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'Tis getting late, and I miss you,
I miss you like I used to do
Your cold and clear and fair air;
The winds that followed me everywhere

'Tis not fate, but there was a poem,
I used to read at night in my room
Summer was gone, and I looked at the sky;
You were there to me, to my sight

Coventry, why did you falter me;
Why did you take it all away
You are not here to see me write;
You are not here to comfort my fright

Coventry, why did you love me,
Why did you make me go away
There was more love I wanted to give
There was a life I wanted to live.

Coventry, why did you touch my heart
With such a fatal and hard song;
That I could not take in return
That I had no voice to sing all apart.

Coventry, why did you burn me
And sink my white love back in the sun
And my cold winter, my solid night
My justice, all that had seemed right

Coventry, why did you **** me
Why did you peel my love at once,
And used a sword to seal my words,
To break astray from my whole world.

Coventry, why did you forget me
Why was all to you a lie
And was my love but a faint shadow,
In the white meadow, like one that has no tears

Coventry, why did you drown me,
With a lie that has grown false
Have you forgot the words you perused,
The poems of love, my soul's wisdom.

Coventry, why did you fail me,
Was I but an absurd flute to thee?
A flute that has in its chest no song,
Did I love thee for too long?

Coventry, why did you lie,
And make me look at the murky sky?
That day there was no cloud in sight,
None to be, and none to love again.

Coventry, why did you go,
I am not free, and I cannot be,
There is too much darkness, to be here
Too much that I shall not hear.

Coventry, why did you turn,
There was but none new to burn
And you could have loved me,
I was like a lost bird in the fir tree

Coventry, why did not you forgive,
Had I been mistaken much to live?
Had I been unloved too much,
Had I come from too far away.

Coventry, why was there no reason,
At summer, there was no more season
And why did you bring me back,
Why did you not wait for me.

Coventry, why did you make me cry,
When I had too much love to give,
And all of my heart has rusted away
Just like you want it to have, today.

Coventry, why did you make me sad
And it feels like there is no more to read,
And no more blood in my heartbeat;
All was sorely left in my last poem.

Coventry, why did you alter me,
That I had nowhere else to be
I had no other poetry to love in sight;
In my conscience, at the truest nights.

Coventry, why did you leave me;
Why did you steal my voice today,
You tore my rains and kisses away,
You made me cease to love.
Ah, Yorkshire, thou art purer than Coventry;
and thy promises whiter; than my fluid poetry.
Thou art braver, prudent, and all the way more intelligent;
thy lands are mightier; and perhaps in every possible way-more imminent.
Thou art sincere-and so more delicate than wine, and thoughtful;
Thou adored my words, and made everything else healing, and more beautiful.

In my heart but there might have been no Yorkshire at all-
had I attended not one Coventry last fall.
I witnessed not-at t'at time, all t'is rude twilight-and toughness and madness;
and every chapped breath it had in its roughness, and hilarious-though indeed fake, felicity.
No soul has even bits of a heart, here, to forgive others' soreness,
No being wants to share; no human lives in joy, nor simplicity.
No delight indeed; as I stream my way through every roads;
Everyone is either busy with their selfishness or their coats.
No living is cared for; for humans are phantoms at night and on morns;
Vulnerability is mocked, and demised and often slyly torn.
Ah! Coventry is but a sphere of hell!
For even hell is still lighter when has it not hellfire;
As well cities are, when there is no scoundrel nor liar;
But Coventry is not at all tender;
Its wicked gasp is alive, and never to heartily surrender.
It falls for glory; it bows to such fears for pleasure;
And wanes by the light of whose death; the end of whose allure.
But thou art true-thou art as shy as every flash of virtue;
Thou art indeed-everything t'at is solemnly agreeable and brand new.
Ah, and just now-I had dreams of a fine image of thee;
Smiling within thy fullest verdure, bushes, and lavish undergrowth.
And thy summer is but vivid and friendlier;
Healing every sore heart, and turning 'em all, merrier.
Thou adored the nouns and verbs I wrote,
and admired such simple notions I quoted;
Thou shine upon me-asthe light that shall makest me grow
and the promising dim, faraway region, that lets me glow.
O, Yorkshire, this is still but too early in the transparent evening;
But I am deeply endorsed yet, by t'is poetry writing-
And with thy soul that remains but too witty,
Tearing me away, but with loveliness-
from my cautious present engagement,
Thy charms might be just too hard to bear,
for thy tongue is too sweet;
and thy veracity too chaotic, ye' imminent.
In thee shall I find peace-of that I am convinced,
Peace whose soul is calm, neat and on all occasions, careful-
Unlike t'is bustle which is at times perpetual, and sorrowful;
Unlike t'is very city of Coventry,
Which is damp with exultant bareness, and haziness,
In many ways exalted, but indeed too proud;
And its tongue which is blurred with sin and poison-
Its all-too-loud excitement makes everything but faint,
And at times sends my heart to exile, sends my heart to pain,
In every possible way too unlike thee,
With an imagery, and coaxing voices so sweet
Thou shall leave all my poems bright and freshly lit,
Even though I am still here, even though we are still yet-to meet.

Coventry is too proud and vibrant-yes, too vibrant,
Amidst its own foolishness, which sadly made itself formerly too elegant.
Too elegant to me-in various shapes, and keenly cloaked in unseen deceit,
But only by some beings, whom I was to meet, and my breath to greet.
And as I wake up to an early morning hour,
the plain summer strangely makes me thirst for honest water.
And should I love still-one intelligence t'at is so bitterly repugnant?
I shall certainly not; I shall turn to thee, Yorkshire, who is truer ye' far above, tolerant.
Ah, Yorkshire, but honesty is something Coventry promises not;
for its soul has been maliciously beheaded, and twitched,
It has been paled, corrupted, and despaired-
by its own claws, derived from the jaws of those evil souls
Veiled by their even still inhuman, disguises,
And shall still be wicked, otherwise.
In t'is sea of hate, and these waves of despondency,
I shall think of thee with tantalising depth and scrutiny,
Though thou art still imprisoned in my soul,
Thou who hath flattered and accepted me as a whole.
But Coventry is-still, accidental with some of its bindings,
For mortal as thou art, itself, and is unable to escape its fate,
Still I canst think only of the beauty of thy linings,
And upon thy lands shall I venture to fill my plate.
Ah, Yorkshire, remember that virtue is in thy hand,
but neither is vice-thy dormant enemy, is in its therein,
Virtue who is vile to all of t'is world's inconsolable men,
like in Coventry, as deemed it is, unreasonable and ungenerous, within.
Virtue which is tragically abandoned, in its pursuit of honour;
virtue which was rich, but flattened, and dismayed and disfigured
within the course of one unsupervised hour.
Ah, York, Yorkshire, when shall I ever taste the grandeur
And the very superiority of thy dignity?
For in yon picture, thou art still but a comely neighbour,
Which endorses and attests to my mute, yet unaffected-virginity.

Ah, but Coventry shall despise thee, and with its stubbornness
and overwhelming pride, shall jostle and taunt thee;
Shall defect and isolate thee-when I am but by thy side,
But God be with me still, and blind shall not, my virtuous sight.
Detesting and confronting thee for the remainders of years-as 'tis to be,
Which for thee lie ahead; as how hath it deluded me-just now!
I, who, disconcertingly, placed my heart within its sacred vow,
hath been robbed of my satisfactions, and utmost fortune,
All were perused in centuries and gone in one moon.
Ah, Yorkshire, shall I continue my poetry here-but call out endlessly to thee?
And shall I abandon this tiny caprice of mine-which is a fine, tiny desire of glory
And let myself on the loose, and for evermore be in search
of thee, whom I shall've lost-under the very indulgence of their mirth?
O, I think not!
For I shall mount my poetry-and achieve my silent dreams,
I shall take him with me, if allowed am I-to conquer him,
And make him and thee mine, just like I hath made my poetry,
And be thy light; and thy spiritual and endless reciprocal adoration
All day and night, at the end of our quest for destiny
Wherein I shall dwell, and thrive as my intellect be granted-its long-lost coronation.
O, Yorkshire, for within thy hands now I shall lie my faith-
and trudge along thy forking paths, unto the light of my fate.

Ah, Yorkshire, I am infatuated with these paintings-
these very paintings of thy lush green lands,
And of myself wandering and skulking idly about thy moors;
With my best frock, and his fingers, the one I love, entwined in my hand
As lights procured and on our storming out of yonder wooden doors.
I am shining like a bee is-upon the sweet finding of its honey;
but in whose tale 'tis like thee-to sweet and unpardonable to me.
Be with me, Yorkshire, and be with me forever, only,
As I leave behind this faint malice and commence my journey;
I shall be with thee, and my poems shall be free,
And t'is bitterness of winds shall be no more tormenting me,
Furthermore-be them what they desire to be;
But let me write; and play my song as beautifully as yon naive bee.

Ah, Yorkshire, and wait, wait again for me;
But before let me sink again into a deep sleep,
and tease thee again in my dreams;
Read me once more-the very passages of thy indolent poetry,
Take me out of my stiffness; swing me out of abhorrent Coventry.
Coventry shall be envious, and waiting forever for thy demise;
but honesty is honesty-and one that has no lies,
for thy virtue is clear as thy Western gem,
which is to God, shall always be virtue, all the same.
Ah, Coventry, thou art but dead now-to me;
Thy life is not alive, and thy winds are too cold
Thou art as filthy as dust can be, and eyes might see;
Thy hearts are too bold, and to greed-your soul hath been sold.
And I want not, to be pictured by thy odd art;
For than oddness itself, 'tis even paler, and more odd;
And 'tis not honest, and full of disputing fragments;
Gratuitous in its earnest, talkative in each of its sort.
Ah, Coventry, I shall go, and catch up-with the strings of my story,
Which thou hath destroyed for the sake of thy fake harmony;
And in my tears lie thy most fragrant joys, and delightful sleep,
Which thou findeth tantalising, but idyllic-and satisfactory.
Ah, Coventry, go away-from my sight, as I solve my misery;
T'is misery thou hath assigned to, and dissolved over me,
I bid thee now fluently blow away from my face;
With a spitefulness so rare, and not to anyone's care nor taste;
And doth not thou question me, no more, about my tasks-or simply, my serenity;
For thou hath fooled me, and testified not-to my littlest serendipity,
You who claimed then, to be one of my dearest friends;
And now whom I detest-cannot believe I trusted thee back then.
And my soul! My soul-hath been a tangled ball-in thy feeble hands;
Colourless like a stultified falsehood, blundering like a normal fiend.

