Tag Archives: free verse

My Younger Self

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I sit here

Drinking beer

Alone at home

In this dying heatwave

Unable to forget

What I could not save.

 

 

As I drink

I think

Of girls who padded like cats

Around my bachelor’s flat

In their bare feet.

 

 

We drank wine

And, sometimes

I would find

A kind

Of comfort in a stranger’s arms.

 

A few  left charms behind.

A hairband

I kept in a drawer,

Though I saw her no more.

 

I returned hair extensions.

There was no pretention

Of love.

 

Drinking my beer

I look back on half wasted years.

There where tears and laughter

But what comes after …

 

Perhaps I can find

A sort of tenderness

Tinged with regret.

 

 

I can not forget

And sometimes wonder

What they remember

Of me

In the Quiet Time

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In the quiet time

Before I go online

I see the sunshine

Fall on my office walls.

 

If I could stay

And watch the sunlight play

I would be happy,

Temporarily.

 

I have seen another January

Come and go

And trust I will see

The coming spring

Bring flowers to me.

 

 

But man’s hours

Are brief as flowers

And I may go

And not know

January or spring

The Human Heart and Art

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In the early morning

Before the birds are heard

I think on light

And dark

And how the human heart

Makes art.

For we are light

And dark

Birds and Men

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Birds

In early morning

Sing

Of coming spring.

 

Cats

Have no cruelty

Yet we condemn in them

The cruelty of men

 

While the birds still sing

Of spring

And my heart responds

To birdsong

Open Window

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I open my window

And listen to bird calls

As rain falls

To the garden below.

 

This is the timeless time

Of nature’s passing rhyme.

But work calls

And I must go.

 

Yet the fall

Of the rain

And the bird’s call

Remain

 

 

Breath

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The cold takes my breath.

I kick a branch away

And think of death.

 

 

Winter will not stay.

The wind through branches sighs

Then dies away.

 

 

And I will lie

As that bough

Lies now

While birds sing

In spring.

Time’s Halter

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Tired.

Not inspired

To write tonight.

 

Light

Grows dim.

Seconds pass.

Pub and friends beckon.

 

 

The cheerful lights

Shut out the night.

But all dims

And the dark descends

In the end

 

Yet I laugh

And pass my time

In rhyme and friends

 

No-one can stop

The ever present clock

For Time’s halter

Holds us all

In thrall

Yet still we pretend …

Dash

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Sometimes I dash

Along the churchyard path.

But those who sleep

Have no appointments to keep.

And I pass by

The graveyard plot

Until I do not.

 

 

Yet I must

My final appointment keep

With worms and dust.

And the earth

Will continue to turn

Without heed or need

Of me

London Encounter

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Walking along the familiar street

I meet

A lady who asks me

For £1

So that she

Can get to bank.

 

I give her the pound

And laugh at her story.

 

I receive no thanks

But get asked for £5

(Which I deny I have).

 

I go home

Thinking on philosophy,

Lies,

And the fickleness of charity.

 

But who

Exploited who

I wonder

As I sit alone

At home

Writing poetry …

 

(Note: “Bank” refers to bank station on the London underground).

Cold Birds

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Standing in the cold park

I heard the birds

Sing in early January.

 

I will hear them in spring.

And think I see

Cold birds.

 

 

Yet I know that the  winter

Lives in me

And poets sing

Of what is true.