Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Quotes
Short Stories
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Resources
Syllable Counter
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 18.117.81.240
From Email:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
Here is a silence I had not hoped for This side of paradise, I am an old believer In nature’s bounty as God’s grace To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming At frustrated lust or the scent of fame Coming too late to make a difference Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars Lined like soldiers, paler the hue of hawthorn With the heather beginning to bud blue Before September purple, yellow ragwort Sways in the wind as distantly a plane hums And a lazy bee bumbles by. A day in Brenda’s flat, mostly play with Eydie, My favourite of her seven cats, they soothe better Than Diazepan for panic Seroxat for grief Zopiclone to make me sleep. I smoke my pipe and sip blackcurrant tea Aware of the ticking clock: I have to be back To talk to my son’s key nurse when she comes on For the night shift. Always there are things to sort, Misapprehensions to untangle, delusions to decipher, Lies to expose, statistics to disclose, Trust Boards And team meetings to attend, ‘Mental Health Monthly’ To peruse, funds for my press to raise – the only one I ever got will leave me out of pocket. A couple sat on the next bench Are earnestly discussing child custody, broken marriages, Failed affairs, social service interventions – Even here I cannot escape complexity "I should never have slept with her once we split" "The kids are what matters when it comes to the bottom line" "Is he poisoning their minds against me?" Part of me nags to offer help but I’ve too much On already and the clock keeps ticking. "It’s a pity she won’t turn round and clip his ear" But better not to interfere. Damn my bloody superego Nattering like an old woman or Daisy nagging About my pipe and my loud voice on buses – No doubt she’s right – smoking’s not good And hearing about psychosis, medication and end-on-sections Isn’t what people are on buses for. I long for a girl in summer, pubescent With a twinkle in her eye to come and say "Come on, let’s do it!" I was always shy in adolescence, too busy reading Baudelaire To find a decent whore and learn to score And now I’m probably impotent with depression So I’d better forget sex and read more of Andr? Green On metaphor from Hegel to Lacan and how the colloquium At Bonneval changed analytic history, a mystery I’ll not unravel if I live to ninety. Ignorance isn’t bliss, I know enough to talk the piss From jumped-up SHO’s and locums who’d miss vital side effects And think all’s needed is a mother’s kiss. I’ll wait till the heather’s purple and bring nail scissors To cut and suture neatly and renew my stocks Of moor momentoes vased in unsunny Surrey. Can you believe it? Some arseholes letting off fireworks On the moor? Suburban excesses spread like the sores Of syphilis and more regulations in a decade of Blair Than in the century before. "Shop your neighbours. Prove it. Bring birth certificates to A&E If you want NHS treatment free. Be careful not to bleed to death While finding the certificate. Blunkett wants us all to have ID Photo cards, genetic codes, DNA database, eye scans, the lot – And kiss good-bye to the last bits of freedom we’ve got" "At the end of the day she shopped me and all I’d done Was take a few pound from the till ’cos Jenny was ill And I didn’t have thirteen quid to get the bloody prescription done" To-morrow I’ll be back in the Great Wen, Two days of manic catching up and then Thistledown, wild wheat, a dozen kinds of grass, The mass of beckoning hills I’d love to make A poet’s map of but never will. "Oh to break loose" Lowell’s magic lines Entice me still but slimy Fenton had to have his will And slate it in the NYB, arguing that panetone Isn’t tin foil as Lowell thought. James you are a dreadful bore, A pedantic creep like hundreds more, five A4 pages Of sniping and nit-picking for how many greenbacks? A thousand or two I’d guess, they couldn’t pay you less For churning out such a king-size mess But not even you can spoil this afternoon Of watching Haworth heather bloom.
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required