Mervyn "Deep Cobra" Seivwright
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mervynspoet.bsky.social
Mervyn "Deep Cobra" Seivwright
@mervynspoet.bsky.social
210 followers 170 following 200 posts
Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness & #poetry craft for humane growth. 2021/2023 Pushcart Nom with #poems in 80 Journals in 13 countries & a new collection, Stick, Hook, & a Pile of Yarn. https://www.clippings.me/users/mervynseivwright
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mervynspoet.bsky.social
I am thankful to the editors of Loud Coffee Press for publishing this poem, “If We Remember.”

Link: (Page 8)
www.loudcoffeepress.com/lcp-issue-20

#loudcoffeepress #brokensleepbooks #spaldingmfa #amwriting #poetrylife #poetry #poet #StickHookandaPileofYarn
If We Remember In a South London elderly home, the residents had finished their midday meal, now marionettes with strings unstressed, sunken into each puffed red lazy chair around the room. Our uncle was wide-eyed, shifting in his ninety-seventh loop around the sun. His now and memories are dancing, fleeting memories selfish for attention in his mind. Then, I shifted time selfishly, the marionettes latched me to a summer between college years, working with my mum, watching her with seasoned residents, a lead bee swiftly hopping within a hive, bringing care, communicating, coaxing, carrying those with frail tree branches, frames waving in the wind. The sound of the domino box ting on the table, jolted me back with our uncle, his eyes shining as I swirled the domino cards, as we Jamaicans called them. Touching the dominoes, uncle was tethered to this instant, seventies Abba songs filling the room from the television blending with domino card clacks, the staccato coughs and moans from those in their time-locked slumber around us, great-uncle, niece, great-nephew gathered around a serving table, being present, taking videos to slow down the string of time racing through fingers, holding on to the moment he said domino.
June 15, 2025 at 9:56 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Hi #BlueSky!
Sharing a #poem just #published about my way to move forward in this social #climate. “In the kaleidoscope of autumn leaves.”

thebrokenspine.co.uk/product/sele...

