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Best Poems Written by Sam Nicholas Harrison

Below are the all-time best Sam Nicholas Harrison poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Dysfunctuation

I crashed into a language barrier

So they put me in an induced comma

As they re-calibrated my damaged grammar

Transforming my full stop into a full start


As I wake from my abbreviation
               I feel tense in the present
Realising that an apostrophe is now all 
              and nothing more I will ever be
I have a kindled yearning to compound 
              my spoken words with good intention
But I’ve become a symbol 
              that marks a past behaviour into memory


I stand in place of the person 
              whose ending is, with my start, synonymous
A person with their own tale
              which I can read but can’t understand
It’s my story, but a rougher drafted version
              Reading it I feel anonymous 
Is this where I’m killed off but my character returns?
              I find asylum asking questions, with an ampersand

And…


…The blurb on the back of life gives me the shorthand:
This is the punctuation that brings order 
In the arc of your lived life
And if you see problems with recalled quotations
Then choose to learn, or live with strife

And…

I’m not ready to die
So here I am
Prepared with notation
The things I’ve seen and learned combined
Swapping the chip on my shoulder 
For an indentation

And…

Don’t ever put down the pen while you’re still writing your history



And…


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Snake Oil

I heard all the anecdotes on antidotes
but I wanted my therapy done chemically
so much that, in an approximation of intoxication 
my judgments blurred uncertainties with a whispered ‘allegedly’

spectacular vernacular, jailed - minus crime or credibility
capital cliches of an amateur poet, inevitably
a teenagers growing phases annotated in the vaguest of chosen but stolen phrases
regurgitated words and statements

the morbidity of authenticity that is lexicon-artistry


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Sin

Both lucky and deadly are the qualities of seven
You can trust me or repress me, it’s astonishing what people can do with stones and sticks
At the age of six I truly believed in heaven
And some semblance of rememberance is possibly why i’m still alive
On a pentagram, those points, those five can represent the devil
And how he’s forthcoming in our penchance for the deadlier side of living
But for luck I’ll take the magic number three and watch for magic tricks
“And I second that motion”, said the man in the boardroom, grinning.
What happened to one love?
It’s looking like we’re heading towards one state
One corporate nation, rule the world and dice it,
It looks more like one hate.
Prioritising, merchandising,
In commodoties I place my priorities.
Fat cats and smack rats,
Decorated in sinful qualities.
What, sin?
Sin is the grease that keeps those cogs moving.
Sin is just the slander in a false gods self help leaflet, literally demonising your base instincts, time to seek treatment.
Give me seven Hail Mary’s,
Give me six white Russians,
Give me a five knuckle shuffle,
Give me four fingers and a thumb,
Give me three minutes to finish,
Give me two’s on a cig when I’m done
That leaves one.
One life, it’s not a joke…
That you can laugh at, anyway


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Roll and Rock

A spectrum of memories // etched in // directing
Synaptic obscenities // fetching regrets //
Count those dour mental entities // concepts like insects //
Innumerable enemies // wielding their sketches

Of interlacing, undulating, thoughts I’d never saught to see again
It’s raining, awful tortured claws of water dripping down my neck
Engaging like the famous horsemen four of the apocalypse
A brainwave tells me faught or flew is not an option, it’s past tense
And it’s passed any means of remedy - my enemy’s my friend
And it’s last orders on the corner where I’m standing with a ten
And if I bought at four I might, instead I waited ‘til seven
I test the borders and the corners of the realm of temptation
Daily thoughts of pickin’ up…

…When all the pieces come unstuck
And I thank that’s It’s a familiar pattern
I piece it back together, crumb by speck by dotted flame, refuelled lighters on the bristle of tobacco peering from its paper nesting, used now to light a subtle torch, the lightbulb in my head, a spotlight thats located a second answer -
And I thank that it’s a familiar pattern
As I know how to piece it back together.

