Reals and Ghosts

Tags

Change, creative, Depression, Ghosts, hope, lyrics, poems, poetry, verse, writing

All the reals and all the ghosts

The loudest singing

Won the most,

Pictures hanging in the air

Still cover up each

Jagged tear.

You scream and cry

And watch it die,

And feel the sand

Drain through your hands,

And pray that there

Is one more day,

Just one more chance

To turn your dance,

You ask me why

The crows still fly,

As if their black

Was some way back,

To everything

We used to sing,

With eyes of hope

Before the joke,

All the reals and all the ghosts

The loudest singing

Won the most,

Pictures hanging in the air

Still cover up each

Jagged tear.

Night Bus

Tags

AbeBooks, Amazon, Another Tease, Book, Book Depository, creative, Depression, hope, inspiration, loss, Love, Lulu, lyrics, music, nostalgia, Peace, poems, poetry, Prose, Publication, verse, war, writing

A short piece taken from the collection of poetry, prose and lyrics entitled ‘Another Tease’ (links at the end of the post. Enjoy!

I sat on the bus, watching the night-lit streets as they passed by like frozen, shrouded memories. The juddering, stop-start motion seemed to bring an uneasy comfort to my body, detached as it was from my consciousness. Other vehicles, heading in the opposite direction, appeared and then disappeared as if they were on some mythic quest, their headlights dull and dim below my position on the top deck of the bus, illuminating nothing but the first few steps on a journey without end. For a moment it seemed as if only they knew the direction in which to move in order to find some salvation, some respite from the pain, and yet I knew, contained within each metal box, was nothing more than one more lonely figure hoping beyond all hope that something, some miracle, would appear to snap them out of their coma.

Buildings rose up on either side of me now; giant monoliths, some pale and dark, devoid of life, tired and waiting for release, others still humming under the electric glow which gave them purpose. Their eyes stared out without seeing through the dark, and were gone again, lost to me as I moved steadily on. Their facades hung momentarily in my mind like all the faces of people I had met in my life, before fading into a sea of ashen memories. The night around me seemed to tighten its grip as, like an abandoned vessel, we sailed on.

To both the right and to the left of me roads sprouted off from the main artery down which I was travelling. They sparkled and twinkled with the hope of the newborn before even their lights were swallowed by the darkness into which, it seemed, the whole world had fallen. I shuddered as the bus lurched around a corner: not from the cold – I had long since become immune to that – but from the impending realisation that we were, at last, nearing my stop, my final destination.

And then everything was quiet, but for the pounding in my chest and the pulsing in my head. What if I were to remain on the bus? Would it eject me when it reached its destination, its point of termination, or would it show a glimmer of empathy, offer up a hand and cradle me to its heart? After all, my brain reminded me, what point was there to alighting, to leaving the bus to continue without me, if you were no longer there to welcome me home?

Another Tease – poetry, prose and lyrics

LULU

BOOK DEPOSITORY 

ABEBOOKS

ALBRIS

AMAZON

What Use Are My Words?

Tags

Change, Communication, conflict, creative, Depression, Inertia, loss, Peace, poems, poetry, verse, war, What use are my words, Words, writing

This one is a few years old, but sadly as relevant as ever, I feel.

Anyway, it felt like it needed to be out once more, so here goes:

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?

Another Tease

Tags

Another Tease, Book, creative, Depression, faith, Falling Sleet, fiction, flash, flash fiction, hope, inspiration, Love, lyrics, music, poems, poetry, Prose, Publication, short stories, stories, The Candle Game, verse, war, writing

Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who has purchased either Falling Sleet or The Candle Game. I hope that you are enjoying them.

It gives me great pleasure to announce the publication of my latest collection of writing Another Tease:

‘Another Tease’ is a collection of poetry, short prose fiction and lyrics covering themes as diverse as love & war, faith & loss and hope & depression. The lyrics have no melodies – each one is left open for the reader to create their own interpretation.

ISBN: 978-1-329-16251-8

Available now via:

LULU

As soon as the book is available on other platforms I will post more!

I hope that you enjoy reading!

And now, a couple of ‘teasers’ –

Watching Dreams

Watching dreams

Evaporate like tears

In the warmth of another,

Sun-bleached streaks

On a bed of sand,

Wanting to reach out

Clutch and grab

At Youth’s fresh resolve,

Mold it to age’s wisdom

And stride once more,

Sight-scarred eyes

Life-bleached and hollow

Stare blind at passing time,

Hands that sweep so quickly

Unforgiving, so cold,

And floating on the wind

Dream’s lost fragments fly

To settle on another,

Sun-bleached streaks

On a bed of sand.

The Interview

When they had asked me what he had been like, the man with the knife, all I could say was that I couldn’t really say. He had been, to my mind’s eye, nothing more, or less, than average.

      He had stood at average height; not discernibly taller nor shorter than myself. His hair had been worn short, but neither cropped nor shaven, and his eyes, well I could barely remember the colour of my closest friend’s eyes, so that line of questioning drew a blank.

      What of the colour of the man’s skin? I could confidently say that he was white, but boasted a tanned face; or had that been a more olive complexion? It was difficult to say with any degree of certainty.

