Poetry Page.......

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LIVING

Ever thankful and ever giving

Help to make a life worth living.

Peace of mind can be attained

If avarice and greed are disdained.

Love and truth are two great factors

In cooling anger and dispelling hate.

With pride and envy as two more actors

that can mortify the heart and mind.

So as you walk the road of life,

With all its trials and tribulations,

Keep your head held up high

And avoid all temptations.

Being well aware that it’s hard to do

So try your best and God bless you

A well wisher

Here are a few poems submitted by Phil Page of Debdale Hill. Comments would be very welcome, to p.c.b.page@lboro.ac.uk.

Self Tortured

The lotus grows wherever I can think of you.

My home is no longer my home
Except when only you are in my head;
You are my nights between darkness and sleep,
Dreaming of a future together,
A bitter-sweet endless fantasy
Because I can't stop the unwelcome thoughts
Of how you are with him,
And of my loss
Why must I torture myself like this

Scarred

Sliced by the sharp edges of shattered promises
I bleed tears into the night
You were my world
Until yesterday I had so much
You took it away with one careless word
And all that I have left is worthless
The sharpest cuts are the slowest to heal, they say
But leave the smallest scars

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Daydreams

What do you see when your head is in the clouds ?

I see my true desires
And I would make them real
You see daydreams, fantasies
And you would keep them reverie
Must we be together only in our dreams ?

Dream

Did last night really happen ?
Or did I dream you ?
As I have dreamed so many times

Did you transport me to another country ?
Or was it Paradise ?
Somewhere I had never been

Did you drug me ?
Or are you my drug ?
You are my ecstasy and my heroin

If I can ever sleep again without you
Will I dream you again ?
Will I go again to Paradise ?

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Hope

Hope is a strange creature.
Untarnished by grimmer reality
It survives.

Hope is sweet
It keeps away that bitter self-recrimination
Drives away the pain of feared knowledge

Hope is a mirror
A suit of shiny armour, our protection
And the last thing to die

Conflict

Shaken by sudden self-discovery, my mind is full.
I know again the ever-sharp joy of new love;
An impossible doubling.
A deep poignant sadness of feared unfulfillment fills my heart.

Yet the calm strength of earlier love is undiminished,
and I cannot resolve the guilty guiltlessness my thoughts produce.
The bright budding of pure new life in that other's presence
is counterpointed by the dark and inadmissible.

I see that captivating animate expression,
I glimpse the cleverness and articulate maturity;
I see a dewy mermaid's body and strength of will.
And my need is sharpened by her physical absence.

It is unfair to both, I know,
and I can expect and ask for nothing.
I would hurt neither, and so must wait in silence.
I suffer that hope beyond hope which makes humanity
and perhaps I can never be happy again.

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Waking Dreams

Curly hair strewn across my chest.
The electric touch of my fingers down her spine.
My kisses burn her neck.

Thoughts of her cause such a passion in me,
but she is unreachable,
and I know a happy sadness.

My internal conflict is unresolvable,
except, perhaps, by time.
Only hope and all-too-temporary fantasy are left.

Discoveries

I know at last that she loves me.
A new optimism springs my steps.
Thoughts of her fill me with
an unexpected tenderness.
And I live in four dimensions.

Wheat Field

Spiked torment seen through tears.
The canvas an imperfect passion of an infinite vision;
a yellow ecstasy with pain in every brushstroke.

Death flaps slowly through frustration.
The true vision is lost;
only paint remains,
a tortured window onto yesterday's storm.

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Untitled

An orange sun, wearing a crown of uneven spikes
A blue strip of sky
A new believer in the flat earth society
Trees and flowers in clashing hues
A many-headed monster who should be in the news.

Mothers & grandmothers cry out fainting
Another bad dream - just a child's painting

The Wine of Violence

The angry men read speeches
The politicians pose
They know that peace is in their grasp
But still the people lose
The bombs are still exploding
The men still fire their guns
I wonder when peace can descend
Despair has always won

Must there always be such men ?
Are they within us all ?
Are Bosnia and Palestine
So far from Lower Falls ?
Do they have wives and children ?
And are their mothers proud ?
Would I know them if I met them here ?
Is there a sign that marks them out ?

They have drunk the wine of violence
Are they too drunk to see ?
Their intolerance is bred in fear
Without them we will be free
I am sick of blood and torment
Of looking to the past
The future lies beyond those ties
We must forgive at last

chorus:
Lest the crosses burn in Texas
Lest the ovens flame again
Our hope must keep despair at bay
Through our courage peace can win

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The Party

I stand alone in a room full of people.
My role as observer decays with the brandy
and my natural isolation increases.
I sense the requirement for fun.

I look at the faces; I see them talk.
Animate gestures. Dribbly laughs.
But of sixty-five here there are three I can talk to.
I sense the requirement for fun.

The silence is filled by the action of eating.
The glass in my hand I refill from the bottle.
Eating their food, and drinking their wine,
I sense the requirement for fun.

Why am I here?
What am I doing?
Enjoying myself?
Save being human
these people and I
have nothing in common

The Key

A sound, a voice half-heard;
a smell; a gesture, a way of standing;
each seized on like magic from the flood.
A half-glimpse, rewarded;
a still-born hope, as quickly submerged
by the dreadful tidal wave
Fake memories captured by my eager mind.