#thebrokenspine #brokensleepbooks #spaldingmfa #amwriting #poetrylife #poetry #poet #StickHookandaPileofYarn
In the kaleidoscope of autumn leaves Mervyn Seivwright I look for light, the harmonizing glow, the fiery feeling, yet the leaves flash to brittle browning more hastily this year. I wish to greet each set of eyes locked with my energy this day, the gift of breath seems an embrace enough with icons falling as age-old oak trees once on fertile, now gritty frail ground. I need to be the lighthouse, the fog thicker, the rocks sharper, the sea, an unrestricted unrest. I seek to be a space, listening, tender bliss enough for that moment, cheerfulness harvests a smile in return and even when it’s too cold to snow joyful tears can still warm cheeks to chin. If I could crack the egg layers of anxiety we hyper sow from the ones and zeroes slinging our eyes across screen projecting successive voices in an alley cat yard peeling skin from each end of the compass, I could be the sun, a torch for the heart of shared accepted teddy bear hugs, forest green moss breathing life in lungs, be the instant when hope encompasses us. I would know when the shadows compress with darkening cracks, a pinhole of acute light would find a way.
March 14, 2025 at 1:23 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising #bluesky
This is a #poem #published from a future collection to share.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #BlueskyPoets
#poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets #poetlife
Sunrising From the Mind - XVII I bring the shadows to the river, wider from spring showers, carving the banks deeper. The moss has painted itself here. The path of the valley, thinner to tread while my shadow plays bounce and blend in breaks betwixt broken trunks, stone stairs, tall sliding stones. My thoughts vanish, feeling the river’s trickle and white bubble-womps. My skin is sensitive to the air with quilted comfort. Each thrush and blackbird are tweaking solos. It is here I ground my feet in the soaked soil and fuse.
February 8, 2025 at 10:38 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Hello #bluesky
Sharing a new #poem previously published by Poetry.Onl in 2022.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #BlueskyPoets
#poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets #poetlife
Manifest Predestinate Man Society inculcates us to chase our goals never surrender mining through mountains what makes a man a shepherd the long warmth of arms—embracing what makes a man a shepherd the long crooked stick—swinging an acorn crushed in a man’s hands will breed no generations acreages of land claimed when it is tilled by one man’s order possessing a populace grains of DNA in a rat’s jolting-labyrinth disloyal blood grated irrigating the grime is a required tribute infinite seeds slip through fingers of small town folks adolescent breathless bones the mortar of tenement tower rubble a restraining cage of souls human festering fertilization stench does not stain clinical high-rise-arched palaces if vocal cords can be severed unable to vibrate erupt trade winds will sputter voices hiss
February 1, 2025 at 12:24 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
‪Hello #bluesky
It has been a while. #Life is about shifts. I am sharing a #poem about #memories.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #BlueskyPoets
#poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets #poetlife
Duality in Mountain Memory When my Granddad passed I found out we were mountain people in Jamaica, my mum scaled trees on dirt paths, no safe road cliff barriers except for the flowers, colors of warning connecting to this German village I have found. When my Granddad passed, I remember the dominoes clanging on tables in a village, a decade past kerosene lights in the present, where chickens freely roam unaware of hot water, and their last cluck. I found out we were mountain people as the one I live on, both share a fusion of forest flayed between fields of tall grass, walking miles winding trails for water in and out of the trees. My mum scaling trees reaping sweet starfruits, mangoes, plum, papaya as a spider, then called Tomboy, she had fierce courage, hearkening the stories she told me, endeavors gapped amid store market strolls. On dirt paths, I wondered of my mum in the fields, working before school days, dancing in puddled potholes, shifting for honking horns of cars around corners. I wander the cobblestones, considering the history in my village, far across the Atlantic Sea. The daffodils, tulips, buttercups brightly lead me into a forest shaken, stirred by nature’s twisting force pulling strings of harmony, snow, wind, thunder, and lightning’s chaos in our eyes, until nature’s painting has dried. Connection finds me coupled with my mum’s youth, the hills I am scaling, lost in Hansel and Gretel hinterland country, syncopated scents of fruits and flowers, hidden with green moss fluorescent on the rockface, a chorus of finches claim mornings, a thread stringing this homeland in me.
January 30, 2025 at 9:15 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Sharing a winter #poem in the Ohio Valley.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #BlueskyPoets
#poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets
Winter’s Whispering Winter's stillness brings whispering winds without leaves as sails whistling. Winter whispers quicken movements of field mice not cuddled from cooling earth wandering for leftover grain. Winter whispers ice forming as we sleep snuggled in heat warming blankets, hot water bottles wishing not to wake for work. We whisper in our morning bed wrestling eyes while listening to humming whispers of the refrigerator, central heater’s moans and our breaths.
December 14, 2024 at 2:12 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Hello #BlueSky!
Places that make you want to write #poetry.

#poetlife #amwriting #croatia
A bay of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia on a sunny day.
December 14, 2024 at 1:56 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Blessings #Bluesky.
I am sharing a feature #poem published by #AGNI, from my collection, Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn. Part of my #poetry journal.

#brokensleepbooks #poetrycommunity #amwriting
#stickhookandapileofyarn
Manhood's Gambit We do not choose the parents who birthed us. My father asked me if I wanted to stay in England. His voice echoed between mountains with great canyons, fading, remembering his face from two pictures, hardly, remembering the Cadbury Chocolate Roses, the aftertaste. No loving calls, nor weekly, monthly visits recalled ever. No proclivity for me to be rooted to his tree or spring buds. My stepfather was presence, postured to parent us with anger instead of teaching math, football, manhood. Feeling empty for a patriarch-guide, providing stories of life. My mummy scraping for our emotional needs; his loving touch missing, given to glasses of stiff drink. My adolescence welcomed advisement from a man, arms wide, my friend’s father, pseudo-father role teaching me the mechanics of cars, life, to touch a woman with respect, kind voice, a smile, willing to laugh with sincere heart. I played the three-shell game, guessing after a green pea, finding stale affinity in these fathers, strangers, to explain my hairs growing, leaving reeking odors when not cared for—my teenage feelings, my unraveling when seized on by riotous peers, those tempting serpents that a father or real male mentor could have deflected. QR code to my book The cover to my book Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn with a Chameleon on cover.
December 9, 2024 at 4:10 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Blessings #Bluesky, #poet s #poetrycommunity. My blessings rain upon you all.
#nomadpoet #amwriting
Waterfall in Oiriase Gorge, Japan falling on a large rock with autumn leaves covering the ground.
December 8, 2024 at 1:37 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising #Bluesky. Seek out your purpose, the road of your belief, for you, not as a lamb blindly following. Know the details as the stuff beneath the sand waiting to resurface. Seek life-- before the sand runs out.

