The following are poems I've especially enjoyed. When sufficient in number, I'd like to publish these poems in book form.
Click on the flower next to the title of the poem in the frame on the left to read the whole poem!
(You can submit your poem for inclusion here! Contact Diadem Books--click here)
Emelia Hardy
| Speedily, impatiently | |
| refashioning his soul | |
| in a painted world | |
| where humans are baubles | |
| and only houses and cafes | |
| have personality, | |
| * | |
| he rose again, | |
| day after day, | |
| on the hill of martyrs | |
| where skeletal hands of trees | |
| groped the sky and | |
| the eyeless sockets of flats | |
| * | |
| dotted his landscape, | |
| where the broad-haunched | |
| women he loathed | |
| were forever strutting | |
| away from him; | |
| this new martyr, beaten, | |
| * | |
| crucified on the bottle | |
| and beaten again, | |
| set on the featureless | |
| masks of his skies | |
| his wordless story; | |
| in alcohol the colours flowed. |
Norman Buller
(Poem copyrighted to Norman Buller 1998 © )
| As I, one of the many lives | |
| you never perceived, stand aware | |
| of you this May morning, beneath | |
| their stolid headstones and the arabesqued | |
| ironwork of your Martyr's cross, | |
| the Kirchstetten dead, even the Nazi | |
| suicide long-levelled in his | |
| separate garden, are imperceptibly | |
| crumbling back into their village | |
| as earth to earth. Always a fugitive | |
| hunted by soldiers while love hid | |
| beyond the uncrossable border, you shuddered, | |
| unready, into an early fame; | |
| now, in your country of unconcern, | |
| is the bruise of your youth still as blue? | |
| * | |
| Innocence came to its sudden end; | |
| deep in your lead-mined limestone landscape | |
| with thwarting passages, hollowed caverns, | |
| the echoing trickle of hidden water | |
| secret and fickle as mankind, | |
| you and your brothers, rival lovers, | |
| explored your mother's forbidding slopes, | |
| that awesome mythic being you | |
| could never imagine copulating. | |
| How to break out? How to be whole? | |
You sang Isolde to her Tristan |
|
| but when she died the music stopped; | |
| you were alone; in that cold void | |
| you reached for Christ, a door through which, | |
| at last, the Answer glowed like fire. |
Norman Buller
(Poem copyrighted to Norman Buller 1998 ©)
'It's a funny old life' (Margaret
Thatcher, Nov. 28th, 1990)
| Should they swear? |
| Those actors on T.V? |
| That’s life they say. |
| It’s a tough old world out there |
| As homeless and jobless know full well. |
| And now the actor shouts on stage |
| The words he whispered as a boy |
| Behind the cycle shed. |
| It is a funny old life. |
| It’s said a rose would smell as sweet |
| By any other name. |
| But words can now be tricky things. |
| 'Nice' has now a different smell. |
| Anything that we called nice |
| Is today beneath contempt. |
| Should any naive writer dare |
| To write in sentimental vein, |
| The fearful spleen of critics |
| Would descend upon his hapless head. |
| They say we do not understand |
| That little pile of bricks. |
| Art has so many forms they say |
| We do not comprehend. |
| Who are they? Whose arrogance |
| Would besmirch the things we love? |
| A plague on them and all their works! |
| Take heart my friend, take heart - |
| One day, one fine day |
| A voice from the crowd will surely say |
| 'Look, the Emperor has no clothes!' |
| It’s a funny old life indeed my friend. |
John Moore
(Poem copyrighted to John Moore 1998 ©)
SOUTH AFRICA (A poem from the Apartheid era)
| Port Elizabeth, midnight, in a cell |
| You lay; skull beaten open by a man |
| Who laughed, since now you're dead you cannot tell |
| Of the plight of the black South African. |
| Out in the street you wore a silver cross. |
| The necklace you wore was a burning tyre. |
| No one stood round to watch or count the loss |
| Though they heard your screams melt into the fire |
| * |
| We're all guilty of your murder, brother. |
| We cannot wash the blood stains from our hands. |
| As long as we persecute each other |
| Our home will be a graveyard, not a land |
| Where peace is a philosophy of life |
| And love reigns unhindered by man's knife. |
Poem by Louise Bergin
(Poem copyrighted to Louise Bergin 1988 © )
| From here your gravestone | |
| sprouts among a grey stubble of stone, | |
| trees straggling down | |
| like random cabbages to where | |
| the broken Abbey broods. | |
| Each time I needed you | |
| for a smashed window | |
| or a shelf to be lopped | |
| you stood by my door, | |
| your lined face unsmiling, | |
| your eyes piercing blue. | |
| * | |
| ‘Did ye get planning permission | |
| for these velox windows?’ you asked. | |
| Did you apply, Andy, | |
| to put that nail in your brain? | |
| What bureaucracy gave you leave | |
| to lift the nail-gun to your head? |
Poem by Charles Muller, as revised by Norman Buller.
