wild and windy
stripping off the leaves
naked sycamores
© Rachel Green October 2026
On the Purchase of a Hat
I bought a hat today.
A woolly hat to save my ears
from being cold.
I'm old
and people smile at me
because I skip and dance along the street
and they think perhaps the village fool
has been released just for a day
and maybe it's the hat
and maybe it's the wide-eyed smile
and maybe it's the wishing of a happy day.
© Rachel Green October 2026
kitchen clock
with egg on its face
they've boiled dry
© Rachel Green October 2026
Attempting to be Cheerful (V)
bank account
reaches negative numbers
long before the month runs out
but I have apples
and baked beans
and more dog food
than the month has days remaining.
I have somewhere to live
and love given freely
and the internet is paid for
All we really need is time to write
and time to create
and dogs to keep me warm
© Rachel Green October 2026
trichromatic palette
distributed to wet paper
sudden nebula
© Rachel Green October 2026
Attempting to be Cheerful (IV)
the weight
of two tiny bibles
is almost too much to bear;
all that guilt and suffering
in the name of one book
written centuries ago.
perhaps they'll improve
with a little colour added.
© Rachel Green October 2026
pavement cake
still in shop wrappings
of course I ate it
© Rachel Green October 2026
Attempting to be Cheerful (III)
deep frames are a happy find, stuffed
deep at the back of a charity shop shelf
which involves moving teddy bears
and assorted Christmas clutter to extract
to discover all three are four pounds
All that's needed now is to carry them home
and paint some objects to put inside them.
purity
the obscurity of paintings
in simple frames
© Rachel Green October 2026
morning walk
extra barking comes free
empty houses
© Rachel Green October 2026
Attempting to be Cheerful (II)
steel plates
left out for the binmen
and an hour spent wondering
how to use them in artwork
half a dozen ideas
and a return to the disposal site
now...
how to cut sheets of steel?
© Rachel Green October 2026
supermarket walk
musing on the uses of discarded steel
returning collection
© Rachel Green October 2026
Attempting to be Cheerful
Small pieces
painted on old metal,
pieces of fallen brickwork
or that book of collected Keats
that you threw in the fire.
just one, every day;
bright colours in oils and acrylic;
watercolours and gouache
set in tiny frames and photographed
then marked for post-mortis trash
© Rachel Green October 2026
rainy morning
coughing up phlegm
London maladies
© Rachel Green October 2026
Surface Detail
Right-wing Christians
controlled all the AI centres
while well-meaning scientists
learn to upload consciousness
into an artificial memory.
Who decides a future
when Christians take the conscious minds
and upload them into a simulation
of heaven and of Hell?
To spend an eternity in a data stratum
constructed by patriarchal xenophobia;
A dystopian nightmare?
or a capitalist dream?
© Rachel Green October 2026
