Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
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melissampoulton.bsky.social
Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
@melissampoulton.bsky.social
160 followers 170 following 280 posts
A gothic witchy performer from Worcester. Speaker, Poet and Writer. For more information please contact melissampoulton@gmail.com
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Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
edwardstjames.bsky.social
#Poemsabout #dogtags @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #triolet #chain #tanka #haiku #poem #poetry #writingcommunity
November 21, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
dnwritespoetry.bsky.social
Happy Friday #BlueSkyPoets! #PoemsAbout #DogTags
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@karenpgonzalez.bsky.social
Have a glorious day and weekend! Excited as always to read the amazing artistic work presented here!
November 21, 2025 at 11:57 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
fiftywords.bsky.social
What does it mean to hold onto your name when the world and your mind starts to forget it?This #PoemsAbout #Dogtags looks at memory, identity, and the quiet defiance of holding on. @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
Dog Tag Not the metal but the certainty that your name once fit your body. You carry it because the world keeps trying to rename you: patient, veteran, burden, relapse. A small plate of fact against the drift. You touch it just to feel the sentence of yourself still whole. And you wonder what a name is worth when the mind walks off without it. A tag, a trace, a held fragment of the man you insist was real. Identity, reduced, only just refusing erasure. Until the day Until
November 21, 2025 at 6:39 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
drnaturegirl.debbiemross.co.uk
Good morning #BlueskyPoetry pals @thebrokenspine.co.uk & @alanparrywriter.co.uk facilitating today’s #PoemsAbout #DogTags this fag packet offering is for a friend’s husband, Dave who was killed in Afghanistan in 2012. He was military police not army but she wears his ID.Dogtag jewellery is a thing.
A short poem by Debbie Ross for hashtag poems about hashtag Dog Tags hosted by Broken Spine Arts and entitled Signaculum A signaculum was worn by Roman soldiers in a leather pouch suspended around the neck on their enrolment. This disc, made of lead, bore the name of the recruit and their assigned legion. The text of the 2 stanza poem follows: There was no mouth left to place your tag, the bits of you scattered across a foreign field. Barely any need for a 'body' bag. Your service and your sacrifice I wear around my neck - symbol, memorial, commitment to fight back.
November 21, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
andywilliamson.com
Maybe a bit off-script for #poemsabout #dogtags but it's what emerged - a quick poem on names and seasons of a relationship. Thanks @alanparrywriter.co.uk & @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poems #poetry
Call me by any name spring sunshine graces your smile birds sing in praise of all the saints as we amble through the market holding hands you call me by any name that means love summer heat warms to our conversation young birds fledge, their nests left behind we run for the bus, not fast enough to catch it you call me by names only we can know autumn comes early, rains close around us the birds will leave for warmer lands as smoke from cosy hearths fills the air you call me in a hushed voice winter is hard, a northerly wind brings snow those who are left search for shelter you are wrapped up against the elements you call me to say goodbye
November 21, 2025 at 9:01 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
philippabowe.bsky.social
Morning poets! Struggled a little with the #PoemsAbout prompt this week, #DogTags. Looking at the history of them I discovered soldiers in the American Civil War pinned paper notes to their backs, so went with that. Happy Friday! 💜
Thanks as ever to @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
Shaded grey box with a poem: all that remains we don’t cry when they leave us women with our smarting wombs and unbroken backs we don’t cry when the silence from the front line is louder than sorrowing words we don’t cry when their bodies return paper notes pinned to backs shaking letters telling us who and where we cry once we bury them flooding their graves clutching our relics tight to our ragged hearts
November 21, 2025 at 10:08 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
rotherwrites.bsky.social
It's Friday, it's not Crackerjack, but it is time for another episode of #PoemsAbout. A difficult theme this week with #DogTags, and a natural leaning towards the military. I have no idea if this one works.
Join in the conversation; post, like, comment and repost. 📬
The Ordinariness of Things It’s the bitter relish of conditioning, eyes to sight, range load the duty program horror-fantasy-reality game safety catch off, initiate offensive. Bin the logic, break out the Shock and Awe toolkit, practice, perfect, engage combat autopilot. Now is everything but nothing without the pieces: soldier, sailor, airman and factory worker. This week: stamping widgets knob, lever, switch, key 997, 998, 999, 1000 shift over, head for home town, household unit, me and you. Next week: stamping military IDs regular, volunteer, conscript 997, 998, 999, 1000 battle rhythm, always on blood group, service number, surname. © Glenn Barker November 2025
November 21, 2025 at 9:12 AM
melissampoulton.bsky.social
This week's @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout theme is #Dogtags I picked the humble tattoo as the skins dog tag. Identity wrapped up on skin.

Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk for another amazing theme.

#poetry #poetrycommunity #poetryprompt
November 21, 2025 at 12:06 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
janpsolivagant.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Desire @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#newpoem / #photography:
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2007

#poetrycommunity #Symbolism #ImageAndVerse #ClassicMono #Abstract #shadow
Penumbra Penumbra - Limbered with Aplomb of Ages Unborn. Jacob’s Ladder - Amid a litter of Vapid suburbs - Glimpsed, Countenanced from Forgotten Lookouts. Throughfares, Appetency-spoored, Throng with progeny; Jangle idly with Clamour of galère, Ill-willed coterie. Feral squall of Rout-scrum Multitudes in the Midst of Abounding Wonder. Now - Each Second courts Cataclysm. Now - Each Lust-itch Lifts the Lid on the Abysmal. Ineffable Horror of Glib Lucidity - Held, Noted in a Holloway of Blackened Houses. ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025 After Я провижу гордые тени (“I foresee proud shadows”, 1899), by Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), Russian Symbolist ©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2007 Monochrome image of the shadow of a crane head cast upon the iconic facade of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
paulwritespoems.bsky.social
For #PoemsAbout #Desire this is a piece called ‘A Snake Sheds Its Skin In Eden’.

Will catch up later with others work.

@thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
A Snake Sheds Its Skin In Eden I watch the saliva-slick river of devilbright pomegranate juice snake down the canyons of her face. Forbidden fruit. Her flesh, plucked from the harp of my rib— naked, as my maker is brutal. Soft. Cold. Prickled. Unforbidden fruit, mine to savour. Are you staring too? Are you staring too? Are you? I can’t hear you over lust in your breath and gritchurn of teeth. Admire the pinnacle of creation. I hold the power of the divine, your new God. A snake writhes. Ecdysis in motion. Beasts, ever-changing— succumb to temptation, gorge yourself.
November 14, 2025 at 7:13 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
poetryforce.bsky.social
Today #PoemsAbout #Desire with @brokenspinejournal.bsky.social , @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social . I couldn’t help but post another poem. This one is aimed at giving a little chuckle to the theme as well as delving into the meaning of what desire really is.
Poem about the meaning of desire poised in an off-center unexpected subject!
November 14, 2025 at 3:56 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
poetryforce.bsky.social
Greetings @brokenspinejournal.bsky.social , @alanparrywriter.co.uk @karenpgonzalez.bsky.social for today’s call for #PoemsAbout #desire. Many thanks go out to this #poetrycommunity!
November 14, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
essvari.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

Tendrils of #desire
Snaking its way into her heart
Seeping slowly into pores of her very being
Intersecting with greed
Finding equilibrium with need
This...
This!
Becoming that 'one' that she simply can't get rid.
November 11, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
For #poemsabout #desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Three faces of desire:
Allow Me to see the skull in your passion the teeth in your desire to caress the bones of your delight the sinews of your breath to delve the niches of longing the cleft of floods My Freezing Desire for you clichés my words. We shiver as we touch. Each caress brings striations of ice over skin, blood bubbles to the surface. Our cold air stretches our lungs makes it hard to breathe. My body is alabaster, yours marble. Sex is a fridge turned up highest. Someday we must defrost. We Must Damage Each to feel anything for one another. I take this razor and cut your cheek until it bleeds. You reply with a needles stab in my leg. The blood drips as we continue our intimate conversation. Clearly this is most intense love and desire.
November 14, 2025 at 7:39 AM
melissampoulton.bsky.social
This is my #PoemsAbout poem about #Desire. I had a really bad day on Tuesday. I desired alcohol to get me through the hurt. I know it works. If we met, then I wouldn't be 18 weeks alcohol free today.

