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Best Poems Written by Tony Bush

Below are the all-time best Tony Bush poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Will Shepard

The day Will Shepard shot my dog
His barn burned to the soil;
The flames licked at the Autumn sky,
The smoke as black as oil.
I dropped the torch onto the earth,
And felt the whole world turn,
I stood and watched Will Shepard’s barn,
I stood and watched it burn.

The day Will Shepard shot my dog
I set his horses free,
They galloped over grass and sand,
They galloped to the sea;
I dropped my whip onto the floor
And thoughts turned to my gun
I stood and watched Will Shepard’s herd,
I stood and watched them run.

The day Will Shepard shot my dog
I put him in the ground,
My bullets found his heart and brain,
He fell without a sound;
And as his lifeblood ebbed away
And light fled from his eyes,
I stood and watched Will Shepard leave,
I stood and watched him die.

And now I sit here in my cell
And through the bars I spy
The carpenter with wood and nails,
Who builds my gallows high;
My vengeance has been satisfied
As far as I can see,
For that old dog Will Shepard shot
Meant all the world to me.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Cobalt Summer

Down there, on the shell-coarse beach in a furnace of sand
The sea writhed and almost boiled at the shore,
Barefoot we walked, with her hand in my hand
No girl had ever driven me more.
She dry-licked her cherry lips and saltily smiled,
Solar flares bursting there in my chest,
The way she moved always drove me wild,
My eyes entranced by her shape in that dress.

The sun stamped in the sky like a chromium plate,
Dripped the colours of butter and steel,
And she stood there the most, the coolest hot date,
So radiant and still and surreal.
When she threw back her head as she lay on the grass
Liquid eyes burning silver and green,
With the parting of lips she gave me a free pass
And the world dissolved to aquamarine.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate and Dirty Deadeye Dan

Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate was a very evil man,
He used to eat his dinner from a filthy frying pan,
And when he’s finished eating he’d play “catch me if you can”
With his desperado first-mate known as Dirty Deadeye Dan.

Now Dan was quite a ladies man, but also fond of booze,
In bars and streets and hotels he liked to drink and cruise,
He used to taunt old-Peg Leg Pete by dragging up old news,
Like Pete had only ever needed half a pair of shoes.

One day Pete had quite enough and things got pretty scary,
Confronting Dirty Deadeye Dan whose mood was always lairy,
A sudden hush fell on the room when Pete clumped in the bar
And Dan called out: “Hey, Peg-Leg, hop on over, have a jar.”

Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate clasped the pistol on his hip
And snarled at Dirty Deadeye Dan: “Enough of your damn lip.”
The floozy sat upon Dan’s lap was dumped onto the floor
And Dan rose to his feet and hissed: “You’d best limp out the door.”

Across the sawdust, blood-stained floor they faced each other down,
And you could hear a pin drop from the other side of town,
Eyes were locked and fingers twitched and seconds seemed like days
The tension burned unbearably and shimmered in the haze.

Both men drew their pistols and both men fired fast,
Flame spat from the barrels with the bullets roaring past,
But neither man could aim for squat and when their guns were done
They’d killed two people in the bar but they weren’t either one.

The barman Blind-man Billy Bragg and the floozy Scar-Faced Sue
Lay dead as dead as doornails, as doornails tend to do,
And through the pall of gun-smoke and the mist of rum and beer
Deadeye Dan called out to Pete: “We’d best get out of here.”

And so they did, they fled the bar, and vanished in the night,
Back to their ship, The Crippled Cock, and sailed on out of sight,
Never to return to shore, and never seen again,
The rumour is they sank and drowned just off the Spanish Main.

The moral of the story is that when you draw a gun,
Be prepared to end your days always on the run,
“Or in your case, always on the limp,” said Dirty Deadeye Dan
To Peg-Leg Pete the Pirate, that very evil man.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

All I See Is Beauty

All I see is beauty in the burning of her words,
The flickering of flames,
Constructs of fires licking at the night
From snow white sheets of dreaming.

The senses of her bleeding, ink and roses,
Sensual vibrancy,
Gliding rails streaming to the stars,
The links between the earth and heaven’s tide.

All I see is beauty in the visions of her art,
The tenderness of angels,
Architects of chapels wrought of lace,
An arbitrary grace of love.