      Distinguishing features? He had a knife: a response that solicited a look which could have been annoyance but equally disdain. No, there were none that my sapless mind could recall.

      He had been, the man with the knife, nothing more than average. His accessory had been all that made him stand apart. His unremarkableness reminded me only of myself.

      In fact he might as well have been me.

Embrace

Tags

creative, dark, Depression, Embrace, Ghost, poems, poetry, verse, writing

He follows you, silent

Gliding, dark-cloaked, invisible

As whispering eddies in the night.

Through streets shrouded

In simple shadows, and light

As pallid as the Sun in winter

Kissed skies.

Across cobble and path,

Through doorways abandoned

As cold as hoar-frost mornings

Creeping tentacles brushing

A shoulder of flame.

In ancient corners, windowless

Led deep within a labyrinth moon,

A face forms shapes melts

Features upon your flesh,

A windless sea carries call to home

Acceptance sighs to welcome.

Silence Always Wins

Tags

Communication, creative, Darkness, Depression, Devil, dreams, Fear, isolation, Loneliness, poems, poetry, Silence always wins, verse, writing

Threw my words against the silence

To see if they would stick

And trail like raindrops on the pane

But silence always wins,

And in a way my presence came

Like a shadow in the dark

And briefly fell before the fall

On everything below,

Dark thoughts and dreams you did not call

Lurk lost and lonely like the tears

You spilled before the sudden light

That linger on your cheek,

Holding on to tiny moments

That scream inside your head

The whispers that mark out the world

And lead you to forget

That silence always wins.

Nothing Changed

Tags

Communication, creative, Depression, Fear, hope, nostalgia, Nothing changed, poems, poetry, verse, writing

Nothing really changed at all,

The mark still stayed upon the wall,

And as we looked for something new,

Behind our backs it grew and grew.

Though we thought that we’d moved on,

The chains that held us were not gone,

And darkness clouded all our arts,

And spread its blackness through our hearts.

Things we thought that we had tamed,

Clung to our shadows hurting, maimed,

To heal themselves when night took hold,

Our sweetest dreams to then enfold.

In the light it brought its gloom,

In every corner, every room,

The stain it grew with fitful glee,

To pin us here and make us see.

Every footstep brought us here,

But never freed us from our fear,

Hung heavy over every head,

And coloured every word we said.

Dreamed we’d come so very far,

Our feet stuck fast in blackened tar,

We felt we had so much to prove,

Only to find we couldn’t move.

And nothing really changed at all,

The mark still stayed upon the wall,

And as we looked for something new,

Behind our backs it ever grew.

AVAILABLE NOW

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/chris-nelson/falling-sleet/paperback/product-8dkqgy.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Wrapped Within

Tags

creative, Depression, Fear, Love, poems, poetry, verse, Wrapped Within, writing

Across the blue across the green

I’ll come to you and stay with you

A silent itch beneath your skin

The things you hold, the old the new,

Beneath the silver silken moon

You’ll see my shadow feel my sigh

And in an instant know my name

And catch my heart and catch my eye,

Deep in the dark below the sun

I’ll wrap myself within your beat

And seep inside your every breath

Beneath the light beneath the sheet,

And when my eyes close in the black

Your light will shine behind my lid

As mine stays deep within your soul

A love to never be outbid.

AVAILABLE NOW

Falling Sleet – a collection of poetry

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/chris-nelson/falling-sleet/paperback/product-8dkqgy.html?page=1&pageSize=4

As It Ever Was

Tags

age, As it ever was, creative, Depression, hope, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, time, verse, writing

And when at last the dust

That had crept into our eyes and

Scratched its frozen images

Deep within our hearts and minds

Began to fall

Did we find that we had found

All that we were looking for

The prizes and rewards that we

Had promised ourselves

So many lifetimes before?

Or did our vista still contain the

Dreams that we had always known

Were nothing more than that

No more than the pictures that we

Had painted with the hands

Of children fleeing from the night?

And all the promises that we had cast

Like yarrow stalks, now pebbles on the beach

Had given up their secrets to the sea

And washed themselves with the briny tears

That we had shed so freely

Thinking that they would be gone

Spent like the pennies we cherished in

The youth we dreamed away so soon

Before we learned to mourn its death

And let the black sank deep within

A storm that never passed

The ghost of all the days we thought

Would one day come to life

And take our hands

And lead us to all that grew on trees so near

So far from reach

But now through thinly veiled eyes

The scratches fall away

And through the sinking mists we see

All as it ever was.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2021

Something to Say

Tags

Communication, creative, Depression, loss, Love, nostalgia, poem, poetry, Relationships, Something to Say, verse, writing

There was something that I wanted

To say to you

Before the feeling was drowned

By words

In the moments when the ghosts

Moved amongst us

Like silkworm strands

Their delicate beauty their strength

Eclipsing the hands as they swept away

The stories that we had been sold

Before the skies grew dark above

Our heads

In the days when the ghosts

Drifted from our sight

Like cataract clouds

Their flailing hands now skeletal

Lost behind the numbers that fell from our eyes

Leaving nothing but the dust.

There was something that I wanted

To say to you.

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2000-2020