Monument

Tags

creative, Monument, poems, poetry, verse, writing

We’ll build a monument to who we are,

Pack all we own and board a fast car,

We’ll leave our mark in tracks upon the road,

And throw away the things that we were told.

We’ll build our legacy in glass and stone,

And swear to silent gods we call it home,

But never turn and never look behind,

At promises we made to be that kind.

And were the castles that we built on sand?

The dreams we took meant for another’s hands?

As effigies grow taller by the day,

And all we see behind our eyes grows grey.

The mirrors steal the souls we never had,

And our capacity for good turns bad,

But still we build and sow and sow and build,

And empty hearts we hold are never filled.

Distorted truths the way we kill the time,

To make the scenes we paint all fit the rhyme,

And as we kneel before our saviour’s face,

We give ourselves one final loving grace.

And still we build our monuments so high,

A sign to all that we will never die,

We’ll leave our mark in tracks upon the sand,

But turn our eyes from actions of dead hand.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

 

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Watching Suns

Tags

age, creative, faith, Life, loss, poems, poetry, Remembrance, Strangers, Sun, time, verse, writing

She sat and watched the suns

Come and go as if they were

Strangers passing on the bitter streets:

A nod, a glance, perhaps a smile.

They rose in the levelled east,

Fought their way to the highs of their days,

Then struggled to climb each obstacle,

The mountains of the west.

She watched from the window

The porch and the gate

As the clock stole the hours,

Spirited them away,

And filed them under ‘lost’.

Emerald vines grew like memories

Creeping slowly over the garden fence,

Tendril-fingers seeping into the grain

Tenderly choking the life unlived.

She watched the marks of the years

Engrave themselves into her hands,

Pathways followed and gone,

And so many dreamed,

Her face the scorched and dried

Map of ages,

Marked, but abandoned before the mark of treasure

Had burned itself into her.

And the suns still came

And the suns still died,

And someone else took her chair.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Ice-Ribbons

Tags

age, Change, creative, dreams, faith, Life, Planes, poems, poetry, verse, writing

I watched the planes trace ice-ribbons

Across the sky before

They were lost to the

Cirrus wisped blueness

And their tails faded

Like promises written in

Tide-threatened sands,

And hopes took restless souls

To the promise of utopian shores

Not realising that they

Like all that came before

Wore the mask that hid

The fault-line masquerade

That spread like disease below,

I watched them come and go and

Taxi slowly on the grey

As if discarding the seeds of doubt

That grew beneath their wheels

Like ancient gods burying

Defeated foes unaware that

They would rise again,

And as the stuttered raging roar

Splintered hearts like candy then

Tore holes into the sky

Which like starving angels

Swallowed fleeting flailing dreams

Cocooned within a safety shell

They never saw,

As standing rooted in my

Futures past and present

I watched the planes

Trace

Ice-ribbons.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

 

Waste the Time

Tags

creative, dreams, Life, nostalgia, poems, poetry, time, verse, Waste, writing

What did we do before we had

The time to waste the time,

When every moment seemed so full

Of obligation’s ties,

And commitment pulled us closer

Then swallowed up our days,

When hands were full and red and raw

From dawn to dusk to dawn,

Of all the things we ever made

For lives we never knew,

From pit to fire they came and went

To lay the tracks from now,

And love was just a distant dream

In books and silver screens,

We washed away the dirt of day

And with it all our hope,

So tell me now with hindsight’s eye

When dear time’s time we kill,

What did we do before we had

The time to waste the time?