#poet #amwriting #nomadpoet #poetrycommunity
Poet on top of Mount Pilatus, Lucerne, Switzerland with snow covered Switz Alps in the background.
December 6, 2024 at 6:34 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Sharing a #poem written at a Sugar Plantation outside New Orleans.

#poem #poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #poetsonbluesky #blacksky #poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets #BlueskyPoets
Laura’s Wind Off that Mississippi River Between the cypress And banana trees Around cayenne And banana pepper plants. Next to the dirty green round tad poles bowls And egg plants By a missing burnt kitchen space And food storage. Under the big house In canary yellow Frame outline In sky blue Under the big house In creole diction Lays story in pictures And fragments broken. Over a cellar of wine And building tools Beyond the field Past the manor’s garden Before the crops Long tall strands Of sugarcane crops Extending beyond my sight. I hear them whispering In the silent place Between each of the wind's breaths. Ancestors from these wooden shacks Prison cell depths size shacks Where families Would curl stacked As puzzle pieces When allowed to rest. Southern slaves With tattoo brands Like cattle Infused DNA beneath the skin Conditioned to serve. Most bared the sun To blow the horn of blues Upon their backs To farm the crops Where wealth was made Because they were taught to serve Breed to serve Raised to serve Harvested to serve. They forgot to cry Cry for freedom Never taught What freedom gave Only knowing the condition Of where their puzzle piece Was born. Though seasons of them have passed I can feel a breeze Deep in my skin hairs bubbled up I saw the expression In my young son's face. They are watching While in their presence In the plantation By Laura's name.
December 5, 2024 at 6:58 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
What can be done in 14 lines? An American sonnet #poem from my collection about my youth.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #poetrycommunity #SpaldingMFA #amwriting #Skypoets #BlueskyPoets
From Athens to Tellico, Tennessee In the summer of my late teens my best friend’s father fathered me on things I thought men should do. Away in Athens, nested amidst dogwood trees, fields with lavender wildflowers, blended in green tinted meadows in Tennessee. I learned to listen to crickets build networks where telephones may not ring often. A neighbor called my best friend’s father’s father and asked if he had hired help. Just my Korean grandson and his black best friend. My best friend’s father spoke about girls, intimacy while driving on Tellico mountain roads, as each car passed he pushed my head down, shrouded my skin from folks with hatred for brown.
December 4, 2024 at 3:50 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
I love to escape to the water, whether river, lake, or sea. The #poetry of it is sound, sight, smell, and movement. Enough sensory details a #poem should be written with soft imagination touch.

#bluesky #amwriting #sailing #poetrycommunity
Lake Luzerne, Switzerland, taken from a boat a couple of hours before sunset with connecting scattered clouds. There is a blue and white sailboat ⛵️ in the distance.
December 3, 2024 at 10:14 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Blessings sharing a #poem from my collection, "Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn."
#poetry #blacksky
#bluesky #stickhookandapileofyarn #poetrycommunity

