 18h

Sharing this oldie for @victoriaspires.bsky.social #PromptCombo #DreamLogic - it's always nice when poetry prompts remind you of poems you've almost forgotten about 🌝 #BskyPoets #PoetryCommunity

A poem titled 'Hypothetical Love' by Francesca L Rolle:
My love for you is infinite,
it is eternal, it is pure,
My love for you is without failing,
For it is no more than hypothetical,
In my dreams I will carry you,
And safely tucked away,
there, you will stay.
Never yearning, never fearing,
Never to know the light of day.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you Emily, I’m ver pleased that you do.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 1d

Thank you again @victoriaspires.bsky.social for this weeks #PromptCombo . Here’s mine, from the balcony, #DreamLogic . Love to all.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 2d

A lovely poem to start and those wonderful last two lines… Utterly Nabokovian.

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Victoria Spires @victoriaspires.bsky.social · 2d

Hey #promptcombo crew 👋🏼

Thanks to @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social for hosting last week. This week's prompt is #DreamLogic.

Tag me & use the #. Replies will be a little sporadic initially, but I know the community will be out in force, supporting each other as ever ☺️

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Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 9d

Thankyou, @dragonslayerma.bsky.social for last week's excellent #promptcombo. All are welcome to contribute. Use hashtags #promptcombo #SoTellMeWhoYourFriendsAreAndI'llTellYouWhoYouAre

BEFORE "GET LOST" NOBODY TELLS ME

I'll keep it short.
Folk don't reckon right.
Soft in the head.

To share's forbidden.
Grip my hand, lad
for sores
and livelong pain.

Smell this breath,
for rotten air
that'll make you gip.

Others are stench.
Others touch, poison.

Use 'em.
Abuse 'em.

In face swearers
do my head. Spoutin'

"I'm your mate."
"You're me dad."
"I love you."
"You're family."

Abusers. Shop 'em.

Don't come close again, lad.
These boots are fed
on others blood.

Have her
and she'll have thee.

Drop a sprog.8
Dump it outside.
If sharp tooth cold
don't have it,
it'll get on. You.
Bring yourself up.

You soon learn.m
Do nothing for nubdy.8
All for yourself.

Nubdy trusts no one.
Way it is. Keep
yourself to yourself.

Selfish is good.
Now, bugger off.
Else you'll lick
end of me
steel toecap.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 12d

Phantom gulls float
above the early town,
their white bellies
phosphoresced by neon
street lights. They laugh
in rebellious guffaw
and disappear behind
those ‘well-appointed’
seafront apartments.

©️October 2025

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 13d

For #PromptCombo this week #SimplePleasures thank you Fidel.

My presence brings a
‘Skrech!’
from a Magpie spirit
hidden high
in the branches
of the Mimosa.

©️October 2025

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David Birch @davidbirch.bsky.social · 16d

Many thanks, Fidel, @dragonslayerma.bsky.social for your enticing #PromptCombo #SimplePleasures. I'm sure I've posted this before but I think this bit of nostalgia fits the bill

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Emily Tee @emteepoetry.bsky.social · 15d

Ah, the #simplepleasures of watching the behaviour of the birds! One from a short while ago for @dragonslayerma.bsky.social and this week's #PromptCombo

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Fidel Walsh @dragonslayerma.bsky.social · 16d

I'm your host for #PromptCombo this week(Monday to Friday) & the theme is #SimplePleasures . Share those small everyday joys!

Here's 1 I've rejigged to start us off

Tag me & use the hastags❤️

@victoriaspires.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @hool415.bsky.social @rfsmith.bsky.social

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 16d

@alanparrywriter.co.uk

Hi Alan, A wee poem, Zen practice

Etude

Rain sings into cobbled
gutters. Rapids rise across
uneven stone then break,
gurgling between oily grills
to fall into grottos that echo
beneath us. No need to look,
just listen to the torrent
of a fresh hood-up day.

©️August 2023

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 16d

In fact, if you’re in the #poetrycommunity or one of the #poetsombluesky and particularly if you contribute as part of the overlapping prompt communities #poemsabout and #promptcombo why not simply drop what you’re doing right now and say hello to @alanparrywriter.co.uk?

Here’s why 👇

The Broken Spine @thebrokenspine.co.uk · 17d

You usually have to be signed up to our newsletter to read it. However, this week is too important, and I wanted to share it more broadly.

preview.mailerlite.io/preview/5022...

Thank You — and Some Honesty

preview.mailerlite.io

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Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 23d

Morning @hool415.bsky.social Ju. Here's my first response to your marvellous #promptcombo #visitor. It's from my ImpSpired collection "As Folktaleteller." Have a great week:

A Lincoln Imp

Tell you why I'm motionless here, grinning
down at you. Satan let us out to play.
Mate and I sat on a church spire twisting
it. Chesterfield never had better days.

Next we blew through that door. Tripped up Bishop.
So serious. In the Angel Choir broke
chairs and tables till angel out a hymn book
told us to stop, so I lobbed stones at bloke

while mate scarpers to Grimsby, where angel
catches him, smacks his arse, turns him to stone
as he did to me. At least mate can waggle
his smacked arse at visitors I'm alone.

