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Colin’s Jumps & Other Stories, London (2026)

12/05/2026

NO END

He jumped but never landed
In a life that couldn’t be even handed.
Fast cars and glamorous women.
High, rolling venues.
He couldn’t stop.
Money stuffed in bin bags.
Everyone had a price.
The worth of loyalty,
The cost of a favour.
Love was a commodity,
Everything was easy
When the money rolled in.
Bigger and better,
Faster and further
As if life had no ending.
He didn’t see it coming,
She was clever.
Beauty before a bullet.
He would kill for her,
He’d killed before.
She killed him.
Stiletto death.
She stilled his breath.
Love was the dealbreaker.
She was the taker.
Cleaned him out.
Sentenced to life.
Iron bars and an exercise yard.
Canteen meals.
It was his last deal.
She is far away.
Money without end.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Painting by Spanish artist Tomás Taure Alonso (b. 1944)

10/05/2026

WAY OUT

Dreamscape, landscape,
Visions through a glass.
Colours diffused,
Time confused,
Thirst in a storm,
Floods draughting a drought.
Conflicts of confusion,
Understanding in a drink,
Hydration of thought,
Words that need to talk.
Long time arriving,
Longer to leave.
Can’t find the door.
Desert without an exit.
Born innocent,
Cheating a way out
In a world of difference
When my glass runs dry.
Pour me another drink of emotion.
I will figure it out.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Image author unknown

08/05/2026

DREAMS IN A SOUP

People walking on pavements bare.
Streets undressed, raw and exposed.
Hard boots, clothes of disguise,
The soft flesh of armour-plated life.

Dreams in the soup of an evening meal.
Reality camouflaged in routines.
The fabrication of scenes.
Restaurant etiquette.

Dress code observed.
Umbrellas in the rain.
We all flow in the gutters
Looking for a drain.

Expense and dispense,
The drugs to cope with life.
Happy pills and little spills.
It ain’t black and white.

Honesty on those pavements.
Honest to yourself?
A car on finance,
Used to make a statement.

Driven hours, travelled lives.
Individuals in a soap drama,
Relationships in a cauldron
Bought for convenience.

Hair colour disguises,
The suit of camouflage.
Easy come, cheap to go.
Ever earning nothing.

All on borrowed time.
And in the end, what have you got?
A debt that bought you an illusion,
And adults surviving like a crime.

We are all running out of time.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Coloured photograph by Leonard McCombe (Dublin, 1957)

07/05/2026

DRIFT

What drift is this
In between the prison walls
And the great expanse?
A bottle and a glass, realisations
Beyond the perimeter of my mind.
So much so late, what’s the date?
Time never had a name,
Just like you and me.
Another sip of time, another glance
Back along the rambled track.
Were you ever there?
What comes in between
The meteors and the burning?
The space of learning.
Arrival too late.
Who should I tell before I enter hell
In a place of deaf and blind men?
A draft of time, another sip of wine.
Life bottled in a vintage of youth.
Smiles from the vine, battles of mine.
We stood in line, you on the other side.
Belief and confusion, the pain of fusion.
Generations that learn nothing from before.
Now comes the dream in a place unseen.
Life and love wrapped in fate.
It is you and me along with everything else.
Now reach for my hand!
You will come this way
On some late day.
None of us can see where others have been.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Image author unknown

05/05/2026

CHILD OF THE STREAM
(For Roy)

I walked with an old man.
Tall and whiskery. He strolled.
A hungry tale of a river old.
Under a risen sun,
I felt the cold.

Humble flows the river.
He spoke in colours.
Her hair was fair.
Green to blue and back again.
All under a changing sky.

A million words under a billion suns.
Conversations translucent
In translation.
It has all been said before,
Never the same.

Silent sound.
Grass whispering her name.
Truth hidden in willowing branches.
Life against the flow.
Earthen, banked graves.

Poetry in ripples
Caressing gravels of time
Under bridges of days
Into endless night.
Six years of age.

Now a watery slave
Passing so many days.
Here, a girl drowned,
Gone without a sound
In the rush.

Her brother watched.
We met there sixty years later.
His tears falling to his sister.
What secrets a river holds?
She rose for her fun.

