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@vientoverde.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 1:05 PM

A not-so-long-ago quarrel and the fact that @thebrokenspine.co.uk is looking for #PoemsAbout #Rot made me write an experimental #haibun. Happy Friday! Cheers!

Rot in Hell

Through the glassiness of suburban stars, I stretch out my hand to tuck them in. With each one, the root of red bleeds as if the devil's a painter. I splay my fingers like paintbrush bristles and sway them across the horizon. They tickle the gates. Suddenly, I become the black ink of the galactic canvas amid the last traces of fiery red. At once, I can hear the shouts of my family and the screams of the doomed.

bathroom mirror —
mouthing the insult
I left unsaid

@mm-brown.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 12:54 PM

#FloweringFriday #PoemsAbout #Rot #Haiku

Corpse Flower

Flowering Friday
Meet our world's largest flower
Smells like rotten flesh

@mwplovesmusic.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 12:52 PM

#poemsabout #rot @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #domesticviolenceawarenessmonth #poetry

love bomber
doesn’t become
narcissistic abuser
quickly,
their rot festers
in your ears,
inside your bones,
recorded on tape,
easy to play over and over,
to remind you of your fate;

it’s so subtle
you don’t realize
your world is through
their eyes,
your dreams are their
dreams,
your faults are the
CHASM for all things;

one day your voice
is theirs
you play by the rules
they set
and you don’t even
remember why

@brendafromia.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 12:16 PM

#poemsabout #rot My first attempt at #cascade #poetry

@merrildsmith.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 12:00 PM

Good morning! Happy Friday! Another tough one for me. #PoemsAbout #Rot
As always, thanks to @alanparrywriter.co.uk and @thebrokenspine.co.uk I'll be back later to read and comment on others!

Poem:

Composting
Fools seek fools’ gold,
for a glimpse of gain—

destroy the seas
forgo the rain—

they rot from within
belching bellies, dissolving spines,

upped on T,
mean with greed.

Can protests, people, press
break down the morass--

what might we grow
after decomposition, in new soil?

@fiftywords.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 10:55 AM

This #PoemsAbout #Rot is for any football fans disgusted by wha been goin on at the Etihad. Thanks as ever to @thebrokenspine.co.uk

Rot Rain into grass, crowd into club, street into stand,
father into son.
The roots went deep. They drew on place, memory,
rivalry, the stubborn hope
of another Saturday.
Then came the harvesters.
The shirt.
The ground.
The kick-off.
The television rights.
Sham contracts worked into the earth, accounts tattened, money buried, dug up,
called something else. Season after season the trophies came, bright fruit
from poisoned ground. Now the roots are shallow,
but the rot is deep.
Again.
Again. Until the soil
gave up its goodness.
What remained
was fed with money.
Artificial light.
Artificial heat.
Artificial growth.
And City rejoiced in barren soil. brands. assets.
data. And where the game once grew from the ground, something rank has taken hold, blue, glossy,
rampant,
feeding on what is left.

@metaphorqu.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 10:53 AM

@thebrokenspine.co.uk
#PoemsAbout #Rot

In this world, a

Wasp

has a twofold
inclination

To transmute all the rotten she acknowledges

wherever she might land

And to sting without dying

@jenthorne.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 9:38 AM

I hope everyone is having a good Friday. I am having a busy one, so am going to post this and run! I will leave reading everyone else's until tonight when I can hopefully relax 😌

#PoemsAbout
#Rot
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
#Poetry

Slow Death

My mother's garden once held itself together
the way a thought survives a sleepless night,
each bed and border aligned
to some private geometry of care.

Now rot works through it
like a forgotten language returning
to the mouth.

Apples soften where they land.
Pears remain aloft, unchosen,
moons refusing their eclipse.

The shed folds inward by degrees,
its boards separating from one another
old friends who have exhausted
every story.
Rain collects in the bench.
The wood drinks and drinks,
remembering old thirsts.
The fence gives up its straight lines.
One panel lies down in the nettles,
gravity has won the argument.

Nothing is cleared.
Leaves gather,
brown receipts from a season
that no longer keeps records.

I walk there and feel
time changing shape.
Not passing, but thickening.

Everything she touched
continues the cycle without her.

The trees stand crowded with
their unfinished offerings,
and death hangs on the branches:
a bruised apple
holding one square of light.