For on thy stilted dreadfulness at night, I hath stepped;
For in front of thy heterogeneous eves, I hath bluntly slept.
I had tasted thy water, and still my tongue is not satisfied;
I had swum in thy pages, but still my blood is not glorified.
Among thy boughs-then I dared, to solidify my fingers;
But still I couldst not bring thee alive, nor comprehend thy winters.
Instead I was left teased, and as confused as I had used to be;
I couldst find not peace, nor any saluted vehemence, in thee.
Ah, I am exhausted; I am brilliantly, and sufficiently, exhausted!
I am like torture itself-and if I was a plant, I wouldst have no bough,
For my branches wouldst be sore and demented,
For my foliage wouldst be tentative and rough.
I hath been ratified only by thy rage and dishonour;
I hath been flirted only, with thy rude hours.
And my poems thou hath insolently rejected,
And my honest lies thou hath instantaneously abused.
Thou consoled me not, and instead went furtive by my wishes;
Thou returned not my casual affection, and crushed my hope for sincere kisses.
I hath solemnly ratified thee, and praised thy music by my ears,
Yet still I twitch-as my sober heart then grows filled with tears.
Ah, thou hath betrayed, betrayed me!
Thy grief is even enhanced now-look at the way thou glareth by my knee!
O, Coventry, how couldst thou betray me-just whenst my time shivered and stopped in thine,
Thou defiled me so firmly; and disgraced the ****** poetry bitterly in thy mind,
As though it wouldst be the sole nightmare thou couldst 'ver find!
Ah, Coventry! Thou art cruel, cruel, and forever cruel!
Thou hath disliked me-like I am a whole scoundrel;
Whenst I but wanted to show thee t'at my poetry was safe, and kept no fever at all;
But no other than an endorsement of thy merriment, and funny disguises for thy reposes.
Ah, how couldst be thou be so remorseful-how couldst thou cheat me, and pray fervently-for my fall!
And to thee, only greed is true-and its satisfaction is thy due virtue,
For in my subsequent poetry, still thou shalt turn away-and scorn me once more;
With menace and retorts simply too immune, and perhaps irksome loath-like never before.

Ah, but how far shall thy distaste for me ever go?
Thou who hath blurred me-'fore even seeing my dawn,
'Fore even lurching forward, to merely glance at my town.
Thou art but afar, and now shall never enter my heaven,
For victory is no longer my shadow, 'tis to which I shall return.
I am like a shame behind thy glossy red curtain,
I am a pit whom thou couldst only befall, and joylessly spurn.
But ah! Still I am blessed, within my imperfection-thou knoweth it not?
I am blessed by the airs-and wealthy Edens of the Almighty, thou seeth t'is not?
He who hath the care, and pride anew-to cut thy story short,
He who hath listened to my cores, and shall deliver me from thy resort.
T'us I shall be afraid not, of thy wobbly tunes-and thy greedy notes!
For humility is in my heart, though probably thou hath cursed me;
And bidden me to let my soul detach, and run astray,
Still I shall find my fertile love, and go away;
I shall bring him away-away from thy abrupt coldness-and headless dismay;
I shall nurse and love him again-like I hath done yesterday, and even today;
And in t'is, I shall carest not for what thou might say to me later-day after day.
For as far as I shall go, my poetry t'an shall entail me;
And thus follow the liveliness, and scrutiny-of my merritorious paths only,
And in the name of Him, shall love thee and rejoice in thee not;
But within my soul, it shall recklessly, but patiently-do them both;
'Tis my very goal it shall accomplish,
And for my very romance, shall it sketch up altogether-such a mature bliss.
I should dance, thereof-just like a reborn female swan;
And forget everything life might contain-including my birth, as though life wouldst just be a lot of fun.

But I shall be alive like my tenderness,
So is my love-he t'at hath brought forth my happiness,
I shall be dressed only in the finest clothes-and he my prince,
As the gem of my soul hath desired our holiness to be, ever since.
Yet still I hope thou wouldst be freed, and granted my virtue,
Though still I doubt about which-for thy fruits are weightless, and to forever remain untrue.
Such be the case, art thou entitled to my current screams,
And blanketed only by my most fearful dreams.
T'is is my curse-in which thou shalt be in danger, but must be obedient,
For curses canst be real-and mine considers thee not, as a faithful friend.
And obedience be not in thee-then thou shalt all be death,
Just like thou hath imprisoned my love, and deceived my breath!
Still-my honesty leads me away, and shall let me receive my triumph;
As so cravingly I hath endured-and tried to reach, in my poems!
Ah, Coventry, unlike the stars-indulged in their tasteful domes,
Even when I am free, in thee I shall never be as joyful-and thus thou, shalt never be my home.
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.
David P Carroll Jun 2021
The day is so beautiful and
The sky is so blue I'm cheering
For Coventry and I'm singing for the blues
And the blue bells are the sweetest flowers you've ever seen
And the waves are so blue and we're
Cheering for Coventry too and
Listening to the little blue birds sing along we love Coventry all day long.
Football ⚽ 🥰❤️
I want to feel you breathe,
  So cool and languid,
A gentle rise and fall
  Of your sweet skin...

Oh so calm and temperate
  Like the resting waters
In the glassy fields
  At nightfall.

I want to rest my head
  Against your flesh,
Pale and cold like
  A cooling, winter sunset...

And kiss your [cadaver] eyes
  All the while drifting lightly like ash
Along the soft currents
  We are carried through.

The tempest carries our bodies
  To the Sleepless Coventry
As the Albatross flies
  Over head, leading and bleeding.

The night with the eyes of water and
  Painted in decay, cries for
The tragedy I wish to
  Live...

And 'tis such a tragedy so,
  For I want to love you
In the most ardent
  Sense, my darling.

My sweet love, I wish to feel the fire inside your
  Heart to keep me warm in my coldest hour.

My ocean soul covets the
  Warmth and the silent curves
Of your tender body, becoming
  One with the waves...

Like a lone kindling flame
  Beneath the sparkling waters,
We burn together, attracting
  The teeming luminescent.

Dearest lover, let us fall together into the sea...
  Hold me tight in your arms...

And these lips will
  Caress your watery eyes,
And bring you the loveliest
  Cloud of dreams.


Hand in hand,
  We are Shadows by the stormy sea...

Restless Shadows and the Sleepless Coventry.
nicholas ripley Mar 2010
I’m walking up hilltop, two men pass, one says,
'**** the French, they never have the bottle for a fight’.

To have got here they passed the old Cathedral.
Did they glimpse it as a relic - exploded by incendiary,
ostracised in dubiety, seen fit to feature
only in the focus and snap of foreign tourists?

It is two days before Ramadan. Tonight Tornados
will tear between the Euphrates and Tigris
to illuminate Babylon... live on CNN.

At the top of the hill I pause,
staring at stained glass fragments
still suspended in the apex of frames
and view snacking office workers,
seated upon the benches that have replaced the pews.
(C) Nicholas Ripley December 1998
Olivia Kent Apr 2015
Telephones ringing the changes.
Banging hard inside my head.

Who are you bothering me?
Needing peace, please let me be.

Freedom is for dreamers.
Dreaming is for sleeping.

Houses for fashion.
Musing for using.

One night stands.
Final demands.

Bills of rights.
Feisty nights.

Long lost lovers.
Cold to each other.

Holding hands carved of ice.
Coventry won't be so nice.

Know how you're feeling.
Head must be reeling.

Maybe it's numb.
Having a mother, but never a mum.
(c) Livvi
Edward Coles Oct 2015
Rugby, Warwickshire
16/10/2015

Unholy streets of G-d, liquid tobacco,
gentle froth and steam
from the coffee estuary, split beneath the clock tower
on the idle hour; more pigeons than people,
more buildigs than choices
on this small-town, charity shop parade.

The women are still beautiful, still unattainable,
still on the brink of a breakdown
in the most confident dress.
Street-pastors carry the drunks home,
the street-cleaners appear by the afterparty,
clear out the old bottles
before the commuter picks up cigarettes
from the newsagents that never rests.

Tattoo parlours, barber shops,
Christmas on the radio come Hallowe'en-
this is the town that crazy built:
war-time poetry, jet propulsion,
chief inventor of sport,
of mild alcohol addiciton.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
hundreds of places to hide away;
a foreign face in a sea of family and friends.
Landlocked, gridlocked,
centrally located but left out on a limb;
this town clings to the tracks,
it's avenues of escape
the only margin to keep the residents
out of mind and in their place.

But this is where I grew up,
always more car-park than parkland,
my first steps on Campbell Street,
on Armstrong Close,
first time I broke the law on Bridget Street,
on Selborne Road.
I'd push my bike all around this town,
no stopping off for a smoke,
for to get my fix-
I'd push on and on past graveyards and open bars
without a second gance.

Now, it's all shooters and soul-singers
and happenstance;
chicken wings on a late-night binge,
a box of wine, a night of sin,
wake up in shame,
life's a guessing game
and guess what, you'll never win.

Chewing gum, patches,
vapour that scratches the back of my throat,
nicotine in my blood,
you know, I'm trying my best to get clean.
Blister packs of vitamins, bowls of fruit,
buying coconut water over the counter-
green tea by the rising moon,
incense sticks and vegetables in the garden,
yet by the time night rolls on by
the locus of my eyes, they darken;
I'll be back on the beer,
I'll be smoking a carton.

This is the town that crazy built,
even the flowers by the roadside wilt,
cement factory, hum-drum poverty,
post-code belonging to Coventry,
kept out of the war
by a matter of minutes,
kept from the future
by corporate interest.

Hospital lights, supermarket glow,
I can't remember the last time
I wasn't loaded with chemicals
every time I get home,
every time I sign out
and put my head on the pillow,
I see familiar streets, familiar signs,
the job centre, the floodlights,
the 12% lager, the twist of lime.
I struggle with rhyme,
I struggle most days to get out of the house,
but at night, I know, that sea of doubt
is a river of light, to ruin my liver,
to spike my fever, to calm me down.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
and this world it don't spin,
it just throws me around.
A beat poem (adapted slightly for reading purposes) about being young in my home-town. You can hear a spoken word version here: https://soundcloud.com/edwardcoles/poetry-and-music
Francie Lynch Feb 2016
Brigid was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.

Little's known of Nellie's early years;
Da died before she knew grieving tears,
They'd turn her eyes in later years.

She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her look is distant,
Her face is blurred,
But recognizable
In an instant.

She was schooled six years
To last a life,
Some math, the Irish,
To read and write.

Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God and Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.

At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie,
Relieved their worry.

War flared, men were few,
There was work in Coventry.
Ireland's thistles were left to bloom.

Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin followed,
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
And brought the mill to life again.

The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself
A generator,
Providing power
To lights and wheel.

Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Daddy's angel.
Is this what turns
A father strange?

Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no borders
For brothers and sisters.

We left for Canada.

Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland.

Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.

Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.
Bridget Ellen (Nellie) Lynch (nee Sheridan): January 20, 1920 - October 16, 1989. A loving Mammy to all her children, and a warm Granny to the rest.
David Bremner Jun 2016
The words seemed to dance
freely within the script
So much so that it seemed difficult
to determine what pattern
they might eventually take.

Yet as I rose early
in order to watch
Coventry awake
The silence morphed into noise
and I prayed that the summer
would reveal its truth.
Nae Nov 2013
“Nicole Brunelli, the first small town journalist receiving...” - no - “...the best journalist of Ludlow receiving the Pulitzer Prize! She is ambitious, determinated, fearless, unstoppable and this couldn’t be possible if she wasn’t like this otherwise she would never had revealed the macabre events of Bethlem Royal Hospital! Aaaaaaah”.
My name is Nicole Brunelli I’m 28 years old and I’m a journalist. My childhood wasn’t easy but what childhood was? My mom died when she gave me birth, and my dad... lo... my dad loved me too much until my 16 years old. By then I was starting college and I went to live with a friend of mine, we moved to  Glasgow and we graduated together. We had the time of our life and I ended up marrying him, a few years later we moved to a small town called Ludlow, we had our precious first child and I became an unknown journalist. But now everything changed, this is what I was meant to do.
I research about Bethlem Asylum and some archive stuff just doesn’t make sense, death dates, nonexistent patients, witnesses like one man who lived in the area of the hospital attested to the “cryings, screechings, roarings, brawlings, shaking of chains, swearings, frettings, and chaffings to be heard from the outside.” and he also said something about the managers of the facility that were known as Keepers, and were seemingly as frightening as they sound.  One such Keeper, Helkiah Crooke, a member of the medical department of the royal household, took over, ousting the former for being “unskillful in the practice of medicine.” It could be assumed that he would then handle the medical inattentions to the patients, but no records were ever made of any medical needs of the patients. He himself referred to the patients as “the poore” or “prisoners”. Something is not right I feel it and that is why I’m going there to scrutinize, and due to this I’m going to be the first and the best small town journalist receiving a Pulitzer.
My husband doesn’t really agree with this, but he knows how I am, he knows I’ll do everything for my Pulitzer, and to make him and our baby proud of me...
The time has come, this is it. My future is about to change, I am here now, after a bus ride to Bethlem that **** 3 hours and 45 minutes, I am here.
They refused to receive me! They don’t let me in! They don’t let me in and they don’t give me any information about their procedure on patients or anything! No, no, no, no. I gotta find another way to get in.  I have to. I gotta find another way in. I’ve got to do this! I don’t know what to do, I was so close, so ******* close! I can’t give up, I can’t! I’ve got to do this! This is what I was meant to do!

One night passed and I was still there waiting for them to let me in until the night watch, where a nurse thought I was one of them trying to run, or at least that was what she wanted me think. For instants I thought “This is my chance! This is it” until I realised that once I get in, the difficult part is to figure how to get out.
Three days passed and I realised what they were doing there...people coming in aisle F as sanes or insanes and two days later coming out as vegetables or dead... They were using patients, human beings, and most of them weren’t even crazy at least when they got there, and they were using them as cavies for their experiences.
Of course, who would believe in crazy people?
After the seventh day as a patient in the Asylum I had earned the right to a guided tour to aisle D... where they give you shock therapy. Apparently I’m a messy patient, I talk to much and I refused to take some pills, so they sent me to see Mr. Cleymoore, the asylum shrink so he could diagnose me; he said that I would never see my family again, that I would never see my husband or my baby again, he said he knew all about me, and he wanted me to sign myself in the asylum but I refused to do that...So they faked my death. In my plug diagnosis my name was no longer Nicole Brunelli, now I was Lisa Coventry and I was diagnosed with hidden schizophrenia and double personality disorder, caused by the fire that killed my family when I was 16 years old.
But how would they know all of this? My family, my past, my whole life?! It doesn’t make any sense!
Three months passed and I had a tour to aisle D every week. This place was crazy, it makes me think who are the insane people here. The way they treated people! The way the “disturbed” were chained up to walls and posts like dogs. They slept on beds of straw only as the water supply did not allow for washing of linens. The way the rooms had exposed windows, leaving the patients in damp conditions at the mercy of all weather and utter darkness at night. The hospital itself was actually noted as “a crazy carcass with no wall still vertical,” offering only leaking, caved in roofs, uneven floors and buckling walls.
Under Crooke’s Keeping, the residents were not only filthy and unclothed, but malnourished to the point of starvation using a “lowering diet,” of intentionally slim portions of plain food only twice a day. It was meant to deplete and purge the madness out of the victims, while helping to conserve money. 
 There were no fruit or vegetables to be given. Mostly bread, meat, oatmeal, butter, cheese and plenty of beer was the menu. While all of this is terrible, the true horror was in the moneymaking scheme that kept it running at all. Originally, the hospital was open to the public in hopes that food would be brought to the inmates from the community. Quickly, money was charged, creating a sideshow where the public was invited to watch patients displayed in cages, laugh at them as they banged their heads repeatedly on the walls, and even to poke them with sticks and throw things at them.
 Luckly I made a friend there, Mike Spencer was his name, he was the male nurse who used to do the night watches, he used to stay all night with me just talking and making promises; he knew I wasn’t crazy and that actualy helped me keeping me sane, at least for a while.
 Six months passed and I wasn’t the same.
They are coming, they are coming...they are coming for me...they are coming for Lisa.
 It’s cold, the cold tastes like blue. - Ahah - it tastes like blue! - Ahah...It’s cold... they are coming for Lisa, Lisa doesn’t want to go with them...
 She said that she’ll keep me safe, she said she would take care of Lisa. Lisa is hearing them, They are coming! Lisa doesn’t want to go, no, no, no, NO.
 She said they wouldn’t hurt me. YOU SAID THEY WOULDN’T HURT ME! They, gave me shocks again, they gave Lisa shocks.
 It’s not my fault. They know. They know. They must know why am I here if they don’t know? It’s not my fault she made me do it! She said it was the best thing! Now they can’t have him. Now he’s safe. My unborned baby is safe. They can’t have him now.
 She said she would protect me...She said she would protect Lisa. Shut the voices down! Shut the voices! She’s saying bad things. Lisa doesn’t like what she’s saying. She keeps telling me - “ You killed your mother when she gave you birth! it’s your fault that daddy loved you and used you to replace her! You know you liked when he used to play with you and love you. Everybody knows he used to did it what people didn’t knew was that you liked it! you wanted more! You know he only did it because you let him! And you certainly know who started the fire who killed him...” - SHUT UP! We need to shut the voices down! We need to shut the voices! shut...shut the voices...shut the... shut the voices down... shut the voices down... shut... shut the... shut the voices...
 She said Mike promised. She said Mike promised Lisa to take me out of here... Mike promised.
Two more months passed and I was completly insane due the shock therapy, but Mike kept his promise and he took me out of there, in the middle of the night he gave me a coat and he drove me to South Hampton seaport, he gave me the ticket and said that that was the further he could go. Along with the ticket he also gave me his lucky neckless and told me he bought me a ticket to Cuba so I could be free. I left a friend in that seaport a really good friend but I needed to go I couldn’t go back to that place.
 I had no lugagge, no shoes, nothing, just a coat, a neckless and a ticket to freedom.
 I had to ****** adapt to the situation and try to go unnoticed and not to attract to many attention, so I went to my cabine and stayed there until the end of the cruise for the maximum I could.
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2016
beyond the whiskey
and the beer drank along the familiar
path, with memory stressed
as to no accomplished ego coupling,
drunk indeed,
but rehearsing the familiar path
that thought de-activates
and there's less of identifiers required.*

in terms of gambling,
in familial setting,
betted:

watford (21-20) home to newcastle
(5-2), QPR (6-5) against wolves (9-5 to win),
barnsley v. rochdale (draw at 11-5),
chesterfield v. millwall (to win, 11-8),
oldham v. bury (draw at 21-10),
port vale v. bratford (home-side 8-5),
coventry (13-10) away winning against southend (13-8),
plymouth (11-5) against bristol rovers (evs),
accrington (13-10) against exeter (13-8) too,
manfield (6-5) winning against luton (9-5),
portsmouth drawing with oxford united (21-10),
wycombe with leyton orient (11-5) too,
yeovil beating crawley (13-10),
dundee utd. losing to kilmarnock (11-5) -
scots wish me luck,
motherwell drawing with ross county (19-10),
brochin losing to aidrie (11-10),
montrose winning over clyde (9-5),
hamilton losing to edinburgh's hearts (6-5),
finally...
burnley overcoming derby (13-10).

if i got all nineteen right, i betted 2 quid
and won a million,
split it down the middle with my father,
bet for two quid, quid each, half a million each.
my father is a cautious gambler,
bets spare change to get pennies for a million
exchange, i only desire serious alcoholism,
i am a true scot between the two pulling
two pence apart to create copper wiring,
scots are the jews of the north, after all:
i don't gamble, i play chance,
the chances of me being prophetic about five
football scores will be a, a ref. to the guinness book
of records.

i aimed high today, feminism still hasn't the foggiest
of house husbands, lazy lions,
it's still thursday pay-cheque day for the women,
i can cook a killer korma (added late
grind cashews), and a serial killer kashmiri masala curry,
organic chemistry experiments 12h a week will do that to you,
you'll enjoy cookbooks more than chemistry textbooks,
too many esters i say, spices v. perfumes, your choice
the pakistani in my off-license looked amazed i was wearing
hindu perfumes after having cooked a meal he could
recognise that wasn't a concentrate of strawberries:
find a needle in a haystack, yes... find a berry in a haystack...
no.

i love hindi cuisine, much aroma that deviates from
what europeans claim to be aromatic:
pig sweat and oxen salivate a taste for synthetic
odours when an analysis of cardamon justifies aplenty
likewise: what opens necessary porous areas
of the skin as necessarily sweet
does not necessarily invoke a sweetness for the tongue
to match: fat cows better than anorexia voodoo
of *******-champagne girls i'd tell you.
Francie Lynch May 2016
Bridget was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.

Little's known of Nellie's early years;
Da died before she knew grieving tears,
They'd turn her eyes in later years.

She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her look is distant,
Her face is blurred,
But recognizable
In an instant.

She was schooled six years
To last a life,
Some math, the Irish,
To read and write.

Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God and Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.

At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie,
Relieved their worry.

War flared, men were few,
There was work in Coventry.
Ireland's thistles were left to bloom.

Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin followed,
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
And brought the mill to life again.

The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself
A generator,
Providing power
To lights and wheel.

Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Daddy's angel.
Is this what turns
A father strange?

Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no borders
For brothers and sisters.

We left for Canada.

Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland.

Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.

Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.
Repost, in tribute to my mother: Bridget Ellen Lynch (nee Sheridan).
January 20, 1920 - October 16, 1989. Mammy is a term used in Ireland for Mother.
Nigel Morgan Jun 2014
A suite of fourteen poems

for Alice, always

I

Cutting for Silage

Seen
on the path close to the field edge
a swathe of green grass cut,
Left
in the wake of the machine
to dry in the hopeful sun,
Rich
in a profusion of grasses,
glimmers of wind flowers,
weeds and tares.

Seen from afar
the cut fields partition this landscape
with stripped overlays
packaging the valley,
dark green rows revealing
the camber and roll of
a naked field shorn,
Dark upon light.

II

Walk to Porth Oer

Where the sand whistles
and windy enough today
for the tinnitus to set in,
we’ll walk the curve of its dry fineness
left untouched by the tide’s daily passage
up and back

before
and along cliff paths,
from the mountain
past secret coves
whose steep descents
put the brake on all
but the determined,
beside shoulders of grasses
bluebelled still in almost June
now hiding under the rising bracken
up and down

we’ll walk to a broad view
of this whispering bay
where below on the sandy shore
dots of children
tempt the slight waves.


III

Cold Mountain

Whether  a large hill
or officially a mountain
it’s cold on this higher place
wrapped in a land-mist,
the sea waiting in breathless calm
where the horizon has no line,
no edge to mark the sky.

Any warmness illusory,
in sight of sun brightening a field
far distant, but not here,
where waiting is the order of the day,
waiting for grass to shine and sparkle,
for bare feet to be comforted
by sweet airs.

Meanwhile the sheep chomp,
the lambs bleat and plead,
the choughs throaty laugh
a shrill punctation, an insistence
that all this is how it is.


IV


China in Wales

In my hermitage
on this sea-slung place,
a full-stop of an island
back-lit illuminated always,
I view the distant mountains,
a chain of three peaks
holding mist to their flanks,
guarding beyond their heights
a gate to a teaming world
I do not care to know.


V


Wales in China

O fy nuw, I thought
my valley only owned such rain,
but here it teams torrential
taking out the paths on this steep
mountain side. Mud
everywhere it shouldn’t be.
Everything I touch damp and dripping.
No promise of pandas here.
And there’s this language like the chatter of birds,
whilst mine is the harsh sibilants of sheep
on the hill, the rasp of rooks on the cliffs.


VI


Boy on the Beach

Heard before seen
the boy on the beach,
a relentless cry
of agrievement, of
being badly done to.
This boy on the beach

following his mother
at a distance
then no further.
‘I hate you, ‘ he screams,
and stops,
turning his back on the sea,
folding his arms,
miserableness unqualified,
no help or comfort
on the horizon he cannot see.
It is attrition by neglect.
He becomes silent, and called
from a distance, relents
and turns.


VII


The Poet

Austere, his mouth
moved so little when he spoke,
you felt his words
were always made in advance,
scripted first
and placed on the auto-cue.
Ask a question: and there’s a long pause

as though there lies
the possibility of multiple answers
and he’s running through the list
before he speaks, his antenna
trained on the human spirit,
full of doubt, doubting even
belief itself.


VIII


A Gathering

Thirty, maybe forty
and not in a lecture room
but a clubhouse for the sailing
look you. And we did,
out of the patio doors
to the sun-flecked sea below us,
here to honour a poet’s life and work
in this village of the parish he served
at the end of the pilgrim’s path .

Pilgrims too, of a kind, we listened  
to the authoritative words
of scholarship where ironing
the rough draft found in the bin,
explaining the portrait above the bed,
balancing the anecdotal against the interview,
reading the books he read
become the tools of understanding.

But the poems, the poems
silence us all, invading the space,
holding our breath like a fist.



IX


In the Garden

He came alone to sit in the garden
and remember the day
when, with the intimacy of his camera,
he took her, deep into himself;
her look of self-possession,
of calmness and confidence,
augmented by butterflies
motionless on the wall-flowers,
and the soft breath of the blue sea,
her soft breath, her dear face,
freckled so, his hand trembling
to hold the focus still.


X


The Couple from Coventry

Young beyond their years
and the house they had acquired
but only to visit at weekends for now,
they drove four hours to open the gate
on a different life, a second home
requiring repairs on the roof
and replastering throughout.

With their dog they were walking
the mountain paths, checking out the views,
returning to the quiet space
their bed filled in an upstairs room
echoing of birth and death:
to experiment further with loving
before the noise and distraction
of children swallowed up their lives.


XI


On Not Going to Meeting

There was an excuse:
a fifteen mile drive
and a wet morning.
He had a book, a journal
that might focus his thoughts
towards that communion of souls:
a silence the meeting of Friends
sought and sometimes gathered.

These experimental words
of a man who felt he knew
‘I had nothing outward
to help me,’ who then, oh then,
heard a voice which said,
‘There is one, even Christ Jesus,
that can speak to my condition
. . .  who has the pre-eminence,
who enlightens and gives grace
and faith and power.’


XII


New Life

From behind its mother
the calf appeared
tottering towards the gate,
but after a second thought,
deeming curiosity inappropriate,
turned back to that source
of nourishment and life.


XIII


A Walk on Treath Pellech

Good to stride out.
Good to feel unencumbered
by the unconfining space
of beach and sea, a shoreline
littered with rocks and shallow pools,
sea birds flocking at the tide’s edge.

Alone he sought her small hand
and wished her there over time and space
so to observe what lay at his feet,
that he might continue to look
into the distance with a far-flung gaze.


XIV


The Owl Box

James put it there.
One of forty
all told but
empty yet.
‘We live in hope,’
he said.

Slung from a bough,
bent and bowed,
on a wind-shaped tree,
a hawthorn blossoming still,
(inhabited by choughs a’nesting)
the box hangs waiting
for its owl, her eggs,
her fledgling young
who are not hatched together
but are staggered as though
to give the mother owl some
pause for thought.

Meanwhile the nesting choughs
tear the air with tiresome croaks,
a bit of rough these black characters,
neighbours soon to the delicate mew,
the cool, downy white of the Athene noctua.
The poet celebrated in this suite of poems is R.S.Thomas.
What is love, and what is love not;
I cannot feel love any more,
I am asleep in my sick conscience,
I feel dead when it can but breathe.

What is a heart, what is it not;
When my sight is but bathed in pain,
In grief, for no more love hath recognised me;
Nor bribed me for the sake of lust.

What is poetry, and what are words;
For I am not seen within their worlds,
What hath caused me to be so weak,
What hath now ceased to be my love.

What is sane, and what is sane not;
For I hath had my story short,
I am insane in a place I cannot see,
Where my steps cannot place their whereabouts.

Ah, I cannot even feel the air;
My lungs are stuck in such unwavering heat,
My heart is devoid of its past midnight bliss;
I am longing for what used to be me again.

Ah, I cannot even feel such love;
There raised a longing for my lost poetry,
All is not settled and I feel but angry,
I cannot smell and taste the summer rose.

Ah, I am now blind to such delight;
The delight that once carried me to moonlight,
And the butterflies that hummed in my dreams
That I saw them live as I writ.

Ah, I am now blind to such joy!
I cannot mime the animated old song,
For all is greed here—and tainted by greed,
For speed is prime, and conscience is vain.

Ah, I feel weary too much now!
For tomorrows are heavy, and lights are violent,
For on the roads are but violent tumults,
And all the cheeky hot breeze they raise,
I cannot live, nor do I see in such rage.

Ah, I feel savage in too many ways!
The green gardens stay but to mock me,
They are a low illusion to my presence,
An image too unreal to reveal my fate.

Ah, I feel distorted in my imagination;
Even my universe cannot keep its way now,
And I cannot feel my feet steady,
Its hysteria spilling all over me.

Ah, I cannot but feel thirsty;
The sun is too bright that I cannot see,
The moon is too vague that I cannot feel,
My destiny lay too briefly in my arms.

Ah, I cannot feel comforted, no more;
For none in t’eir slumbers shalt hear my word,
They are too busy with their talk, and legs,
Aptly storming about with ugly chores.

Ah, I cannot see in such dry moonlight;
I hath not a soul to fight, but read—
And none bears but a piece of word about me,
With too much to say, too many tongues to feed.

Ah, I cannot but remember the forgot;
To endear to thee like my arms did,
To read and lay about the upcoming moors,
To feel the urge to lay still, like an awed child.

Ah, I cannot but remember my dreams;
The ones so wild that the vibrant remain,
A remembrance of which shalt become my character,
And my character thus, shalt stand not in vain.

Ah, I cannot but long for my shore;
A long shore so cold like that in England,
When ‘tis a shore not, aye, but a solitude,
One I am not to find in such hearts unlike mine.

Ah, I cannot but long for my old oak;
In Coventry, that I saw by pitiful daylight,
But oft’ smiled to me during the hazy winter,
Hanging to me like my dear sweet old friend.

Ah, and I cannot help but writ about thee;
And sing the same cheerful song again,
A song of innocence and lethal youth,
That my midnight sleeps in colours again.

Ah, I cannot but miss that wry smile;
That such crooked lips shalt by satiated by none else,
That such mirth is but to lie within thee alone,
That such joy is not present in thy absence.

Ah, so I cannot but long for thee again;
My moonlit light and twilight friend,
My dark poetry as winter began,
I felt it light on my naked hands.

Ah, so I cannot but feel thee here;
On whom are all my guts and verdant desire,
Whom hath I sweetly, and purely loved,
That I hath loved with unknown bareness, and chastity.

Ah, so I cannot but miss t’at season of thine;
Thy blooming cheeks and lush lavenders,
Those we strolled by in the vigilant autumn,
The ones that would soon die, and wake in a daze.

Ah, I cannot but rest in my dreams again;
My slumbers are now about yon blue fall,
Too sophisticated for a sophomore like me,
In that image too, thou wouldst be by my side.

Ah, I cannot but resent the sun once more;
But it understands not my resenting,
Like a joyless bud it shimmers no joy,
Like every summer that is void of love.

Ah, I cannot but resent its tears;
For such gurgling tears I am not made of,
I am a being of my immortal poetry,
And so my youthful joy too is eternal.

Ah, I cannot but favour thee again;
I feel too chaste for the absent-minded sun,
Too spirited for its imbecile heat,
Too womanly for its sordid jubilee.

