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Gerry Sykes Nov 2
Abandoned, Still, Silent,
only the dust is moving
dancing a noiseless perpetual waltz.
Here and there a mote
intersects the silent sun,
(that slips in through broken glass)
picking out the rainbow rays.
Just the quick perception
of mouse and bird
to observe the shafts of coloured light
that they do not comprehend.

Above the pulpit
marble eyes look out,
and stone lips
caught in the act
cry out
"Why have you forsaken Me?"
Immobile hands are pinned
out wide,
to receive the world.
They cannot open the door
but wait
for someone to come.
One of the first I wrote, sometime in the late 1980's. The first one outside English lessons in school.
He is like a god to me
    alpha of my pack, my rescuer and my rock:
his breath like beef’s bouquet
    his words like brittle bones breaking in my mouth.

Our touch like summer
    as I rest my head on his strong thigh:
gazing adoration
    staring petition.

I stalk him
    for the crumb that falls from his plate:
and wait patiently
    for scraps of skin from his repast.

When indecision strikes
      to eat or not to eat:
He nobly leads me to the door
      and tethered takes me out.

He leads me through
    musky canine
          saffron sage
              scented pastures:
and corrects me when
    squirrels like sins
          tempt me to stray.

We romp through rugs
    of red and russet
          fallen fronds:
foraging for
    foully fragrant food
          delight of doggy dentes.

I am his humble hound:
he my mighty man.
An exercise in personification. The poem uses the metaphor of a dog's devotion for our relationship with the divine.

I thank Kareneisenlord Klge for her feedback,  especially the image of yellow scented sage that allowed me to improve the 5th stanza, and the suggestion of more visual imagery that lead me to add the 6th stanza.
Gerry Sykes Nov 6
I was called to walk on the water,
but I ****** in the lake instead,
polluted the whole of creation,
until all its creatures were dead.

I was called to heal all the people
with hands that are gentle and kind
but I couldn’t turn round a profit
so I shat on the lame and the blind.

I was called to bring peace to creation
but found it better to sell,
weapons of mass destruction,
and condemn all the nations to hell.

And if I complain that the world,
is *******, unfair and unkind,
it’s because I ****** in the water
and left all my refuse behind.
I has the first 2 lines in my mind but they needed more so the rest is just to support them. I hope it makes you laugh and think
Gerry Sykes Nov 4
As the solution cools
the molecules slow their stochastic dance
and the liquid is less able
to keep the substance dissolved.

As a threshold is crossed
the power of solution fails
and atom by atom
molecule by molecule
the substance crystallizes
plane by plane
layer by layer
the form of the substance
gives rise to a growing crystal
revealing in its structure
the nature of itself.
DDT
Gerry Sykes Nov 5
DDT
The drab
brown butterfly
sits on a white blossom
incautiously drinking honeyed
poison.
The darker side of our relationship with nature isn't always visible – a metaphor for our relationships with other people.
Sitting at a stained desk
superfluous space for ink wells,
groove to place my pencil
I dream of rockets, submarines and spells
as the sixties swing by
                                  out of sight.

In the lowest English sets,
there’s no dyslexia
only dumb slackness, scribbling misspelt words;
scrapped, I scarcely scrape a pass.

What bare faced side I display
attempting to write a poem
when the system says
You ****.
I went to school early because the local authority needed to make up numbers. I was probably dyslexic as well. I wrote this for the staff of a school I work in, and it's interesting that it engaged teachers, assistants and site staff.
Gerry Sykes Nov 12
Rubble and dust
spinning in swirling disks
around the fire
until one place
of greater attraction
draws debris to itself
and coalesces into an incandescent planet.
Earth and sky begin
full of promise.
Field of overnight oats
so full of hippy goodness
I might live forever.
Just thought of this when I made my overnight oats. A comment on health fads.
Gerry Sykes Nov 11
No one saw the hooded man
in the grain of the wood:
every night I slept face down
so I didn't have to look at him.

