Grey Drizzle

Leaf 107 – Reflections

 

Personally, I’m not a fan of political haiku/senryu. I try to avoid writing on this topic myself, but recently two such poems have managed to slip past my inner censor. It’s perhaps not so surprising though, because – whether we like it or not – politics affects all our lives, and so it is impossible to avoid. Plus, a recent quirk of fate resulted in me living in London’s Westminster for an eye-opening couple of years – very close (uncomfortably close, in fact), to all the principal locations associated with British politics – during a particularly mad and tumultuous period (between 2021 and 2023). Consequently, these two (mercifully brief) poems must have bubbled up as a subliminal result. They were each written separately, but these poems seem to work well as a linked-pair when placed together like this, in an uneasy coalition of sorts.

 

 

Politician disavowed

– whitewashing

his own soapbox.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

His motorcade

sweeps out of number ten,

into grey drizzle.

 

 

 

These poems were originally written in response to Bluesky writing prompts: #inkMine (vow) & #haikufeels (sweep).

Photograph credit: WallpaperAccess