Jane Dougherty
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janedougherty47.bsky.social
Jane Dougherty
@janedougherty47.bsky.social
790 followers 610 following 2K posts
Writer of fiction and poetry, lives in a green fortress. Not interested in 'communities'. Learn to live together, the rest of the natural world manages to.
Visit my Substack https://substack.com/@janedougherty47 for short fiction and poetry
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
patrickdunleavy.bsky.social
Draft-dodger Trump's false claim Nato troops avoided Afghanistan front line sparks outrage in UK
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Trump's claim Nato troops avoided Afghanistan front line sparks outrage in UK
The US president says Nato troops stayed
www.bbc.co.uk
January 23, 2026 at 11:57 AM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
A short one for @thebrokenspine.co.uk and @alanparrywriter.co.uk
#PoemsAbout #FalseCrowns
January 23, 2026 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
pvcannon.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #FalseCrowns

With thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk
A free-verse poem that speaks about those who feel they are entitled to take power over us. The poem references MacBeth, Arthur, and Game of Thrones in the process.
January 22, 2026 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk
Hello @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk thanks for this week’s #PoemsAbout prompt #TimeSlip Not sure if this hits the mark. it’s all that occurred to me this am after a migraine yesterday. I’ve never successfully written about one and this doesn’t change that! #poetrycommunity #poetry
A poem by Debbie Ross entitled Migraine Text as follows in 2 stanzas Light fractured, pixelated, pounding axe blows to my skull. Medicated, time slip slides depositing me at day-end all dredged up.
January 16, 2026 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
davidbirch.bsky.social
Many thanks @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk for your #PoemsAbout prompt #TimeSlips. This song immediately came to mind: if by any chance you don't know it, listen here: open.spotify.com/track/43IYZ1...
Looking forward to reading other responses
January 16, 2026 at 10:47 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
merrildsmith.bsky.social
Good morning! For #PoemsAbout #TimeSlips
I'm fascinated by time. 😊
Thank you as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Poem: We’re All Time Travelers The contour of time– not flat, but shaped with possibility, polished, as a queen’s pearls sliding from the string, dropped here there we meet, fall in love now, long ago, in the future-- a child’s perspective that a wish can alter time’s path, an unbroken circle, an orbit before we accelerate.
January 16, 2026 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
sueimnw.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout theme #TimeSlips with thanks to @thebrokenspine.co.uk and everyone participating.
January 16, 2026 at 7:19 AM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
A poem that started last night as I lay awake with a migraine brewing. For #PoemsAbout #Timeslips
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetry
January 16, 2026 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
cieloceano.bsky.social
Dear @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social ,
For #promptcombo , #TakingItUpStairs

Picture: New Mexico, 16 July 1945 (AI interpretation).
January 12, 2026 at 9:52 PM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
We are absolute beginners
Eyes completely open
but we can be heroes
never wave bye bye.

In the sea dark as wine
swim
like the dolphins can swim
Into the blue blue electric blue
where
once we were lovers

and you are a blackstar
a solitary candle.

#poem
#Bowie
January 10, 2026 at 9:13 PM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
The nights are silent
skies only skimming clouds
the birds are gone beyond the cold
and spring is so far away
with its wingbeats
stronger than the northern ice
the arid call of the south.

#poetry
#7lines
January 10, 2026 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
merrildsmith.bsky.social
Good morning! It's great to be back to #PoemsAbout #Static.
Thank you to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk .
Poem: Laundered In the arid, winter-dark a thousand sparks fly, looking for a conductor, any could cause a conflagration-- infinite possibilities (to breathe free) imagine if we could (stop shooting) wash and rinse in sun-streams and moon-rivers, apply a fabric sheet layered with feathers from a galactic phoenix to tumble us dry, to soothe the static, to leave us scented with hope as we rise.
January 9, 2026 at 11:34 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
robgalpin.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Static

I'm feeling very at home in the #imagist mode these days. I might stay here

#poetry @thebrokenspine.co.uk
midwinter wood the white sun cut again and again by black hatching nothing moving only there— a displacement of snow a squirrel gliding grey over grey alder to alder to widening ice
January 9, 2026 at 12:46 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Static @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2008