© Copyright H. Denton 1998
| I gazed from out my window | |
| At the scintillating lights | |
| Those man-made stars all dancing | |
| To brighten up the nights | |
| * | |
| Behind them lay the movement | |
| Of a city feigning sleep | |
| The slumber of a giant | |
| With dreams it cannot keep | |
| * | |
| And I with humble candle | |
| Do dim that tiny flame | |
| No man has great importance | |
| In this living kind of game. |
Filton Hebbard
(Poem copyrighted to Filton Hebbard 1998 © )
Remembrance day, another year gone by,
A time to think and remember them, they didn’t want to die,
They had to fight for King and Country, they didn’t have a choice,
They had to leave their loved ones, their thoughts they couldn’t voice,
Uprisings, trouble, hatred and violence; there must be another way.
Each year we go on remembering the brave who fought and died,
The wives and mothers left at home, their hopes and fears they would hide.
Some came home wounded, disabled, troubled in their mind,
Some came home disfigured, some of them were blind.
No doubt next year they’ll gather once again,
Two minutes of silence to reflect and think of all the needless pain.
We can’t put right the wrongs of the past but surely can’t they see,
Just think about the consequences of any actions, think of the dying soldier’s last words,
What would they be? …
PLEASE REMEMBER ME…
Beth Richards
(Poem copyrighted to Beth Richards Nov. 2005 © )
She plays because she must.
Untutored in the formalities
She makes music as
Unselfconsciously as a blackbird.Cadences from her young fingers
Flow, bell-like through the house.
I pause, entranced, to listen.
Her melody is so clear,
New-minted, but still redolent of eternity.
That I am moved to tears.Later, when I tell her, shyly,
How much I like her playing,
She only smiles, and with
Gentle seven year old superiority
Gravely informs me, "It really wasn't very good you know."Pat Miller
(Poem copyrighted to Pat Miller 1989 © )
Busy, busy, busy,
Rush, rush, rush,
Always in a tizzy,
Hush, hush, hush,
Hurry, hurry, hurry,
Worry, worry, worry,
Push, push, push,
But whatever is the rush,
Slow down,
Calm down,
Give yourself a rest.
When you sit in golden silence,
That time is the best.
(Poem copyrighted to Beth Richards July. 2007 © )
A sonnet written while and after looking at
Rodin's sculpture in the Tate Gallery.
The rocky lovers sit upon a stone.
Their bodies' shapes grow from the rock below.
From their stone bodies always sitting there
A warmth and loving tenderness does glow.
A man of rock you'd say if you saw him
Digging a hole or wrestling in a ring.
His hands are spades, his feet foundation stones,
The muscles of his might are ropes of rock.
The woman's shape is solid as befits
A marble woman with a rocky mate,
But rounded like the stones of running streams.
Oh, might the softer selves of our two hearts
Remain as steadfast as these lovers are.
Bill Waugh
Dreaming in Acharseid Mor
“The big harbour” on a small island.
‘Survey information for Acairseid Mor seems to be under a spell,
and drying heights of rocks shown on the plan are only approximate,
or even positively doubtful. Further observations will be gratefully received.’- Yachtsman’s Pilot.
Sitting
In afternoon sun
Warm wood under bare toes toasting.
Silence
Increased by a distant discussion of gulls.
Breeze
Blows softly over arms no longer clad
Defensively in damp synthetic fur.
Reading
Adrian Henri
In the streets of Liverpool
Seeing the Spring in plastic daffodils.
Seaweed
Hangs brown and yellow over children's’ caves.
Thick heavy hair for half tide rocks
That come and go like mermaids.
Seal
Teapot tilted on its seaweed rock.
Soaking in sun.
Shortsightedly sniffing round the airfilled world.
Silence
The clearances come clear through Calum's Fiddle.
Every event, with the dignity of design,
Deserving the duty of the dance.
Bill Waugh
You can submit your poem for inclusion here! Contact Diadem Books--click here.