@ianbrownlie.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 9:18 AM

Two for the price of one today on rotten drama masks
#PoemsAbout #Rot #Poetry #Haiku #Limerick

rot haiku

we're decomposing
revealed now by time-lapsed years
knowledge at the death

Rot Limerick

The one thing ‘Filcher’ Finch had forgotten
Is old houses are sometimes quite rotten
Once the floorboards gave way
He was cuffed where he lay
And imprisoned for all gains ill-gotten

@metaphorqu.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 9:17 AM

He needs to have a look at #PoemsAbout from @thebrokenspine.co.uk every Friday on this site for inspiration. Nb reading poetry doesn't usually take as much sustained concentration as reading a novel .....Unless it's Paradise Lost or something..

@anna-orridge.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 8:57 AM

Red patches advance
on wet, green leaves plastering
our sullen pavements.
The dream islands of childhood,
feeding on fantasy's rot.

#PoemsAbout #Tanka

@patriciajvs.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 8:50 AM

A Friday offering for #PoemsAbout #Rot. Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk for the prompt. I'm travelling a little further North for a weekend with friends and beach walks so will come back later to read everyone's contributions.
This one was inspired by Steve Harley and life!

Blue eyes blues eyes,
Ice cold bright,
Lying and lying again
Cracked by the mirror rot,
Desilvered by fraud
Layer upon layer
A mist of deceit,
The steel that would not rot,

This rebel hit a floor of
Dogged dust and spiralling hair,
Ephemeral in the dusk light
Stifling the lies and life,
Gathered along ages
Tumbleweed in empty rooms,
Warm breezes whispering
Through cracks and crevasses
Nurturing spores of decay.

@drvmiranda.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 8:34 AM

I will attempt once more for an answer on this issue regarding the book "27" and the cover produced by using generative #AI.
@alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk #PoetryCommunity #Poetry #PoetsOfBluesky #PoemsAbout #Rot

@janedougherty47.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 8:29 AM

A spontaneous one, written just now in anger for #poemsabout #rot for @thebrokenspine.co.uk
#poetsofbluesky

@deemclachlan.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 8:12 AM

A #fridaypoem for @thebrokenspine.co.uk #poemsabout #rot

#poetrycommunity #poets #poetry #poetsofbluesky

Eve
By Dawn Mclachlan

"What did she expect?"
when she stepped into a world fresh and newly green with arms open wide
and the fairness of the morning upon her upturned face?

"What was she thinking?"
that her steps would be as level as those that went before
and that the world's light and shade could be shared
without consequence or expectations?

"What was she wearing?"
Did she assume
that her shape was her's to command and it would never matter what she wore
and that the apple wasn't rotten at the core?

@andywilliamson.com Oct 2, 2026, 8:06 AM

Good morning lovely #poets, sharing something new for #PoemsAbout #Rot this week. 'Glas' can mean grey (Gaelic), green (Irish, sometimes Gaelic), blue (Welsh, Breton) or even paler/silvery shades! Colour as a social construct!

Glas

To learn the words
for colours,
we must unsee.
Nothing is fixed,
nothing finite.

Changes come
with the light,
the season,
your mood,
my presence.
Or unpresence.

On your table
are the flowers,
he left.
Left
too long.
Bleeding to
grey.

@bernp.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 7:29 AM

My thanks again to our hosts @thebrokenspine.co.uk for this week hosting #PoemsAbout #Rot here's one from its inspired by an extraordinary Shropshire landscape love to see what other poets do with the theme

Whixall Woman

On finding her below
The sphagnum moss
He brought her up
From the ancient deep
He carried her from her mortal bed.
To his cottage in the wood,
lit a fire to warm and dry her.
And asked her, if she could
Love a simple country lad,
Who longed to have a wife.
She said she already loved him,
But up here she couldn’t live his life.
So, he took her by the hand,
Her beauty still in tact,
No telltale sign of decay
But neither was there time
Now to dally and delay.
As he led her back down into the fen
Where he and his beloved
Could forego this world of men.
© Bernard Pearson

@francesca-laura.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 7:03 AM

I didn't get very far with drafting a poem for #PoemsAbout #Rot this week, so here's the start of something that I might finish at some point...

The skeletons bang on the closet doors, flesh, long since having rotted away,

@davidbirch.bsky.social Oct 2, 2026, 6:25 AM

Thank you @alanparrywriter.co.uk @thebrokenspine.co.uk for today's #PoemsAbout prompt #Rot. Here are some unfiltered reflections on the state of our local river. Looking forward to reading other offerings from the #PoetryCommunity later