Best Back Street Poems
Remembering the days of yesteryear
when family ties were held most dear,
gas lamps flickered in the back street
while most of us danced a different beat.
Tragic alleyways of smog and smut
“Live over the brush”* branded a sl*t,
silhouettes infringe the darkest night
gullible back shift broke the morning light.
Adventurous nights at “Townhead Mill”
eight pints of beer the back porch thrill,
when no meant yes in rapturous skill
to fumigated music from “Nashville.”
Obnoxious libertine this bread man
bay curtain drawn delivery van,
the situation conspired indiscretion
clinical the world’s oldest profession.
Sporting gentlemen in summer bliss
caught first ball costly night on the piss,
pavilion home to moorside drover
many a chaste maiden bowled over.
Partial pilgrimage down “Bolton Road”
black and amber heroes round ball code,
liniment buoyant throughout the room
manly skills embroider the village groom.
Cardinal days steeped in “Rock ‘n’ Roll”
sire in fear of them out of control,
a colossal wedge between cultures
in shadows of decency vile vultures.
Repetitious days of school yard might
the bullies reduced one’s life to plight,
parents queried yet misunderstood
reasons for mayhem in the neighbourhood.
Lad and lasses lost in “Hide and seek”
games of “Stroke a back” every week,
by the old school grounds we all did laik**
now the street is naked for heaven sake.
Why on earth would a mind keep drifting back
this poetry constantly placing me on track,
when life was a role without fame or stars
only toil and trepidation and these scars?
© Harry J Horsman 2013
*Living in sin
** Play
'You are the music', the guitar strings of my favourite song.
Your lyrics 'touch my life,' as you are the twin to my soul.
What 'am I' without you, when all melodies sound so wrong.
I'll never question 'what is a woman's role' in rock and roll.
Your lyrics touch my life, as you are the twin to my soul.
My 'midnight flyer' your spirit glows like a 'seafull' of stars.
I'll never question what is a woman's role in rock and roll.
When life 'makes you wanna cry' we can create memoirs.
My midnight flyer your spirit glows like a seafull of stars.
When you 'send me no more letters,' I'll ignore the post.
When life makes you wanna cry we can create memoirs,
I'll follow your footsteps, roaming from 'coast to coast.'
When you send me no more letters, I'll ignore the post,
wondering 'will our love end,' before the ultimate vow.
I'll follow your footsteps, roaming from coast to coast,
until you serenade about 'feelin' so much better now.'
Wondering will our love end, before the ultimate vow,
'it's only a dream,' but you get 'nothin' for nothing,'
until you serenade about feelin' so much better now.
'Your love is allright' when your muse is soft and loving.
It's only a dream, but you get nothin' for nothing.
It hurts 'way back to the bone' when you leave me alone.
Your love is allright when your muse is soft and loving.
'Black clouds' fade to white when I hear your sweet tone.
It hurts way back to the bone when you leave me alone.
I feel like a 'loser' playing solo to a 'jury' of 'back street love.'
Black clouds fade to white when I hear your sweet tone.
I ain't 'keepin' time,' but it's just 'another day' of grey skies above.
I feel like a 'loser' playing solo to a 'jury' of 'back street love.'
What 'am I' without you, when all melodies sound so wrong.
I ain't 'keepin' time.' but it's just 'another day' of grey skies above.
'You are the music', the guitar strings of my favourite song.
21 songs from Glenn Hughes with Trapeze:
What is a woman's role
You are the music
Touch my life
Am i
Seafull
Midnight flyer
Makes you wanna cry
Coast to coast
Send me no more letters
Feelin so much better now
Will our love end
Nothin' for nothing
It's only a dream
Your love is allright
Way back to the bone
Black cloud
Jury
Loser
Back street love
Keepin' time
Another day
The word Love has been tainted
I love your dress
I love your new fishing boat
I love that new color of paint
Mankind cannot love physical things
Love is heart felt for all Nature
Not mans creations
The answer lies in the heart
I love your eyes
I love your lips
I love all of you but,
I sure love those new shoes
The answer is we love things that,
Cannot love us back, this we have to stop
Love comes from the heart
Not from a store
Love is the answer but the question is
What do we love more?
Mans creations or people and nature?
Contest: Love is the answer
Sponsored by: Lu Loo
Date Created: 11/08/2019
The cry is a teardrop, unheard
Among all the others in a curtain of teardrops.
You stand in the rain that falls out of nothing
The way gray cats move through back street alleys...
The way we learn to live.
You stand obscured - outer edges indivisible
With all your mistaken emotion
Whose passion is spent for coppers....
Planes and angles leading inward - always inward...
