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Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

1.9K followers 1.5K following 5K posts

Poet, painter, translator (mainly from modern Greek & German). Originally from Boston, Lincs (though after the last election I identify as being from Islington), I live in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds.

https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com/peter-j-king

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Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Did You Mean It So".

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #rondel

Did you mean it so to hurt,
or just to knock me out of true?
Although your face contained no clue,
you maybe meant to disconcert.

It wasn’t something that you blurted
out and straightaway withdrew.
Did you mean it so? To hurt,
or just to knock me out of true?

It was no accident, for you inserted
it precisely — still, could I have misconstrued?
No, no, I can’t avoid the sorry fact that you
slid words like a stiletto through my heart...
but did you mean it so to hurt
or just to knock me out of true?

November 27, 2025 at 5:21 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Thank you! (And glad to be of service! They still run, I believe.)

November 27, 2025 at 10:14 AM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Wuppertal".

One of a series of poems responding to the work of Emmy Klinker (1891-1969), a German artist born in what's now Belgium, dubbed a degenerate artist by the Nazis.

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #wuppertal #emmyklinker #klinker

from winter woods we gaze into the valley
where a city stretches out along the river
like a richly woven carpet from Tibet.

a distant whistle draws the eye
past towers and steeples, stone and lead
and verdigris, to where great arches
measure out the land in red-brick curves.

cast iron scrolls festoon the full gasometer,
surround the station’s gaping mouth
from which a brightly-painted tram car,
hanging from its single rail, darts like a needle
stitching towns into one vibrant patterned whole.

November 26, 2025 at 5:37 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Shop window with red lettering:

WE BUY MEN
USED
29 AND UP

November 25, 2025 at 8:05 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Rabindranath Tagore - "Gitanjali" 14

I reversioned this from Tagore's own translation .

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #bengalipoetry #reversionedpoem #reversioning #tagore #rabindranathtagore

I am filled with myriad desires
I whine and beg for their fulfilment
but you save me from myself
with stern refusals,
and my life
is moulded by your mercy.
You are slowly leading me
to merit your unasked-for gifts –
sky, light, body, life, and mind –
and from the dangers
of too much desire
you rescue me.

I am inclined to laziness, procrastination;
sometimes, though, I leap up
from my bed to follow you,
but you are cruel and
hide from me.
You are slowly leading me
to merit union with you
by constantly refusing me,
and from the dangers
of half-willed desire
you rescue me.

November 25, 2025 at 5:14 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

November 25, 2025 at 5:03 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Three found poems.

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #unlost #foundpoem #foundpoetry #unlost

You see,
a poet is wounded into speech, and
he examines those wounds,
meticulously,
to discover how to heal them

(Nova, Samuel Delaney)

*

In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia,
/-iz/ is used not only after /s z s z c j/ but
also after /sp st sk/

(An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics, H. A. Gleason)

*

Farmer's Wife Hints:
Keep cool

(yoghurt carton)

published in Unlost 25, 2021 © Peter J. King

November 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Acrylics on paper.

#painting #art #acrylics

November 23, 2025 at 5:54 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Κάστρο Κολοσσίου, Κύπρος.
Kolossi Castle, Cyprus.

#photo #photography #cyprus #kolossi #castle #mediaevalarchitecture #limassol #lemesos

November 23, 2025 at 5:52 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

A road with a bicycle lane; completely blocking the lane is a sign saying: "Give cyclists space".

November 22, 2025 at 3:04 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"A Murmuration of Stars".

After Mervyn Peake, crossed with:

Joke

Why does a tree have ten thousand eyes?
To look at the stars.

(Benjamin Campbell, age 6)

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity

A Murmuration of Stars
(after Benjamin Campbell [aged 6] & Mervyn Peake)

The winter trees
stared back at me —
ten thousand bright unblinking eyes.
Then suddenly
the eyes flew off —
five thousand starlings in the sky.

November 21, 2025 at 5:17 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Acrylics on paper.

#painting #art #acrylics

November 21, 2025 at 5:14 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Four Metaphysical Theories".