Tomorrow, do the same thing again,
But tonight, a glass of water then bed
Dreaming of keeping the faith
Dreaming always


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Jumbo Jettison

the journey can be worth more than the destination
but maybe seeing what it’s worth first isn’t worth it if you’re already patient
I’m already where I’ve been, and I will be where I’m going
so will what is on that path effect me if I did or didn’t know it?
 
phone numbers are more memorable when you group them into bigger parts
5 numbers, then 3, then 3,
or 4, then 4, then 3, which to me is just bizarre
you could say that the phone number itself is already the bigger part
it’s only the perspective that sets the two apart

some say the only things we feel and from which all emotion is derived from is:
                                                      Love
and
                                       Fear
also told as fight or flight
and I wonder if there’s anyone who’s seen them both for what they are, and lives the two together
what would that be like?
Others say the only things we really feel are serotonin and dopamine
and plenty of people love those together
maybe that’s why when people do go crazy they say:
“he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going”

when I first wore a pair of glasses at age 11
I realised that I had been missing out on all of the intricacies
of any object further than 20 feet away
it still feels like cheating being able to see things from beyond a certain point
when everything is unfocused, little things are left out
so if I really want to know, I have to get closer to see
and then when I leave it will return to it’s elaborate ways
the sum of its parts
not really changing, just identified by a different name

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The Truth Stood Downcast In the Lie - Poetry Contest

The truth stood downcast in the lie
We met, and vowed not to stand by
Through solar and wind we’d stop this
But some cared first for their wallets

Consumed by industrial drive
The truth stood downcast in the lie
In chasing their personal wealth
They’d ruin our homes and our health

Markets profit from our burden
They’ll claim the facts are not certain
The truth stood downcast in the lie
Until waters began to rise

We must fight to make change on Earth
For the sake of all she has birthed
And into the light we might guide
The truth stood downcast in the lie

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Clearying Out the Closet

There’s a curve in my perception that’s in dire need of straightening
To deter the insurrection I’ve called ‘my spiritual awakening’
My ego is faced with the fact that it’s on a need to know basis and it’s on the attack
Which consists of my being pissed off, with bad habits shouting 'viva la resistance!’

Means tested, faults considered
You’re the standing evil that’s delivered
Everything I’ve ever wanted
Whilst your sleight of hand goes for my watch
Stealing, rinsing we’re both haunted
Now forsaken comes the final cotch

Something bigger the both of us turns pages that are frayed and withered
I can’t believe it’s been this long yet still so badly botched

Standing

Delivered

Stood

Remisson

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Prophetable

The things that fortune-tellers know are quite unfortunate, I’m told:
They’re reportedly perceiving all the thoughts and fears and hopes 
Of we, the the ordinary folk, as such amongst them they’re achieving
Unprecedented rates of suicide - but great palm-reading


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50 Stories High

“Step into my office, young novice
Clear off the tears from your face
Because they’re pointlessly burrowing into orifices
Tuning wounds that will bloom into a fixed gear race
Shift from fifth gear to disgrace
And if you don’t have anything to say about today
Then trust these crooked, red-rimmed and emerald, eaten, eyes:
Tell lies.”

Harbouring fostered promises to decorate the walls of his mind
It’s in this presidential suite where his highest hopes are hanged
On a residential street with six foot of rope in his left hand
With no name, no post code, not a scratch on a map
Just a decade of decadence and a panicked attack on the senses

These walls
Adorned with but not defined by their views
Of the nature, that,
By passing from one room to one room
The effect is a walk back
Through grave, rave, and womb
And this life, flashed before four eyes flickers fragments of favoured tunes
Accompaniments to occasions, partnered to soothe

But if scarred walls in suite thoughts caused this crescendo of crimson
Then it’s the tightest rope that he walks as he walks within them
A single-minded reason is mightier than both sword and pen
Because this form of self-deceiving is a shortcut walked by so many men

As I witnessed in a gallery where the artwork was just a bloodstain
And the only vanity the artists knew was a simple word, almost spelt the same

He sleeps inside a tower reduced to rubble, which he calls Babel 
But in a certain light, in the deep of night, it looks like his reward for staying faithful 
But when it doesn’t, he’ll rent a room, he’ll book the presidential suite
Taking in the views to the intoxicating beats


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I Could Have Been Able To Remember That I Could Have Been a Contender

I played insane games with my brainwaves, leaving psycho-spiritual stains in the astral plane, collapsed synapses, bruises, scratches, this ain’t magic, it’s incompetence

Unconscious but alive, same as everyone else in the supply chain on the physical plain: is it wrong that I’m still here, I’m in a contract of astonishment

My epiphanes are crystalline, they’re bought and sold like nicotine - indecisive? Lived your life by your choices? Spoilt for choice? That’s not a punishment

These mental ball games, throttled thoughts of pearly tall gates, hadn’t you ought to stop painting a portrait of yourself as a sore saint? It’s getting monotonous.

Train timetables, tortured habits

Surfing rings far from the planet

Ailing adversaries, damaged

goods is how we’ve always managed


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