Germans are making the loans
and bankers are hot on their phones.
The message they’re sending
Is ‘Bankruptcies pending
and ‘ware of mad Greeks bearing stones!’

© Stafford Ray

In pictures: Greece votes amid riots
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Writer of musical plays and reading resources for schools. Wannbe novelist, one completed, two more on the way. Poetry happens when moved, limericks when amused (interchangeable).

A TV picture shows there's not a leaf on the tree,
with only tears falling as drops on the land.
This merciless world is the giver and the taker,
above all life, but do we ever understand?

Each day is a struggle, whoever we are;
to find a job, sometimes to park your car!
But it all pales to nothing if the rains don't come.
The trivial is essential under the searing sun.

The girl's sunken eyes reach us deep inside,
the deepest language we all comprehend;
where the rivers of belief dry up like the soil,
to wither the cause of conflict – to make war end.

© David Francis Barker

Somalia Islamists lift aid ban to help drought victims
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David says, 'I try to paint, write poetry, prose, sometimes music - I guess that makes me an artist.'

"Go, hack a phone!" I never said it,
And to conceive me with such guilt
May cause a nasty bit of wilt
In credulous employees' credit.

The right-hand path: I'll always tread it.
The red-tops' red-top stunna, me!
The Murdochs' holy company:
I'll lead it as I've always led it.

You see, I was just there to edit.
The Guardian may lead the fools on -
I'm innocent as Andy Coulson!
News of the World? I hardly read it.

© Philip Challinor

Rebekah Brooks: 'It's inconceivable I knew of Milly Dowler phone hacking'
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Philip blogs at 'The Curmudgeon' - He insists, "You'll come for the curses. You'll stay for the mudgeonry." Philip is the author of a number of books.

Trials after trials; my begging lips started to give up
and then spoke the reticent judge-
“Hang till death”
Similar footsteps were heavy that day
marching onto my thin nerves where
memories have set up a light nest;
I was wrong; my thoughts of it to be undying
were crushed. The nest was thrown off and
the eggs about to burst open were carried
away by ravenous vultures.

A month was the time,
in which I was allowed to be a man
fit to be hung in the square of law;
a man who can feel pain rather than
one of whom pain is ashamed of.
A book, I still call nameless was all I took
as medicine; pages after pages the holiness
of it cured my sores red in deliberations
of the world outside the prison and future.

The clock in the central hall that used to sound
as the devil’s treads, now seem to be useful
hours that smile with the era of truth
approaching me with its unlikelihood.

One more day to go and the last page
of the book had, “seven ways to go to heaven”.
I had restored my greed of learning till the last day
to grasp the ideas just before falling free
into the ocean of kismet.

Strong arms pulled me out and the walls
wailed, feeling my nonexistence.
My last wish was torn to pieces without any grounds
known to me or perhaps to the ones who did it.
Now, I am walking with obscurity holding onto
some pages which said,
“Truth prevails on death. Neither before nor after.”

© Sonnet Mondal

Dhananjoy Chatterjee Hanged In Kolkata Jail

After Ahmned, Hangman Crunch
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Sonnet Mondal, author of six poetry books, pioneered the 21 line fusion sonnet form. He has received a number of awards, including the Azsacra International Poetry award in 2011.

© David Green

Nearly 1 in 10 fish sampled contain plastic debris
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David Green is a Graphic Designer and 3D Animator who, through some of his work, reveals the poet within. See more of David's work at his website.
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Editor's note: Clare and I would love to receive your YouTube uploads, of topical or news-related poetry. So, if you have a video or audio clip, that fits within our criteria, do send us the link.

After all the fun and games with nursery rhymes last week, this week has been more sobering here at Poetry 24.

From long-distant tragedies like Helena Nolan's deep (in all senses!) and evocative Shipwreck Grave which left us with a lingering threat, to the more immediate personal traumas of Rachel North's haunting When she went missing and Michael Holloway's much angrier Mother of a Soldier.

Poetry often works best when it focusses on the detail, makes the big issues personal and hints at their full breadth by showing how they affect the individual.

So hats off to Jess Green whose voice is powerful enough to take on the threat of sweeping changes threatened in arts and education: in Close the libraries she crafts an anthem for all those who oppose them. David Francis Barker, too, took on the futility of every military campaign that has marched into Afghanistan in Lesson One - Afghanistan.

I was horrified at the story behind Hamish Mack's simple-but-effective Man Trouble - about the NZ union boss who 'uncluttered by thought' believes women to be 'less productive' than men.

Although, to be fair, I have been less productive than Martin this week in my general editorial duties, due to internet connection problems. Thanks Martin!

And thank you all for your support, comments and poems - do please keep them coming!

Clare

Mother who sweeps the floor each morning alone
Who crotchets together her failing mind that keeps her
Sleepless each night, and Mother who actually cannot believe
Any more in a God who killed her son
Wrapped up in camouflage and black boots put on his feet
By the hands of his dead comrades;

Mother of soldier, who died here too,
In a war of opinion that sacrifices you,
Mother your son is dead, taken away fighting,
Killing and real bullets tearing a hole in the heart of Mother;

Mother who weeps with a cancerous moan
Distracted by war and the governing bodies,
Killed and tortured by the bloody hands of your owners,
Who treat you like a dog, Mother, like a dog
And now, less photogenic sunsets with his face,
Lifeless in a casket now burning in the crematorium of

Your motionless son; unable to love or to care,
Mother, your country has killed him,
Fearless frightened burning with fury,
While your peers decide what to wear;

Mother hates the army, hatred of difference and death,
Hatred of feeling of loss and hate,
Hatred of disgusting vulgar green and black,
Hatred of Jack and his loyalty,
Hatred of country and honour,
Hatred of mother and son in crowds and crowds of soldiers.

© Michael Holloway

Soldier Gareth Bellingham's grieving mother 'hates army'
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Michael Holloway was born in Liverpool in 1985. He studied English Literature and Creative Writing at UCLan and is currently studying a Masters in Writing at LJMU.