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Best Poems Written by Gavin Lockey

Below are the all-time best Gavin Lockey poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Happy Birthday Marie, 100

Happy Birthday Marie, 100,
splashed across the evening news.
Replete with colour photograph,
seen wearing another girls shoes.

Happy Birthday Marie, not knowing.
In meltdown, fused in your chair.
Your family, they loved the Queen's telegram,
and look there's the Deputy Mayor!

Happy Birthday Marie, not hearing.
The paper describes you past tense.
Dream of the cat that sits on your lap,
as none of this makes any sense.

Happy Birthday Marie, dementia.
Alone, with your family round,
long suffering daughter bears crucifixed grin,
she's aware you are already drowned.

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Girl of Sand: Woman of Strength

little girl keeps getting lost
sliding off her rainbow
trying to untie her shoes

and she's counting up the cost
of the company she's keeping
saving up those violet tattoos

she thinks love is like a sin
knocks you out as you fall in
and every kick is gonna leave a bruise

young girls
and
wishes,
tight spots
and 
dirty dishes,
deadlines
and
waistline,
schoolgirl crushes
and valentines

crawling up against the walls
no escape from Bedford Falls
no 'stage' to board from town at noon

you may not think i have a heart
kind of scared and not that smart
but pass the rope and I'll lasso your moon

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Reflections On a Collection of Pickled Specimens

Men of affairs, scientists, gentlemen collectors,
researchers, technicians, plankton detectors.
Ladies, when permitted, provided manful help
Wading shorelines intrepidly for variegated kelp.

Be-whiskered men off charted shores 
their Science to be applied. 
From blindest depths defy stern jaws 
to reveal a great divide. 
Thus predate all faith - shift their cores – 
expecting the spring tide.

Knowing their names, seeking their protection. 
Categorised, specified, a literal dissection. 
Must now each specimen elders plucked, and carefully
selected, 
be hidden forever, politically corrected?

Dead-eyed and soaked, deep in their jars. 
Pickled in formaldehyde.
Gentleman, killer? The choice is yours, 
Think well before you decide.
Is the Creator of countless stores
Dr. Jekyll or Mister Hyde?

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Double Entry

Spawn of the blade,
a bacteria
engineered 
'twixt knife and wound.

'Tween scales and tape
they took
his measure leaving 
figures 
in books.

The spade
cut smoothly
through the earth.

In an effort to save for the approaching moment,
he had lost what he'd failed to spend.

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

A World Too Small

I cannot find enough minutes in the day,
Even measured in the beats of my heart.
From no poet can I prise the words to say,
When all except feeling, appears then departs.
I cannot breathe out those avenues of light,
Capture your beauty in some lost chord,
Nor deliver clarity in the black on the white
In some vain hope of a dignity restored.
Each corridor of retreat inches narrow,
Distressed I find my air it pinches thin.
This control of love plays me as shallow,
Yet is its pursuit the inducement of sin?
Here then I find there are no exits to this place,
And the world is too small to forget your face.

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Masks of Silence

The letters he wrote.
Words cut the pages.
The passions 
wrought molten the
forever malleable spaces
cool 
in their contrast.
The letters he wrote. He gave them no stamp

The torch that he carried.
He could turn the air blue with his protestations.
He reached for wall and floor.
He would scream, strain, 
stab his conscience
with doubts.
Yet
reticence, respect and reason left the room dark.
No candles were ever lit.

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Chair

Her eyes weren’t on her feet,
they were still at her hair,
she claimed a misbeguiling air
as she rolled past in that chair,
as she sailed past in that chair.

Framed by the sharp stillness
then they were suddenly there
plumping the bubble with throat-filling care
which blew past with that chair,
then curled past with that chair.

And I swear I saw her standing
saw a firmness in her stare,
courage to show she was aware,
as she walked past in that chair,
as she walked past in that chair.

Details | Gavin Lockey Poem

Time (1)

For him, time was a mere succession of milk bottles,
He'd sit and watch the summer passing him by
on the backs of pretty young things
still wrapped in cotton.
His wife died.
He decided to have the front door repainted.
He remembered her red hair.