http://slow.writerscafe.org/Speacenin The original writings of author Sel Whiteley en-us Copyright 2026 WritersCafe.org 1776021707 WritersCafe.org RSS Generator 15  I want to be myself,that person you dream I can be,me,not your neophyte, your disciple.I remember the knotworkof ten thousand stitches on a loomin a crowded, musty room in Tunisia,where you never went. I wished mycr.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/1046496/ In the deep recession of the world,I've only a poverty of words.I cannot pen on this white sheet -any description of you: Eco-warrior, world treasure.Nor imagine how it is to spendeach day in the serenity of fieldshaving only the dawn chorus as your alarm clock, radiant starsas your bedside lamp.A d.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/1013256/ A poem inspired by the fact that an incredibly experienced youth is prepared to help me with Pax Populi. I miss the words. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/987079/ For all people whose youthful expectation is challenged by life http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/976824/ A poem inspired by two children I am teaching in Afghanistan http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/975391/ I might be the mere skeleton of a pinewith wood the shade of wet sand,the whorls in my grain like flames.I might wear the armour of a knight,be small scaffolding filled with dreams.Sometimes, you overload me,and weighed down like a mule,I'm all aching limbs. Still,I sustain the words in which you ta.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/723235/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Even though you wear that green sweatshirt,you swore always brought you g.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/721744/ For all my Bristol friends, bravely keeping the battle going. I love you all and one day, we will triumph http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/721716/ A found poem http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/720515/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }With the bright French sun against the patio windows, I was frozen by the s.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/714892/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }I watch her hands tremble Like windswept, unknowable flowersdrifted too far from the soil bed.&.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/714870/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Last Saturday, I found a rock, half-fossilised coal, half-wood, light as a sparro.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/713593/ My boyfriend mourns the loss of the Francophone Canada http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/713563/ In these dusk fields, umber shares no reassemblance with shadow,- though the French label them the same -only with the oncoming night.Each house seems jewelled with a sapphire square of swimming pool. And I am out of placeas I dream of you again, a memorynarrowing that nightmare of my sleep.Always i.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/713521/ @font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } He’ll leave totake .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/709053/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }@font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambr.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/709052/ @font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Where yews stood, wind-hu.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/709005/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }A junior school child amongst wax crayons,felt tips, playschool cousins, I dr.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/708567/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.yiv53072983msonormal, li.yiv53072983msonormal, div.yiv53072983msonormal { margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/708563/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }I know all sentiments can only seem saccharin, too well-tuned a music, .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706750/ just a thought http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706746/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Talking to you, I feel I am in Toulouse in April �" walking alo.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706737/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706735/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }I make his dawn wake-up call, regular as an alarm clock; He observes, &ld.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706729/ @font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }  Cloud underbellies .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706049/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.shoutbox { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } His walls lit by October sun, he pours away h.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706047/ again a very early poem http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706046/ One of my first poems. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/706045/ A week ago, I saw a girl, in the immediate aftermath of that shift from that first, futile crush to the post break-up or dejection moments. - the agony of adolescence.All women recall too well.The first bleeding and aching of adolescence,and that pain which long predates the menstrual. All I could d.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/705596/ @font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }Africa is a continent of music in my living room, an orphan's tears dampen th.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/703956/ @font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }For you, I've drawn each floral pillar of the.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/585944/ You, of no fixed abode, could make a heavenof a few soiled fields. Or, living on the road,stand dignified as any glacier-cut mountain.  