Victory [Get a postcard from me!]

[I’m just experimenting to see what I can get away with writing here…

Comment with the other piece on this blog that this is a rewriting of, and I’ll send you a postcard. Cos why not]

Victory

The rising sun ironic,

Illuminating death.

A battle bathed in sunlight,

Our hero lives with nothing left.

All around him friends lay still,

Ne’er to breathe again.

Battered bodies lined the hill

Broken brothers met their end.

He gathers their possessions,

The trinkets for the wives back home,

Who scream as he approaches

His presence news – he walks alone.

Now night-time sees him screaming,

As he lies awake in bed.

For friends he lost and men he killed,

Swim endlessly around his head.

A tortured soul, a plague of mind,

Glance to the shadows – what to find?

Losing faith and losing time,

The reaper creeping close behind.

An emptiness that swallowed all,

Crept slowly through his veins.

Bleak futile obsolescence,

That would drive a man insane

And losing incandescence, life:

The oft-extinguished flame.

[We’ll work out a way for me to subtly get your address don’t worry]

House of Hope [twin poem discussion post!]

[My friend wrote a poem. Then I rewrote it, changing every word but keeping the meaning and the precise 100 word total. I won’t say which is which just now, because I’m not certain I can remember. Maybe half of you reading (yes you, not not you) should scroll down and read the second one first. Anyway, thoughts? Which do you prefer? Does it even matter? Can we just appreciate both. Answers on a postcard (gosh, that would be romantic).]

 

House of Hope #1

Bowing, bending beams and walls

‘Tread softly’ I repeat,

‘Take care’, broken bricks and mottled mortar

Sharp silhouettes and angles fill the gloom

Leering out, reaching up

Beyond the boundaries of candlelight;

Passageways take shape

 

The soft hum that signals slow collapse,

Pierced with urgent screeching,

Timber snaps and starts the descent,

Gradual, but gathering, past every path,

Each side taken, each challenge faced

Even challenges I couldn’t face.

 

Collapsing.

 

Building blocks, cracked with age,

Shape undecided, indeterminate, growing and decaying.

A hollow whisper whistles round dead end corners

For each one that got away

The blueprint for my past

 

House of Hope #2

Great groaning husk of building

Proceed slowly,

Carefully, rotten wood and blackened timber

Strange angles and shadows in the darkness

Looming forwards, extending upwards

Further than light’s glow can show;

Corridors unfurling

 

Gentle murmur of slow decay,

Broken occasionally by a more destructive leap,

A beam breaks and begins its fall,

Its slow, sonorous fall, down all the passageways of your life,

The choices made, the bridges crossed,

The bridges you turned away from.

 

They fall.

 

The wood creaks under the pressure of time,

The structure changing, shifting, morphing, parts falling.

An empty wind blows through the broken house

The unredeemable moments

Architecture of your life

 

Heather

Underneath the sky, bright and boundless,

gently reaching down to hold the Earth once more.

Underneath the sky, in amongst the Life, they lie.

Sprawled amongst the heather, their laughter rings like bells and birdsong.

Natural, here they fit and feel alive.

Nature watches without judgement; the only witness to all they do

and do not do, to all they create, destroy and create again.

Busy city streets are far behind, the unkind looks left there as well.

No hushed ironic whispers, no raised eyebrows.

Here, and maybe even here alone, they live and laugh and love as they’ve longed to all their lives.

Urges kept in check before run free and fire fills their souls.

All day they play, at night they keep the cold at bay.

Bracken burns in a merry blaze, warm hazy glows on warm contented faces.

Darkness brings the owls and bats, dancing through the firelight.

Exhausted, they fall back into the landscape, and

sprawl amongst the heather, nothing can touch them.

 

 

Butterflies

For Victoria

The excitement of new, the remembrance of old

The subtle advance or like lightning so bold

It can strike anytime and can hit anyone

And when it begins it cannot be undone

Irreversible, undeniable

And no matter what you try it will

Surround you, astound you

Above all it will confound you

Under its spell even saints will lie

Kings abdicate, the heartless cry

It pounds like a drum, a beat through the chest

And once it starts up the drummer won’t rest

It will drive you to madness, a voice in your head

But god if it stopped you would rather be dead

The song without lyrics, carefree it will rise

Out of pages and hearts like new-born butterflies

On paper-thin wings they bring hope to us all

To wait for the day, when in love we will fall

United State of Mind [possible dystopian graffiti]

[Just a short piece, and an old, possibly unfinished one at that, but better to post something than nothing, right? I can imagine this scrawled on a wall in the 22nd century remains of the US…]

Why try, cry weary eyes

Only the lonely don’t seem phoney

____________________________

People police popularity pride

No individuality in mob mentality.

 

Pride

[Evening all! Found this reading through some old work and quite liked it, so hopefully you will too. A slight departure from my usual style, which I enjoyed. Shout out to my good friend Jake of Granola For Dinner, who likely helped me edit this back in the day (thus any mistakes are his and I accept no responsibility). *end disclaimer, start poem*]

Pride

The bitter taste of bile and blood,
A battle nearly won.
Though vict’ry’s air was sweet to taste,
The cost had been a son.

All around him friends lay still,
Ne’er to breathe again.
Yet tall he stood, with pride in tow,
A king, he must remain.

Time soon passed with summer scorch,
And winters cold with frost.
Then though the land grew green once more
He was consumed with what he’d lost.

In sweet birdsong, a rose’s dew,
The king saw only death.
Bleak and black and burned in guilt,
His mind a blazing wrath.

Wife departed, sons all slain,
What now, did he have left?
The razor drawn at the setting sun,
The king saw only death…