Ah, I cannot but resort to thee once more;
I feel too wasted by the impatient wind,
Horrendous and frivolous in its wake,
Hot and sultry to my conscience.

Ah, so I cannot but seek my sweet fall again;
For t’is heat is too godless to share,
For a youthful maiden like me,
All is blind to me, for I cannot stay awake.

Ah, I cannot but seek my same old love;
My solitude is rigid and tough,
Fake in its meridian and lame singing,
And its heated leaves smelling sour.

Ah, I cannot but yearn for my rhymes;
Filled in fall with sweet grapes and thyme,
I used to write by the old lime tree,
The ice and cold washing all over me.

Ah, I cannot but long for long writ;
By the golden brass and old riverbanks,
Where all goes dark and becomes dusk too soon,
When clean, free air but satiates my mouth.

Ah, I can but feel such love now, and longer;
There exist too many tales to tell,
My heart hath fallen to Coventry’s midnight grass,
And with its existence, cometh again the image of thee.

Ah, I cannot but tame such love, no more;
To spend every word at the same old pace,
Bear my flavour in darkness and haze,
Writ damp poetry by the bashful chest.
Inspired by a real story.
Dedicated to Dust and Water.

Charlie.
The son of poetry, the sculptor of language.
The fire of my lust, a charm that shall ne'er end.
The prince of the sun, with such unchained melodies
and shades of green grass in his eyes.
Even the sound of his voice startled me;
For it was sweeter t'an the rainbow
T'at, to our skies, is sometimes too fabulous
to grow, and smile, and stay alive.

Ah, Charlie, your eyes but of autumn's green leaves t'emselves;
Undying and far more immune than the robust moon.
Oh, Charlie, but how my dream of you
Shall fore'er be an unspoken secret;
A secret of my ****** tongue
t'at remains forbidden to this world;
For 'tis too in this world t'at she lives,
And in 'tis life t'at she breathes,
Admires, and hates, as loved by you.
And thus any token of my love shall be a waste;
Shall be neglected, and be despised as an omen of doom.
For I am the daughter of the evilness of love—and so to her,
My love for you shall always be a herald of evil,
A spring of madness t'at needs soiling and throbbing away
Into t'ose wells of rigidity and notions of death.
Ah, Charlie, how you have gone, and shall be gone forever!
But for you know—although you are hers now, and only hers always,
Once I still thought I would meet you again someday.

You greeted me within the darkening roars of Jakarta;
Jakarta t'at was once like our hell and heaven;
Jakarta t'at is at once but trepid and magnificent.
Oh, and I remember t'at at t'at time, 'twas about to rain;
When I, standing by vanilla paper in my brown dress,
Was drawn by your soft beaming eyes,
Ah, Charlie, how my dried heart filled with love when I saw you—
I called to Him and prayed for your smile from above!
But then, perhaps you went away too soon,
And I, stepping home, cried and cried pools of maroon tears,
With a groan t'at was not fully satisfied,
With lust t'at, as I knew it, would never see a friend.
Ah, Charlie, the sole painter of my poetry!
The drawer of the scenes, whose words made me cry;
The teller of houses, whose fears made me want to die.
Ah, Charlie, how you are genuinely betrothed to your words;
And now t'at my heart is dead from its love for you—
All the world is but a lie and no more true.
Charlie, I despise love now; for 'tis no more t'an
A hateful stage of cowardly theatres;
A bunch of beasts t'at boastfully embrace
And show off t'eir love to one anot'er—
ah, just like t'is ring of monstrosity about me!
Ah, how vicious, vicious t'is menace of t'eirs is—
if only t'ey could unwillingly comprehend!
Thus I shall believe in no such remarkable lies;
For they trust in stories evil and not too nice;
And how t'ey smile to night and not to day;
And to even poetry t'ey have oft' none else to say;
For in vice is t'eir sole, sole triumph, my dear!
And for you know, Charlie, none is a poet in Yorkshire,
Their souls are but dried pipes of cold—and lumps of fire;
Perhaps they shall **** me before my soul even reaches heaven;
They are the ghosts of my virtues, the wand'ring spectres of my garden.
But was it you again, that laughed and sweetened my sleep last night—
and whose deep voices crafted such haunting poems like mine?
Everything sounded right when you were there, although they were false;
Ah, false indeed, like a piece of dishonesty awaiting troubled death;
When I had nothing else to give, but one sour last breath.
Ah, Charlie, after all—you are not here any more,
And Jakarta is but no more than a tender dream;
A dream I should perhaps forget—together with the chills
And idylls we once mercifully favoured.
Perhaps it was fate that did separate us;
Oh, how I wish it had ne'er happened!
How I still remember that noon—with a thousand suns
That were glaring at my head, I swayed my hair
By your side, as though the hills and the moons of England
were but all painted rightly next to your eyes.
Oh, my Charlie, how I have only words to play with now,
And perhaps tomorrow—for we have no future days together!
Yet still, if I had anything to dream of, it would be about you;
For again, my love for you was once pure and true;
I remember you like I do the lilies and tulips of dear Jakarta;
Wild in their toasts, too shiny in the darkest of places.
Ah, Charlie, but it is perhaps our vengeful fate,
That has robbed us of joyful virtues of late,
I am away from you, and my love—though dead, was once virile;
I shall pray for you, and think of you again once in a while.

I might have another love to attend,
Though I am too vexed, and obnoxious on my own to think;
I am unselfconscious of who I am;
I am troubled by the colours and spells
Of t'ese binding walls, as if there is no gift—
Even t'at one of love, t'at can absurdly cheer me
And bring my soul up, out of t'is sorrow—any more.
I am saddened, despaired, and deprecated by your tale;
I am now going to sit instead, by a cup of soiree ale;
I am going to rehearse the skins of my wit;
I shall test fate t'at want'd not to meet;
I shall conquer my own domains—and not anyone;
I shall think t'at truth is untrue—and evilness is but sweets and fun;

For a poet like me hath no love—and none to love with;
None loves me here, even for a sweet single bit;
I can see from the glass of t'eir eyes—t'at they care not;
They want my death, for it shall cut my poetry short.

Ah, how unfair, unfair and harsh t'is life for us is,
How 'tis but a worried flair for our aesthetic souls;
A craving t'at shall ne'er be true while it conveys truth;
A desire t'at is honest—while others want it to live not;

Ah, Charlie, how aimless and purposeless t'is eye should be;
For you are hers, and thus your charm can no more be with me;
I've been but a sad joke, in your present and perhaps in your past;
You talked to me back then, but knew your giggles should ne'er last;

And thus what I feel in my breast is blue, and shall ne'er own no end;
I shall now give up to time and let it carry my misery;
Perhaps I shall be wounded 'till the time of my grave though;
I shall be injured with t'eir inhuman love, lack of sweetness, lack of laugh.

Ah, Charlie, and your smile shall only be my severed utopia;
An unwanted song, amongst the deadly tears in yon grey forest;
Where ghosts are alive and ruthlessness is an endless unrest;
And my longing for you is useless—and ***** like an untended nest;
You are away, and neither in my view, nor in my sight;
You smell her hair every morn and noon, all through the day and night.

And your lust is a torch when it comes to her, and her only;
She to whom my love for you shall always be a mystery;
Ah, but a mystery she shan't come, or need t' care 'bout;
She who drowns your saliva by her voices out loud;

Ah, Charlie, now 'tis too late, and perhaps you should return to her sweet bed;
And address your new wife as she undresses and comes naked;
I shall be back soon in Coventry—before another storm goes mad;
And let Jakarta dwell alone, as he likes being on his own;
Let him fret over my tears that have silently gone;
And my shadows t'at are bound to dwell away, and ne'er return.

And let her stab your heart, with a love like a thousand spears;
Let her bury you in her cheeks, and remove your rightful fears;
For I am not one to offer you such happiness like t'at;
I who shall ne'er see you again, even just for one slice of dying breath.

For I wish to see, and open my heart to dear London;
Where I shall wander the streets, and lakes, though by my feet alone;
Waiting for a love that perhaps shall ne'er come;
'Till my breath goes out of me, and my fingers are left numb.
You don't have to put up with it,
no one is stuck on Facebook.

I look but can't see
the
delete me the **** outa this app that's free and always will be
krap.

Zap,
Zuckerberg just shot me down, run me out of Facebook town.
Pow,
I was going anyhow, they're just a bunch of nothing new,
a new look on a pirate crew,
*******
facebook.

Then they suspend me, them
wicked ******* on Facebook send me
to that godforsaken place called Coventry where the end of me is processed and repackaged endlessly,
Coventry?
I think it's twinned with monotony and
******* facebook
I'll go-commando,
hide away in Twitterville
and go it solo with 139 other characters who know as
much as I know.

Which is next to nothing

Am I bad or what?
A serene cottage upon a dreary hillside
  Where my mind's listless galaxy of neurons
Synapse in the absolute darkness,
  Is painted in Victorian hues, cold and haunting.

Dejection rains down from the leeward sky
  With nothing harkened save for the ocean's
Stormy roar and a desolate lighthouse,
  Beckoning through the fog and memoirs of the past.

The deeper my soul is carved out with sorrow,
  The deeper the hollow can be filled with joy.
But alas, I feel nothing of joy but only a void
  Left by the dagger of yesterday's darkening tragedies.

I feel the rain soothe my skin and kiss my cheek
  Like the sweetest lover on midnight's embrace,
Yet my moth-eaten quilt of memories only seems
  Enough to shelter our legs but ne'er our feet.

My heart feels the warmth of an autumn fire,
  Kindling in the crisp rain, bleeding beneath
A rose where we burn in the endless torture
  Of our own despondence.

I can feel the blood in my veins turning to fire
  As I imagine her fingertips unzipping my spine
As though it were full of secrets and mysteries
  Unbeknowst to myself...

I can feel the inferno that rages within my aortic arch
  Every moment I imagine losing myself within her
Eyes, glimmering like an eclipse over a midnight
  Sea...the Sleepless Coventry.

She unlocks my secrets and weaves them in the bouquet
  Of tendrils in her hair like ribbons of crimson and light,
Waving in the vehement northerlies with numbing scents
  Of argan and spice.

Her body is but a canvas wrapped neatly around a
  Paper mache skeleton, the most beautifully tragic
Foundation known to humanity...
  
She arrives right on the equinox to set fire to my sorrow,
  Intoxicating me with her kiss and infecting me with her smile.

And so enters the conflagration of my soul,
  An annihilation of light, blackening my coronary
Artery whilst shooting smoke through my cinnamon
  Whiskey tainted veins.

'Tis hard to look through such a misconstrued lens
  As such, the Vena Cava Kaleidoscope...
Where the flames burn through the galaxy of neurons
  Expending the harrowing memories as its fuel.