An off-color blueprint
Melting in the weighted air above you;
A black & white parallelogram slightly out of skew.
Close in upon yourself - close in...
You used to hold the world at bay
Before you got bone weary,
Wild and bitter....
Cheeks and lashes wet with rain,
Or is it rain, after all...?
Is it really the rain
Or your excuse to stand there like an afterthought,
Fugitive from someone else's deeper scheme
Who put their name to yours...?
Standing in the rain,become the rain;
Become a cry.
Become a teardrop in a curtain of teardrops...
One single moment at twilight hangs suspended;
You turn in the nimbus of half-light mist
To find the street signs gone.
Become invisible.
Become a cry against the teardrops.
Become lost in the curtain..
Do not become at all..
The world is just a shade too slick for you,
Even as the curtain falls...
Even as your curtains fall
Wicked witches aren't the only ones who melt...
Wicked witches aren't the only ones at all...
I left myself open to you like a 24 hour store and you stole from it all that which I value and hold true. You have left my shelves barren…I don’t fully understand it? My heart has been robbed by someone I thought wanted me too, yet only to find that she did not ever love me…I was just being used. As my heart bleed out on a back street alleyway in some forgotten part of a city on the edge of rebirth. I cried dear Lord, oh dear Lord…I have surrendered my love to a defiler of good things. Broken like a priceless vase that can never be replaced, these are the words of a man who’s heart now beats off pace. How could someone be so cruel? I stand hear on the edge of the top of this building, looking into an abyss devoid of my soul and trust of another…seeking only to gain solace in death, from a love misplace in the hands of a cupid killer who was incapable of receiving love.
Just writing on paper clip the best my mind jumping jack said just rest but to write the word processing my thoughts to paper is right angle that he has I fought so I write on about life span the moments for the right memory stick to the components to see something radiant energy to complete this task of the heart attack the concrete lying in the grass root out the problem at hand got my rhythm back street is the band this will work boots on the ground stay the course work abounds just to see the comic strip the necessities it may not be virtual reality is one’s abilities
Night's flickering neon lights
seduce the young with their glow.
And flashing taboo delights:
lure youth in to catch the show.
Youth views what is in plain sight,
through the optics of a teen.
And they search the bars at night;
for a world they've never seen.
The young are easily fooled,
by all the hype and glitter.
But naive fools soon get schooled,
tossed out like back street litter.
Exposed to degrees of fright,
living shadows skulk and dart.
For when forced to flee or fight,
youth's bravado falls apart.
I’ll take you down with the pull of a trigger
Cold metal chills my bones,
At the same time sweat drips from my brow.
My steady hand lets me know I’m in control.
I am in control.
It’s the begging I cannot stand, the word ‘Sorry!’
Sorry for what, I think to myself?
I don’t bother to ask, I don’t care.
The final moment at the squeeze of my finger…
I wait for a moment or two, just to see…dead.
I walk through the empty back street. Job done.
Great pay, but job satisfaction? Not really.
And on to the next.
Like a pack of howling wolves in need of prey,
A wounded urban psyche strains its gnarled voice,
Motherless, fatherless, ice cold pavement waif,
Wee small hours plight
The rocks of his facade dispatched in ghost trains
for those ghoulish oil float gutters to imbibe,
Back street burden stray, schooled in fringe art fables,
Phantom kite chaser
Eerie street lights peer into an aimless soul,
Clouds of pea soup fog engulf his raw foot slink,
Firefly knotted angst or bilious grumble,
Trash can tummy fare
But still he ambles on, inner plagues in charge
as loafers from the underworld gawk and gape,
Pithy, a phased out coin for snow cap straggler,
dead of night orphan.
Date Poem Submitted : 19 th Of July 2020
Title : A Dark Underbelly
Sponsor : Edward Ibeh
Staggering through red rocks,
hot to the touch in sun,
desperately scanning the
far, muttered, desert horizon.
Looking for anybody,
amidst the baking dirt,
desperate for a drink,
to slake an endless thirst.
My wide-brimmed hat is soaked
by and endless, grimy sweat.
I wish to god my horse
Wasn’t lying dead.
He fell back on a slope,
sliding sideways down.
I clung atop his body
to avoid the jagged ground.
My boot heels hurt my back,
not made for long walking.
My mind can’t take silence,
no noise, clamor, or talking…
Just a hot wind blowing,
background music to pain,
my ribs ache and throb,
can’t focus my brain…
But wait! A glint out there,
distant, but repeating!
Something out there, mile off,
a faster path I’m limping.
Seems to take forever,
but I stagger on and on,
to the back street, paved,
a highway rolling broad.
An SUV stops and sees me
and they empty out.
