Hello, the week seems to have ended with a lot of snow, I hope it's not affected our readers too much. This week we began with The Season Ends by Amy Barry. It was a very sad and moving poem and quite powerful about a fifteen year old girl who had committed suicide after being tormented in school over sex rumours. It was a complicated story of sadness and cruelty and I'm reminded of the final, short stanza: 'Her body / found hanging / from the maple tree, / in winter.'

Suicide was a recurring theme as another story popped up, this time in the military as combat lessens. Show Me Something I've Seen Before by David Mellor was published on Tuesday. It shows us a kind of torment with being in the military and not fighting, which seems to create a psychological torment and shows someone to wishing to see their normal life, 'Something I've seen before, me and Steve growing up in the candy store.'

Fellow Poetry24 editor, Abigail Wyatt was published on Wednesday with Proper Love. It's a thought-provoking poem about the 56 year old British woman who was sentenced to death in Bali for cocaine smuggling. The poem questions the way we judge and the decisions we make. The ideas of right and wrong and crime and punishment.

Royal Pardon on Thursday, written by Philip Challinor, was a satirical approach to the tabloid stories about Prince Harry. It references the naive and immature actions Prince Harry did in the past and the negative press he gained from it, but then the change in opinion about him, to forgive him, when he joined the army, 'Go to Asia and blow up sufficient wogs.' I suppose this wasn't about Harry and what he's done in his life, but about the silly, fickle tabloid journalists who really only write about their own agendas.

Clare Kirwan returned to Poetry24 on Friday when we published The Moses of Elephants. This was about the baby elephant that died in the BBC show Africa and David Attenborough defended it, saying it was a natural tragedy. The poem is filled with religious imagery and almost sanctifies the elephant in question, showing that the elephant's death was indeed natural and, in a sense, beautiful, and there was never any need to complain about it.

Finally, we published Prisoner at Home by Katie Beviss to end the week. The news story was about Palestinians who threatened to sue Israel over settlements. The poem is very powerful and interesting from the first line: 'The man at no.3 has been taken prisoner.' I particularly liked the use of Hebrew '"מתים המהלכים"' to read 'The Walking Dead.'

Remember to keep submitting to us at poetry24@hotmail.com and tell your friends about us. You can like us on Facebook on our Poetry24 page.

Hope you've all had a good week and have better one to follow.

Michael.

Show me something I’ve never seen before
Away from the one bar and candy store
Show me something I wish I’d never seen before

It’s friendly for a while , with no foe, we can play cards for a while
Til I see their limbs go
Away from this Taliban strong hold back in bits to this one bar and candy store

Show me something at night , now I can’t pull the trigger
Show me something at night , that’s not Steve falling like a pack of cards
Show me something that’s not my leg and soul in bits

Show me something I’ve seen before, me and Steve growing up in the candy store passing our days in the one bar
Forever and a day away from this

copyright@David R Mellor, 2013

Suicide in military rise even as combat lessens

David was born in Liverpool in 1964. He left school with nothing, rummaged around various dead end jobs, then back to college and uni. In his 20s he first discovered poetry, starting writing and performing and has done so ever since. I has lived on the Wirral for the past 8 years.

Hi all, it's been a bit of an up and down week here. We started the week with Aparna Pathak's poem "Intentions" about the Pakistani/India clash that is ongoing in Kashmir. It is a simple yet powerful poem that could apply to most conflict in the world. A bowl of humanity is what is needed.
David Mellor continued his recent run of good poems with "Truce Bomb" about the Syrian rebellion and the West's attitude toward it.
Editor Michael Holloway contributed a great poem "An Evil of Want" about the current British government and their attacks on the most vulnerable people in society. I particularly liked his phrase:
"The small eyes, gap-toothed grin beneath balding head,
laughs without shame or remorse".   
Marie Ryan contributed her first poem to Poetry24 with "Here Comes the Sun" an ironic title considering that the subject is the worsening world situation and containing the memorable line 
"Winter sun skis to April fools."
Nicola Copeland's poem "No Pancakes on Sunday" is a wonderfully sad poem about a British soldier dying from his wounds inflicted when he was in Afghanistan.
All in all it was a great week of poems but we had a break in transmission due to a glitch in scheduling and a low level of submissions. As Abi Wyatt said "Come on guys, it is time to shake off that comfortable and euphoric drowsiness brought on by the excesses of the festive season, time to get your backsides in gear and get down to work."   

The pound’s dropping

And in Syria   they’re dropping like flies

But there’s nothing to gain

Just humanity

And a couple of kids

Trapped together

Melted in two

But they’re foreign blood

And you hate your next door neighbour

And you’re pissed off with your friend

And you can’t remember your credit card number

No time to look at the screen

It’s digital

Coloured glass

The pain lives on

While you sip a foreign glass

Copyright©David  R Mellor 2012

Syria unrest has killed 60,000, says UN

David was born in Liverpool in 1964. He left school with nothing, rummaged around various dead end jobs, then back to college and uni. In his 20s he first discovered poetry, starting writing and performing and has done so ever since. I has lived on the Wirral for the past 8 years.

Here in Cornwall, so far as the weather is concerned, we have had a dismal beginning to 2013. For much of the time a heavy grey mist has engulfed the beauty of our landscape and, in the intervening periods, we have been treated to - yes, you've guessed it - yet more heavy rain. Because of this, like Jessica Traynor in Nollaig Na mBan, I too could wish for 'a day disrobed' that looks beyond 'January's darkness/to search for the horizon's light'. Equally, I could wish for 'a little more promised each day'. On Tuesday, however, far from the promise of light, David Mellor's  It's Breaking News reminded us of the media's appetite for tragedy and of the fact that, all too often, the perpetrators of the most terrible violence are 'rewarded' by a perverse kind of celebrity while 'those who have gone / have no name'. Here at Poetry 24,  we ended the year sadly in the shadow of the Sandy Hook shootings and, with the greatest respect to the poets who wrote so powerfully in response to that tragedy, we hope and pray that this year no such poems will be penned.

On Wednesday, Philip Johnson's Fantuckinfastic Ideas gave us a sharp-tongued and insightful response to the recent proposal  that we should legislate against high levels of fat, sugar and salt, particularly in those products targeted at younger people. Then, on Thursday, our own Hamish Mack gave us Australia Ablaze, a delightfully spare and understated piece that ironically reassures us that we 'can / maintain our / lifestyles' but quietly asserting that we may 'make our children pay'. Then, on Friday, it was me again with 'A Dream of Retirement'. (I make no apologies for having a bit of a rant. There is, in my opinion, not enough of public ranting going on at the moment.)

Moving swiftly on, however, we arrive at Saturday and James Bessant's 'Food for Thought'. This was a piece that posed important questions about prevailing attitudes towards food and about the way in which western society both produces and markets it. Thank you, James, for ending the week on a note that may be uncomfortable for many of us. It is fitting that we should remember that, as we in the west hit our January diets, there are those, far too many, who may starve.

That said, I wish all our readers well. Please, if you will, spread the word. In order to continue this important work, we need your submissions. Remember: Poetry 24, where news is the muse.