I can see the magnetic alloy of her Cobalt eyes reflecting
  The fire that consumes me from the inside out.
She pulls on me like the moon pulls upon the tide
  As she whispers with her soft, enamored sigh.

I burn in my silent knowing, my liquid mind
  Awakening in fervor and strange euphoria.

I burn for the Aurora Infinite.
There is not much of me now, my Northern Light;
I hath been too torn to tell of my deeds,
I am a broken soul now, emerging from an invisible pit;
I hope the sun shall clear though, that I can but delight in belated rain again.
Rain, on thy forested land, that I hath begun to long to taste;
Coming to me like a five-year-old nymph: a succulent playmate,
Shadowing me but in cheerful grins and tireless haste,
What funny terms t’is little creature makes sense of!
Ah, a little one that brightens and salutes my days,
With lyrical giggles often stunning the entire forests of glee around me—
And taking my breaths away in dozens of waves of fierce smoke
That I often pause my breaths, feeling privilege and triumphant
Amidst its innocent odors, smudged with green hues and damp visions.
I feel comfortable then, as my pulse speeds and moans with delight
Spilling onto us from the brave storm above, as I always do.
Tasting rain, I shall twitch and sway around again with laughter, wisdom, and patience
That were undeniably stolen from me; leaving me in a deafening whine of tears.

They but told I did not belong, I was foreign, and so were my streaks of song;
My justice was but not their equal, I was a liar, I was wrong.
I was too humble to notice, I was too unarmed.
I was too innocent to be their companion—improvident and reckless beings!
No delicacy flashes across their eyes, neither do sympathy or softness.
All I could see was scorching hate and heat, shimmering in a blinding, officious smirk.
I was ample and blused oft’ with shyness—how come they came and stole my tranquil peace!
How ignominious and disgraced the whole nation is, who believes
that our own skin shall save us, unmerited and soulless!
How immature, timid, and vile; imbeciles that inherit only rainbows of sarcasm.
And what told they of my poetry, in such recursive envy and hate;
With disgust they said to me; ‘tis not my beloved, nor my fate.
They claimed I lived one life—and three souls too late, that I understood what life meant not;
They thought all was but a wealth of infamy around me, and I was rife with unseen disease.
I was a creature not to fall in love with, I was a disgrace;
I was ungodly, a shoddy strand of leaf to be killed unborn.
They figured I smelt like the withered summer weather;
Not a fit for their chilly smokeless air!

The air there smelt fondly like their absence of love;
And though it was silent, they were silent not,
It was a joy for them to ****, and to see my blood spill,
They said yet I knew not how to taste and feel.
It was as if I could not feel my own blood,
Nor that I could locate my gut’s instincts.
And what thought they of my ****** story;
For my presence was a nightmarish joke to all,
And I was a meaningless and too joyous of a little bud,
A small lavender which poorly knows its enemies and their fetal tongues,
That roses can sting and steal one or two of its crescent seeds!
Ah, and I was that degraded bland-smelling little bloom,
The mindless bloom t’ be plucked in their spring garden—harvested before my time;
That I shall cry and weep my blood out of me, in burning pain,
Destructing all my jutting illusions once again, without knowing why,
And finding my fierce heart, the next second, lying still!
That I think of my Immortal no more, and his face accusably so white and lean
For he has been forgetful of the love he once sustained;
His love, dimmed by the greed around his whole figure
Unsupported by the angered nature about him—which he barely sees.
Hungry for flesh, he is a snake of untold regret and hate;
Powdered with deadly lies only, in his season of love.
Bathed in austerity, and in his own madness running;
Running into the nowhere of my dreams, and dies finally, as I wake from my sleep.
I saw no compassion in his eyes, on those last old days, and after I left,
All that was dead not I deep buried,
I oft’ dream of him burning and rotting his own scattered life,
Melting his own flesh into a rogue wave of sins,
Questioning his divinity with rage that he himself be ragged before he knows it.
And so unseeingly he curses and is consumed by his own karma,
Gathering his own bulleted skins and fleshes by a knife,
But in doing so betraying his own domain of conscience,
Depriving him of ample wan pleasure, tumbling himself vehemently into death.
Scorching death that feeds but from our departing shades of life,
And shrieks in agony when no ferocious air growls at midnight.
Ah, at my dismantled nights in England but I once gave thought of thee;
Thou wert there in my perpetual mind, but not so inquisitive as my English journey was.
O, Northern Light, I was but all shivers upon their first mention of thee!
And so there was I, unknown to the English world but heard fairly of thy name;
That I, at times, thought of the Northern Light, aside from my streams of cries and desperation,
And the noble autumn on its land, when in my fluorescent night slumbers,
I’d love to dally on top of fall’s rebellious moors—and ah!
I can see my love, flapped with his native pride, storm down the maroon roads.
I can see his wait for me, encapped by forty feet of snow on a mountaintop,
ready for my warming fingertips and embrace whenever he thinks of me.
Ah! Though there is sun not on thy lofty linen land, my Northern Light;
I am grinning with joyous tears in sight of thy snowy night,
My dreams have finally drawn me to thy visible lines,
And soon, I shall have to renounce my weary sunshine.
I want to break free, enormous with youth and vibrancy;
With affluent rhymes and delightful vibes that come in time.
Poetry, for it has become one of my salient features;
A concise concoction of my soul, that I love in laugh and hate.
My daydreaming has not been too bad, for I have seen the fun once more;
I was too selfish to open my eyes and see its truth.

Come to me, my Northern Light, and shall I have to perish later along with age
into blue nothingness, I shall not die inside out;
For I know thou shalt come to help my toil
And relieve it of grease and oil;
filling my light up before it turns out.
I, who hath been consumed and decried within two sad springs;
I, who was made to survive an agitation and pain
Only by a jug of comforting cold,
Hath now left my past with a single shrug;
And so I hath dreamed of bouncing back into thy arms,
Thy arms that are too cold at first—to my fragile feet
And swim into thy hands that shall all but know me to well;
Blame me not for the fateful pairs of stories of mine, to tell.

And who are they anyway, to enjoy poetry whenst they see not?
They, whose shadow is to fall into death within the first three days—
But acknowledge the slim presence of death not, among us.
They, whose ******* glisten with envy, and a displeased countenance;
Haunting every guileless soul, dancing over their dismantled beings
Although they bear no trace of hate towards their very eyes.
All I see of ‘em is a beast, that encaps and murders decisively within a short breath;
None of them is eager to touch the deep,
Nor to be kind and set their hateful souls alight,
They are a boastful ally of the devil, far in their forest’s central gloom,
A hell by the deadly babbling brooks, sending water into every undying leaf
That all shall die within the unstable touch of their hands.
They are a bunch of strange apparitions that mock every treasured sight;
A rough incubus, waiting for every foreign man’s headlong fall,
They live only to scorn, ****** and fight,
Penetrating every fortune’s secrets, poignantly tearing their kind walls.

Not seldom that I began to wonder, in all my recursive roamings;
I wanted to see and listen to thee, ah, what a warming sound of thy Eolian lute there was!
All was in vast vain, for I was conceited to hear of my own vision;
Nor proceed my learnings, I was stupidly void of hearings, and rich with shortcomings!
My conscience was too thin, that I wrote when I heard not—and drew
when I saw not, ah, I was unable to hear thee, my love!
For everything I could see was but, in my red dreams, thy roads and their unspoken lines;
Telling me that I was dreaming and all wouldst be fine.
I failed to see though thou wert but very, very kind!
All was a parade around me and ah, yet I could see not,
Its loudly thumping winds but made me blind,
Squinting into the gust, all but myself I could not identify;
My whole soul was absorbed by its minutiae of unbearable pain.
Belligerent and poisonous, the circle was bitter as dread;
Sordid in life, uncivilised and mortified in death.
Aye, how I struggled hard to break free myself, from those violent thorns!
Finally all was clear, and I saw the vital path to light; ah, my Northern Light!
Now I can see again, I am grateful for having not capitulated to my desires.
My poisoned desires, that once retained me;
I am thankful that I hath wriggled free.
Ah, Northern Light, it seems that thou hast so much to tell;
I do not know, yet, how it all shall begin.
I shall dwell on thy grounds so well;
the grounds so beneficent and keen in the first place.
I have not heard of thy sweet voice;
I have known but thy cherry-red stories.
Stories as original as my love;
Willingly given to thee, should thou lift my heart away
and within one saturated breath, amaze and steal which from me.
Stories with red kisses plastered over its blushing pages;
Stories with a shy tint of love; that love of ours that demands recognition.
Stories with hugs and passion that are yet still unborn;
waiting for the frozen night to become known.
Oh, we all should seek the tremor our loving hands hath caused;
And a newly replenished joy, yet, that they hath so lovingly unleashed.
A new, formal joy, that delights both in giving and returning.
My Northern Light, I may love thee and seek delight within thee only;
The fire of thee has consumed the living of me violently,
and I have begun to see my other living side,
cheerful and jubilant may I be, on my front days.

Come to me, my Northern Light, lure me into thy sacred idle night;
When the time of our fate washes ashore, and all the wrongs shall turn right,
And all the fires grow into rain, multiplied by the benevolent immortal knight,
Who shalt fly as King of the Skies, whilst burning out the prejudiced sunlight.

Come to me, my Northern Dawn, moisten me with thy Victorian dew;
Draw me closer to thy sonatas, a realised romance written by bare hands
Bringing another vigorous pleasure to our reluctant bliss
And removing the worries of our juvenile present, marking it as the new Truth.

Come to me, my Northern Dusk, flirt with me like thou didst not with one;
Wish our hearts luck, and fight so our triumph be won,
Thou shalt **** hate with thy sword of victorious words,
Satisfactory to our chests, infallible to the sniggering worlds.

Come to me, my Northern Lamp, tempt me into the army of curling winds;
Rub my shoulders again the beguiling sweet rains, charm me away,
Far in the dark I shall be generous to thee, calming like wine,
I wouldst love to fall into the sky by thy wings again.

Come to me, my Northern Sky, envelop me in thy starlet dawn and blanket;
I want to embrace thy northern grass and tulips, and paint some rainbows,
To read some lullaby beneath the benign sky, and its amulets,
To write some poetic words, and sing them today and tomorrow.

Come to me, my Northern Sea, may thou enjoyest thy grounds’ cold clay;
That my wondrous script shall touch and place upon it a play,
Announcing my ragged arrival on the harmonious soil,
Adjusting myself to the convenient steep hills.

