Beneath the Bridge

Tags

age, Creative writing, faith, Life, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, Truth, verse, writing

Beneath the bridge

Below the waves

With all the things

We threw away,

The faces and

The names we knew

Our fallen dreams

From younger days,

The bitter roots

We never killed

They twist and turn

Begin to grow,

Creep up our spine

And choke our bones

And root us here

As if to show,

How all the things

We ever lost

Will anchor us

And mark our place,

Beneath the bridge

Above our sighs

We are as all

A fading face.

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What Use Are My Words?

Tags

Communication, conflict, creative, Creative writing, Depression, faith, history, Inequality, Life, Love, poems, poetry, politics, Principles, Progress, religion, Truth, verse, war, Words, writing

What use are my words

If the shells still fall

From black-heart open skies

And bombs still separate limb

From torso

On a whim?

If lover’s nights are torn asunder

Each phrase of love declared

And punctuated by the rifle’s kiss

As bullets fly through skies

To deafen out the

Infant’s cries?

If families fractured fall apart

Their bodies as their homes

And stuffed in ragged bags

They walk on paths anew

Hopes and lives askew?

 

What use are my words

If every judgement still

Depends on colour, race or creed

And not on who we are

Those who act so blind

Injustice our own kind?

If passion is fuelled by hatred

And shouted from the stands

Evolution’s backward stare

Feet that stomp and pound

Like we never left the ground?

If all that we can show

Is intolerance and hate

To mask the failings in ourselves

To stick within our clan

And say this is the Plan?

 

What use are my words

If all that we believe

Serves not to heal but pull apart –

Words lost behind the rhetoric –

And sets us off to goad

The wrong way down the road?

If our deities stand toe to toe

As we become the baying throng

Applauding every blow

Forgetting that it’s all a game

And they are all the same?

If faith is lost behind the mask

And we think ourselves the show

Where Glory resides in riches

And ceremony makes us tall

Hidden safe behind our wall?

 

What use are my words

If those who shout the loudest –

The basest of our kind –

Earn mandate over all of us

To wield the sharpened sword

And cut the final cord?

If none of us is equal

And power comes through privilege

Whilst on green fields they scheme

To hold on to the wealth

Through division and through stealth?

If birth outweighs our merits

When change is just a word

And nothing brings a greater good

As islands we shall ever stay

To never see a brighter day?

 

What use are my words?

 

Stand or Fall

Tags

creative, Creative writing, faith, inspiration, poems, poetry, Resilience, verse, writing

You stand or fall

On who you are

And who you were before

The fingers of another

Wrapped themselves

Around your soul.

You stand or fall

In independence

And all you want to be

Without the need of shoulders

Whose payment

Asks too much.

You stand or fall

In no-one’s dreams

But those you dream yourself

And rise to shine above the ones

Who cannot see

That you

Will always stand.

 

Giving

Tags

Creative writing, Giving, poems, poetry, thoughts, verse, writing

I have grown good

At giving things away:

A word, a look, a plaything;

Objects gathering dust on shelves

Which serve only as a reminder,

Hollow and spent,

Of the emptiness of detachment;

A touch, a smile, a heart;

A muscle with purpose usurped

Scratches on the page

Of another’s life;

A hope, a wish, a future –

And of what use is a future

When its past has been given away? –

An entry erased from the ledger:

Yes, I have grown good

At giving things away,

Giving until this shell

Is empty.

I Knew You Better

Tags

Creative writing, inspiration, Memories, nostalgia, poems, poetry, Truth, verse, writing

I knew you better then

When days were younger and

Every door was open,

When the roads that we ran down

Were soaked with morning rain

But led to other roads,

And every virgin corner

Gave rise to something new

Something that we could hold,

Or lose inside our hearts

And evening’s journey home

Never crossed our minds,

I knew you better then

When every alleyway

Was dressed in blossom’s cloak,

When crimson veins ran rich

And pulsed with love unknown

Like corridors of hope,

When fear’s unshaven head

Stayed hidden far from sight

And never crossed our path,

And complacency of age

Swept over by time’s hand

Cast us in a shallow shell.