Your world fits in your traveller van: a miracle of electronic engineering, wiredlike your brain, to everything. Your&nbsp.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/582991/ Five weeks devoid of words for recalls. Why are our poetic phrases scarceston black coffee mornings daydreamingof our best friends? In cider-filled nights, we talked of religion and a liturgy of folk songs but many facts, were inferred only in the crevices of our conversation, your words comf.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/581900/ We talked of Manchester United and he tapped some compulsive staccato with his gold ring etched with a Scarlet Devil.Between pulsied muscles and a million, miscommunicating, synapses,he was all testrorone.Without my minder, I'd be bedridden,he reflected. Still a widescreen TV,good sound system, comp.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/458651/   She’s stood unaltered for thirty years, must, as a childhave played games amongst those armoured tanks,such vehicles must have lined the July alleysof her teens, only withdrawing in her early twenties. Did she dream in the litter of adolescent magazines, that .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/457348/ if just one of you passes this on in America or England you would be helping, we need to bring attention to this, I cannot believe what is happening. This is not poetry I admit, this is shock http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/456544/  @font-face { font-family: "Times";}@font-face { font-family: "Cambria";}@font-face { font-family: "Trebuchet MS";}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Sec.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/447756/   “It’s like an airport check-in”,you intone as we stand under the numbersof a post office desk, laughingin the way we've done since childhood.  Both of immigrant families. You help me senda parcel to some of my ‘new’ friends,the sort .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/446775/  In this hotel room of velvet sofas,hewn gemstone lamps and etiquette,we philosophise about our desires.The floor is cold, cream marblestoic to my dreams, he alone listensto my desperate hopes of peace –the sort only foreigners dream ofbecause the locals and combatantsar.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/446714/  Another shift begins as a door closes,a computer logs on and my boss sings.Somewhere, a child starvelingcould pluck a handful of rice:opaque, milk-coloured grainsfrom floating gardens and sing there too. In a sterile British hospital,a mother might comb a child’s c.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/446273/ Bowler hats worn in some dark homageto Sir Winston Churchill and the sixteen hundredsto celebrate the liberation of struggling settlersand the fortresses that walled into infertile fields, a newly landless people. Loyalist jackboots, black as broken coal, march in rhythm to.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/430456/ Firstly I want to thank the many people who have had an input into this work. My mother, the late Linda who was like a second mother and writing tutor to me, Trevor Bryne and all those on writerscafe. I think a special thanks has to be given to the friends who related these stories to me. I know tha.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/425031/  Cultivated flowers of cultures far off and long gone have faces upturnedto some yellow charge of sun. We eatat Belfast’s Botanic Gardens, where the imperialist sun many never set spend money we both earned years ago and for nothing. He is some phantom, or slig.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/425029/  Six years old he stands the same heightas the cello and still idealises his fathertheir lead singer, who drunkenly reelsbetween the instruments.This is his father's band, these lyricsare in the language of the isles,A wedding party perhaps six milesto the east of the Donegal .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424758/  Six years old he stands the same heightas the cello and still idealises his fathertheir lead singer, who drunkenly reelsbetween the instruments.This is his father's band, these lyricsare in the language of the isles,A wedding party perhaps six milesto the east of the Donegal .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424755/  Though you see your peopleteenagers slaughtered as terroristsnumb to the scorch of lead in their fleshand despite the white flagsand the Geneva Conventionthey are deserving of death. And when you see your brother,a sixteen year old school boy,unarmed but shot dead.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424747/   This coat staves off more than just the cold night.He coughs all the bloodied phlegmfrom his lungs and life. He is alone, crying,despairing as a child. In the brimstoneof Belfast’s building sites, he had long labouredto build his way out of poverty’s thick dust. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424744/  I squint my eyes against the morningas sun greens May grass.  I try to imagine  soldiers even in this suburb of clipped hedgesand large houses, almost mansions,  with blue flowers in the mown lawns. In a room whitening with tobacco smoke  like the cirru.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424739/  - funny in a sense,my being drunk, his being drunker.I sat on his knotted carpet,listening to that recording of his song,..at the turnstile...It's okay...it's okayyet I never expected him to enter.Medallion man, soft as an eiderdown,bare-knuckle fighter, commander;he fumbled .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424737/  Mothers drink amid the hazed laughterof coffee houses and tearooms as before.Yet never once forget lost sons,thousands and thousands tucked into bedswell-ironed with maternal hope. These youths fell in city districts of Civil War.And thousands and thousands of mothers.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Speacenin/424698/