www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page...
Raggedy Rusted Fifteen-Year Old Red Car How many young black men should be on their knees each night? Outside our window in a suburban neighborhood, a sea of middle to upper class fenced homes see a red car. Two o’clock in the morning, a raggedy rusted fifteen-year old car is revving in our neighborhood with four black men waking good white folks. This neighborhood, with only two black families. How many young black men should be on their knees each night? One raggedy rusted fifteen-year old red car with four black men; red and blue lights, a single siren rings from three saving sheriff department cars, surrounding them, demanding the four black men out of the car with hands interlocked behind their head and dropping to their knees. Raggedy Rusted Fifteen-Year Old Red Car How many young black men should be on their knees each night? Late night concert ends during rare Floridian cold night finds us stopping in an upscale suburban neighborhood to warm up this raggedy rusted fifteen-year old red car. Just traveling home, delayed by red and blue lights, single siren ring from three surrounding police cars. Would I ever get home this night? Flashlights bright enough to blur faces, voices demanding us out the raggedy rusted fifteen-year old red car with arms raised, palms showing, fingers interlocked, screaming BOY in our ears, pushing us hard to knees, scraping pants to drips of blood, smelling road oil, grit in my mouth. My praying position seeking deliverance
December 3, 2024 at 1:14 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising.
I wondered about those who erected the stones of #Stonehenge and what they wrote. Did they have #poetry? How was a #poem written? With drawings? Between Summer and Winter #Solstice, what Stonehenge #poems would you write?
Picture of Stonehenge from the Healing stone, clear with spotted clouds.
December 1, 2024 at 9:19 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Here is Mutsu's northern coast, Japan. Here, I would meditate, write #poem s and #haiku while thinking of those that wrote on these shores before me. You can smell the fish here, a humble place of simplicity, while the clouds dance swaying as orchestra playing opus in the wind.
#amwriting #bluesky
A picture with low clouds in a grey haze and a rock tiny island full of birds on the northern coast of Mutsu, North Japan
November 30, 2024 at 11:22 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising. Today's #poem is about simplicity. The instants when we see #poetry in life.

#poetrycommunity
There are instants when photos are clicked with my eyes. Blended waning crescent moon over lilac-shaded dawn, hovering oaks and pine clusters around my village. I am still. Magpies perch on a wall-edge, a couple screeching Morse code—their contrasting black and white coats, blue streaks on wings against the millennium-aged red brick. Still. The magpies flutter fleeting from the steady rings of the church bells a half-hour after seven sings, waking villagers not aroused by magpie chorus morning calls beyond the darkness of their window rolladens.
November 30, 2024 at 10:46 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Blessings, here is a #poem, for the #poetrycommunity and any others on #bluesky to feel.

#poetry
Tonight I cried I cried for the children I cried for the children that never thought they could cry I cried for the children that made their heart hardened and dry I cried for the children that fired their first gun I cried for the children that ran their first drugs I cried for the children that had no where to run I cried for the children that cried internally I cried for the children that must front for others to see I cried for the children that felt cold from shot that had them to bleed I cried for the children who lost their way home I cried for the children who endlessly roam I cried for the children who innocent was sacrificed for money I cried for the children that were violated since infancy I cried for the children that pain flow like a waterfall I cried for the children that hide that pain behind wall I cried for the children Children that are still children behind the eyes of decades past Children that will never cry So my tears will last
November 28, 2024 at 6:45 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
When I need the oxygen of life to feed me with #poetry, I come here, by the river to write my #poems.

##poetrycommunity
A trail next the river in a valley in West Germany.
November 26, 2024 at 2:17 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Hello all, I am just on here sharing what I love, a #poem about the coast of #England where I once wandered in my youth.

