Missed me? Don’t answer that! Some things are best left undisturbed. Such as my latest project, which, on the off-chance you haven’t heard about it (and, to be honest, it’s a very big ‘off-chance’) can be found at my new home http://laurapendleburyadventures.wordpress.com/.
Crank your speakers up folks, otherwise none of it will make any sense. (Not that it makes a lot of sense anyway, but it’d make even less if you couldn’t hear it.)
And for anybody daft enough, there’s the Laura Pendlebury Adventures Fan Club over at Facebook. (I know…it’s Facebook…but even the devil has some uses sometimes.)
That is all,

Brian Hughes (Author of the Laura Pendlebury Adventures)

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Still Absent…

As you’ve probably gathered I’m still absent without leave. No idea when I’ll be back. “At some point” is about the best/worst I can offer right at the moment. In the meantime, however, if you’re really missing me that much (which I strongly doubt) I’ve compiled about 250 poems into a book, available from the following address:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/disambiguation/14083680

 

I will return…perhaps…at some point.

 

UPDATE: I’ve changed the cover. (Didn’t want my ugly mug putting people off.) So there’s a new link now as well with a slightly different address.

For Those in Peril

‘For those in peril out at sea’ – the hymn of choice for we who know
How cruel the pounding waves can be along this callous, battered coast.
And, yet for all of that, I saw four fishermen at Anchorsholme
In combat with the thunderous storm, in oilskins, drenched to the bone
By deafening waves, still wheeling out their eight-foot wooden fishing smack
The wall of foaming, angry surf inhaling shingle, fighting back.
Then came the wave, at thirty foot in height it grabbed the flimsy prow
And hurled the vessel with such hate it landed, broken, upside down,
With all its would-be crew beneath; provisions for the voyage ahead
Now tossed and scattered on the plaster mountains of the storm instead.
And one by one, like drowning rats emerging breathless from the swell,
The fishermen, in rictus grins, fell scrambling amongst the shells.
And as the tide let out another roar and threw the wreck aloft,
The skipper, terrified, called out: “Per’aps wi’d better call it off.”

The Unsubtle Self-pity of Youth

So there I was, just seventeen, four hours before the grey-drenched dawn
In South Shore’s grotty, out-of-season bed-sit land, the world half-drawn
On tungsten light with charcoaled lines, surrounded by some claustrophobic
Room that bore the trademark of the seventies – anachronistic,
Dark and dreary, listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd on repeat,
As Roger Waters’ dirges made my dank, self-maudlin world complete.
Outside the streets were closed for winter, only brothel doors ajar,
Illuminating men in flat caps, smoking Capstans full strength tar.
It really couldn’t get much bleaker. Here was life in all it starkness.
Then the meter stopped and plunged my rank self-pity into darkness.

On the Knott

And in some corrugated field, a tower pointed at the clouds.
It dated from a bygone age, the soil around its base now ploughed
And fat with oats. In rough hewn blocks, precariously balanced stairs
Coiled upwards in a tightened spiral, hanging in the empty air,
Whilst arches held the walls above the swaying ocean of the crops,
And in the darkness just beyond came snorting sounds. We bravely stopped,
Convinced that we had seen six eyeballs blinking in the murky dark,
And egging one another on, we peered into the dungeon’s heart,
Where evil moaned in ghostly tones and demons shuffled in the deep,
Then screaming ran, as three brown cows emerged from where they’d been asleep.