Tag: poetry

Brexit – Confusion – the poem.

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Britain looks back to its former glory

Revising history and dreams of epochs new

Excluding friends and mistaking foes

Xenophobes moaning about empty nursing stations

Isolated, insular and dreaming still of money power

Trading, trashing, cashing in and cashing out.

 

Brave New Britain, breaks with bureaucrats

Racing outward and razing the bonds of Brussels

Escaping chains and euro notes and promises

eXiting the strangling weight of unknown faces

Illuminating the new world with influential freedom

Transforming trade for all our world

 

Blind and bothered, we are ashamed,

reviewing backward brave or silly votes

Entreating others to show the way

eXpecting leaders to know what’s what

Intelligence absent across the plot!

Tell us, pray,  when? where? and what?

I

 

 

 

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Poetry – harbinger of joy or tears.

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Looking back at some of my  poems, none I may add, acclaimed by anyone, I am surprised at the ups and downs reflected there.

There are many who find poetry a balm and sometimes a boost and even a spark in the darkest of places. This piece tries to identify with the darkest places, unlike some poems it offers no solace, just a recognition how bad things can be. There is ambivalence about the subjective ‘us’ victim or persecutor or even observer content to sit on our hands

 –    ‘There’s black in every heart‘      is one of those where I try to share the deep hopelessness and sadness that can prevail  in the most difficult times and moods. The reason I wrote the poem is still vivid in my mind, I have since been overtaken by happy and glorious times .  But the goings on in Myanmar remind me of the darkness we can all feel. I pray that those who suffer will be delivered from their earthly hell.  Please can we all help – in any way at all.

 

 

  There’s black in every heart, it spins like the sun

  There lurks the antimatter to our joy.

  It spins and pulls the light away

Sending hurtful splinters

Anywhere, even at the things we love,

things so fragile.  Too late, – we realize

Another hateful arrow finds

a random target and despair surrounds us

It spins and pulls the light away.

Looking out we can see nothing

other than that loathsome pity for ourselves.

There’s black in every heart, it spins like the sun.

Who cares what hurt that we have done,

what flower cut down, what trust betrayed?

There lurks the antimatter to our joy.

They talk of hope, they have none.

Not while this black hole burns coldly in our souls.

It spins and pulls the light away.

There is no light,

We choose to blind ourselves and turn away,

There’s black in every heart, it spins like the sun

Alone in our individual anguish,

misery and icy loneliness.

There lurks the antimatter to our joy

Don’t pity us,

We are below deserving.

It spins and pulls the light away.

Fear us for we can

spoil and smear and desecrate.

There lurks the antimatter to our joy.

Don’t give us love

We don’t need it; We shall hide,

here in the blackness of our hearts.

 

Thick-skinned writers.

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Let’s face it we’re not all great writers.  In fact very few of us are.  Nevertheless, we persevere and produce labours of love in whatever form we think we are good at.

When our major work, which has sometimes taken years to complete, is done there remains an almost universal desire to seek the approbation even admiration of our friends’ colleagues and readers. How then are we to react when our work is considered poor?

The reasons why our readers find it so are many and various, some deserved some perhaps not as valid as others.  Nevertheless,  criticism can hurt.  There’s no use denying it.

Is there a defense mechanism that can help us ward off the hurt?  Probably not, but what we can do, is go again.  Write some more, but when we do we should if possible take yesterdays’ criticism as tomorrow’s guideline, at least to some extent.  If we are to write anything worthwhile we have to believe that one day someone will read what we’ve written and say: “Hey, that was worth my time.” That’s possibly the greatest compliment of all, we filled their moments with words that exercised their minds and made them think,  enquire, cry, laugh or even be amazed. This is the challenge every writer faces and very few writers achieve.

I hear you say, that’s ‘baloney’.  I don’t think it is, but equally, I believe that the business of writing has become a very tough place to be.  The commercial mainstream demands excellence in well-trodden genres, yet there are still astonishing breakthroughs.  However, it remains true that the readers enjoy the hero rather than the anti-hero,  that readers have habits and areas of comfort where they are comfortable.  Do we, as writers, want to follow or lead. That is the question each one of us has to answer.

The thing is, we’re all storytellers, and some stories are better than others. It is the unpredictable that makes us tick, the ability to wander around in the frontier-less expanses of our minds.  No one has been there before, and no one but us can tell where the stories will lead. Good for us, let’s write another one. Somebody somewhere might like it.

Addicted!

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Love’s a bind, love’s a burden

It’s like heroin, there’s no doubt

Each day we need our fix to live on,

Every day it’s agony – without.

 

         Our fix comes, not through the needle

         But through forgiveness or new giving grace,

          The shaking stops, withdrawal assuaged

          Make me warm in love’s embrace.

                   Love you then, as my good habit

we mustn’t fail to indulge and tame it

I must keep you always flying

Pray we don’t start love denying.

 

Like all those who are addicted,

it’s for ever, an eternal mix.

You and me, who’d have predicted?

We know no bounds to get our fix.

 

 

 

 

 

How close to throwing it all away.

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How close to throwing it all away,

How close to killing what keeps us alive

To closing down your shining eyes

To be deafened to your laughter chimes.

 

Love is blind but can be blinded

Locked out by selfish whim

But love is strong and fights her corner

Conquering even the blackest sin.

 

Let’s be thankful for what we share

Let’s enjoy each other’s gifts

Living and letting live

the spark that heals our rifts.