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

The Forgotten

Tags

creative, Forgotten, history, poems, poetry, Truth, verse, war, writing

The future will kiss

Our shadows as if it knew

The things that we had chosen

And all the things that we had forgotten,

It will stare back as if

We were a part of all to come

The things that we had seen

And everything that we had prophesied,

But we are the lost

The souls who burned on Hell’s cold fields

And left the lessons buried there,

The future will still close

It’s cold unempathetic eye

It’s vengeful ghost still chained against

The cliffs we fought so hard to tame,

The laughter rings like rain

Upon the boxes we built as defence

Which wall out the moments frozen

To stop them scratching out our eyes,

The future will still blow

It’s kisses downwind to hide its fear

And all the things that we had chosen

For we are the forgotten.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Eve’s Curse

Tags

creative, poems, poetry, verse, writing

She moved like the simmering storm,

Swept in from an ocean

Which festered in its anger

Like a child whose petulance grew

Bitter berries beneath a compromised sky,

Aching shoulders, back bent twisted

Head hung like a knife blunted

Her eyes still razor sharp

Raised above the bruised horizon

Cut the rain like sorrows parting,

Loose skin caught by the whispering wind

Its map folds trapped

And blurred at the edges

Roads that once led south and west

Smudges smeared like fallen fruit beneath the boot,

Carried like carrion the black shadow wings

Swept on like Arctic winter

With nowhere to go

A desperate curse upon the land

Her eyes burned blackened by hope.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Kitchen Window

Tags

creative, Life, loss, poems, poetry, time, verse, writing

She stood at the kitchen window

Still her eyes looking out

Over the fields of wheat

Now clothed in concrete and stone

Salt-moist with the days

She had given away

And moments she had sunk

Her tired hands into

Too deep to ever catch the dreams

Which swam in the shallows

Transients in the currents

Which left their lip-stain

On shores she felt that she

Could never reach

Not seeing that they

Like the hours lost

Were nothing more than shark-bait

Driven onto rock-scarred shores

Wishing that the story book tales

Had not been quite so tall

And that true love’s lips had kissed

A promise of truth

That the dragons had left some bridges

For her alone to burn

And that the rainbow had borne

Her happy ending

Still, her eyes looking out

She stood at the kitchen window.

 

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Losing You

Tags

creative, Distance, Fear, Losing you, loss, poems, poetry, separation, verse, writing

When did I first begin to start

Losing you?

Was it the note that you said I

Never wrote?

Or was it the favourite tune you

Couldn’t name?

Perhaps the day you looked away

At the trees?

Or when we passed upon the stairs

Like strangers?

When did I first begin to start

Losing you?

Was it when you looked at me and

Said his name?

Or was it when your lips forgot

How to smile?

Perhaps the day I was not there

Within your eyes?

Or when I felt the final cord cut

From my heart?

When did I first begin to start

Losing you?

 

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

Gone (Light and Dark)

Tags

creative, death, Gone, Human nature, Life, loss, poems, poetry, thoughts, verse, writing

I read the fickle words you wrote

Scribbled on a post-it note,

False sentiment caught in my throat

Made me gag and made me choke.

I heard the flowing eulogy

The standard one and not for me,

As standing there for all to see

You hung your words upon the tree.

I watched you talk of you and I

And look so meekly to the sky,

And as you spoke of when and why

To my replacement you mouthed ‘hi’.

 

I read the fickle words you wrote

But what more did I expect?

A heart torn open

Bleeding free –

A life cut short to be with me?

I heard the flowing eulogy

But I was only lost at sea

And ships will sail

And ever will –

And life goes on without me still.

I watched you talk of you and I

But true I never let you know

The secrets that

I hoped you saw –

And now I’m gone, forever more.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

 

Distant Shores

Tags

creative, hope, poems, poetry, Promises, Reality, verse, writing

I chased the poster’s dream

As it fluttered high above the breezeblock sky,

Its white-wisp clouds kissed the blue,

And even though

It was not there

An egg-yolk sun caressed the flesh

Of perfect bodies on the sand

As draped in tiny fabric slices

Their feet in silken silver grains

They let the gentle tide

Carry off the cares

They never really owned

A thousand palms

Captured in stop motion

Waved through the lens

Across the miles

And beckoned to their world

Their silent mouths too still

To whisper truths

That they would always be

One dream away from reach.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018