@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk

#poetry #poetrycommunity #hardweek #nottoday
November 14, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
janedougherty47.bsky.social
For the #PoemsAbout #Desire prompt from @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk
November 14, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
rburrows.bsky.social
More snails I’m afraid! #PoemsAbout #Desire @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk Happy Friday!
#parasite #poetry
November 14, 2025 at 6:35 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
sueimnw.bsky.social
For this week's #PoemsAbout #Desire with thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk and all those participating.
November 14, 2025 at 7:00 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
andywilliamson.com
A wee contribution to this week's #poemsabout #desire. Short, simple, an old poem re-written, nice to revisit it. Thanks everyone for the wonderful sharing, particularly thinking of @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk
You I ache for you we cannot be together without this ocean in between I desire you the landscape of your body mapping softness to my touch your head resting on my shoulder
November 14, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
rotherwrites.bsky.social
Hello everyone for this week's @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoemsAbout.

Two Remembrance ceremonies and a Remembrance Day poetry group have knocked the harshness out of me. #Desire has taken me back to writing the intangible.

We're on autopilot; keep posting, liking, commenting and reposting. 🔥
Persuasion It’s more a conviction, season’s feather-finger touch, than jolt, a subtle landslide shift, say coastal shingle drift, seeing from other placed eyes a distinct attention shift, a hint, a shoulder touch, word or inflection, that stirs and latches into movement, as of a lock or escapement, releasing energy in a click or glide, a move you recognise only later, the movement having already taken you, your pulse much more animated more definite in hue and feel. Call it desire; I call it persuasion. © Glenn Barker November 2025
November 14, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
deemclachlan.bsky.social
Time for another #FridayPoem
I’m enjoying exploring the #haibun form so here’s another one. This for the #poemsabout prompt #desire . I’m afraid I’m not a brutalist poet so you’ll just have to make do with my soft nature work again!
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetrycommunity #poets #poems
Desires a haibun by Dawn McLachlan Like so many others we went to the park at the first snowfall. I wondered if you'd be warm enough but you hardly seemed to notice how thin your jacket was. I did my best to control my shiver in case you offered it to me. The air was bright and brittle with the sudden arrival of winter. Across the newly covered grass people had already worn fresh tracks that meandered far from the paths we knew. They wound their way around the dazzlingly fresh snowy field turning velvet into lace. "Desire lines," you said. We sat on the bench watching people ignore the common ways and instead follow their own routes. We watched until the brown earth showed through the trampled snow and the cold seeped into our bones. In landscape smoothed white With all our paths now hidden We follow our desires
November 14, 2025 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
badvibrations62.bsky.social
#PoemsAbout #Desire - back after a short break, with a short poem. Thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk at @thebrokenspine.co.uk for this week's prompt.

#poems #poetry #poetrycommunity

www.davekurley.net
Screenshot of my poem on Apple Notes - the desktop background is of some idyllic scene in the Californian countryside, redwood trees flanking the valley, a river cutting between, reflecting a pale sky.
November 14, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
bethosmond.bsky.social
Good morning #poemsabout crew, here’s a poem about someone wanting something for the #desire prompt @alanparrywriter.co.uk
A poem for the today programme
November 14, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
daveashleypoet.bsky.social
#LockedDoors #PoemsAbout #poem #RhymeRoyal #MentalHealth
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
November 7, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Melissa M Poulton (she/they)
thebrokenspine.co.uk
Tomorrow: #PoemsAbout #Desire. Not romance—risk. What can’t you name without trembling? Don’t post before Friday. Tag your post. Use Alt Text. Sign up for Saturday inbox prompts: shorturl.at/0Xm7A
A halved papaya lies open on a dark, wet surface. Its glistening red interior, filled with pomegranate seeds and dripping juice, carries a sensual, sexually suggestive tone. Scattered berries surround it. The Broken Spine logo, shaped like a black fountain pen nib, appears top left. "@thebrokenspine.co.uk" is written top right in white. At the bottom right, bold white text reads: "Read Repost Reply #POEMSABOUT #DESIRE".
November 13, 2025 at 11:34 AM