The impressions of her breathing, saffron breath,
Exhaling of her soul,
Bestow of sleeping kisses to the lips,
Priestess of the mind and loin.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Periphery

On a path laid as a snake,
Trodden down a winding wake,
Curls and slithers into night,
To thrones of ever-dimming light;
I hold still and gripped with feeling
In a mist that wraps concealing,
And I glimpse her flicker by
From the corner of my eye.

Heartless granite fissures break
At prayers to God of souls to take,
In their vessels bled to white,
Shells of failure and of blight;
It snares and snags as ivy veins,
Upon the brickwork, grasps and strains,
And I catch her ribbons fly
From the corner of my eye.

Set adrift in this domain,
The dead volcanoes that refrain,
Never smoking nor erupt
For the end was sharp, abrupt;
I feel the ether of despair
Envelope skin with frosted air,
I spot the crystals melt and die
From the corner of my eye.

No space for sorrow to explain,
To tell how love was savaged, slain,
The stir of breath can bare disrupt
Or wall of silence interrupt;
A fear of days, in truth, compare
With nights that always hunger there,
Unguarded moments, her I spy
From the corner of my eye.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Ronin

I wander the landscapes of solitude
Unchecked and unhealed,
Beneath heavens speared with bamboo rain,
A blade on my back concealed
Beyond where the eye can envisage and see,
Deserts burning dry,
Beyond where the temples sink in the dust,
Under a storm laden sky.
There is no one to swear allegiance to,
The loneliest decree,
To walk the earth as the years dissolve
And land crumbles into sea.
I wander the heartlands of yesterday,
Of feudal souls no more,
Where the killing fields were hearth and home,
My brothers men of war.
No master to slip the chains and unleash
Honour and ferocity,
Belonging to nothing, beloved of none,
Rootless, accursed and free.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Nothing But This

Furnace pink roses blushed on your cheeks,
I held my breath when I saw you there,
Stood in the sand in a gossamer dress,
That clung to your form as the breeze caught your hair.

Bruises of rain clouds filled up your eyes,
I held you close when your spirits were low,
The feel of your skin was electrically cool
As the rain swept your face and your eyes were aglow.

I’m just a chancer who stood in your path,
I borrowed the beat of your heart just for me,
I still feel your skin in that gossamer dress
As the sun fell behind you and sank in the sea.

And I never found one last moment to spare,
I gave not one second to grant one last kiss,
But when you close your eyes I pray I’ll be there,
There’s nothing else for it, nothing but this.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Rust Sleeps

Rust sleeps without the churchyard
on the blunt perimeter rails,
on the bloom of iron stabbing up
into the pelt of rain.

Rust sleeps upon the fence posts
where the wire is nailed to wood
and the metal burns an ochre tint
beneath the sodium arc.

Rust sleeps atop the hinges
of the pub door so to screech
a shrill alert to drunken ears
of some returning ghost.

Rust sleeps upon the riverbed,
suicide pushed into the deep,
trolleys severed by the silt,
dead baby prams beside.

Rust sleeps in feasts of coma night
and eats small mouthfuls of the moon,
spits corrosion at the stars
and dulls this razor life.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Gutters and Stars

The fall to the abyss is incendiary by design,
  Burning out and plummeting toward
The bottom of a fjord or the shaft of a mine,
  To impale upon a metaphoric sword.

The climbing from the dark is instinctive by default,
  Implanted in the root of human soul,
With each progressive step to scrabble from the vault,
  Victorious emerging from the hole.

Regeneration spreads it’s slowly beating wings
  To raise the heart and mind against the night,
And even in the depths of all the blackest things
  Draws us once again into the light.

Just as Oscar Wilde was clearly heard to utter
  In defiance of the fates and prison bars,
I may have sometimes lain in a pretty dismal gutter
  But my eyes were always fixed upon the stars.

Details | Tony Bush Poem

Home, Now

Should you venture home, now,
And see the cobbles gone,
Hear the rattle on steel shutters
As the rain falls on and on,
You might as well be leaving
Just the way that you arrived,
For there’s nothing for you here, now,
Nothing has survived.

Should you tread the streets, now,
Between the alien facades,
And puzzle at the structures
In the cul-de-sacs and yards,
You should do yourself a favour,
And turn away into the rain,
For there’s nothing left for you, now,
Nothing to remain.

Should you reach the house, now,
And fail to recognise,
The brickwork and the curtains
And the car parked on the rise,
You really should be going,
From the freshly painted door,
For there’s nothing of your life, now,
Nothing anymore.