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owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
C. Oulens
@owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.2K following 6K posts
Poet, thinker, dreamer, scribbler… in ascending order
differently logical . . . I sense, I feel, I write . . .
Winner, 3rd Annual Poe-it Like Poe Poetry Contest 2025 by sixdegreesofpoe
For my recent posts: #Oulens

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owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
C. Oulens @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social · 1d
For #PoemsAbout #NoFuture , , , and maybe breaking the hourglass?
Will return later to read others’. Thank you for reading! 🙏💫

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#Oulens #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poetry
There’s NoFuture in This Bound Hourglass - C. Oulens That which wecamearoundto prepondering— the future— thatwhichpresseddownpoundingona couple of poor grains at the narrow neck piling up piteously at the bottom of this time-plagued hourglass Is nothing but the past flipped and posing as Future everforevernever to be a to be,,, ,,,oh! I forget! I’m trying to break free of shards that came t o b e.
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
in #matters #huge
we stand #united — #amazed
split to the last atom

#vss365 #inkmine #2WordPrompt
#Oulens
#haiku #senryu
#blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poems #poetry
November 29, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
drkimiww.bsky.social
English is a zombie language,
composed of body parts
stolen in a rampage
about
the
planet.

This Frankensteinian
pastiche
stole poetry
from
poets.

Lean
lines’
layers
lost
in
genocidal
sludge.

What does death #propagate?
Cacophony.

#vss365
December 12, 2024 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
pierpaolo.bsky.social
February 5, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
ayesart80.bsky.social
#Macro
#Photography
Click on image to see full view.

Flower sun kissed.
When your petals have Dropped,
Your beauty will be Missed.
November 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
mitchellsquid.bsky.social
Incidente con lo scooter
Mitchell P
#art
November 28, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
profdavidmorley.bsky.social
Releasing the flock into blue sky after the cage closed around Twitter. Let's begin with Beethoven's Yellowhammer.
www.the-tls.co.uk/literature/o...
'Beethoven's Yellowhammer' by David Morley | Original poem | The TLS
“dzi-dzi-dzi-dzi” – call of a Yellowhammer Some birds sing the notes of their names like the Hoopoe and Tinkling Cisticola; or clamour and chatter like the Kittiwake or Chachalaca. Some ask you to tak...
www.the-tls.co.uk
November 14, 2024 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
oddly-me.bsky.social
.
The dark beckons...

with a shadow's wave
into foggy aught I fade
thieved by a sly knave
.

#oddlyme
#HaikuFeels #fade
#BlueSkyRelay #wave
#poetry #micropoetry
November 24, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
madp03t.bsky.social
Hello #Writers & #Poets!

Today’s #BlueskyRelay writing #prompt (Nov 28, 2025):

“the candle blinked twice” (#thecandleblinkedtwice)

A quiet spark for a day full of meaning. 🕯️

Do you want to host next? Let me know!

#skywriters #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity #poetry
#5amwritersclub
November 28, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
merrildsmith.bsky.social
Good morning! With Thanksgiving and houseguests, I wasn't going to participate in #PoemsAbout #NoFuture this week, but I felt the urge to write--so a quick one from me. I'll be back to read when I can. Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Darkest Nightmare, Brightest Dream The possible impossibility of no future, the universe’s flawed design, a bug in its brilliant breath, a break, a slow bleed-- or a flashbang— the syncopated rhythm of stars collapsed jazz-hands flutter and fall time folded, an accordion waiting to play every song and none here, not here a hummingbird, an azure sky, green vines, orange lichen, a soft-pink lotus flower opens, a laugh.
November 29, 2025 at 11:50 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
zoomburst.substack.com
Since retirement, I have been so busy with poetry that I have hardly had time to write any poetry. #PoemsAbout is a great way to keep your hand in. Even if it's a tiny hand, and it's frozen. #NoFuture
A poem about the ever presesnt present, which is on a big font on a white background and even easier to read than alt text. (or is it actually possible to read alt text - If it is and thats what you depend on, then my humble apologies to you. Reach out and I'll send you an Mp3 of me reading it.
November 28, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
pvcannon.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #NoFuture with thanks to
@alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk
The poem speaks of bondage and abuse of Mother as a metaphor for the way we and corporations in particular have treated nature.
November 28, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
fhpowellwriter.bsky.social
Giant boulders
in a forest stretching
far and wide
take a walk in
and discover
many dreams will uncover
and light up your soul

#EastCoastKin #photography #loveofbsky #ClassicMono #ColorADay #BWFri #ForestFriday #ImageAndVerse #poemsabout #poem Francis H Powell
November 28, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
stacebot.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout #NoFuture, I'm thinking about paradoxes and the future problem.