 

Touch me, let me feel you close to me

Stroke me and let my earthly heaven live on

Breathe with me and let me love you softly

Smile, light my days and warm my nights

 

Never mind the past, bad times

Just remember all the good;

The sweetest days, the tranquil nights

Your welcomes home; my harbor lights.

 

 

Forgiveness – the gift of love.

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Forgiving something small is easy,

excusing someone you hardly know;

but some one close, who fails you

that’s a wound, an open sore.

 

So when to mend the scars and how?

We need the answers now.

Lest the wounds we bear

fester, get angrier and grow.

 

Still, dark angers urge redress.

Surely there’s no sense in this.

Strike back and hurt, at least a bit.

as deeper gets the vengeful pit.

 

We need not vengeance here; but healing,

to find a balm for all the pain.

Easier far to repay in spite,

then hate wins, despite love’s might.

 

Turn back, turn back; from the abyss

where darkness rules the day.

Let light flood in to heal the wounds,

despite our instinctive way.

 

It is not easy, to wipe away the hurt,

of injuries that stick like stinking dirt.

We must forgive; for that’s the only way,

for love to linger longer, despite the price we pay.

 

As times goes by.

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I remember all our yesterdays Summer, winter, sad and happy days lazy, sweet days of love and mingling Days of wanting more, Sometimes hurt by carelessness Sometimes raised by care. Counting all our yesterdays brings the years around, But yesterdays are meaningless For now, we’re safe and sound. Today’s the day that counts, it’s a […]

For lonely lovers everywhere.

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Waiting in an empty

Today I have nothing to do

If you were here,

today would be full of things to do.

But it is not, it is an empty day

when the beach is un-walked,

the sea un-swum.

 

I wait, there is nothing else to do,

for I can not think of anything but you.

You are not here, the vacuum goes on,

I could read, I could drive, but to what purpose

I cannot read because my mind is full of you,

I cannot drive because I have nowhere to go.

 

The beach holds no delight,

if I sit there alone,

there is no one to splash or hold my hand.

I do not want to drink beer at the shack

for there is no one to look at

over my tepid, flat rum and some’at.

 

I can dream and sleep and think of you,

see you in my dreams and pretend that I

can touch you and hear you laugh.

I have no desire to be awake,

for if I sleep and dream I can be with you.

My fear is that I shall lose you in my dreams.

 

And then there will only be the empty day,

once more, spent waiting,

waiting for time to pass

until the day is bright and full again

and  I can hold you in my arms,

feel your breath and look into your eyes.

 

Digging deep to find a story

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Another day in paradise, not long now till be beat a retreat to the UK for the summer. Worked this morning writing and editing, my wife is top gun when it comes to syntax and punctuation.

Working on ‘A Touch of Class’ is not as easy as I thought in the sense that, I find the discipline of tense and person  hard, the story limps along a bit because of all these stops and starts, ensuring I’ve got this sentence and that paragraph nicely bedded.

This morning I had a lot of interruptions, about a termite attack, and the plan to repulse the attack and what it will cost, plenty, I’m afraid.

I work on, determined to do my thousand words, edit and work on this wretched platform stuff, no time left to think about the next story.

I shall be glad when ‘The Psychedelic Traveler’ is finished, it might be today’s mood. but it has been a work I have enjoyed only in parts.  Short stories need such a wealth themes and ideas, and yet they are finished so soon.  This book is not like writing a novel where you see your idea grow, sometimes very slowly.  With short stories, no sooner do I have the idea and it is finished and the necessity to find another is like a blister on your brain.

Then it will be time to think of Publishing, how?  I’ve tried many ways, all of them fairly unsatisfactory.  If I add to my daily chores, the pursuit of a useful agent, I will never have time to write anything worthwhile.

I sound like a manic depressive, I am not, it is just hard some times pushing myself to another thousand words, and worst of all admitting sometimes that those thousand words are shit.  Occasionally of course they are not shit, they are lovely, glorious, they make me cry and laugh and smile. Then I think how lucky I am to suffer from this obsession to write.

I’ve just been reading some of my old poetry, it has been a good experience. I cried a lot – surprised sometimes that I had written such moving stuff.  Maybe I should take a sabbatical and go back to it(poetry).

On BEING Seventy

 

Three score years and ten,

the end they say, my time is up!

My lurch into decrepitude lies unavoidably

beneath my uncertain feet.

 

Then downwards? Towards what end?

Hopefully to peace of mind and spirit.

Not hopelessly to hell, condemned by unforgiving diety

judging me as I  probably deserve.

 

Bits are metaphorically falling off,

Arthritic fingers, and flaccid parts

The extremities that mattered,

matter less as days tick by.

 

But things do still matter,

My accomplished grumpy rudeness

threatens equanimity in others.

I must resist the gurgled satisfaction.

 

All the hours, days and seconds do matter,

as things rush to their inevitable end,

There are those I love and care about

Much more than anyone would guess.

 

Each ticking second is as much worth

as when I wailed, balling in my pram.

Others giggled and enjoyed my baby charms,

more innocent than my  old acerbic wit.

 

Enjoy each remaining day,

Enchant the world with one’s experienced head and heart,

Be kind and mild, calm and quiet,

unlike the child, unlike the man.

 

So three score years and ten, is not the end!

It is a start to put so many rights and wrongs in place

and leave the dust of eternity untroubled

and of hearing laughs fade, and smiles melt sweetly away.