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Clive Blake Mar 2018
Do you know what it’s like
To be required no more,
To be put out to grass,
To be kicked out the door,
To know your work’s ended,
No more will be done,
To be slung on the tip,
Pushed aside by the young,
To be pensioned off
In an unceremonious way,
To know you’ve had your’s -
Every dog has its day,
To have an appetite for work,
But be left to hunger,
To be replaced by someone
More able and younger,
To be told you’re too old,
When you feel in your prime,
To be sent on your bike,
Before it’s your time,
To be all washed up
And flushed down the drain,
To have no physical wounds,
But still be in pain,
To feel your age,
Find you’re no Peter Pan,
To see your life going
No longer to plan,
To recall when you felt rich,
But now you feel poor,
To hear your heart slowly pumping,
Alas’ it races no more,
To experience an emptiness
That nothing will fill,
To have no medical symptoms,
But still feel ill,
To be out of control
Of your own destiny,
To be constantly asking
Why me ... why me?
There is a follow up poem to this entitled 'Required Once More'
Clive Blake Mar 2018
What a great reptile,
A Royal Python - no less,
A serpent so dapper;
Never seen in a mess,
Non-poisonous, deaf, mute;
Except for its hiss,
It likes nothing more
Than to hug and to kiss!

Though it has no arms,
Harmless it is not,
Make no mis-snake a
Mean streak it has got,
Outside of its coils
The view is just fine,
But if invited inside
You'd be wise to decline!

Don't be enticed in
By its hypnotic stare,
For when those coils tense,
They act like a snare,
For those patterned coils;
Look brill' from without,
But lose their appeal
When wrapped
Around your snout!
Clive Blake Mar 2018
Raindrops descend, puddles form,
A stream engulfed, a river is born,
A course is set, the sea to reach,
Meandering ponderously to a far off beach.

The sea reclaims its myriad young,
Kidnapped by clouds, thunder-slung;
The storm is long past with calm all around;
Albatross glide, with a whisper of sound.

Seagulls circle, dogfish sleep,
Gannets dive and dolphins leap,
But black clouds return and lightning flashes
O'er storm-tossed seas, as thunder crashes.

Once more a stealthy cloud abducts infant water,
The sea's own offspring: a son ... a daughter;
The thief sets off at a wind blown pace,
The anguished mother unable to chase.

The criminal finds refuge in a partisan crowd,
A formless body in a vaporous shroud;
The cloud has no guilt, shows no remorse,
But heads inland on a predestined course.

A hill stands guard, like a customs post;
It stabs the guilty, but allows past the host;
The rogue cloud is ruptured, severed seam and pleat,
Releasing its captives and accepting defeat.

Raindrops descend, puddles form,
A stream engulfed, a river is born,
A course is set, the sea to reach,
Meandering ponderously to a far off beach ...
Clive Blake Mar 2018
I want to walk in my golden years,
On the Cornish beaches’ warm gold sands,
Where my footsteps are unhurried,
And my route is seldom planned.

I want to sit on the wooden benches,
Overlooking those dark blue bays,
I want to breath in this fresh salt air,
Until the ending of my days.

I don’t want to become immortal;
Living for forever and a day,
I just want to savour life in this world,
No matter how long or short my stay.

I don’t want my life extended for the sake of it,
With no reason or rhyme,
I just want to live in the here and the now,
And enjoy this - my quality time.
Clive Blake Mar 2018
God’s Light split,
Laying bare its constituent parts,
Diverted on course,
Nurtured by prismed skies,
Producing rainbow’d shafts
Which penetrate even the darkest hearts,
To be feasted on, only to be contradicted,
By sad, unbelieving eyes.
Clive Blake Dec 2017
The muggers,
The rapists,
The murderers,
The paedophiles,
The confidence tricksters -
Pray for them.

The weak,
The naïve,
The young,
The old,
The inadequate mixers -
Prey … for them.
Clive Blake Dec 2017
People living in cardboard boxes ...
What are they doing there,
Are they there out of choice,
Or there in despair?

Are they there through their own fault,
Or is the blame society's at large,
Should you give them some free assistance,
Or have police put them on a charge?

Unlike the good samaritan,
You choose to walk on the other side,
Quite happy to debate lofty moral issues,
Until you meet reality, stumble and collide.

Cardboard City's inhabitants,
Are surely past redemption,
Would you really make that statement,
If in there, lived your son?

Shouldn't they help themselves more?
Perhaps they've already been trying,
All I know is they are fellow human beings,
And in the winter ... they are dying.
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