Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Ashley Chapman Aug 2018
These days have ebbed
as Love's swell was checked:
the waters in some places
- all but dammed!

But now at last
I sense the rising tide
and thank Temese
for the current's turn;
now following that great writhing snake
to where its pulsing head will rake;
over the mucky soiled watery beds
of Woolwich
Greenwich
Limehouse
- and under -
Tower Bridge

     To that great gloating sight
                A crown of a billion lights
     Blazing day and night:
                And somewhere within
     In the slick oily warmth
                Our flood tides mesh,
     As over each other we wash.

Hard thrusts
wicked deep cuts
given and received
are recorded in that great mirror smoked!
where with a tug and a shove
on the banks
in the streets
through the loopy twists
everything prospers in the glow
as the decades decaying flow;
each ***** bud
red with new blood
one after t'other
flowers
before their purple petals scatter.

Let's on the luck o' the dice
(you 'n' me!)
ride out
on the flotsam and jetsom
that has carried us this far
and as pleases
merge.
London, a city with a rhythm, the Thames, which I sailed upon one Saturday morning - not a soul at this end of this magestic river, this city, in which I have lived for forty years...And love - a wonderful woman - and how I desire us to pull at each other as tides do, tugging at each other, two flows running over reeds and muddy shelves searching for each other in the cool green depth.
Paul Hansford Sep 2018
Many people write a "bucket list" of things they want to do before they die.  Now in my 80th year, I don't have the time or the energy to do things that others might aim for, but I have during my life visited many places, seen many things, and enjoyed many experiences that I would have been sorry to miss. There have also been some events that I would have preferred not to experience, but which have enriched my life in different ways, and which I remember with a kind of sad affection.  
Some of these are very personal to me, and would not be interesting to most people, but read the note if you wonder why I chose them.

Here then is what I might call  
                                                My Reverse Bucket List

Towns and cities – architecture & atmosphere
   Barcelona, Spain
   Venice, Italy
   Oxford, England
   Jerusalem, Israel
   Luxor, Egypt
   Varanasi, India
   Hiroshima, Japan
   Pompeii, Italy

Other locations
   Galápagos islands, Ecuador
   Great Barrier Reef, Australia
   North Woolwich, London

Churches
   St Paul's Cathedral, London
   Sagrada Familia, Barcelona
   Coventry Cathedral
   Córdoba Cathedral, Spain
   Blue Mosque, Istanbul

Other structures
   Taj Mahal, Agra
   Auschwitz concentration camp, Poland
   Royal Festival Hall, London
   London underground system (because it was the first, and I rode it for a long time).  Also the more splendid underground railways of Mexico City and Moscow.
   Avebury Ring, Wiltshire, England (the largest prehistoric stone circle in the world, and much more primitive than Stonehenge)
   Bayeux Tapestry 
   "Angel of the North" statue, Gateshead, England
   "Christ the Redeemer" statue, Rio, Brazil

Events
   Messiah at Royal Festival Hall, Feb 1959, with the girl later to be my wife
   St John's night, Spain, early 1990s (?)
   Death and funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, Aug 1997
   Oberammergau passion play, 2010
   Destruction of World Trade Centre, Sept 2001
I haven't added explanatory notes, but a lot of them are easy enough to look up, and if you message me about any mysterious items, I'll answer as best I can. There are poems in my stream connected with some things on the list, though not all are obvious.
Lewis-Hugo  Feb 2014
Woolwich
Lewis-Hugo Feb 2014
As day falls to dark,
eyes turn red,
lusting, hunger, lusting.

Hatred will devour
the flesh of any man
at the bar with eyes closed.

Cursed forever he is with
the sour taste of change,
an irrevocable scar upon today.

We are not united, and we
will die alone, in a ditch
dug by fellow man, under the
crashing September sky.

A lunatic cannot cure a wound,
and one hundred will only
drown in ignorance together.

The man next door has shut
his curtains, fools do not listen
to the sound of yesterday,
only to the screams of cowering conscience.

The red cracks gape, as the tears
of dead minds pour in vain
over the edge of God’s last
and
final
vessel.
A stroll through the honour roll of history
along the river where
shipping was once the big industry
and now the river is the graveyard
of destiny

the march of the container army.

slow

the tide doesn't move with the phase of the moon
there's no room on the Thames for regrets.

Ghosts of the sea sailing in to haunt Woolwich and
Wapping,
Limehouse and Greenwich, the
sound of eight bells on the air.
We direct them
half dead men
who
walk at a funeral
pace
and the other men
I've seen them
riding shotgun on
the outside
at
the dark side
of the sun.

Then the credits rolled
at the folding up of night

These deep fissures which are eyes
prised open by the cracks in dawn
remind me that
half dead we're born into this life
of misery
which serves to trample me and
my day down.

But the Kingdom and the crown remain
God bless the Queen,
I've seen them
the other men
on a golden carriage
pulling guns to Woolwich

is nothing sacred anymore?

half dead men to procreate
the building of an
Empire,
state the obvious
how can this be?
we're all ****** in the end by misery.
I'm not in Greenwich, Dulwich, Woolwich or Shoreditch
but I've been to all of them and never looked at them
the same way again.

The staples to me were
Paris, Rome and Naples,
been to them too
passing through en route
to other locations
assignations
desire
every
destination on fire,
and
then I found you.

don't ask what the pen knows.

— The End —