In that moment I looked
Under ripples so calm.
I saw her face.
A dress of old lace.
Child of the stream.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Image author unknown

16/04/2026

RENT UNPAID

Bottle empty, heart full.
Glass broken.
It was my fall.
Late,
Too late.
Darkness hollow.
Silent feelings.
The dulling of a deep soul,
Lost in a life insecure.
Lonely in a moment.
Empty of life.
Running like a river.
The peace of a silent pool.
Red is not an illusion.
Head heavy,
Careless of thought.
A gun upon a table.
A table before a lost man
In a room that is nowhere.
Company forsaken,
Deceptions of every day.
Truth like a hammer.
The pin of despair.
Picking up the gun.
Nothing to think.
Undiscovered for eternity.
No one came there.
Roulette played with a
Single man.
Love for a bullet.
Why care?
It wasn’t a gamble
In a game that was never fair.
She never knew.
How could she?
He didn’t care.
That gun is in his mind.
It is still upon that table.
He isn’t there.
She is everywhere.
The velvet skin of a death,
Lost in the memory of a stolen caress.
The scent of cordite
Upon his last breath.
Attic room.
Rent unpaid.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Image by D'Lavigne

15/04/2026

UPON THE BACKS OF GODS
(duras, hard endurance)

Virgil accounts for Atlas,
Condemned to hold the celestial.
From Earth’s end he stood
Upon his Mountain high
Where the hands of Land
Hold Heavens apart.
Son of Titan and Oceanus,
That ancient world encircling river,
Geographer, cartographer,
A name beyond man.

Atlantic washing, oceanic flowing
In the minds of simple fighting men
Far back in time Atlantis sunk
Never to rise again.
It is upon the backs of few
That we live our days.
Some carry the burden,
Whilst many lie in the hay.

Gaia shimmers in our hands.
She is our abused slave.
Her liberty is bursting
Lest Atlas gives way.
The heavens are parting
For man to fall in between
As Perseus turned Atlas into stone.
Farnese sculpted this Herculean
Set upon an earthly throne.
When his flesh flows with blood,
It is we who shall be thrown.

©️CHSpeare

10/04/2026

OVERCOME

Should the common man
In a space of human time
Meet an uncommon woman,
The ground upon which they stand
Will open like a hand,
For one will love the other
As the other fears his loss.

All in the palm of a grasping desire,
Where love shall inspire
That which runs
Against all of the rules;
That class nor colour and age
Shall be a bar to love’s splendour
Upon our prejudicial stage.

The fingers of each
Grope and reach
Into the soul
That neither could know.
From her he learns,
For him she earns,
As in turn they tug at the emotions
Of a mismatched love.

From both so far apart,
They saw what couldn’t be seen
Across the great in between —
To travel upon desire
Over so many others
Who could never know
Because they needed to be told.

A thing that for so many remains
The love that flows in the spaces —
Those awaiting,
Unknown.

©️CHSpeare

***************
Fragment of a sculpture by British artist Marc Quinn (b. 1964)

09/04/2026

FOOLS WITH STICKS

To be a fool in a sensible world is foolish. But this is a world peopled with fools who think that they are sensible. It is the fool who is sensible, yet others suppress his reason in favour of the easy-to-pick fruits of self deception to cash in on the extended credit offered by the Bank of Delusional Loans.

The credit card of modern life is now bust and all debts are to be payed off forthwith.

The party is over and the sparkling wine has run bitter and flat. We are all older having lost optimism that has now morphed whilst we were sobering up into a reality that none want to meet.

The internal consumer-led market that has no manufacturing exports is running out of blood as the greatest amount of wealth is locked away in the vaults of the very rich.

The belief in an ever growing population and an expanding economy is imploding, as nature screams its disgust through a first fight back with a pernicious virus.

War is upon the horizon with the next being total, whilst the Fourth World War shall be fought from caves with sticks.

Here comes the disease and it is your life that is beating. Can you hear the fright? Do you sense the futile panic when you shop at the supermarket?

Yes, this is for real and if you don’t respect the natural order of the system that nature follows, there will come a backlash to bash you again so hard that even the Old Testament stories will seem like a lullaby in comparison.

©️CHSpeare

05/04/2026

WINDLESS

Out there alone,
All of us crowded together.
Isolated in the rush,
Crushed under illusion.
You and me,
What do we want?
No time to see.
Collisions of who we are.
Undiscovered, lost dreams.
Destination’s need.
Stay in the race.
Money in,
Money out.
Conversations in text
Against headwinds of time.
Familiar streets,
Repetitions repeat.
Spirals of routine.
News on stream.
Love like an industrial product.
Lonely in an age of convenience.
Neglected minds.
No junction.
A revolving turnstile.
The terminal of an individual.
What changes?
Cold coins in a clenched fist
Or a reason that was left behind.
A wind that never blew?

©️CHSpeare

***************
Image credit to Jo Wowo

Colin’s Jumps & Other Stories

12/05/2026

10/05/2026

08/05/2026

07/05/2026

05/05/2026

16/04/2026

15/04/2026

10/04/2026

09/04/2026

05/04/2026

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