Dead Snakes featured two outstanding poems on Monday by my friend and colleague, Philippe Atherton-Blenkiron.  Readers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of his first collection of poetry, “The Pustoy.”

The poems titles are “Ode to Sabrina” and “Redsands.”  The latter is titled after a real, abandoned, youth residential care facility in the author’s native Britain, and it’s accompanied by a set of moody black-and-white photos that he took there himself.

I love “Redsands.”  Its final stanza and closing lines remind me of the ending of lines near the end of one of my own favorite poems, “The Shield of Achilles,” written by W.H. Auden and published in 1952:

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

Read both of Phil’s poems at the link below.  You won’t be disappointed.

http://deadsnakes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/philippe-atherton-blenkiron-two-poems.html?m=1