We Kneel

Tags

conflict, creative, Creative writing, faith, history, poems, poetry, politics, religion, Truth, verse, writing

We kneel the same way

You and I

Faces like mirrors

Reflecting the futures

Our plans were made for

Trusting in the benevolence

Of something more

Something greater

Than the sum of all our parts

The wishes that we share

The words whose bloodied kisses

Stain our days –

And for how long need we free

The same words,

Now tired and frail,

Bereft of meaning?

We kneel the same way

You and I

And yet our voices

Never meet.

Something

Tags

creative, Creative writing, hope, inspiration, Love, lyrics, poems, poetry, verse, writing

Well I was older

Than my days,

Playing out my time

In middle ground,

Living like a monk

Unholy days,

Checking off the hours

A voice without a sound.

 

You gave me something

On that we are agreed,

Gave me something real

And not something I need,

You showed me something

Yeah, opened up my eyes,

Showed me something real

Brighter than the skies.

 

Well I was younger

Than you knew,

Killing every second

Assassin’s eye,

Leaning from the edge

A life askew,

Safety’s middle ground

And comfort’s easy lie.

 

You gave me something

On that we are agreed,

Gave me something real

And not something I need,

You showed me something

Yeah, opened up my eyes,

Showed me something real

Brighter than the skies.

 

Well you were stronger

Than you knew,

Living in each moment

Open eye and heart,

Captured every image

Living in the new,

Never knew your power

A perfect work of Art.

 

You gave me something

On that we are agreed,

Gave me something real

And not something I need,

You showed me something

Yeah, opened up my eyes,

Showed me something real

Brighter than the skies.

Felt the Sky

Tags

age, Aging, creative, Creative writing, Depression, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, Reflection, verse, writing

Saw the lines

Drawn in the sand

That marked our time and place,

Heard the words

In silence fall

That gave life to the lie,

Watched the face

From clouds emerge

Reveal its mocking eye,

Felt the sea

Beneath my feet

All futures soon erased,

Saw the veins

Fill up with salt

An atlas of our days,

Heard the sigh

Of ghosts now gone

Their helplessness unchained,

Watched the flow

Spill over dunes

The drowning man restrained,

Felt the sky

Sink to its knees

And blue eyes turn to grey.

Rust Bitten

Tags

Change, Creative writing, poems, poetry, Principles, verse, writing

Staring like twisted iron railings

Rust bitten and chilled,

Stealing kisses from

A washed out Sun

Which hung with fickle deceit,

I held my ground

And principles that tore and cut

Like paper,

And were they worth what they

Were written on?

The view from my

Side of the road,

Once heavy thronged with

Vibrant promise,

Now ringing hollow

The shell of ghosts now gone,

Limping shadows in temperate climes –

The far side of the street,

The one we cursed with vitriol

And swore we’d never walk,

In slippered steps

Your feet now soundless fall,

As I still stare

My silent roar

The tears beneath your eyes.

 

Episodes

Tags

creative, Creative writing, faith, fiction, flash, flash fiction, short stories, stories, Vignette, writing

     It was at that moment that I realised that my life had been no more than a series of episodes: some linked by connections which only presented themselves with hindsight, when events had long since lost their relevance, others disparate, fleeting, scudding past like clouds in the sky; yet more presenting themselves like movie scenes, half-remembered but titleless.

      And it was to these movie scenes that I had clung, as if they would somehow, miraculously and with the wisdom to time, meld themselves into a story that I was able to follow, to understand, even.

     Yet they came and went with the regularity of Japanese trains, each proferring a new horizon, a sense of purpose to which I was a mere distant observer. Landscapes flashed by me, tantalisingly close yet constantly beyond my grasp: I witnessed every imaginable situation, every conceivable outcome, but always, as they sank below my horizon, I was left with nothing more than a hollow sense of detachment; of impotence.

     The camera rolled and then stopped, rolled and then stopped again, as if responding to silent cries of ‘cut!’. And through each scene I played the role of an extra, watching and waiting. Watching and always waiting.