Featured Image Above: wae created by Copilot and me.
At the edge of dusk, every path feels like a crossroad.”
The Elusive Crossroad
Beyond the evening’s projecting twilight zone,
I’m looking for this planet’s bright side of the moon.
I observe a strange stratosphere
That does not belong here, nor there.
Between now and the universe’s next episode,
I perceive a mirage of cosmic cathodes,
Faithlessly obscuring eternity’s elusive crossroad.
Ivor Steven © January 2026
Feature Image Above: was created by Copilot and me.
Over at Weekly Prompts, the Weekend Challenge is the word “Squish”
To visit their fabulous site, please click >>Here … and I think everything about censorship is awfully “Squishy.”
Nancy’s story on The Elephant’s Trunk [https://theelephantstrunk.org/2026/01/20/rdp-tuesday-disapprove/ ] stirred an old frustration in me — how easily free expression can be twisted, muted, or dismissed. I left a brief comment there, but the idea continued to nag at me throughout the afternoon. Sitting in a quiet corner of the café, I found myself shaping those few lines into something fuller, a small protest poem about the weight of censorship and the stubborn resilience of words. This is where that moment led.
When Words Wear Chains
Words wearing chains,
Pages awash in teary rain;
Quills feel the pain,
Like wisdom without veins
Inside lifeless brains.
How to explain
The inhumane
Of censorship’s careering train,
While the reigning regimes
Sip on foreign champagne.
Ivor Steven © January 2026
Featured Image Above: Created by Copilot and me.
An image and song that drifts along the same edge this poem explores — between light, shadow, and the unknown.
What Colour is the Edge?
I ask myself,
Is there an edge?
Is it the golden sun rising,
or the hessian sun setting?
Is it the dark horizon
beyond the deep blue ocean?
Then I wonder,
What is the edge?
Is it the black chasm
beyond the starry universe,
or is it the white light
when time sees no night?
Ivor Steven © January 2026
A small reflection on the strange path from understanding to uncertainty, and the fragile line between what feels real and what feels lost.
On the Edge of Finality
Physically,
and enigmatically,
Scaling life’s realities
has critically
reached obscurity.
Combined with humanity’s
vanity, inanity, and insanity
and lack of morality –
brutally –
finality
is not an impossibility.
Ivor Steven © January 2026
Gigi’s poem >> https://gigisrantsandraves.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/have-you-noticed , opened a familiar ache — the sense of being small inside a vast, grinding system. This poem rose from that feeling, with Lisa O’Neill’s “Rock The Machine” humming at its edges.
Why Worry?
Government – Corporate piracy –
Rife everywhere in our binary society.
Ironically, our privacy is *actively*
The policy of every dynasty’s refinery.
Corruption: slavery, bribery, impiety.
And privately, I worry about the impropriety,
The calamity’s spidery finality.
Ivor Steven © January 2026
Featured Image Above: Created by Copilot and me.
This poem grew from a series of poetic anecdotes I first shared as comments on fellow bloggers’ posts. In stanza order, they were inspired by:
David >> Back to the soil, or: Stretching forth – The Skeptic’s Kaddish
Eugi >> Wordless Wednesday – Poesy Perspectives
Susi >> Erred – I Write Her
VJ >> Turning (tanka) – One Woman’s Quest
An Albatross and the Saboteurs
Underneath all the mounds,
we are all bound together
by the same ground,
whether we are lost or found.
The packaging is losing its gloss,
but the contents are not lost –
still spirited like an albatross.
Bluffers and shovers
Swoop like overprotective plovers,
act like “Big Brother,”
ring the buzzer,
usher out the duffers,
and snuffer the crushers.
Oh, so many detours
and hidden contours.
Who are these saboteurs?
Lisa O’Neill’s music has a way of grounding us in what matters. This song, in particular, feels like a quiet reckoning—an honest look at the world and the winds that shape it.
Lisa O’Neill, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right, Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I’ve lately been thinking of an old friend
Who I haven’t seen in a while
Last night I dreamed that the same friend
Passed without sayin’ goodbye
[Verse 2]
Oh, to be wild like the roses
Oh, to be red with delight
My blood is red out of fury
The wind doesn’t blow this far right
[Verse 3]
Some terrors are born out of nature
Some terrors are born overnight
Some terrors are born out of leaders
With their eye on a different prize
[Verse 4]
The thing is, some leaders are players
And players sometimes can be clowns
And clowns then sometimes can be dangerous
When they’re there and yet they can’t be found
[Verse 5]
The Big Mac, the big man, the big bomb
The power of money and lies
The power of fear in the people
The wind doesn’t blow this far right
[Verse 6]
Some terrors are born out of nature
Some terrors are born overnight
Some terrors are born out of leaders
With their eye on a different prize
[Verse 7]
Oh, to be wild like the roses
Oh, to be red with delight
My blood is red out of fury
The wind doesn’t blow this far right
[Verse 8]
Drill, baby, drill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Don’t you hear the winds, feel the fires as they burn?
Beautiful planet, beautiful home
Drill, baby, drill
Don’t, baby, don’t
[Verse 9]
Kill, baby, kill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Don’t you hear the kids as you blindly bulldoze on?
Beautiful children, starved to the bone
Kill, baby, kill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Kill, baby, kill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Ivor Steven © January 2026
The Moon and the Tycoon
Late afternoon
The crows are in tune
Even without the moon
Nature’s towering, white dunes
Are the birds, cushioned saloon
There
Beyond the tycoon’s
Loud trumpets and bassoons
Where
The unknighted buffoon
Uses his innate silver spoon
To lampoon the tribunals
“Devon Church’s Fall Like Lightning — a soundtrack for protest and reflection.”
Ivor Steven (c) December 2025
This poem grew from poetic anecdotes I first shared as comments on fellow bloggers’ posts. In stanza order, they are:
1. Sara >> Random Numbers | purplepeninportland
2. Dwight >> https://rothpoetry.wordpress.com/2025/11/25/aging-without-numbers
3. Ivor >> a personal reflection.
Time Hears No Numbers
There is a number attached to everything,
Tracking them down is overwhelming;
Tallying the total is mind-boggling.
I perceive, with a twinkle
in my blurry eye,
an extra wrinkle
on my milky thigh.
But I do not cry
at the number of crinkles
that falsely belie
the sounds of my
life’s happy jingles.
The number of memories shall not diminish
until time decrees, “you’re finished.”
Accompanied by Sleeping At Last’s “Saturn” performed live with the Symphony Orchestra, this poem listens for the echoes beyond numbers—where memory, music, and existence intertwine.
Ivor Steven (c) December 2025
Hello, dear readers and followers. I write for Coffee House Writers magazine (USA) fortnightly, and my poem “Trojan Cloud” is in this week’s edition.
To read the poem, please click the link below to visit my Coffee House Writers Magazine article.
>> https://coffeehousewriters.com/trojan-cloud/
.
Until Eyes Hear Sound
Lulu Books >> Until Eyes Hear Sound (lulu.com)
Perceptions:
Amazon >> Perceptions : Steven, Ivor, Knight, Derrick: Amazon.com.au: Books
Lulu Books >> Perceptions (lulu.com)
Tullawalla:
Amazon >> Tullawalla A Meeting Place Where My Empty Hands are Full of Memories and Rhymes : Steven, Ivor: Amazon.com.au: Books
OR: >> You may email me directly for a signed copy at
ivorrs20@gmail.com … and I can send you a PayPal account,
for the Book, plus Postage.
Ivor Steven © November 2025
Ivor.Plumber/Poet 