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Best Poems Written by Bill Drayton

Below are the all-time best Bill Drayton poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Beginning of Everything

BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING 

Sleep comes as a welcome guest
Who assuages in some measure
The prolonged stage of pain
Within the straits of breathless grief.

The one at final rest starts a journey 
Beyond the narrow confines 
Within the dimmed space
Out to the open prairie of a sunlit
Horizon, unknown to those who 
Wait behind until their time
Of reaching home. 

They are present visitors to a finite place,
Where the hours rush by
Without thought for the future,
Before they too embark on
The adventure to a distant shore. 

The end is a beginning,
And signifies the end 
Of things which do not 
Correspond with 
The beginning of everything. 

Everything that was, is
And now is come to pass.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

The Boy Stares At You

THE BOY STARES AT YOU

He is raggedly scrunched up 
Against a wall of sweating bricks,  
Staring at you with as much pride
As life has thrown at him.

You see he has no desire to make
Conversation with a stranger
To his stale, rank impoverishment
But he smiles anyway with false bravado.

His eyes question your unwanted presence,
Loitering for a possible answer
Which may be forthcoming
And include conditional expectations.

He won't break his kingdom of silence,
Where he reigns supreme
Among poverty's sprawling plague.

He waits for you to speak but knows
You have nothing to say he'll understand
Nor care about. Besides your speech is
Foreign to him, so you can stutter on
Without the slightest effect.

The vultures circle above, letting out
Their dolorous cries in search of the dead. 
He and you live but do not engage
Because you cannot relate;
You do not exist to each other.

Among the scattered stones of the houses,
You have found a hidden graveyard
Of dreams where there is no afterlife.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

The Street Evangelist

THE STREET EVANGELIST

There is a new dark shroud of wintry mass,
Covering the hidden beauty of the land.

It emanates from a deceptive layer 
Of smooth-honeyed words which stroke
Their spiteful way into artless minds,
Hearing with open conduits. 

The charlatan, dressed up 
As a worthy preacher, 
Smirks through his enticing act 
Of treachery, no one, listening 
Except the crazed followers to nowhere.

The rest of humanity go about 
Their untroubled business 
Without a furtive glance,
Disappearing into thin air. 

Perhaps a single raised eyebrow 
Betrays profound disdain. 
Otherwise, life goes on 
As though quackery is far from 
All circles of sane thought.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Off To School

OFF TO SCHOOL

So you're off to boarding school,
It'll be the making of you, my lad,
Muses the bespectacled gentleman,
Sat behind his morning paper, 
The commuter train steaming 
Its trundling way
Past opened curtains 
Of genteel suburbia.

Familiarly hypnotic rhythm 
From the clickety-clacking track
Continues, scarcely heeded 
By the carriage's motley clientele, 
Disturbed from comatose reveries, 
Enduring the drilled strains 
Of unwelcome conversation.

Hostile eyes look up in 
Bristling annoyance
At a shy, enclosed boy, 
Who keeps locked-in silence 
On his first uncertain foray
Into the strange world beyond 
The comfortable boundaries
Of his homely playpen.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

I Cannot Hear You

I CANNOT HEAR YOU

I cannot hear you in the noise of traffic
Among busy, fretting crowds,
Unaware of the still, calm presence 
Of Mother Earth who bore her children
To be cognizant of her natural ways.

Don't take control by destroying 
The fragile shape of things that exist
In a delicate state of balance
Since the beginning of time.

The sounds of the forests are dimmed
By the cacophony from society's savagery,
Preening itself in a self-righteous pose,
Concocted with a false mixture of 
Superior, egotistical civilization.

The world beyond the grasp of humankind
Is beautifully crafted with the honed skill 
Of an expert artist. It stands as a witness
At the crossroads between decay and progress. 

Listen to the waves that beat on the shores
Of your own mind. They convey a message
To your ears and you must be receptive,
As the groans and agony are expressed.

Time is running out the door of opportunity; 
It may be too late to take action. 
The purposefully deaf will rue the day 
They ignored the siren call, becoming
The first to drown in the cruel waters
Of the burgeoning oceans. 

I still cannot hear you in the loud screams
As the west wind transforms into a raging
Hurricane, unstoppable, inexorable. 

