older poems

NOTICE

I notice you in the pub, you with the raven black hair and pierced face,

you look at me, a dark eagle. I guess rightly that you’re as alternative as me.

We talk, we get on, I see no ring on your finger, are you single, should I have asked? You say you sing, I say I write and I’ll show you my poems, you’ll sing me a song. What kind, I ask, emotional you say, but you just want to read them, not be part

of it all, in the middle of it. When did this start – when I first saw you at the bar?

And you’re scared by my work, by the intensity of it all, the wrong

thing, not meant to be. And I heard you talking, you have a boyfriend,

what will he think, will he laugh it off or want a piece of me?

Have you overreacted, a girl like you, or have I overstepped the line?

I think it’s a bit of both so I’ll let things die down and move on in life,

hope you’re ok, don’t be mad!

PATH

Mother Earth, forgive our naïve race of men on your precious Earth,

for we have poisoned your oceans with chemicals. Turn a blind eye

to the loss of your forests, acre by acre for our greed.

Let us get away with the destruction of your ozone layer,

don’t let us get skin cancer by our own negligence.

What more have we done to your glittering world, our world?

Our selfishness knows no bounds – guide us to a sensible path.

SUNLIGHT MEMORIES

I am able to look back in time as I see people and things,

old scenes and more in old news reels and black and white photographs.

If I could spin past through the years I’d visit Lilya,

even if I couldn’t save her, I’d talk to her about Russia, the endless steppe, of flying.

A trip onboard an old sailing ship, across the ocean five hundred years ago,

no radar or computers to guide us, just the sea and the wind and the stars.

What would it feel like to be naked to nature, at her mercy and whims?

I’ll never know as this ship hit the rocks and all onboard perished, hidden dangers.

Older still, what was it like to see the pyramids built? To actually help lift a ten-ton

stone block using only man’s strength? Today, this is just a question of history,

archaeology and science, not of living everyday life, now gone forever.

In my own life, what would I think if I could observe myself quietly from afar,

when I was ten years old? Again, just guesswork and photographs,

memories in my head to last only my lifetime.

SIMPLY GONE

You are now dead, a rotten corpse, you set fire to your house a dozen times.

Our courts sent you to jail but you’re so unfixable, brain damage with a child’s mind.

Mental health services can’t help, so in the nick you stay.

Not your place, jail or this earth or your life, you said you would do it,

you never lied. Dead before your time, yet mixed up, broken, never to be fixed,

so who is to say, was it right or wrong that you leave this earth?

Prison a last resort, mental health system failure, all admit defeat, you, your family,

the law. So in your life, what did you achieve? The years pass and now

you’re a memory, a statistic on a suicide chart, another vulnerable girl

dead – simply gone.

BLONDE GIRL

Blonde-haired girl waiting for something, I don’t know what,

standing there with a look of mischievous happiness on your face.

I see the wind tussle your hair, delicate blowing strands, see the sunburst

on your blonde hair – an explosion of gold, beauty eternal at this moment.

Head slightly bowed, eyes ahead, mouth resting on your pink cardigan.

You must be thinking of something funny, see you smile for an instant –

sun through the clouds.

For few precious minutes I watch you, you don’t see me, I see you

and do this poem for you, blonde girl waiting for something – what?

BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY

I look upon my land, from North to South, East to West, this beautiful land.

A timeless place of fair maidens and history, now as ever, a place

in every Englishman’s heart, his home, my home – England.

We have our problems of drug abuse and alcohol addiction, of single mothers

and failed marriages…

yet our strength of spirit can’t be broken. We endured The Blitz,

IRA bomb attacks and al-Qaeda threats.

If our land were scorched from end to end, one in three killed or maimed,

we would always pull through, for we are English.

A human spirit runs through us, from London to Carlisle, to Whitby to Blackpool,

we live in this beautiful country of moors and rivers, of valleys and lakes.

England is ours – we are hers.