Holding our host @alanparrywriter.co.uk in my thoughts this week and thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and to all of the other writers.

#poetry #poem #writing #PoetryCommunity #BlueSkyPoets
the future problem that’s the part nobody warns you about— how long something dying keeps walking past its own expiration date. we perform belief until the ground peels out from under us, quiet as hunger, elegant as ruin— already down, bruised, off balance, pretending we meant to fall. if i were to tell you this, you mustn’t tell anyone else: stop believing in living into the endings. everything always is forever until it isn’t.
November 28, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
For #poemsabout #NoFuture @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk. This is one of my very first sonnets. It's from my collection "Wolf Eye," Red Ceilings Press:
A Tagged Bark Shall I compare tall skyscrapers to trees, Pavement to a woodland walk, Crowns of leaves to wafted washing on the line, Bird calls to mobile tones and talk Skitter of squirrels to patter of business shoeshine Gusted branches to snapped windscreen wipers, Fall of blossom to a passing girls intoxicating air, Gust itself to air displaced by cars and lorries, Tummelling streams to rush of sewers underground, Hearts carved in bark to graffiti tags on brick walls, Streets are forests in disguise, veins in fallen leaves An urban map, a portable satnav. Thus, romanticise an urban sprawl, a polluted world before its fall.
November 28, 2025 at 8:30 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
rburrows.bsky.social
Morning poets! There is a break in the slimy trail of mollusc poetry to bring you one about fenugreek! 😊 I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it fits the prompt or not! Happy Friday!
#PoemsAbout #NoFuture @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poetry
November 28, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
fiftywords.bsky.social
It’s hard to hear the phrase #NoFuture without thinking of those heady days of youthful rebellion #PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
Teenage Riffs I was fifteen, already full of life, laughing loud, limbs quick, the world still wide and mine, but then a riff kicked in, pierced me, like the sound had been waiting for someone alive enough to catch it. It sparked me. Buzzcocks on a battered tape, a Clash lyric like a dare. I unleashed. Ripped jeans, radio static, hair razored to rebellion, vinyl sleeves spread out like maps of who I already was. We moshed in basements, sweat, spit, black nails, Doc Martens stomping out the heartbeat of the lost. We didn't want tomorrow, just the chorus, louder, louder, till the walls shook with it, and we howled it back: "No Future!" Our idols were broken angels, Poly Styrene, Howard Devoto, Siouxsie Sue, we worshipped them in stickers and patches, zipped up in leather and adolescent ache. Every track was a flare, every night a manifesto. We believed, God, we believed, that songs could save us. And maybe they did.
November 28, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #NoFuture

#poetry / #photography: ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2022

Worth another outing, I guess

#LostPlaces #GhostTown #Monochrome #UrbanDecay #Architecture #ImageAndVerse
Zeitz Parasitic twin coughed up by Detroit, Pygmy royal seat in Mitteleuropa bodies forth the Nerves, fascia, viscera of Hel – doomed child of the Trickster Knave - Half comely maiden, half corpse mouldering, who Presides over the underworld that bears her name. But no monstrous symmetry to be found here as in the Pulchritude-to-putrefied ratio proffered by Mythology; rather, isolated nodes of Health and vitality – Schloss and Old Town Square – in an Organism otherwise riddled with necrosis. Thirty thousand souls. Dead? Lost? Sequestered in crevices and lesions of the Scabrous facades? Or cowering unseen in the Shadows, fearful that the vernal splendour of this Saturday afternoon in April will obliterate them? Processional artery linking Schloss and Old Town, Choked with exhaust fumes, Rahnestrasse airs its Moth-eaten medley ranging from Baroque to Art Nouveau: Abandoned society beauties out of some Gothic romance, still dressed in their Mouldering finery as they languish into vexed, bewitched dotage. Disgorged time capsule from that moment four decades ago when a Doddering regime paraded its moribund state in Appalling scenes of neglect, whole cities lurching into decrepitude, Swathed in corrosive fogs of blue and yellow smoke. No death mask fixing us with its waxen stare, rather Fragments of rare isotopes Decaying over half-lives as yet Undetermined. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022 Monochrome image of decrepit former shopfront. Peeling paint reveals layers of historical sign painting. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2022 Monochrome image of decrepit facade of multi-storey 19th-century townhouse.
November 28, 2025 at 6:14 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
davgar51.bsky.social
So today, is the last day of #PoemsAbout #Dogtag for @alanparrywriter.co.uk and is it @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social ?

