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  • Roar of The Herd


    By Paul Steffan Jones AKA, 2020-04-03

    Build up herd immunity

    selves as cattle

    livestock locked down

    in slaughterhouse towns

    stay home 

    protect the NHS 

    and save lives

    protect and survive

    taking back control

    the language of our various crises

    the slogans of our desperate times

    the litany of avoidable lunacy

    an opportunity to inform on those

    who veer from the restrictions 

    of the pandemic's regime of new laws 

    with new rules to learn

    the requested change of behaviour

    of travel and purchase patterns

    the twitching net curtains

    betraying an increased interest 

    in the essential comings and goings

    of one’s dear neighbours

    funny how we find our true place

    when we’re all in this together

    and there's no let up from spam

    its faceless operators still having

    to steal a living as thousands die

    may these gangster spamsters

    be eaten alive by their hamsters

    as other life forms colonise

    the polluted human settlements

    and the air is cleansed again

    there’ll never be a Spring

    quite like this one

    until the next time

    the lemming army of hoarders

    is marching over the cliff edge

    of dried teats and no deals

    with their gluttonous supermarket trolleys

    and who’s profiteering from 

    Personal Protection Equipment

    ventilators and medication?

    who actually is in charge

    of the looting the delays

    and the half-heartedness?

    my grandmothers could have done better

    they were not hampered

    by feelings of entitlement

    but knew from real life drama

    what urgency demanded

    where to start in Ravi Shankar’s back catalogue

    now I've got the time?

    pandemonium reigns

    now wash your hands

    there’ll never be a Spring

    quite like this one

    until the next time

    Posted in: Poetry | 2 comments

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    Paul Steffan Jones is a Welsh poet and author.

    Paul Steffan Jones was born in Cardigan in 1961. To date, two collections of his verse have appeared, Lull of the Bull (2010) and The Trigger-Happiness (2012), both of which were published by Starborn Books. His When You Smile You’ll Be a Dog No More won first prize in the 2012 West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition.

    Over 100 of his poems have been accepted for publication by periodicals and anthologies including Poetry Wales, New Welsh Review, The Rialto, The Seventh Quarry, Roundyhouse, Red Poets magazine, Seren Books, Hanging Johnny, The Slab, Eto, Poetry Cornwall and The Western Mail.

    He has recently worked with the artist Chris Rawson-Tetley on a project entitled Gwaelod which responds to the Cantre’r Gwaelod history and other notions of identity and diaspora. He has also collaborated with Glenn Ibbitson and other artists in a work called Room 103 which attempts to consider the relevance and importance of the ideas of George Orwell in a modern world of inequality, surveillance and manipulation of information. He is in the throes of assembling two new collections of verse under the working titles Otherlander and I Thought I Had More Time and regularly performs readings in Northern Pembrokeshire and adjacent areas.

    Paul has had some success in writing song lyrics. His most recent is Ar ôl Yr Angladd/After The Funeral, a response to a request from the rock group Datblygu. A song he co-wrote with the late Charlie Sharp, Bombstar, was released on the AA side of a single by Datblygu, Cân y Mynach Modern/Song of The Modern Monk, on Ankstmusik Records in 2008. He was one half of the underground folk-punk duo, Edward H. Bôring, who achieved a small amount of notoriety and a session that was broadcast by Radio Cymru in 1980. A track he wrote and recorded in 1981, Byd Heb Tywydd (sic)/World Without Weather was recently re-released on Recordiau Neon.

    He used to be a Civil Servant and Trade Union activist. He believes he is descended from Owain ab Afallach, the semi-mythical originator of the Royal House of Gwynedd, Alfred the Great, Charlemagne the Great and William the Conqueror and is pleased to count Owain Glyndwr and St David as distant cousins.