Author: Pete Aki'i

Criticise and hate me if you like;I know I don’t make life easy,well, I was born on a fence spike.that hurt right through me,but at least kept me upright. Tearing down fences started as a gamethen became habit. I learned from criticismand subsequent shame thatthe railings were there for reasons I was told I needed […]

UNLIVED LIFE They buried him gently. No funeral bells.No black clothed mourners.No final prayer spoken over his cold earth.Just a thousand tiny compromises,laid one upon anotherlike leaves that fall from autumn trees. They buried the child who danced when no music played.They buried the dreamer who followed clouds to see where they were drifting. They […]

Verse 1 I remember whispering inside, “Enough. I’m done.” I’d tasted love’s bright dawn and its blacked-out sun. I stood so sure of the choice I’d locked away, yet silence pinned my tongue. I could not say. . That morning, keys in hand, I paused mid-stride, turned at the door to take one last look […]

One year ago, we queued to vote, ballots to cast into dreams and hope. We chose the red to end the blue, Believed in lies dressed up as new. But now the mask slips off with speed: The rat gnaws, its prey bleeds. . The Starmer state so sharp and cold Doles out hunger, while […]

The world can break anyone. Working quietly at first, like fog through stone, then louder, until the fault lines show, in places even we don’t know. It snaps the string that’s tuned too tight, casts shadows of angst beneath its light, scuffs your name with wind and sand until you barely understand what held you […]

Morning does not ask permission. It turns its pages, sharp as frost, and writes our names in ink that dries too fast. Bills pester. Doors expect opening. Time keeps its boot on the stair. . Inside, something is ripped a single page torn from your history. Your mind fraying like rope being dragged over a […]

. Here I am, approaching seventy-five, and now I re-define myself: I am a bridge.  A quiet span between what was and what’s still becoming. I was born in one Britain, now I’m parked in its digital offspring. Coal smoke, milk floats, tin baths, wages folded brown and exact on Fridays, the mangle’s iron mouth […]

Forget the dream of your ‘five-year plan’, Your PowerPoint to glory’s gate; Just do the thing that’s in your hand, And do it well coz the rest can wait. . Don’t chase down joy as if it’s a fox, You’ll scare it deep into its lair Stay busy, kind, even unorthodox, And let delight hold […]

I was told of a fellow named *Russell one day, who apparently died (well sort of) in May, then returned from a coma of thirty-nine nights to declare that all matter is… crystallised lights? . Now I’m no philosopher, truthfully, friend, I’m the sort who forgets how a sentence should end! So imagine my panic […]