This is a story from way back when I met my first Viet vet (at 17), his stories opened my eyes. We were partnered in Physics lab, a strange meeting, indeed.
Finally finished it!
Physics 101 Mechanics SIU, Carbondale, October 1968 **Lab 1: The Ramp** We were setting up: levers, pulleys, ramps with wooden rods, planks, a cart and weights. "How like the tracks of tanks", you said, "How like pulling a body up the berm to the fort, that wasn't a frictionless ramp, was it. Oh, and driving a tank over a village of huts booby-trapped babies in tunnels" "Umm, is it vertical?", I ask. "Is our ramp at 45°? The support?" "Here, hang my dog tag on it. Oh, yeah, looks good, nail it." Example of Free-Fall The ball and feather are released through an evacuated tunnel, ,, they accelerate by gravity, ,, under a village, ,, down a barrel bored through the earth to, the antipode are weighed by the jackal-headed god on a Sauter balance a feather blows away the heart is... in free-fall where do they come to rest?
November 27, 2025 at 10:03 PM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
Thrilled to have my poem “the output…err…the outcome (well…whatever…if ever) of a therapy
session” in this #Rites&Trials anthology. Huge thanks to EIC Alan Parry @alanparrywriter.co.uk , @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Many wonderful pieces including by Alan Parry, @pdevonald.bsky.social and more…

#Oulens
thebrokenspine.co.uk The Broken Spine @thebrokenspine.co.uk · 1d
Also out today, dual launch of festive short fiction and this coming of age poetry #Slimline #Rites&Trials

amzn.eu/d/18qstSC
November 29, 2025 at 5:07 AM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
white memory flakes
softening cobbled stones
a warmth for gone cold

#SenseWrds
Prompt 151 : Snowfall Dimming Sidewalks

#Oulens #haiku #senryu #monoku
#blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poems #poetry
November 28, 2025 at 3:58 PM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #NoFuture , , , and maybe breaking the hourglass?
Will return later to read others’. Thank you for reading! 🙏💫

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#Oulens #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poetry
There’s NoFuture in This Bound Hourglass - C. Oulens That which wecamearoundto prepondering— the future— thatwhichpresseddownpoundingona couple of poor grains at the narrow neck piling up piteously at the bottom of this time-plagued hourglass Is nothing but the past flipped and posing as Future everforevernever to be a to be,,, ,,,oh! I forget! I’m trying to break free of shards that came t o b e.
November 28, 2025 at 3:25 AM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
Beneath the
frolic of words
Above the
mush of verse
was a hymn
without a
language’s syntax
you’d have heard
had you let it in
through your breath

#SenseWrds
Prompt 150: Blessings Misty Hold
#Oulens #blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #micropoetry #poetry
November 27, 2025 at 2:28 PM
owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social
#autumnal #designs
#learning in dusk’s soft pulse
rhythms of fall

#vss365
#2WordPrompt
#BSPP47 : #softglow
#Oulens
#haiku #senryu
#blueskypoets #blueskypoetry
#poetrycommunity #poems #poetry
November 27, 2025 at 9:35 AM
Reposted by C. Oulens
madp03t.bsky.social
What bounces back
was never gone.

A lake,
a mirror,
a thought too long rehearsed.

Each truth reappears,
distorted or clear,
in the quiet that answers.

#vss365 #reflection #prompt #poetry #blueskypoetry #skypoets #writing #5amwritersclub
November 26, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Reposted by C. Oulens
pvcannon.bsky.social
I’ve Been Meaning To – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 40, Double Ennead Photo: found at thegardenfixes.com Melissa Is our host and she invites us to - write Double Enneads. The Double Ennead is a form created by Colleen Chesebro for 99-word stories at Carrot…
I’ve Been Meaning To – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon
For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 40, Double Ennead Photo: found at thegardenfixes.com Melissa Is our host and she invites us to - write Double Enneads. The Double Ennead is a form created by Colleen Chesebro for 99-word stories at Carrot Ranch. The Double Ennead is composed of three stanzas of 33 syllables each, for a total of 99.
pvcann.com
November 25, 2025 at 2:52 PM