Wooden Pieces

Tags

Communication, conflict, Creative writing, faith, history, Humanity, Life, poems, poetry, politics, Principles, religion, time, verse, writing

Above the birds circled

Silhouette patterns in the sky,

Monochromatic mosaics which shuffled like aging hands

Moving wooden pieces across a board

In some endless game,

Watching, always watching

Waiting for that killer move

That only Time knew

Would never come,

As far below, talking monkeys

Hurled sticks and stones across the fields,

Reached over the seas to tear the rage on others such as them

Moving invisible pieces across a board

As if they had a goal,

Forgetting that they had the gift

Of sound and word and voice,

Turning time upside down

As if it bore the blame,

And still above their sightless heads

The shadows wove designs,

Building plans like those before who came and failed and fell

Moving broken pieces across a board

As if there were a point,

Waiting, always waiting

Til aching wings gave way

Above the spinning rock

As silent Time fell still.

 

© All original writing copyright Chris Nelson 2018

 

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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

Owen or Brooke?

Tags

Competition, conflict, history, Humanity, Philosophy, poems, poetry, Rupert Brooke, thoughts, war, Wilfred Owen

War poets: a) poets who lived through times of war

Or b) poets who write about war?

I saw this poster and, for two seconds, considered writing something for it.

Then I read it and began to consider what exactly were they looking for?

Would they want a ‘war is abhorrent, causes nothing but suffering, pain and misery, and it is about time that we evolved Humanity to a state where wars no longer took place’, or would they rather a ‘war is an unfortunate, yet necessary evil, in which good will triumph, and all those who fight are ‘heroes”?

I decided that the ‘judges’ would err towards the latter.

I trust you know that my leaning is towards the former.

I shall not participate.

Days of Nostalgia

Tags

Childhood, creative, history, Life, Memories, nostalgia, Past, poems, poetry, verse, writing

When we were younger

Our feet danced

To the beat of the factories

On every street,

Metal bins rattled

Voices roared

As our rain-heavy leather ball

Slapped on the wall,

And we watched our dads

As hooters blew

Stride from the heat to the corner pub

And the pull of beer,

It was always enough

To halt our game

And wonder at the marvel of what

Lay ahead for us,

As the words of our mothers

Rang in our ears

And we knew that all too soon our games

Would be lost for good,

And that the storm ahead

Was rising still

Our adult lives being forged in the mill

Despite our cries,

Sweets and penny chews

On happy days

We dipped our toes like liquorice sticks

In life’s tart sherbet,

But not for us, not yet

The working hours

Our endless time still filled with joys that

Poverty couldn’t kill,

As on the kitchen table

Our mothers served their fare

The food that always smelled so good yet

Always was the same,

And mornings came so very late

With our fathers gone

And days of school – what did we learn

But how to play the game?

And did we ever really know

What lay beyond

The streets down which we lived our days

And voices never heard?

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?

 

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.

Cities – 3

Tags

creative, faith, history, poems, poetry, verse, war, writing

I stand

Stand on the high ground

The victim of

Your disease,

I watch

Watch with a glass eye

As you destroy

What you once made,

I see

See with perception

The jealousy

That you deny,

My limbs

Limbs you have shattered

That held you once

In my heart,

Your hands

Hands of destruction

That turned from me

On a whim,

I fall

Fall on my own sword

A victim of

Your designs,

I cry

Cry as the guns sing

A broken shell

To breath no more.

He Waits

Tags

creative, Eyam, faith, history, plague, poems, poetry, writing

Inspired by the events surrounding William Mompesson in the village of Eyam in 1666.

And still they circle
Black angels hover
Endless ceaseless waning presence
He waits
Dull bells toll their hollow
Call – The night birds waver
Spiralling enclosing entombing
Still he waits
They call the winged host
Like sheep their hordes are pulled
As their children
He waits