You have the means in your hands to turn
The tide of waste and stasis, to build a home,
Fit for future generations, where all can breathe
In safety because the air is pure and clear.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Peace

PEACE

Shy, quietly spoken, always in the background,
Never one for thrusting ideas 
Into people's minds,

Diffident, listens intently 
To her surroundings, often hiding
Behind certainty, wearing it 
Like a wickerwork shield 
For protection, but she won't go
Away or sink below the surface
Of things as though she didn't matter,

She has a calm dignity
Anyone with a moral compass can
Easily recognize, perhaps even 
In themselves, she is that which builds 
Communities and cities to prosper

In correspondence to one 
Another with strong foundations
Of steel and grit. Within their walls
Each moving person has unique
Qualities and talents for which 
The cooperative dream can be fulfilled,

When she is present in all their dealings,
The unseen guest who utters 
Not a word but let others take the lead.
She is like a spirit, flowing 
Through human interaction,

Whispering in the ear
To tell of cautious steps,
Made with tranquil ease
And clarity of vision.

She is the one whose face
We cannot see, but know 
There is a smile wreathed with joy
From cheek to cheek,

Still she does not raise her voice 
To express an opinion. She is 
Too busy, placing flowers in 
People's palms.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Lost Love

LOST LOVE

I should not be feeling this way,
Perturbed by a distant past,
Fluttering its insidious allure
Into an immediate moment of impact.

We met again before my departure,
Me, almost drawing near you
To feature as a couple

Just for a split second 
For an offered photoshoot,
And you, showing a flawlessly
Radiant smile.

No, that once-present time is now past, 
Just as the time before was past 
Consideration because it would 
Distract from continuous living.

We said goodbye, including 
An ultimate embrace, which may have 
Meant more than it was
But was not worthy of being lingered
To fray our rekindled friendship. 

A cool mind is needed to control
The fire, burning the lengthy 
Wasteland of separate intervals 
And render them as harmless ashes
To maintain the status quo.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Darkness and Light

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

My friend, you seek to wound 
With a knife, sharpened from 
Bile-imbued speech,
Twisting through to the heart's fragility.

A life bleeds crimson into weeping 
Earth and you, smirking 
Wantonly out from
Behind an artificial facade,
Barely able to conceal the suppressed pain
Inside your blighted frame.

You mock the inconvenient 
Before blinkered eyes -
That which accords not with the acceptable,
In adherence to rules, laid down
From an unmoved tradition.

You need the skeletal framework 
Of structure and routine 
To bolster an inadequate existence;

Familiar only with restrictive darkness,
You hate difference or variation,
The obscure smothering attempts 
To discover the glaringly obvious.

Yet still you wound me at the fork in the road,
As though it's your life's work to do so,
I now speak the truth in my defence,
Succeeding to deflect your arrows 
With the impenetrable shield of love.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

Conveniently Absent

CONVENIENTLY ABSENT

You sit alone, neglected,
In your study-room, day after day,
Well of tears drains away,
Spirit of life, parched for lack of sustenance,
Turned off, sounds of harmony, rhythm,
Place, devoid of meaning.

They, once hearth and home,
Drove you out into barred solitude
Under the same roof
On separate, adjacent lines.

No longer loved as yourself,
Become a living scandal
To strangers in your midst,
Today conveniently absent,
At work or school or church.

Now prepared with care, the means of exit,
Nothing left to chance or change of mind,
Letter lies open, clear - out on the desk,
They may read its explanation,
Take note or pretend it never appeared at their home.

You rise from your seat, irksomely comfortable,
With steel-eyed resolve possessed,
All done as planned, gathering journey’s materials,
Leave space to descend dim-lit stairs
Into a sudden, self-created vacuum.

Graceful you are as a flight of angels,
Moving through to the empty garage.

Armed stool waits patiently for you
From the midst of an unseen circle of fire,
To step into the hollow breach and fall.

Details | Bill Drayton Poem

The Thief In the Night

THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT

When the desert sun melted away
The armour I wore for protection,
Leaving me free to find my oasis
Of unalloyed pleasure, offered 
Without stultifying conditions,

I no longer looked back, anxious 
Of retaliatory strike on my spirit,
And in that momentary flash, knew 
There would be no comeback
From any hypocritical source
Of self-righteousness.

Needing no filter through which to view
What's plain in sight, I stripped away
The false image of a broken promise
And clothing myself with the clear vibrancy
Of unadulterated love, 
Found that peace, like a thief in the night,
Had entered the inner core of who I was.