Need a bit of fun in this God given
place packed full of all praying and hymning.

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Julian (Hool) @hool415.bsky.social · 23d

Hullo @rfsmith.bsky.social @dragonslayerma.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social @victoriaspires.bsky.social I’m hosting #promptcombo with #visitor All welcome, use the #promptcombo to post and me @hool415.bsky.social (Please note: I’m not around all Tuesday but will catch up the next day!) Ju

Walk

That afternoon
the clouds were sullied
holding their breath of rain,
and the wind
one-handed, shyly
circled the trees again.

It was an hour
when the streets were clear
just an old man, his slowed dog,
and the nearby knock
of a Macmillan Nurse.

It felt like a hole in the day:
where time had fled
and the emptiness left
carried no anticipation.

I thought much of that nurse
and the house overrun
with the dry rot
of cancer,

how perhaps
round a downstairs bed
she helped like a priest,
dissolve the glass,
so the clouds and the wind
could be welcomed.

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Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 25d

Hi @rfsmith.bsky.social Ronnie. Here's my sixth for your great #promptcombo #characters. It's from my collection "Please Take Change":

A TEN BOB, TIN POT, TWO
bit millionaire I’m not.
I carry my own bags.
I’m not a slave to this selfie world.
No, I don’t want your chuffin bags
I’ll shove them up your arse.
I’m not your ten bob tin pot two bit millionaire.
I’ve got my own bags. See?
He grasps a fistful of bags out of his bag.
I ask politely Do you want a receipt, sir?
Of course I want a bloody receipt.
Don’t come it, with me, son.
I hand the customer his receipt with
a Have a good day, sir.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

Perhaps…

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

Thank you Gary, I feel it as a situation almost impossible to avoid. The inescapable and timeless conflict of two people who, regardless of circumstance, find themselves living together. The human condition…

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

Ah, the character that perhaps most shapes all others, especially if one grows up beside its character every day. A fabulous poem Rachel, powerfully expressing my own feelings and sensual memories before I became a towny. Thank you.

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Rachel @vignettes.bsky.social · 27d

Thanks to @rfsmith.bsky.social for this weeks #PromptCombo #Character
I've been distracted over summer but getting back into a rhythm & it's good to see and read everyone.

Thalassa
She keeps her counsel,
watching boats bow and sway
like disciples before a hidden altar.
She inhales whole forests,
teaches wind how to breathe,
rain how to fall,
stones how to wait.
Her voice is a pendulum—
golden-faced, merciless—
swinging between lullaby and dirge.
At night, she lifts her hem of foam,
bares her salt-bitten throat to the moon,
and laughs in the language of glass
breaking itself smooth against her tongue.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

Yes Sue, I’ve often wondered who these people are and how they got those jobs presenting next year’s holiday options, dream holiday homes and perfect gardens that make us weep. Not quite celebrities… personalities perhaps. Thank you.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

I am reminded of the churches in the centre of London (C of E). Not like the sandstone, spired buildings that I grew up with but apartments where I couldn’t imagine services taking place. Ancillary boardrooms of a sub-let religion. Thank you for this wonderful work Paul.

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Ronnie Smith @rfsmith.bsky.social · 25d

And then all the shops were replaced by the bigger and bigger out-of-town. And people came in their cars and never talked to each other or to the workers in the shops whose shareholders live in Nassau or the mid-West. And purchases were made in cashless transactions…

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 27d

Very pleasant to discover on #NationalPoetryDay that I've got a poem with a recording published in Wildfire Words.City Church. I've posted the text below. The link to the WW page is in the chat. A few ecclesiastical #characters here
#poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #promptcombo @rfsmith.bsky.social

City Church. A poem by Paul Connolly, first published in Wildfire Words

City Church
Walled in both sides by offices, this Church's
blown candle pollens and Inti monstrance dredged
the lost me up easily, made those pledged
Nevers and Noes crassly proleptic urges

here. Strained to eastward, mumbling, a dark cassock
pipes a sudden wild deaf octave at Mary’s
indulgence, while a sallow father’s keys
shiver down a side-aisle and he unlocks

the booth that baffles spoken sins.
This squeezed
one-storey aperture hence conjures a room
upstairs, whitewashed, where an older priest looks
at sun-glit flooded pasture, horses, and the sea.

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Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 26d

Morning @rfsmith.bsky.social. For your marvellous #promptcombo #characters another poem from my collection: "Please Take Change":

REGULAR
He always comes with his own bags for life,
Thin blue plastic double bagged.
She always calls me darling when
she thanks me for my usual politeness.
Next is the man whom when I ask how he is he says
Another inch on both legs and I’ll be right,
or don’t call me sir because I was once
a worker like you, which leads to a story
of the vicar who used these quotes
And you know he wants to chat
As my queue materialises in an empty shop.
Then there are the ones who stay glum,
or state I love your shop. I’d stay here all day
If I could. I tell everyone about your shop

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