#poetry #satire #academia #paris #saintdenis #philosophy #deconstruction #existentialism #debeauvoir #saintpaul #aporia #monochrome #grave
Aporia in the Academy II: Châtelet les Nuls I know now how Saint Paul felt, his former life – Marked by Intellectualism and Legalistic righteousness – Likened to a pile of Ordure, a heap of Crap. Alone among our affect-of-metrosexual-brow-knit cohort, I travel in from the Banlieue, from very Saint Denis, where men piss openly in the street, Missing the drains. I take the train to Châtelet les Halles, Châtelet les Nuls - disfigured cityscape Lurid with the feral stench of Chants de Maldoror. Walk to a café just off Rue de Rivoli, where we convene to hear a Visiting Professor Enjoin us, as future custodians of the Luminary’s oeuvre (Sharp draught of sententious breath through flared nostrils), to Prendre la relève . . . * We start with a far lesser luminary - Obscure proto-deconstructionist who sets the tone: Dry-as-dust, turgid word salad that would have Failed us in our undergraduate essays; the Worst kind of carping quibble, akin to the Scholasticism of distant Left Bank ancestors. None of the aphoristic poetry of Nietzsche None of the conversational to-and-fro of Hume None of the barbed wit of Schopenhauer None of the austere luminosity of Simone Weil . . . I rapidly lose heart, lose interest. Take to photography; read fiction, poetry; Explore hidden corners of Paris on foot. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 *Assume the mantle Lessons there all along for those with Ears to hear Eyes to see Hands to feel Brains to heal . . . Ultimate knowledge shown as sublime Silence of the flesh for Merleau-Ponty; Life’s vital riches beyond the Vain capture of proposition for Wittgenstein. I browse the Bouquiniste stalls: the Used books, vintage postcards, veteran editions of Paris Match. There, a Two-volume, sixties edition of Les Mandarins Commends itself to my sight, my touch. Of the Deux Magots darlings, de Beauvoir is my favourite: Limpid prose, sparse elegance, visionary ambiguity. Roman à clef, though she denies it. Nuanced, often Unflattering depictions of Leftist intellectuals - Self-obsessed, Ineffectual in a world fractured by Stalin, Shoah and The Bomb. Ça ne vieillit pas . . . ** ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 **It doesn’t age/It’ll never age ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2008 Monochrome image of German feminist magazine, Emma, featuring a portrait of Simone de Beauvoir, laid on that very author & philosopher's grave at Montparnasse cemetery, Paris
January 9, 2026 at 7:30 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
andywilliamson.com
Here's something I wrote earlier for #poemsabout #static. Happy new year everyone and thanks as always to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk for the great prompt! #poems #poetry
Static my father did his best adrift with two small boys the photographs her wedding dress in the wardrobe jewellery still in the drawer her presence everywhere yet nowhere dissolving did he open that box to wonder what might have been they had known each other since they were children static replaces her fading signal
January 9, 2026 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
rock-rex.bsky.social
"Atmospherics after Dark".

(from "Trickling Grains of a Life: an unauthorised autobiography")

#poem #poetry #skypoets #blueskypoets #poetsofbluesky #poetrycommunity #writingcommunity#poemsabout #static
In the early hours of morning, with the volume turned down low, if John Peel’s Night Ride wasn’t on I’d search out pirate radio. The needle roved across the globe: Hilversum to Gothenburg, Ulm to Horby, Prague to Droitwich, Belgrade, Rome, and Luxembourg. In the darkness of my bedroom, lit by just the dial’s dim gleam, ghosts of voices from the past and future flickered like a dream. The airwaves seethed with clicks and whistles, hisses, crackles, hums, and fizzles. Then at last I’d hit a station, more by chance than by design; maybe just the news in Swedish — with good fortune, Caroline! Hours I spent with Floyd and Beefheart, Tull, St John, Blood Sweat and Tears; when nostalgia hooks me, though, it’s atmospherics that I hear.
January 9, 2026 at 9:41 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
jenthorne.bsky.social
This is my second offering, written after waking the dog in last night's snowstorm!

#PoemsAbout #Static
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
In the Dark I sit on a bench in a field in the dark. The blizzard fills the black with static. The TV screen of my childhood when I crept downstairs late at night to find you sleeping in the chair. The chair is gone now and the television never ends. The constant scream of information too loud to process. I sit in the quiet drifting silence of the field and remember what it was to turn off, as my feet grow numb and snow settles on my eyelashes.
January 9, 2026 at 6:31 AM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
Remembering, ten years already.
#PoemsAbout #static @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
January 9, 2026 at 8:20 AM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
Winter thoughts

I wish
a star
light in the dark
a silver fish
a leap too far
a fiery spark
dawn in my hands
a kiss love keeps
a cry
a breath
of forest green
where one deer stands
as still as death
then leaps
the sky
a star
I wish.

#poetry
#poetsofbluesky
#skypoets
December 23, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
yeehawpoems.bsky.social
+ *
. +
+ .
.
* +
you are deserving
of love and respect
& scented pinecones

* + .
. .

#poetry
December 19, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
everettpoetry.bsky.social
A Solstice Poem

our breath mingles
creating tiny snowflakes
that rise in the north wind
delicate ice crystals
float with sparks
from the solstice fire

bright little boats
on a celestial sea
rising embers sailing
into the deep blue ocean of stars
sparkling bright
in the first long winters night
December 20, 2025 at 4:19 PM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
The dark hours tick by
and by and if there are stars
they wait like us for dawn.

Endings are only bearable
when they herald a beginning
the cycle heaving light

from the primal mud
of midnight.
Comets streaming homewards.

#poetry
#wintersolstice
December 20, 2025 at 9:10 PM
janedougherty47.bsky.social
Up on the hill
the first olive trees grow
roots drenched in sun.

Roots dig in dry earth
once rich-writhing with wheat
vines—pays de Cocagne

#haiku
#poetry
December 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Jane Dougherty
johnchmura.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Money
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
I will put a reading in the comments.
MATTRESS MONEY He lost her soon as she found the mattress money. It was nothing he did ‘cause he never did nothing, nothing but moonshine. Life in them days was harder than week old biscuits at the Mount Holly Jail. He was a scab and she was the gnawed fingernail picking at it. They was vinegar and oil and funky dregs like cheap Italian dressing. He was a shortleaf pine, and she was a swamp azalea. She left on the solstice but frankly it did not feel shorter or longer than their other crappy days.
December 19, 2025 at 8:17 AM