Come to me, my Northern Song, may thou be blessed without and in the unknown;
May thou remember the words of my late vow, o my attractive love,
May I in abundance love thee more, after my formative alone,
May this love grow strong, undeniable, and tough.

Come to me, my Northern Sun, bewitch me once more and entrap my mind;
That thou give birth but to a revitalised summer, young and free,
That this immortal joy shall last, like the oblivious moon,
Held hostage by thy beauty, whose half thou hath shared onto my soul.

Come to me, my Northern Rain, make me rejoice in the swirling autumns;
When the greens turn red and all shall die and wake again,
That we shall remain friends until tomorrow and delight,
Delight, that comes to us when we are united fellows.

Come to me, my Northern Grass, be dry and wet and tickle with pleasure and again;
Fulfill my heart with lithe atonement, for my graceful sins,
And by thee, I shall neither be dangerous nor unchaste,
I shall be a ******; my moonlit quest is just about to begin.

Come to me, my Northern Guide, heal my wounds and lingering past scars;
Scars that are immortal and once tormented my dreams,
I hath forgiven them with my tender cares,
Releasing them back prettily, into their domestic jubilees.

Come to me, my Northern Moon, in the merit of haste and run;
Nibbling thy water lilies as thou pass, and flying through the floating grass,
Thou shalt find me within the cheeks of Jakarta, in my cornered walk,
Moving around with unease, void of any candlelight spark.

Come to me, my Northern Star, thou art as warm as thou art cold;
My reason to keep on longing, and hold on to thy unmolested warmth,
That the cruel Coventry can thaw me no more;
Neither shall its herons fly over my untouched shore.

Come to me, my Northern Soul, so that I can be free;
Let me not be engulfed by the breathless dawn, and twilight,
Slide me free from the strain of tropical grief and sunlight,
I want to feel cold once more, all through the day and night.

Come to me, my Northern Tale, and hear me over the shrieking winds;
Let me steer my journey to thy mortal land, unite us as we have been;
Live inside me and feed my blood, make me known and beguiling;
Scoop me into thy arms, picture me asleep and welcoming.

Come to me, my Northern Poem, make me hear what thou couldst promise;
Make me twitch with delight, and shout pleasure within thy hands,
And sign that very night as my time of rebirth;
Pleasant and pure, free from the past sins and filth.

Come to me, my Northern Love, make my ****** soul glow green again;
Find thy way to me by my marked boughs of love,
My journey and love hath but not ended yet,
Thou shalt breed and unite with me—in our timeless breath.
John F McCullagh Dec 2011
Her Horse didn’t canter in Canterbury
Her braided hair was long and Brown.
She galloped uncovered in Coventry
so that taxes would drop like her gown.

Hot to trot without makeup or Jewelry
Hair undone, long tresses hang down.
A ****** named Tom was observing her
riding through town sans a gown.

A woman of substance and Charity-
Not given to horsing around.-
Her legend comes down from antiquity
That’s how seldom those taxes go down.
As suggested by LP
Carlo C Gomez Jul 2020
Dear diary:

Land sakes! Leofric cannot believe I carried through with it. But indeed, today I rode naked along the sparse, meager streets of ye old Coventry.

And whilst my long hair, let down for the occasion, did provide me a jot of modesty; alas! a strong breeze I am most certain granted uncivil eyes to plainly see my top half is much ado about nothing.

Nonetheless, an even more discomfiting fear shall be if some peeping tom espied his fair countess to be no natural blonde at all; just a fare-thee-well lemon juicing, miracle bra wearing charlatan.

On the plus side, I did achieve quite a lovely, even, 'no-lines' tan!
Thomas W. Case's Historical Figure Poetry Challenge, Lady Godiva.
Stefan Michener Mar 2016
Pyramid's mania
Languid pink lotus-eaters
Ominous and luminous
Faded to darkened scars
Eternity held the stars

My how you spoof yourself
Your puerile ferocity
Scuds' untamed velocity
'neath fearsome thunderstorm
Loving before you were born

Now you've gone too far
You're caught in vertigo
Spinning with nowhere to go
No one here you can call,
Nowhere else to hide at all

How's it feel all alone?
Just two inches tall, you stand
Onstage in a cold, strange land
Singing in a silver thong
Quirky tunes grace the throng

Laughter, hisses and boos
Chorus of ridicule
Pomposities of smug cool
Blinding radioactive rage
Taught in a tight cage onstage

You're clamoring now
Your timid voice starts to crack
Look to sky, no one looks back
Blood and sweat fuel the swarm
Furious scuds preview the storm

You ***** a mumbo
APOLLO Coventry hail
The Black Pharaoh wields his flail
Advent of El Diablo
Swiftly comes the deathblow

Aroused by gravity,
****** ground spins before you
******* tingle tango for two
Nobody is calling
You're fearlessly falling

The wind roars in your ears
Ridicule's easing winnow
Distorted faces in windows
Adagio Eternus
Virtue and Disgrace Opus

Beadle cleans the sidewalk
Of a Swan-song's human rubble
Whistling, he's forming a riddle
Dangerous timeless Sphinx
Bested by the modern Kings
Coventry once I left behind and thee too;
But look: I wouldst sail the seas with thee alone!
Thee alone, Immortal, t'at other souls shall feel mocked;
Mine is the night ship and thine the dawn voyage;
Ah, t'at the blind earth knoweth our hearts are its enterprise;
T'at shall be empty not, even th' sun disappears and moonlig't dies.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do;
To thee for whom t'is heart beats, and shall take revenge;
To thee for whom my soul was blown, and by whom I'th grown alone;
Ah, thee, bewildering me too much by thy passionate desire.
Ah, Immortal, talk me no love talk, but take my life-all of it;
As though all men's streams are but fused in thee, thee alone!
Ah, Immortal, t'at fierce scent of thy red summer skin,
Too is just one of tonight's rampage of flurry wind!

And t'ese lines of love hath thou laid onto me, within
The breath and warmth of so many pleasant places;
Immortal, Immortal, Immortal--and like the beauty of Sofia;
I believeth in thy loveliness, in thy kind and timeless fatamorgana.
Immortal, my mountain, my earth, my everything;
Immortal, the very birth yon icy oceans hath to sing!
Immortal, hath thou seen the decree of fate;
T'at love is still t'ere for us, for 'tis never late?

Thy eyes are like heavens' broad fields beneath, and ever rejoicing;
Ah, darling, for I canst but see all gold and silver--plain and honest in 'em;
A drama like a song, a stage play like a vanished poem;
But one t'at turns again brave and crimson;
Toward' th' very end of the dark season.
I'd love to see thee pry love into my hungry heart again;
To watch thee brutally scorn and defy peace t'at hath existed
Piercing such through thy lonesome heart; raised, but now denied.

Ah, Immortal, I blame th' sun for its gladness;
And raise my contempt toward' the unknowing skies;
Like blood flowers, my heart too is emptied with madness;
T'at one wonders why it exists still and cannot die.
I wanteth to take thee again through the city's old brakes;
And introduceth thee to the idle flames of my song;
As beautifully and vengefully as misty poetry by th' lake;
T'at none is to see--nor to steal from me, as t'ey may fly or pass along.
again, and weaving.



we listen to the coventry carole,

the little tiny child, fingers tapping

in time, the medieval, the membrance

of cathedral . walking up hill chanting.

repeatedly. they moved the stairs.



we hold the cotton, the wool

for comfort.



sbm.
Left Foot Poet Jul 2016
.                                                       <>

in my middle life, more than ever, I need a once upon a time.
I forget how easy it is to forget—can’t imagine starting
     Anything new. I used to love the satisfying finality
At the conclusion of movies when a giant The End

Flashed across the Big Screen. Maybe one solution:

We could all change our names every day.


A verse from
"Coventry Lake"
by Bruce Cohen
                                                           <>

before I knew why,
before Bruce explained it all,
wink! wink!
change my name quite often

way past the middle years,
can't remember what I forgot,
so a new poem looks sorta maybe
**** familiar, another guy's guise

maybe, can't be truly sure,
but the grasp of time upon my croaking,
gasping voice box, youthful insistent,
give it another parting shot!

yeah,
I still need a once upon a time
e v e r y d a y
rap you a rhyme friend,
crank it out, one more a time,
before hitting the Dead End sign,
gonna sweat one more script from
the po-ahem pores

do it so
it will be your call,
when shouting out,
it's a wrap

when you complete,
and Declaration signature swirl
an emboldened name,
whichever, no matter

everyday
you need
a once more upon time
to indelible a full throated,
Yahoo!
It's mine going out, writing out loud

The End!
The field gun
hidden behind a grassy bank and flanked by trees
manned by two men and an officer up to their knees in mud
did good!

It fired simultaneously
with a charge by the third infantry
Death stamped on the base of the eight pound shell
it smiled
into the face of Ben Fazackerly who came from Coventry
and Ben fell dead.
(and it has to be said..minus his head)

Perhaps Ben had seen some premonition
that he'd be killed by enemy ammunition
so on Wednesday the week before
he'd decided not to take the chance
of losing his new false teeth in France
and posted them with two weeks pay
to his wife and lover
Betty May

And Bet began to understand when she saw the postman
with the telegram come past the garden gate at ten past eight.
At five past two
the crying through
she went and made some tea.

With the teeth that Ben had sent
she turned the gas on
and bent with grief
she went to sleep.
Forever.
Dark n Beautiful Aug 2015
Master bedroom

It would have been nice
If it could live up to its name
Knowingly, the master couldn’t
Even handle his business in any room
Why called it the master bedroom,
The master haven't mastered any role in any room
until his compassionate flower,  the ladywith a heart of an angel,
Made a deal for the people, , as history was told
Her love for the oppressed citizens of Coventry would never be forgotten:
A Yellow Lily not to be reckon with:
Lady Godiva the people's choice
history is not my subject



bombs/



sounds rather current



except this guy got caught

before the damage



i have just been advised/



he had hoped to be interred at

coventry cathedral



except

he was not sure if it existed yet



then



it was decided to cut him up to **** him

put his head on a spike

up his neck/



that was bombed too

coventry cathedral/



bombs are nasty things/

seriously

sbm.



(prompt.  guy fawkes & coventry cathedral)
Yenson Jul 2022
To many herds borne
corralled in deceptive cages
breed to fellow the herd
devoid of distinction
all in comprehensive similarity
to similarly comprehend
and boo and wail in unison

A GOAT is not for the herd
bred to know what to fear
is fear itself in all guises
rather than embrace fear
and booing and wailing in herds
only brave and optimal in the
numbing constraints of numbers

We do not find our strength
******* a harem of weaknesses
or prove ourselves hiding
under all the cheaply discarded
skirts in the brothels nearest the docks
our worth is from standards high
do send me to Coventry with my Excalibur
I do not hear see or eat with leeming
There is no hesitation in my love, never;
Each promise is true, even to a liar,
Even to the sun that hath no wings,
I writ my words and stand to their singing.