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The Swishing of your Dress part A

I glanced inwards for a moment
And you slipped into my night
You added sharpness to my world
My colours extra bright

But you are here no longer
Something else must fill my days
You were all I wanted most
Now I've driven you away

Now the swishing of your dresses
Can be familiar no more
Your scent's upon the night-time air
Your steps echo on the floor

Love is changeless with the season
But the years pass by in vain
While hope continues stainless
And fine fantasies remain

Blind memory still tricks me
But it's colder in my bed
You will never be forgotten
You're with me in my head
You're with me in my heart

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The Swishing of your Dress part B

I glanced outwards for a moment
You slipped again into my night

The sharpness in my world slammed back
Those colours extra bright

Now suddenly you're here again
My nights are bright full day
I am inarticulate with joy
And I am alive

The many painful years I missed you
Seem but moments long
But though we now have something real
I miss you so much more

The swishing of your dresses swirls
The air; brings life into my days
Your scent's upon the night-time air
Your steps sound upon the floor

New reality cannot trick me
And it's warmer in my bed
You can never be forgotten
You're with me in my head
You're with me in my heart

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Raffles

Monkey nuts in the Long Bar
Cashews in the Lobby
Slings in the Writers' Bar

But never past the stairs

Loss

Her voice still swirls around my head
as once it spilled across our life.
My world no longer sparkles.
A plastic greyness fills my eyes, untroubled by breath or fire or pain.
Which of us is truly dead ?

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Home

Everywhere the small reminders of her presence.
The constant lack is reinforced by every glance,
and I can bear neither to keep nor throw away
the collected fragments.
No fresh look is possible:
not just symbols of my loneliness, but living memory.

High Rise

Rotten teeth erupt painfully from grey sameness,
irregular, teeming with infestation,
corrupt and desolate.

Sterilization is the grey men's goal,
but poison breeds in any gaol.
Infection is a symptom;
extraction is the cure.

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Future Memories

To stand once in the sunlight of her laughter;
to touch in innocent joy, not lust -
a thousand familiar things will never stale.
And after perfection ? Just grey vacuum.

Docks

Rows of empty soldiers stand upright.
Rusting.
Redundant, but yet somehow menacing;
each a useless giant trellis-work,
an iron topiary.

The buildings' glassless eyes stare out, vacantly,
and water laps sadly
around the organized untidy desolation.

A dead mechanical puzzle,
soulless and foreign;
concentrated:
I recognise each piece,
but the spirit which brought meaning
is lost forever.

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Beauty

I am forever haunted.
A remembered naïvete,
an ageless newness, unstained by experience.
This fleeting purity was hers
and she fills my less noble mind.

August

One day in August, my clock stopped.
Unknowing, you touched my second hand
Made me notice you
You stepped out of my past and crushed me

Said you loved me, took the blinkers from my eyes
Made a sharp new world of colour
That only I could see
Made me alive

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A strange apocalypse

Helicopters glide stationary in from the distance like dragonflies
Their wings a shadow in the air above them
Their thrum disconnected somehow
Louder, louder as they near, their blanket noise resolving
Panic below
They are suddenly here, impossibly loud
And then, the expected but sudden, terrible, shocking noise of the guns
And another simple village is converted to its new religion

Countryside

From my window I see a folded quilt of fields,
Green and calm,
Comforting the land.
Grasses rippling slowly in the breeze,
Peppered with sheep,
Their gentle sounds quieted by the glass.
I feel part of it all but somehow insulated.

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Eating Alone
Captured fragments of others' conversations
So quiet at my table they seem too loud
I am more aware of other people
Some parties, some couples
Some animated
Some in married silence

No-one to discuss the menu with
And whatever shall I drink ?
My own order arrives and is quickly eaten
Now what ? Time passes slowly
Perhaps I should have stayed at home

I feel exposed
And so conscious of being alone
What can it be like
To be like this all the time ?

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The poem below was reproduced in the Greenwich Hospital newsletter. It had been written by a lady in a geriatric ward and found in her locker after her death, by staff who thought her incapable of writing.

What do you see nurses, what do you see?

Are you thinking when you are looking at me -

A crabbit old woman, not very wise,

Uncertain of habit with far away eyes.

Who dribbles her food and makes no reply,

When you say in a loud voice, "I do wish you'd try"

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still

As I rise at your bidding, as I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten, with a father and mother

brothers and sisters who love one another.

A bride soon at 20, my heart gives a leap

Remembering the vows that I promised to keep;

At 25 now I have young of my own

who need me to build a secure, happy home;

at 50 once more babies play, round my knee

again we know children my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead,

I look to the future, I shudder with dread.

My young are all busy, rearing young of their own

and I think of the years and the love that I've known.

I'm an old woman now and nature is cruel

tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.

The body it crumbles, grace and vigour depart

there is now a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcase a young girl still dwells

and now and again my battered heart swells

I remember the joys, I remember the pain,

and I'm loving and living all over again.

And I think of the years all too few - gone too fast

and accept the stark fact that nothing will last.

So open your eyes, nurses, open and see,

not a crabbit old woman,

look closer,

SEE ME!

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