I'm grown up:
there are no figures
on wardrobe doors,
but some people make me hide
under the bed sheets.
I was just watching an halloween movie and it brought to mind my childhood fear of a figure I was in the grain of the wood of my wardrobe.
Gerry Sykes Nov 1
.                                                  Inch by inch,
                                            cruel word,
                                      indecision,
         ­                       pressure,
                        spin an avalanche
                    around my grubby life,
              cocooned, cold
          my sight
        goes
      black.
A crack, amber light bleeds
into my shrouding chrysalis.
      I struggle,
        tearing silk,
            escaping
                to smell the sun
                      taste its nectar
                            and
                          ­        see
                                        I am
                                              a
              ­                                      butterfly.
Spent silverfish, massed on black
whippets at        the end of the track
cracked nut shells, lying
inflated balloons, dying.

Steel mosquitos that    tattoo poppies
shot up cartridges by    the school gate
in new mown grass    that stinks      the street.
The poem is about drug use in the area I live.
The silver fish are nitrous oxide canisters left discarded on the black streets - also known as whippets.
Steel mosquitos are syringes.
Deep
    liquid rock seethes
          pressure builds
                molten fingers *****
                        probing
                              searching
                        pressed down
                        resisted
                        suppressed.

                        Incandescent lava
                            finds weak points
                                  pushes
                                      forces
                                      the mountain bends, buckles, swells
                                      strains, contains
                                      furious fire

                                      until

                                at supersonic speed
                      pyroclastic ash
                  rushes
            burns
        clears.

Quiet
    death has passed                                                          
          black cinder slopes
              and
                  a flower
                      blooms.
I wrote this when I was depressed and it is a metaphor for the stress that lead to my depression and my recovery.
Gerry Sykes Oct 29
The fly,
drawn by its addiction
to sweetness,
enters the pitcher plant.
Tired and drugged,
slipping on downward
pointing hairs
it falls into
the digestive juices
that dissolve its goodness
leaving only
its hard
chitin
skeleton.
Gerry Sykes Oct 29
Pale pink petals dipped in blood
surround my yellow crown
  and painstakingly painted stigmata.
A  fragile, fragrant DNA poem
  perfectly expressed.
An immaculate lily – not a failed rose.
On a recent Ignatian retreat I saw a Peruvian lily (Alstroemeria) and it made me think about what I am rather than what people would like me to be. The photo is my own and is of the lily that inspired this poem.
Gerry Sykes Nov 13
Underneath the thorn
  stinking, **** suppurates.

It throbs–
pulling the splinter–
  pressing out the ****–
      squeezing until the green sepsis runs ******.

The thorn's scar
      is permanent
            biding time,
                  waiting for bacteria.
My reflections my a lost son. I can't compete with the great poem by Ben Johnson, but these are my feelings anyway.
Gerry Sykes Nov 7
It's not easy to wash feet
    in Messulumi.
Water fetched
    fire lit
          kettle boiled
              warm water poured
                    soap rubbed
rough towel dried.
Such care
                is needed.
Then poem is about having my feet washed in Messulumi village. Messulumi is the village in Nagaland (N E India) that my wife comes from. The painting is also my work is of Jesus washing Peter's feet at the last supper on Maundy Thursday.
A dead baby
  is a baby that's died
      in anyone's language.
Not surprisingly I am thinking of the terrible things happening in Israel and Gaza. I'm also speaking from the experience of loosing a son.
Gerry Sykes Nov 10
One place, pressure, temperature,
The Triple Point,
aqueous molecules skip between
solid, liquid and gas
the salsa between states - identical.

No growth of  ice
water does not accumulate
nor vapour pressure rise
because the waltz, one to another, is equal.

So the three coexist suggesting stasis
while constantly exchanging substance;
a symmetry of balanced dancing stability.
Written as a meditation on the Trinity while on retreat at St Beuno's in North Wales. The triple point of a substance of the exact temperature and pressure when the solid, liquid and gas phases of a substance are in equilibrium.
Gerry Sykes Nov 8
cobalt blue, lime green and
lemon yellow warp
stretches on a loom

the shuttle dances
back and forth
weaving my crimson weft
into the pattern of the universe

my pilgrimage zigzags
beneath the comb
as time winds the warp
which begins and ends
beyond my scarlet thread
The comb here is the heddle is a looped wire or cord with an eye in the centre through which a warp yarn is passed in a loom before going through the reed to control its movement and divide the threads.

I leave you to decide where the warp begins and ends. For me is in in the infinity of the Trinity.

— The End —