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Best Poems Written by Denis Bruce

Below are the all-time best Denis Bruce poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Season

Trees still denuded but burgeoning with buds
Will soon be bedecked in the brightest of duds.
Small birds renew flitting amid bursts of bright song
While crocus heads from the soil shyly  push  up along.

Freshness and newness is what they declare
When brightness and music do fill the air
Hope and joy in simplicity blend
With which no other season can ever contend.

Summer's profusion ,autumn's decay,
Winter bleak, brightened but by Christmas Day
Yet spring with its simple and artless style
Young and old alike doth beguile.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons, a work of great art,
Depicts the cycle with humour and heart
But the princess of seasons stands merrily  played
To leave the rest in its shy little shade.

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Panta Rei,Ouden Menei

We are but fleeting shadows
Upon the face of this earth
So solid,so tangible ,yet so ready
To slip through the hands of life
When we doff our mortal coil
To leave an inert  and empty shell
Doomed from birth  to turn to dust
How much store do we place
In the substance of this earth
Which can erupt and flow in waves
Sweeping all before it unstoppably
Then coming to rest
Once more monumentally still
Cloaked in the garb of geological grittiness
Water itself takes many forms 
As gas,liquid and solid 
Steam, water and ice
Such metamorphoses tease our understanding
The restlessness of our universe
Encompassing a world of whirling atoms
to give an illusion of stability 
While spatially distanced.
This mysterious blend of dark matter 
And seemingly  solid shapes
Defies resolution by the human mind
As a few  search for meaning 
Seen by many as a purposeless pursuit.
Plus ca change,
Plus c'est la meme chose.

Details | Denis Bruce Poem

Reflection

Do you like me for my form
And my cosmetic moments
With their conceits and affectations,
Bejewelled with glittering gewgaws,
Hinting at the scents of summer,
All show but no substance,
Holding back the acrid stench of death?
For you ,my beauty is but word deep.

Perhaps you see in me your soulmate,
Reflecting what you inwardly believe,
Allowing you to remain in your comfort zone,
Safe from all challenge
And the barbs of pointed criticism.
Secure your world stands
As long as you do not look behind
Or beyond horizons that hold you bound.

Or are you just a voyeur
Sailing on the seas of sensation
Living your life vicariously
To avoid precariously
What you dare not,
Rather like the lady of Shalott,
Reading life through someone else's mirror
To save your soul?

Maybe you do look deeper
To see where we differ.
Confident in your own skin
You are ready for new terrain,
Awkward and stumbling though that may be.
You look before you leap
But forge fearlessly forward,
Willing to face all that lies ahead.

Be all that as it may,
I am but a poor poem,
Taking my existence 
from you, the reader.
That is my fate.
Begotten,not made,ugly by my creator,
Accepting myself for what I am,
Yet I am fully at your disposal or neglect.

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Nostalgia

There it stands, desolate and alone
That roofless shell where the winds
Still whisper of the past
When  scampering children's squeals
 And wheeling seabirds' cries
Rose thinly through the air.
A thatched croft  from which a healthy living was scraped
A shirt-sleeved man, braces showing,
 Bald pate bunneted against the sun,
Bent over to tend his plot
An aproned woman cheerfully shooing away the hens
To collect the eggs for the evening meal
Beside a silvery sea stretching
To the horizon
 Hiding the city lights and its imagined pleasures
Until those dreams drew the young away
Watched sadly  by  the elderly pair
Their exodus damning
The island to its desolation
Where still  the birds' cries squeal 
And the wind  through the grass softly whispers
 Surrounding the now  silent croft
 In the salt sharp air
What homely  pleasures such a life once offered 
Now the graveyard of fading memories
While the once busy city streets
Stand empty drained of life
As the virus continues to take its toll

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Separation

to be so far apart
in so many different ways
brings a hunger to my heart
a sorrow to my soul.
'twas fate dictated our destinies
that we were to be starcrossed 
in love.

bittersweet is our portion,
though we did fleetingly taste
of intimacy's pleasures.
that is the one memory we can cling to
like the shipwrecked Odysseus
clutching at a spar.

you have lived locked
in a loveless union too long.
we were drawn together too late
by a force momentarily
too strong to resist.
thus did nature play
its cruel,insensitive trick.

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Lacrimae Rerum

It is a house
That was once a home.
Now with its eyes boarded up,
It has lost its heartbeat.

No longer does he hear
Her faltering fumbling with the key
When he has to visit.
Guilty memories are buried deep
Within him,just like his mother.

His sister tearfully packed the boxes,
Precious few treasures
Consigned to cheap oblivion.

Soon will arrive the house clearance people,
The necessary hyenas of a crowded modern life,
To leave no trace of her story
Save the little blot
Burned brown 
On the third step of the stairs.

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Lucky Black Cat

When a black cat looks at a red moon
Witches and howlets will there be soon
So put on your costume and be fleet
Go about, to seek your trick or treat

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Quo Vadimus?

If man is the measure of all,
Our world immediately shrinks.
There can be no moral compass
Just the yardstick of failure and success
Drunkenly refracted by o'er heated ambition
Or chilling revenge
Without the overarching Architect,
The Prime Mover that once was.

Man lives in a festering swamp
Where reason plays handmaiden to naked power
And words mean what the speaker wants.
It is now man needs a Voltaire
To bring him back into the light of the sun.
If there is no God, man must invent one.

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Pandemic Panacea

Disrespecter of borders,colour and creed
This pandemic reveals a truth we  all must  heed
To know that we are all but one and the same
Beneath our skin and culture in this life's game
Where we suffer the sad symptoms and the pain
To reclaim our common  brotherhood again
From this dark cloud a silver lining brightens
So that belief in our unity heightens

Such grim moments see us drop our defences
Allowing us clearly to come to our senses
Whether rich or poor,white or black,young or old
In shared humanity we find our true gold
So let this plain message ring out loud and clear
When acting together we have naught to fear.

Details | Denis Bruce Poem

What's In a Name

Oh where,oh where is she
My wondrous Darlene De Beaulieu ?
In my heart do I see her face
Radiant with poetic grace
A handsome place is her fortune
And poetry  both her sun and moon
With kindest  comments she does encourage
Those whose lesser works others might disparage
This feeble eulogy to her do I dedicate
And may she e'er find herself in good estate.