“My god, you need help!"
Of that, have no doubt.
We drive on to Vegas,
to big hospitals there,
have to call the trail-ride place,
tell them about their mare.
Unlike the Famous Five,
with capers, japes and adventures,
boats and well stocked picnics, we lived
a back street life. With a sock and masking tape ball
and mucky fat sarnies.
The Family Allowance Five.
Each one of us an extra pound.
With facsimile school photos,
in hand me down jumpers and carving knife tread pumps,
floorboard cricket bat and under the bed air rifle.
Crab apple scrumping and tresspassing for mushrooms,
rabbitting before school,
paper round before school,
milk round before school.
Everything came before school.
Sunburnt scoundrels but "never any bother"
Corrugated asbestos roof walkers.
Cinema ticket hawkers.
Unseen, inconsequential, together but apart.
No roots or football boots.
Hot pot bollocks.
One foot here one foot there.
Immigrants finding their way,
but without the ginger beer.
Clap your hands for the man
who can tap with his feet and
hold a rose in his hand
Black hat tilted, so slightly;
spine held straight
In charges a senorita
like a bull from the gate
Both heads cock-back
as he offers her the rose
a snap! quick jerk forward
clenched teeth, claims it
beneath her nose
He steps, she steps
her leg glides fire down his thigh
his hand dances on hot coals
travels down her spine
Tension of passion continues
then builds, until at last a silent guitar
heated love has been conquered
in a dark, slanky, back-street bar
Remember the days of
yesteryear
when family ties were
held most dear,
and gas lamps flickered in
the back street
while most of us danced a
different beat!
Tragic alleyways of
smog and smut
“Live over the brush”
Branded a sl*t,
silhouettes infringe the
darkest night
gullible back shift broke the
morning light!
Adventurous nights at
“Townhead mill”
A pint of beer the
back porch thrill,
when no! Meant yes in
rapturous skill
to fumigated music from
“Nashville”
Obnoxious libertine this!
Bread man
bay curtain drawn
delivery van,
the structure conspired
indiscretion
clinical the world’s
oldest profession!
Sporting gentlemen in
summer bliss
caught first ball! Costly night
on the piss!
Pavilion home to
moorside drover
many a chaste maiden
bowled over!
Partial pilgrimage down
“Bolton Road”
Black and amber heroes
round ball code,
liniment buoyant throughout
the room
manly skills embroider the
village groom!
Cardinal days steeped in
“Rock’n’Roll”
Sire in fear of them out
of control,
a colossal wedge
between culture
in shadows of decency
vile vulture!
Repetitious days of
school yard might
“Alfie” Reduced to a life
of plight!
Parent queried! Yet
misunderstood
reasons for mayhem in the
neighbourhood!
Lads and lasses lost in
“Hide and Seek”
Games of “stroke-a-Back”
every week,
by the old school yard we
all did laik*
Now the street is naked, for
“Heaven sake!”
© Harry J Horsman 2020
*laik Yorkshire for play, as in 'play out'
I think I’m in danger
I could end up dead
When my wife smells the perfume
on her side of the bed
The perfumes I buy her
From a cheap back-street dive
Don’t smell like this perfume
It’s Chanel number Five
She’s been away a few days
Visiting her sick mother
So I brought home a Nympho
For a bit of the other
But my wife said this bedroom
Always smells of rank farts
But it now smells like a boudoir
That’s frequented by tarts
She’d smelt it and I told her
What jumped into my head
That the little Lord Jesus
Was asleep in our bed
But he smelt just like a manger
Kinda sawdust and dung
So I sprayed him with perfume
Well it had to be done
She cursed and I was thrown out
By the tip of her toe
And I flew through the doorway
Coming down in the snow
So it seems that like Mary
During that first Christmas
I shall go to meet Jesus
While I’m sat on my ass
i met a wise man with the heart of gold
he told me all his stories of his days of old
he said a child is crying on the other side of the world
and her mother is dieing she'll grow a lonely girl
time and time again he i've seen the faces of death
and if we keep this up there will be no one left
he said just the other day i seen young man get shot
if you wanna see the blood walk around my block
i sat and i watched the tears roll down his face
and then he turned and looked at me and said just have faith
he said hold on be strong theres so much more
he said every dark room has at least one door
two babies and their mother walking down the road
toting grocery bags with their raggedy clothes
he said what about the man in the cardboard box?
what about the homeless women around my block?
no one seems to care about what they're going through
no one wants to hear about the back street blues
oh how sad it makes me to think about all the fine dining
oh how sad it makes me to watch them burn all their money
and still have their silver lining
when all that we do is struggle all day
and wonder why some people just cant keep faith