Skip to main content

A Misplaced Death


To wander like the wind of one thousand faces
amplified by silence,
the shadows beckon me to the earth,
with forgotten and smoked memories,
I glide my way through unwelcome fields.

Cast ashore
by the concave sky
beckoning me adrift
on a sea of darkness,
a stranger of many faces.

Haunted by extra commas,
the landscape between
our past and present
separates and unites us
with misplaced and loyal passions.

Anon

Currently Popular Poems:

Forever Searching

Search the walls Scan the corridors Express the highs Scribble the lows Writing explores The state of my mind.   Judith  

So Much Yellow

There’s gorse, of course and sometimes broom, the lichens yellow on the tomb and every churchyard has its fill of lovely yellow daffodils. There’s dandelions and celandine and yellow primrose, I suppose, and fluffy yellow chicks are born and yellow toads from slippery spawn. And green is seen on every lawn, at April’s end the woods turn blue and tulips bloom in pink and red with drooping leaves in every bed but yellow bellows all around: spring’s mating call, a joyful sound. Julia Duke

Dunwich Heath Cliff

Beachen sand, coastal gravel Heave and spew with every wave Are fixed above my head Banks of sand, clots of gravel Two million-years adrift Are rolling at my feet Same old, same old Dunwich Cliff, Dunwich Beach: The poetry of sediment remains Tim

Feathers

It’s as if all the birds In every weather Had dropped every feather The weight sometimes Of all those why's A ton of lead Or a ton of words unsaid Down on a feathered bed The weight belies The width of squawks When the birds are dead And they sing remembering When a ton of song Weighed the same as Fly away Autumns Flu away fall Feather or not Bird at all. Stephen Kirin

Jungle Walk, Henstead Exotic Garden, Suffolk.

Broad-leaved trees, spreading palms, fingers outstretched, shield me from the sun’s heat. Beneath a green umbrella’s shade, the perfect spot on a blistering summer’s day, so cool, serene. Round, fluted lily pads rest flat on inky waters where golden fish glide, finding refuge in silence. A tiny oasis, place of shelter enfolding, embracing me within its safe circumference. Julia Duke

Post Traumatic Stress

Your steps alert yet furtive, Your actions so subdued, The walls you'd built around yourself, No others heard or viewed. Your senses sharp and heightened, Reacting to small cues, Kept memories lingering in your head No others heard your news. Self protection served its purpose, Of course, and that made sense, But little did you know that, It was all in the past tense. Relief it was short lived, in fact, The price that was to pay Was that years had passed before your eyes With not living in today. So walls built strong like concrete, Impermeable to most, Restricted you so badly, With the past a haunting ghost. Those dreams seemed like reality, Like you were still right there, The terror you experienced then again, Unjust and unfair. In later years you found a way, A chance to start again, Each gentle step to live once more, Crawling gently from your den. Putting back the chaos, That ran amok inside your head, Gave you strength to start to live, And deal with all the dread. Then pea...

Ballinasloe Station

Flood plains replenished and diminished, a deceiving here-and-there fluidity and the flat statement of stubborn water. Occasionally trackside trees are stranded, littered in swirling pools that soundlessly disappear. On the horizon, tall walls and radio mast mark the far-off asylum neatly screened with its avenue of trees. The people are hidden beyond the town, their tears reaching as far as the railway lines. The train navigates the flood’s edge like logic escaping emotion, trim engineering escaping danger, holding firmly onto the rails. (Ballinasloe was a major mental home in County Galway) Pat Jourdan

Paradoxical Party

Only inebriated by our own troubles, with no form of sobriety in society and so intoxicated by our own thoughts. We are just circling around one another in the party of that I see as life. When we meet a death of our paradoxical minds, the death of our bodies or both intertwined, life carries on. So, as we reside in our physical form, celebrate. Have your cake and eat it. Please don’t step on anybody else’s footsteps if they are not dancing to your rhythm. Dance your own design, truth is, the party never ends live to love in celebration and hold onto your hats! Lauren.x

Twenty-First Century Willow

I have always been proud of my body: lithe, supple, quite elastic. Watch me while I bow to reach my delicately painted toenails. I have always been supple. My sturdy trunk withstands the wind which gently stirs my slender limbs and sets me swaying, tossed like the ocean’s waves, rippling the fronds of my lime-green hair. Don’t waste your pity on me. I have a reputation for weeping but I am content with my lot. I am not one of those weepy women you love to despise. Snivelling, you call it. I have always been flexible. Don’t let that thought mislead you into imagining that I am easily led. Supple, flexible, I may be. Pliable, I am not. If you are inclined to stay, we may indulge ourselves in a little laziness. Rest a while beneath my boughs, see how I catch the sunlight in my hair and we will dip our toes together in the river’s flow. I am a little moody, a touch melancholy you might say, and inclined to droop. There are times, I admit, when the river flows by unheeding and I crave a li...

Hidden Behind Plastic Shields and Masks

Hidden behind plastic shields and masks they smile at me but only with their eyes, there is love in each iris, lash and wrinkle wink. Who silently steps in the space between being neither here nor there? He watches her laboured breathing as tubes that had filled her lungs with life are now removed. I’ve breathed in and out without a thought for sixty-seven years but not now, I needed a machine but not anymore. Alone now and strangely calm - this is how it ends, the final cut. He looked at her gravely and slides beside her under covers of night. I feel his presence as a chill - wintery, I’m not dressed for this journey. A lantern held aloft in the forest of firs underfoot pine needles and snow the smell of resin and the crack of footfalls on icy ground. He smiles and I find myself smiling back a new doctor without a mask, weary eyes that have seen this all before and see too much I am weightless as a white feather drifting skyward. Ian Hartley