Best Introspectionsong Poems
GOING BACK
It was not an endearing place, a storybook place
With little cottages and
Loaded fruit trees from which apples could be casually filched,
Nor were there sparkling streams for pushing hot feet into in July,
Or even grassy parks where the dog and the kids could romp
And old men sit and smoke pipes.
My childhood England was industrial, dark and dirty,
And instead of the skirl of bagpipes or the weeping of a fiddle,
There were the round-the-clock sirens and
Whistle-changes of factory shifts
And the clash of steel loads being trucked to the docks.
It threatened to suffocate me,
To imprison my mind between slabs of coal and pints of brown ale,
And when I walked the streets in search of meaning I found nothing
Except a weekly cycle of movies showing how real people lived.
I emerged from it and never returned -
And quickly forgot its worthless heritage of coal-dust, and
Found real places and lived a real life far beyond the horizons
Drawn by the schools of Gateshead.
Now, however, in the silent moments of creeping age and grown children,
The steep streets pitching down to the teeth of the Tyne
Gnaw into my fattened mind and reach to the bones of my brain
Where the smell of coaldust still lingers -
And always will.
And I feel again the empty places, the dark places, the places calling
My name in a strange dialect I have long abandoned.
Somehow they seem less cold and uninviting:
Their song is not off-key;
And the horizons drawn by my own hand
Seem to merge together in that blackened townscape.
God forbid I should ever end up there for good;
But I hear its siren song and cannot shake its
Foundation stones free of my structured life.
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NOTES
Gateshead is an industrial city in northern England.... imagine Akron, Youngstown, Toledo, Essen, Chemnitz, or similar towns, and it will give an idea of Gateshead.
River Tyne is the river on which Gateshead stands, now a pleasant waterway , then more like an open sewer.
Sweet Amazon, my River Styx.
Only this time you carried me out of Hell
Into a life that’s real and true.
Shall I now approach the throne of grace
With only shame in my heart and empty hands,
Having sacrificed all that’s good and true
On the altar of other people’s ideas and opinions?
The quiet voice of spirit sings its song of love and strength
From out the Amazonian depths.
It silences the drone of lack and complacency,
The death knell of the common man.
I now drink deeply of the current of my life, my enthusiasms.
I drink deeply from my true love’s flow and majesty.
Flow gently, Sweet Amazon.
Your song is mine to sing.
My soul shall boast in the Lord from whom all Love flows
My tongue shall sing aloud for the goodness that shows
I will take that long way home when it comes to spending time with Him
There is this reason for the season and why I have this silly grin
I have an inside tip that when I am losing I am really in the Wind
I use to think I was a Romeo playing a part in a stage show
Now I see the truth that from my youth I always had a rough row to hoe
And those thorns of lonely-never-mind were my best teachers I could have ever known
There was this gem that I had to find under the bleachers of another’s stage home
This song I have tried to sing for so long to get the notes down before I go home
With my only hope being a candle in the storm of infidelity can I handle this sanity
I lay my head back down and I lift my hands and gently drift off into the melody of
angelic bands
Seeing all I ever have been superseded by the King that convinced me that I am all He ever
needed
There are different ways of knowing that there are promises that are more than ropes of sand
I only know this one song that tells us only why not how fast, how far, how long…
So in this melody I am pumping my fist to the bliss of a recovered first kiss
Everything stops moving and all my windows become doors and all my thoughts scream more
and more
Learning in darkness this tune that I sing and spark this ever after no matter the flatter
or disaster
The last thing I saw anything would do to bring happiness of Pure Being into view and hold
it as True!!
The swirling steam of the fire of this life,
Captured in my gilded coil. My fashioned attempt,
To process, to distill all things perceived into some draught,
But the leaks confound me, ever slipping through these fingers.
Maddening the effort, turning lead to gold,
Or more like adding sense to happenings like stars,
Out in the cold dark, getting on with their lives to blast and burden,
And I call it the Breeze, of such benevolence. It makes sense to my simple mind.
Etching stones for someone to find,
But they never find them how I left them,
Or how I think they were left; ever…, ever maddening.
The Pierced Hand has put something very beautiful in this cage.
I can feel it, here under clownish flesh.
A riddle for me to solve; thoughts more like memories.
The golden words help to guide, but I pine for a perfect volcano,
To relieve all this creation inside me, a release for precious stones with proper scratches.
Divided by love and yearning for fruit,
I hope to capture a masterpiece some day, some how.
Be it paint or prose, porcelain or poetry; I must find a way,
To give to this world what was truly meant by my current frustration.
I know there are many grains of sand on the beach.
I know every soul has a song to sing and that song is crystalline humanity.
I know the Breeze blows with a purpose, for fanning the fire or forcing the fracture.
I know that I will find a way to give what is needed, if I can grow tall enough to put my
finger to the ceiling.
Inspired by a recent trip to Rome, Italy.
My soul shall boast in the Lord from whom all Love flows
My tongue shall sing aloud for the goodness that shows
I will take that long way home when it comes to spending time with Him
There is this reason for the season and why I have this silly grin
I have an inside tip that when I am losing I am really in the Wind
I use to think I was a Romeo playing a part in a stage show
Now I see the truth that from my youth I always had a rough row to hoe
And those thorns of lonely-never-mind were my best teachers I could have ever known
There was this gem that I had to find under the bleachers of another’s stage home
This song I have tried to sing for so long to get the notes down before I go home
With my only hope being a candle in the storm of infidelity can I handle this sanity
I lay my head back down and I lift my hands and gently drift off into the melody of
angelic bands
Seeing all I ever have been superseded by the King that convinced me that I am all He ever
needed
There are different ways of knowing that there are promises that are more than ropes of sand
I only know this one song that tells us only why not how fast, how far, how long…
So in this melody I am pumping my fist to the bliss of a recovered first kiss
Everything stops moving and all my windows become doors and all my thoughts scream more
and more
Learning in darkness this tune that I sing and spark this ever after no matter the flatter
or disaster
The last thing I saw anything would do to bring happiness of Pure Being into view and hold
it as True!!
My soul shall boast in the Lord from whom all Love flows
My tongue shall sing aloud for the goodness that shows
I will take that long way home when it comes to spending time with Him
There is this reason for the season and why I have this silly grin
I have an inside tip that when I am losing I am really in the Wind
I use to think I was a Romeo playing a part in a stage show
Now I see the truth that from my youth I always had a rough row to hoe
And those thorns of lonely-never-mind were my best teachers I could have ever known
There was this gem that I had to find under the bleachers of another’s stage home
This song I have tried to sing for so long to get the notes down before I go home
With my only hope being a candle in the storm of infidelity can I handle this sanity
I lay my head back down and I lift my hands and gently drift off into the melody of
angelic bands
Seeing all I ever have been superseded by the King that convinced me that I am all He ever
needed
There are different ways of knowing that there are promises that are more than ropes of sand
I only know this one song that tells us only why not how fast, how far, how long…
So in this melody I am pumping my fist to the bliss of a recovered first kiss
Everything stops moving and all my windows become doors and all my thoughts scream more
and more
Learning in darkness this tune that I sing and spark this ever after no matter the flatter
or disaster
The last thing I saw anything would do to bring happiness of Pure Being into view and hold
it as True!!