Poems to Save the World With

Everything plant-delicate. I'm scared to force your arms through your sleeves, It's like

trying to put a little T-shirt on a crow. That's what it feels like. It feels like I've captured

a crow and for some reason I'm trying to show that crow unconditional love. Only it

keeps pecking me, flapping its wings and flying around the room and into walls,

completely terrified, and I'm like, come on, crow, don't worry, I'm your father and I

love you. Come and perch on my shoulder. And the crow just flies around the ceiling

like a fan stuck on doublespeed - CAAAAAWWWWW! - stopping only when it

reaches total exhaustion. And then I'm like, I love you. I love you, crow. I put the crow

to my neck and I sit on a metallic grey exercise ball, the volume right down and

subtitles on because love is so boring. I hum everything my dad used to play on the

piano - stuff I didn't know I remembered. Crow, I whisper, bouncing ludicrously on

the ball, I whisper what I will whisper five years later, crouched by a drunk man

weeping on Hungerford Bridge, it's going to get better, it's going to get better and

everything is going to be okay.

Luke Kennard

'Hope' is the Thing with Feathers

'Hope' is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all-

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm-

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of Me

Emily dickinson

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who call today his own;

He who, secure within, can say

Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today

John Dryden