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #philosophers #metaphysics #descartes #spinoza #locke #leibniz

November 20, 2025 at 6:29 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Acrylics on paper, digitally messed about with.

#painting #art #acrylics #digitalart

November 20, 2025 at 6:27 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Common vole., at the foot of a dry stone wall (not brilliant photos, I'm afraid.)

#photo #photography #garden #vole #churchill #oxfordshire

November 20, 2025 at 6:24 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

It's apparently another of those pointless Days - this time, World Philosophy Day. So here are some clerihews.

"Potted Philosophers".

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #clerihews #philosophers

Pythagoras asseverated
That the spirit transmigrated,
Leaving the body by a route obscene
(That’s why he never ate a bean).

* * *

Socrates, condemned to die,
Ignored his friends’ advice to fly;
If I ever end up in such a scrape
I’ll be less moral and escape.

* * *

In brutish nastiness began,
Wrote Thomas Hobbes, the life of Man;
Not so, said Rousseau,
Man grew so.

* * *

René Descartes
Was a man of parts;
One part was heir to a thousand ills,
The other haunts academia still.

* * *

Baruch Spinoza, all his life,
Shunned evil habits, sin, and strife.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau though, it seems,
Went to the opposite extreme.

* * *

By the punctuality that Kant observed
Folk set their clocks in Königsberg,
Which is odd considering Kant’s position
That time’s but a form of intuition.

* * *

John Stuart Mill’s dad
Educated the lad;
Although this served to toughen up his brain
He later read Wordsworth, and softened it again.

* * *

Gilbert Ryle
Always wore a happy smile
When suffering from depression
(A systematically misleading expression).

* * *

In metaphysics Wittgenstein
Great depths plumbed and great heights climbed;
I’d follow in the former and the latter
If he hadn’t thrown down the bloody ladder.

* * *

‘Warnock’ claims
A double fame:
Geoffrey is the guy’s name,
Mary is the Dame’s.

November 20, 2025 at 3:35 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Hogarth's "The Distrest Poet"

#painting #art #oils #hogarth

November 20, 2025 at 11:31 AM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

Sitting in a Greek landscape, Trump is saying to Plato: "But surely you agree that truth can be created by the repetition of a lie."

November 19, 2025 at 9:27 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Freesias" (response to a painting by Nomi Rowe).

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity
@naomi-rowe.bsky.social

dirty-yellow London brick
with vitrified blue arcs
above the rippled-glass sash windows
(frames of faded white),
and rust-red tiles
weigh heavy
on the slightly sagging roofs.

exhausted elegance
that any George would recognise,
glimpsed through a veil
of delicately scented blooms
whose ancestors were witness
to the violence and misery
that paid for all this yellow red and blue
to be erected under leaden skies.

November 19, 2025 at 8:29 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Schoolboy Humour".

Sorry

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #concretepoem #concretepoetry #facetiousness

November 19, 2025 at 8:24 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Climate Emergency".

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #concretepoem #concretepoetry #collage

November 18, 2025 at 6:04 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

"Sank" and "Of Bears and Serpents".

Two from a sequence "To Be Continued"; each starts with the last line of another poet's poem.

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity #horizon #poetryireland #jamesbradley #alyshahobson
@poetryireland.bsky.social

(Alysha Hobson “January”
in Horizon 8)

back from the sink
to the kitchen door
fresh air herb sharpened
clears the blood from nose and mind
though not from hands

then to the sink again
the waste disposal straining
whining till my head
begins to burst

who would have thought
he had so much stuff
in him

(James Bradley “Late January, Victoria Park, Glasgow”
in Poetry Ireland Review 146)

and there’s Venus deepening the distance
bringing the sickle moon
closer
thickening the darkness
sequining the velvet
till the real stars arrive

modest at first
as if seen through a bushel basket
gradually strengthening
filling the sky
with heroes and demi-gods
hunters and beasts
(take care
not to step on the cracks)

November 18, 2025 at 5:13 PM

Peter J. King

@rock-rex.bsky.social

The first recording of it that I bought was Clifford Curzon with members of the Vienna Octet. A bit dated, but I still enjoy listening to it. (The second one I bought was Richter with the Borodin Quartet - also very good.)