Category: Textual Encounters

Just Give Me One Minute

Just give me one minute and I’ll be right there. I just need to do this little thing with my hair. I’m not always late, I’m sometimes on time. It’s not always your fault, it’s usually mine. Just give me one minute, just one minute more. I just have to mop up this spill on the floor. I’m busy like Martha, but more like Mary I should be, enjoying the moment, instead of making tea. A silence is needed, to hear the drop of a pin. I’m busy doing nothing, getting into a spin. Need to stay calm and attentive, Mary had it right. Listen to a friend, be serene tonight. I’m learning to love the moment and being still at the core. No time like the present, won’t waste a second more. You look as if you need a friend. I think that is my cue. I don’t need one more minute. I’m here to talk to you.

My Absent Friend

My absent friend

You may be gone

You may not be here at all

My absent friend

I miss you so

As long, as it is tall

My absent friend

I wish you well

I want to see you now

But you’re not present

You’ve not been sent

You’re neither why nor how

My absent friend

I’ll bide my time

For soon I know it SHALL be

That I will see you once again

And there’ll be you and me.

Ancient History

Like the Sumarians

Where the first river valley flowed

And the Romans

With their emperors and their roads

Like the Egyptians

With their science and tech headstarts

Like the Greeks

And their philosophy and their art

Like the Aztecs

With their agriculture of course

Like the Byzantines

And their exceptional military force

Like the Kush

Where skillful archers were made

Like the steppes

For its routes of travel and trade

Like the Indus valley

For its systems of measures and weights

And their building tricks

Of a highly advanced sort of state

Like the Phoenicians time

And a thousand years at sea

Like the world a long, long time ago

You’re ancient history.

Lonely Town

I know a place called Lonely Town

It’s got a pub and a resident clown

It has no lights that go on at night

It just gives up, without a fight

It has no hope, no belief

It can’t forgive, this town of grief

Lonely Town, need to get away

Outstayed my welcome, don’t want to stay

Time to forgive, time to hope

Time to cut this binding rope

I’ll pack my bags, won’t back down

No backward glance, I’ll leave this town

Once, you served me well

Like sadists often do

But now, Lonely Town, I’m moving on

To pastures green and new.

Missing You

I’m missing you, there’s a deep dark hole, right there, right here, in my grieving soul.

I miss you because you were bad for me, I am a masochist, that’s plain to see.

I’m missing you, with every fibre of my being, but the person you are, is not the person I’m seeing.

Time will heal, that’s what they say, but the time that’s passed, seems only one day.

‘With attachment comes suffering’, the wise say it too, but it’s the price of being human. What else can we do?

So let’s just say I’m over you and all your evil lies, I have said my last farewell and all my great goodbyes.

I won’t be missing you any longer, you are always in my heart. When I start to love myself, that’s when my life will start.

Summer Song

(or Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Read a Book Like Me?)

Where’d my book go GQ?

The one I lent to you?

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

You said you liked the theme

It was a first edition

Now I am on a mission

I dig that book a lot

You need to drop it like its hot

Give me back my book

It was meant to be read

You used its pages

To do dope instead

I read it in the sun

chillin’ like a villain

I am never lonely

Shakespeare is my only

Thought you were a John Blaze

A Mc Dreamy snack

But you’re not off the hizzy

Buster, you just wack

Now you need to run the jewels

Or you’re gonna lose

Literature bites

It’s how I got my stripes

You’re not ‘off the hook’

Give me back my book

We had a trump tight season

Now I’m out of reason

My trust was at the max

Now your ass is grass

Summer is over

And so are we

Never a lender or a borrower be.

I Thought It Was The End

I’m at the cinema and the movie is on, but when I look down, the popcorn is gone. People are leaving, the seats are all tipped, the soda and cola haven’t been sipped.

    Wait, I was dreaming, fell asleep you see, I don’t like thrillers, bore the pants off me. The film went on, forever it seemed, but I quite liked to think

    it was the end

    in my dreams.

