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Category Archives: poetry
Coming soon
Somewhere in America…
New poem, coming soon.
Artwork by Bob Christian
We Did This In Eighteen Minutes
The Earth has been writing her story
for around four and a half billion years.
Mountains have risen,
oceans have learned the language of the moon,
forests have breathed in silence,
and life has patiently rehearsed
every possible way
to exist.
Then we arrived.
If all that time
were folded neatly
into a single year,
humanity
wouldn’t appear in January,
or July,
or even Christmas morning.
We would step onto the stage
with barely eighteen minutes
until midnight.
Eighteen minutes.
That’s all we’ve needed
to crown ourselves kings
of a kingdom
we didn’t build.
We point at our cities,
our satellites,
our machines that reach beyond the stars,
and call it progress.
Yet somehow,
the hands clever enough
to map distant galaxies
still struggle
to protect the soil
beneath their own feet.
We’ve spent fortunes
looking for another world
while treating this one
like somewhere we’re only passing through.
In those eighteen minutes,
entire voices
have fallen silent.
Species that survived
ice ages,
volcanoes,
asteroids,
have not survived us.
Every extinction
is another verse
removed from Earth’s oldest song.
And still,
the forests whisper.
The rivers remember.
The wind carries warnings
we keep mistaking
for background noise.
Hotter summers.
Stronger storms.
Longer droughts.
Skies that burn.
The planet isn’t seeking revenge.
She’s showing us
the consequence
of forgetting
that we belong to her,
not the other way around.
But this isn’t the end
unless we decide it is.
Because every generation
inherits a pen.
Some use it
to sign away tomorrow.
Others
write a different future.
Every tree planted.
Every river restored.
Every choice made
with something beyond ourselves in mind
becomes another sentence
in a story worth continuing.
Perhaps our eighteen minutes
will not be remembered
for how quickly we conquered,
but for the moment
we finally understood
that the greatest measure
of intelligence
was never how far
we could travel from Earth—
it was whether we learned
how to stay.
(c)BobChristian
I Keep Counting Anyway
Every morning
before the sun stretches itself across my window,
before my coffee tastes like anything but bitter,
happiness hides.
She’s crouched behind the blinds,
folded into the corner of yesterday’s pillow,
laughing quietly at me
as if I don’t know how to look for her.
I try.
I try like I know her favorite hiding spots,
like I know the exact way she breathes when she’s shy,
like I can coax her out with half-empty mugs
and songs that smell like home.
But she moves.
Slips under the fridge,
slides into the cracks of my bathroom tiles,
hides in the sound of my keys clattering
like she’s daring me to follow.
So I do.
I follow.
And sometimes,
just sometimes,
she peeks out
like a shy smile from a stranger in a crowded street.
For that moment,
my chest remembers what it’s like to be full,
and I swear
I hear the echo of her saying,
you found me again.
Then she disappears.
And I swear I’ll find her tomorrow.
Because happiness
isn’t something that knocks politely.
It is a professional hide-and-seek champion,
undefeated for as long as I’ve known her.
And me?
I am the kid counting with my eyes closed,
hands over my face,
promising the dark that I’m still playing.
Every morning,
before the day can tell me who I need to be,
I start searching.
(c)BobChristian
How to Build a Coffin Out of Silence
They keep saying “Man Up”
Like silence is some kind of sacrament.
Like swallowing your grief whole
Is how you earn your stripes.
But I’ve seen what that silence does.
I’ve seen it wrap around a neck,
Like a necktie turned noose.
I’ve seen boys hide their hearts, and call it manhood.
“Boys don’t cry.”
Nah. They just punch walls.
Break their own knuckles.
Drink, hoping for a solution
Until it’s someone else’s problem.
Until it’s their funeral.
And we call that strength?
Eighty percent. That’s not a number.
That’s a mass grave. A choir of voices
That were only echoes.
Just statistics.
Just “He was such a good guy.
He was always laughing…
Even after the desert stopped being a location
And started being an emotional state.”
We’re told to be tough,
But we’re never taught to be whole.
Told to carry the weight,
Yet we’re never told how to put it down.
They call it manhood. I call it emotional malpractice.
And I’m done treating tenderness like a threat.
Done pretending that depression wears a hoodie.
And not a three-piece suit or a uniform.
Because mental health is not a solo act.
It’s a group text at 2am…
It’s “You good?”
It’s “Nah, but thanks for asking.”
It’s therapy without shame.
It’s community without competition.
It’s crying in the open, but not being called broken.
So yeah… Man down is not a defeat.
It’s a signal flare.
A Mayday call.
A prayer we are finally brave enough to say out loud.
And if you’ve made it this far; your heart is still beating
Under all that armour (real or remembered),
And this is your permission…
To rest. To rage. To reach.
This is your poem. This is your mirror.
This is your reason to stay.
Because feeling isn’t failing.
It’s fighting back.
AEOS 1-5
The lovely folks at AEOS are running a Bank Holiday discount over the long weekend, where you can grab 50% off the cover price of this brilliant literature & culture magazine. There are some great issues to choose from and, not to brag, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have a piece featured in each of them.
It’s a buy-one-get-one-half-price deal — just add the promo code AEOSM at checkout.
Grab a copy today and step into something different.
Fragments of Light & Unfamiliar Roads
What a strange and wonderful day it’s been.
First, I found out I’d received another accolade from the Dark Poets Club, which honestly means a great deal to me. Then, almost out of nowhere, I was offered the chance to be an official photographer for this year’s Torbay Pride event.
Photography is still very new territory for me. I’ve always just pointed the camera at things that caught my eye and hoped for the best, so stepping into something official feels both exciting and slightly overwhelming.
Still… growth rarely happens in comfort zones, does it?
Here’s to new experiences, learning curves, and seeing where the lens takes me next.
Stay safe,
BC
Hands in Both our Pockets
They point at the shoreline
like the country is drowning in rubber boats.
Like the reason your rent fills you with panic
is a man crossing the sea, with wet shoes
and a phone number stitched into his jacket.
Meanwhile, somewhere far from the food bank queue,
a billionaire laughs into a glass of champagne
on a yacht big enough to have its own postcode.
They tell us to fear the poor.
Never the people pricing us out of our own lives.
Never the landlords collecting houses
like football stickers.
Never the companies recording record profits
while your gran chooses between heating and eating
because both are luxuries now.
They don’t build anything.
They just keep your eyes busy…
Feed you someone to blame;
Someone close enough to touch.
Someone poorer, louder, stranger than you.
And while you’re choking on anger;
While you’re tricked into mistaking hatred for power,
the real thieves slip their billions quietly past,
carrying our tomorrow out the back door.
(c)BobChristian
Life of Shadows
Working on something a little darker than my usual scribbles lately, as I prepare for a possible upcoming competition.
Failing that, I’m thinking of gathering the whole collection together into a chapbook called Life Of Shadows — which, if I’m honest, feels like the perfect title for where my head’s been wandering creatively of late.
There’s something strangely cathartic about opening the door and letting the dark passenger stretch its legs for a while. Not in a destructive sense, more in the way storms clear the air. Poetry has always been part confession booth, part exorcism for me anyway.
Here’s one of the pieces from the series. It’s called The Garden Stirs, and I’m genuinely proud to say it was shortlisted for the Dark Poets Prize IV.
Issue 5 Out Now
Issue Five of AEOS Magazine is out now.
Its bold collection of art, literature, and original talents. There’s even a poem of mine nestled in the pages.
Grab your copy today from AEOS.
and step into something different.
The Ramblings of Bob Christian 