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

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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

 

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.

Last Thoughts from a Quiet Room

Tags

creative, death, Fear, loss, poems, poetry, Solitude, thoughts, verse, writing

1. (Rage)

Burning with hatred

Like bile in my throat

Another reaction

I wear like a coat,

How could this happen

To one such as me

The cruel and the selfish

Are all that I see,

I’ll spit my last breath

With venom and vile

At those more deserving

And leave with a smile,

And you with your hope

I leave in my wake

As I plough my furrow

For sanity’s sake.

 

2. (Regret)

All the things I’ll never do

Ring through my head

Like the desolate bells

Of New Year’s mass,

Their promise so clean

Like the crispness of frost

Dissolving with time

And age’s fickle kiss,

All the empty places

Once written in my heart

Lie like wrappers discarded

By last year’s favoured children,

All the flesh I’ll never touch

Once the lure of youthful days

Haunt the hollows of my eyes

Then fade like spectres past,

All the words I thought I owned

Now rattle through this house

A jumbled case of scratches

That fail to mark my time.

 

3. (Sorrow)

A thousand salted rainbows

Seep slowly from your eye,

They sigh their words of sorrow

Sign scars beneath your skin.

The fragrance of your anguish

Which fills an empty room,

The memories it brings me

Cuts deeper than these wounds.

You, curled like sorrow’s foetus

I bring you only pain,

Prostrate like a crucifix

I cannot heal you now.

And I will leave you nothing

But emptiness and doubt,

Stripped and bound in ruined skin

To never feel again.

 

4. (Love)

Kiss these lips

With passion now

As if it were

For the first time.

 

Take this hand

And feel the heat

That burns inside

Above all else.

 

Hold me now

A fragile beast

And take this love

My gift to you.

 

Take this hand

Fingertip kiss

And keep it safe

Within your heart.

 

Kiss these lips

Before they fade

From pastel pink

To night-cold blue.

Loss

Tags

creative, death, loss, poems, poetry, verse, writing

Each fleeting life

Tissue paper moments

Torn too soon from books

Whose stories cry silent, weeping

Like still green leaves

From Autumn trees,

Borne on the chill

Dispassionate voice that whispers

Syllables that pass to us unheard

But leave a salted watermark

Upon the page,

Our fingers stretch beyond our reach

And clutch the empty air

Now stagnant with our loss,

As tiny memories cling

Like children to our coats

Their eyes imploring,

But our answers fall

Beneath their feet

Impotent breaths lost

Once more.

 

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.

Alone

Tags

creative, death, isolation, loss, poems, poetry, verse, writing

In a room of smiling faces

The old man stands

His left arm gripped in clammy hand

Falls to the floor

Word filled head cries, ‘Why now, why me?’

A scarecrow doll

Swollen pupils the silent cry

Mute lips can’t speak

And all around slow motion acts

Impotent breath

In desperation’s final throes

The figure stands

An empty platform waiting room

Nobody saw

And of the faces peering on

Did any know?

With resignation’s final sigh

He smiled at last.

Fear of Change

Tags

Change, creative, Creative writing, loss, nostalgia, poems, poetry, verse, writing

What was it

That kept me here –

A hope that this

Would be enough,

Or just a fear of change?

The thought that all

Would, in time, return

To repeat itself

Once more?

That those who left

Would lose themselves

And on their pointed

Memories fall?

Or perhaps the grip

Of ties unwanted

Held me far too tight?

The chance to step

To move apart that

Shook me to the

Naked core –

Or is this place

That I call home

Really all

I need?