    And then I went home to find kitten at play, with a ball of wool she’d had her eye on all day. The unravelled thread, I followed along, ‘soft, strong and very, very long’.

    Out in the garden, the wool did extend. It was just the beginning but I thought it was the end. While tracking the string, U.F.O fleet I spy, orange and red, in indigo sky. Aliens fly to me, with guns all aglow,

    the end is nigh, they say,

    in their own lingo.

    It’s war of the worlds, army from the stars, thought my number was up, invasion from Mars. I thought it was the end, intergalatic death ray?

    No.

    It’s just the World Firework Championship Display

    Physics

    Do you remember our first date

    And our first kiss?

    When the bus jolted

    My cheek smacked your lips

    Your nose stabbed my eye

    And so we broke the ice

    Do you remember the days

    Filled with laughter?

    Our hearts free and happy

    Many afternoons

    Of tea and crumpet

    The ice melted

    Do you remember the dream we had

    And realised?

    We had frowned forever

    Now smiles of joy

    Imprint our lives

    Melted ice, now a pool of hot water

    Do you remember we loved

    In defiance?

    Snarled at the world

    Affronted by the rules

    Bewildered by the sun

    Pool of hot water sizzles to steam

    And now we’re so far gone

    No backward glance

    Like a helium balloon

    You go up

    I go up

    The steam rises.

    He Chopped Off Her Head

    (One of the writing prompts/exercises/homework for the poetry group I go to, was to write a ballad. So I wrote one).

    Your eyes were like two pools of blue

    Your hair as soft as silk

    Your lips were like a red, red rose

    Your skin as white as milk

    I asked if you would walk with me

    I asked you for your hand

    You promised to love me true

    I gave you a wedding band

    And then we had some very good years

    And I know that we did thrive

    But one night you crept into my bed

    And you were cold as ice

    You had been out all night

    And from your lips came lies

    I found the man who stole your heart

    The man who turned your head

    I found the man who took my love

    I found him in my bed

    I loved you more than life itself

    I loved you, oh so much

    You have surely broken me

    And now my mind is touched

    I was enraged, I saw red

    I just didn’t know what to do

    I’m quite sure that I lost my head

    Now you will lose yours too

    I took an axe high in the air

    In frenzy, I did swing

    I chopped off your lovely head

    And then took back my ring

    And before he had a chance to run

    I took him out as well

    There was some blood, just a bit

    Before his body fell

    I burned the corpses that same night

    And put your heads on stakes

    And now you are together forever

    And lots of love can make

    And now I’ve found another love

    Only now it’s me who’s blue

    For I’m a rogue and a scroundrel you see

    And I am never true

    I wish and hope with all my heart

    She’ll find me in our bed

    With another, in adultery

    And she’ll chop off my head

    Looking forward to fifty

    I’m going to be turning fifty, this year. I don’t feel it. I don’t know whether to grow old gracefully or disgracefully. I’ve always been indecisive.

    I looked up stuff about age last week (because I am sensitive about age now) and I learned so much! Some of the things I learned were…

    You’re not allowed to say ‘elderly’ anymore. ‘Senior citizen’ is out and ‘retired’ is out the door. You can’t say ‘geriatric’ and I think that’s quite fair. ‘Pensioner’ is outdated and ‘advanced age’ – don’t go there. ‘Old people?’ No, can’t do that, as it euphemizes age. And that euphemism is negative, if you’ve lived a lot of days. So, what are we to do, to show respect for all the years? How do we put a stop to all our politically correct fears?

    A lot of these words were bandied about, in certain times and phases but now ‘fossil’, ‘fogey’ and ‘codger’ are out, they’re not P.C phrases. ‘Older adult’ or ‘older person’ is the acceptable term these days, or simply ‘man’ or simply ‘woman’, followed by their age.

    It’s about time, the PC World (not the computer store) said something nice about me, so if I’m an ‘older adult,’ then that’s what I’m happy to be.