#poet #poetry #poetsofbluesky #blacksky #poetrycommunity
#SpaldingMFA #amwriting #BlueskyPoets
By the North Sea Felixstowe back then, was not as quiet as this morning, when I was a boy. The sun perching over, stretching arms, glazing a path across the North Sea, greyed silhouettes of transport ships dancing along the horizon, seagulls are surfing tunnelled air waves in the sky-wind’s crests. There were more stones across the beach shores in the seventies, hills of overflowing smooth sanded stones before ball pits in indoor kid’s fun centres, that we would jump in. The personal beach sheds against the coastal walkway have rainbow colours and are locked until the warmer seasons come. One in bright teal, titled “Albert, by the sea,” next to the lavender titled “Nan and Granddad’s Place.” I came to here too early. I can smell the six overlapping fish and chip shops, their greasy battered sausages, large codfish, salt and vinegar drenched chips yearning my drips of saliva from taste buds, while the doors are closed. It’s after Boxing Day and these business owners maybe still in a drunken piss and tummies full of family ale and dessert afters from the days before. I see the illusion of myself in the entertainment parlour, ears engorged from clashing beeps and popping music from the maze of silly penny and shilling games before video games were thought of, lasting hours lost in Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. Waves pounding against the rocks, not sand, jolts emotions, surfaces memories, brings heartbeats to deep breaths. I can see the spirit of my mum at the wooden shed vendor selling fifty pence shellfish cups, my mum slurping them, smiling her silenced life-frowns away.
November 25, 2024 at 4:59 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising!
A #haiku from my time on Lake Towada in North Japan.

Feeling their spirit
Tree breath entangle my thoughts
Ancestors soak me

#poem #poetry #poetrycommunity
A lake edge bonsai tree on Lake Towanda Japan with mountain background.
November 25, 2024 at 6:28 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Just a #poem to share. #bluesky has been a blessing so far, meeting some amazing folks.

#poetry #blacksky #poetsofbluesky
In the Neues Museum I feel bare, a clinical space with dim lights, beige walls rivaling a hospital, yet I am not alone, not alluding to the faces of transients wandering mummies with headphones—I need no headphones to hear, to feel the Kemet energy here, watching my wife’s eyeliner smear, tearful, overwhelmed by the voices attached to the artifacts around us, the statues in glass cubes around us, stolen from depths of sandy caverns, silhouettes shifting in shadows of dark nights on ships. I snatch my son, telling him not to touch the sarcophagus maze, we cannot read the hieroglyphics engraved, a skin on each surface, the desires of the dead not wishing to be dragged from the dredges of darkness, their wishes to reconnect to the land of their ancestors, they cannot speak through the sandy portals left behind while imprisoned in this hinterland of green pine tree mountains and crooked rivers—moons away. Nefertiti is lonely. She is centered in a cylinder room, covered by a chaos of guards protecting clear borders from image snatchers, her one eye is piercing, a poking sight, her flowing energy spoke to us across Germany, a serene scream tremoring under skin hairs, we cannot hide from it, before her I feel my intestines pulled with friction in directions, dripping pus, a weighted gray-skin-cloth coat of clouded fog, enclosing water skins squeezing in, tiring my limbs, my eyes. I run, in my head, their voices here are faces leading the winds following me, until I can close the door behind.
November 24, 2024 at 12:51 PM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
Grand Rising!
If a #poem started in this #photo.
Lake Towanda in North Japan from a lake boat with light piercing through the clouds.
November 24, 2024 at 10:31 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
While living in Japan, Oirase Gorge was my favorite place to write, especially Haiku.

Eyes are truly blind
Truth found in naked spirits
Sight is found in death

from my book Kaleidoscope Paintbrush
shorturl.at/0J9YY

#poetry #poem #haiku
Autumn in Japan, Oirase Gorge River, white river crests along green moss-covered rock and fallen autumn leaves.
November 23, 2024 at 9:55 AM
mervynspoet.bsky.social
After a discussion, I wanted to share this #poem. #Poetry of spiritual journey floats us through a time of need.
Sunrising from the Mind - XVII I bring the shadows to the river, wider from spring showers, carving the banks deeper. The moss has painted itself here. The path of the valley, thinner to tread while my shadow plays bounce and blend in breaks betwixt broken trunks, stone stairs, tall sliding stones. My thoughts vanish, feeling the river’s trickle and white bubble-womps. My skin is sensitive to the air with quilted comfort. Each thrush and blackbird are tweaking solos. It is here I ground my feet in the soaked soil and fuse.
November 22, 2024 at 3:14 PM