An #Otwituary for actor #EveMarieSaint

The house lights go up; just me
at movie’s end…and a woman
on her own, three rows back,
svelte and luminous, hair like
threads of platinum. She lights
a cigarette, says Great movie,
and time stands still, and so do I.

An #Otwituary for film & tv composer #GeorgeFenton

Wait, I know this one; composed,
scored, played, absorbed, proof
that we hear with square-eyes, that
we remember the lives I have seen
when we can whistle their theme.
Shoestring. Sorry We Missed You.

An #Otwituary for disgraced politician and novelist #JeffreyArcher

The church clock stands
at ten to three; words are
priceless in the mouths
of chiselers and shysters.
The benches groan with
fabulists, and the book
writes the man. Nothing
of this, of course, is true.

An #Otwituary for singer #LenaMartell

Yesterday’s gone; the ballrooms fall
to the wrecking balls of talent show
and karaoke. A woman takes the mic
and rakes among the ruins of a heart,
pokes at the embers of a gospel tune,
does every day what she has to do.

An #Otwituary for #EstherRantzen

Turn down the volume on the froth;
the talking dogs, phallic vegetables,
odd odes and high street vox pops.
Can you hear it? A child, repeating
to themselves a telephone number
given out by a woman on TV with
funny teeth, promising to answer.

An #Otwituary for Scottish crime novelist #PeterMay

The isles are full of bodies,
weighted down in dark lochans
or buried under lush machair.
The heart is a blackhouse, and
there is blood to be written of.

An #Otwituary for Scottish crime novelist #PeterMay

The isles are full of bodies,
weighted down in dark lochans
or buried under lush machair.
The heart is a blackhouse, and
there is blood to be written of.

An #Otwituary for actor #StephanieCole

I speak as I find, and when I speak,
I find the voice of the woman inside;
matron and matriarch, hard-faced
yet tender-eyed, perfecting a look
that could sharpen a bread knife.

An #Otwituary for cultural commentator #BonnieGreer

How to live without portfolio:
ask more questions, provide
fewer answers; disagree
agreeably; offer your truth
without assuming it to be
universal; counter hate with
reason; take it easy, but take it.

An #Otwituary for short-lived 60s singer #CraigDouglas

Curtain up on another cabaret,
last chance for your counterfeit
nostalgia - hey, remember this? -
This is the sound of long-soured
milk, memories of you at sixteen,
a time I was too young to know.

An #Otwituary for feminist leader #GloriaSteinem

Revolution first stirs in the head,
then the hearth, boardroom, bed,
even the womb. The just fight
rallies just fighters to the call,
making activists out of us all,
not for a cause, but for a right.