Shall I die again today, my love?
Shall I die to gain back my serenity;
For I hath loved too dearly, and awfully still,
That heart of thine tells not how I could feel.

Shall I die again in our young haven?
And its loveliness as our own Coventry,
When I daydreamed by her spacious boughs,
Pondering the promises of our sweet love.

Shall I die again by the flirtatious sunlight?
That no sight of mine shall float through the night,
No flame nor fire shall sign my presence,
My doleful glee, that thou hath forsaken.

Shall I die again for thee, my darling?
Hark! The flute that I left wants to sing,
That my poems are read by the dark angels,
That such ceased desires can be aroused.

Shall I die again for thee, and thy lover?
That thou shan’t see me again in November,
Nor breathe my hair every dusky evening,
Like thou didst on Saturday, several times before.

Shall I die at last, by the stricken sun?
For my love struck me as I passed by;
An affection I had so genially thought of,
A warmth that filled me with hysteria of love.

Shall I die today, by her deathly burns?
That thou and thy lover shall scream with delight,
And my fluent poetry is killed in cryptic joy,
Like the abstruse cold thou feel about me.

Or shall I die tonight, by the moonlight?
That all shall chant with blunt amusements,
That the moon sparkles in his summer movements,
That their heated love is spread on to the night.

Shall I die again today, in my solemn haste?
I hath some errands to run and waste,
For what is love without thee, here and there;
For love, without thee, shall be absent everywhere.

Shall I die again at dusk, tonight?
Then I shall see the ragged men and their souls,
Forsaken by the worlds so fishy and foul,
With no winds to attend and cherish their tombs.

Shall I die again then, by today’s twilight?
Then I might meet thee in an ethereal light,
Thou, bathed in fleeting shadows and lethal sight,
Thou, the son of evil floating at dark nights!

And shall I but dream of thee again, o evil!
Thou, who hath mastered my mind and my love,
That I hath been killed by thy rusted sentiments,
And the love I felt hath gone from me again.

Shall I dream again, o thou, o peril!
Shall I witness again such that forsook me,
Shall I be a drink within such tragedy,
Shall I writ, and bequeath my spoiled poetry.

To thee, who hath forgot, and shall have forgotten;
To thee, who accrues from hate,
To thee, who accurses fate,
To thee, who yearns for arrogant love.

To thee, the devil’s son, the rough prince;
To thee, who hath arrayed a tide of sins,
To thee, who loves in hate and hates love,
To thee, who loves in haste and hastens love.

To thee, for whom my love awoke;
To thee, to whom love is a joke,
To thee, to whom a heart is futile,
To thee, who smiles and jokes all the while.

To thee, for whom my love turned awake;
To thee, whom I awaited by the lake,
To thee, for whom I raised my tears,
To thee, by whom I erased my fears.

To thee, whom my desires found true;
To thee, by whom such wishes are never truer,
To thee, by whom visions are clear,
To thee, whom I wish was here.

To thee, whom I hath loved, and still do;
To thee, for whom love hath renewed,
To thee, for whom there shall be tomorrow,
To thee, for whom stands the here and now.

To thee, whom I dearly loved, and still do;
To thee, whom I am about to love now,
To thee, whose love was once so true,
To thee, to whom rage is not rue.

To thee, whom I loved dearly then;
To thee, whom I loved wholly and ardently;
To thee, for whom I drained my heart,
To thee, for whom I tainted my love.

To thee, for whom I could have died;
To thee, for whom the world hath lied,
To thee, my eyes and lips are able to say,
To thee, for whom I awoke silently today.

To thee, for whom I faint with delight;
To thee, for whom there is but no day and night,
To thee, for whom all the wrong seem right,
To thee, for whom fear is not fright.

To thee, for whom idleness is love;
To thee, by whom kisses are not enough,
To thee, who sees into the ****** my soul,
To thee, who listens into my heat, and cold.

To thee, on whom I hath laid my love;
To thee, in whom my past is asleep,
To thee, granted by the One above,
To thee, for none else is t’is love so deep.

To thee, to whom I hath pledged my soul;
To thee, for whom I shall still die,
To thee, who knows not buoyant death,
To thee, who knows only the youth of breath.

To thee, to whom merit shan’t be merit;
To thee, to whom greed is not foul,
To thee, to whom misery is a lie,
To thee, to whom joy is in flesh.

To thee, to whom love is a burden;
To thee, to whom love is a sin,
To thee, to whom scars are not mean,
To thee, to whom the grass is not green.

To thee, to whom words hath no name;
To thee, to whom life bears no song,
To thee, to whom love shall not stay the same,
To thee, to whom all the good might be wrong.

To thee, to whom swords bear no name;
To thee, for whom such stories are told,
To thee, for whom lovesick lines are writ,
To thee, for whom silent pages are read.

To thee, to whom sounds bear but rage;
To thee, to whom love dies by age.
To thee, to whom mortal is love,
To thee, to whom affection shall die.

To thee, to whom there is no avail;
To thee, to whom joy hath died,
To thee, to whom love is a fail,
To thee, to whom love is a lie.
I am heading now into the
somewhere and somehow and
I may be a while.
Call it madness
call it style
call it what you will but
I'm still heading there or
I'm heading there still and
until I am sure of a connection to
the cure,
I remain outward bound.

There is a noise in my ears,
a sound that one fears when
the evening comes in and
the night catches up with the sun.

If the dark was a friend in
the somehow it might end and
the somewhere is where I might
find
peace of mind.

There is a curvature to my spine
due to old age and time.

The darkness will find me on the horizon
of history,
bent over the pages and watching the mystery
of myself.

In the mirror,only me,solitary,
playing chess with the toothpaste and
wasting the light.

I am or I was
because someone once told
a serf or a King and
so I bring to this Coventry where
some reflection has sent me another picture to paste in
the windows that chase across the oceans that roll and toss
and again I am at a loss
to explain
what anything means.
Who would span the linkage of the days, and to what earthly end would the toll of time send me breaking to?
And would the ferryman play sticks and stones with my crumbling body or would he have me throw the bones and tell of fortunes squandered?

I
have nothing left to tell of what bridges I have walked across,what joy and loss I found in mansions and in tenements,now
in Coventry sent there by my family in silent wandering I see the chain stretching out in front of me.
And who would join the dots to make this picture right,to read this epicure I spread upon the leavings of my night?
I write,I write until the brightness of the bursting sun comes round again to burst this bubble and in pain,I shout,I shout or scream and cry and when the sun would die tonight,I write,I write.

He,
inside of me knows well the moments and he counts the minutes,strikes the hours and all that passes in between are him and I,the sun waits patiently for me to cry.

Let the artisan then span the chasm that keeps me from the other side and let the ferryman glide well across the waterway.
Let my day be joined with all the other days,send the breakers in as I go gently out with the ebbing of the tide.
Now or never
whether we want to or not
they've got us by the *****
and though we built walls
to defend against these invaders of free will
we will need to be stronger
build our walls bigger and better than ever before
and let them kick out the windows and doors
we'll just brick them up and no one gets in
and no one gets out
and no one but no one knows what this is all about.
but the walls stay because they want us to rot
they've got us by the ***** and all we can do is build more and more walls
and who wins in the end?
when we're all sent to Coventry with bags of cement so we can lend some authority to the people up there
and they don't give a ****
they jam us into categories with the same krappy old stories
that it's good for our health while they're spending the wealth that they stole from the miners and while they're dining on beef
we're starving
good grief
and they've got us by the *****
in glass coloured test tubes lubricated,dedicated to the rise of the monarchs
and it can't be for real
we'd never allow that
but laying flat on our back and winking eyes at the sun
is where this begun.
In the minds of the merchants and in the pockets of wise men
in the back alleys of bigots and bigshots
and what have we got?
you know it,
A box full of sawdust and a whole heap of ****
so the walls get a little longer
a little stronger
but they'll break us one day
and take us away to a recycle plant
and they'll plant us as seeds to service their needs
and their needs will get greater the later they leave it
there's a whole load of ****
a coming our way.
God
I saw my love in 'other world,
By the sides of a damp city,
By the barns of faithless forests,
Under the name of Coventry,

I stared deeply into his eyes,
Scared of finding unconscious lies,
I told him scriptures of past tales,
Behind three cups of wine and ale,

He parted and left all alone,
Burning aside all single words,
In love with the sickly false worlds,
Dismantling spirits he had borne,

I was demolished and lonely,
Smothered by violet solitude,
Not one loveliness could heal me,
Not even my Eolian flute,

But soon I found my honest Lord,
Left adrift by disruptive worlds,
I saw Him in sleep and poetry,
I felt His words strongly in me,

I learned and read with two red eyes,
With a rage on furious evenings,
I squinted into the dried tepid skies,
Firm to thunder and music sounds,

I tore through my religion,
I passed by lone oblivions,
All were plain and spiritual,
All were lurid and magical,

All was poetry, that one of mine,
I was stunned, my idioms were blind,
I had found the scent of my soul,
A faithful show I'd strained to hold,

And all was neither silent nor drowned,
But a reality that never frowned,
A frugality that had found its league,
My heart healed and got no longer sick,

And all sprinted towards another way,
A way to which I had none to say,
A delight like the sun's violent rays,
Vanished worlds were real to me that day,

And there was the music of the stars,
The swift dance of the heavens' bars,
I knew my God was not that far,
I could see Him with my heart ajar,

And I too danced to a fairy song,
That I'd drained to sing all along,
To bow and thrill by my poetry,
To hail His instance there with me,

And the world too was dressed in rags,
A dead end blinding to their age,
And their worries and frayed hustles,
Mocked by their cloaks and green barrels,

And all mornings would sound empty,
For as far as my eyes could see,
I would dream in my shy prayers,
Asking bounties from the Giver,

And feel the salt among the sea,
Witness the cupboards of the stars,
Watch the moon take its long night walk,
Hear dusk and clouds hold their late talk,

And kiss the sands within my hands,
Cherish the flower of my senses,
Shine like the sun all over again,
Be relieved from heartaches and pains,

Be healed from wounds and agonies,
Be free as grouse and butterflies,
Be pure and free and fair and clean,
Bear forgiveness to thy worst sins,

Be hefty and feisty and sweet,
Be witty and solid and bold,
Be tough in rain and bloodied heat,
Be hardy in illness and cold,

And to seal comfort on my chest,
To my senses in the whole round,
Whilst no wind yet brewed in the West,
And the lost bits were to be found.

— The End —