Best Pencilled Poems
Heart beats in rhythm to snowflakes
Cascading in tune to my reality
Like a train travelling through time with no track
Overwelmed by it's vivid fertile surroundings
Colours pencilled in my mind
As a reminder of life and it's many shades
Guided by the brightly lit angels from above
Resolve in my faith remains steadfast
Try leave behind "Book Of The Week"
And head upstairs where floorboards creak.
Where people tilt their heads to look
At every spine on every book.
Where murderers and secret lovers
Plot and scheme between the covers.
Where transport from another age
Transports you to another page.
Where old detective books reside
Each with their price pencilled inside.
Where books based on geometry
Share space with trigonometry.
Where childhood annuals stand in line
With memories of a simpler time.
Where silent thoughts pervade the air
And words speak volumes everywhere.
" Tortured metaphors
spilling from tequila lips,
t i p t o e on my pulse ~
breaking in an arced smile
of the featherless eclipse,
where I waltz as a secluded steel-shine,
sobered s o f t l y
by the taste of satanic stars..."
I'm the loss of a leaf
from gold-dew aspens,
rippling upon
turquoise typewriters,
where drunk fingertips dance.
Turning to ashes,
my heart m e l t s
as a metallic grenade,
and no philosopher's stone
ever reverberating
in its silver-winged silence.
Seeking shelter from smoldering seas,
I curl up in the womb of a guardian willow ~
she's a weeping angel of n e v e r l a n d,
with an ornamented garland
of guns and roses,
enveloping me in the corpse of sunset.
Plunging from diamond cobwebs
into isles of champagne,
like a dynamite dove bloodthirsty for sun,
I l u r k along reefs
studded with rhinestones, unfurling –
lotus manuscripts
as poetic pearls s l i p and t w i r l,
snorkeling in an obsidian oasis.
I miss being
a purple-whisper prophecy,
threaded in fractured letters,
for now, my ink b l e e d s
in the marrow of moon,
where an alchemy is lost and found...
In the chronicles of carnelian clemency
and supernova sorcery,
I've seen arctic assonances
hibernating
in the throats of those,
holding lethal jewels
as a nightingale's neon noose.
So, if my soul is an opal widow
of your thistle-light affection,
a verse romanticised
will be my crystal coffin,
and in the caricatures
of kohl and karma,
our silent soliloquy
shall delicately be shifted.
Surfing in the splitting s i n s
of a salty saviour,
this whiskey damsel
shall evermore remain
a scentless phrase,
scrapped by pencilled brush-strokes,
i n v i s i b l e
in our paper-cut destiny...
They thought he was a harmless fool.
His hair dyed black
And eyebrows pencilled in,
The silver outfits -
Shoulders huge -
And platform shoes.
His lyrics less than lyrical,
Chanted, shouted
At his concerts;
His hits always played at parties.
A has-bean humoured,
Perhaps patronised,
His antics tolerated.
But Gary Glitter had a dark secret…
Jack Horne for Nette's Glitter contest
Oh sail this ship on holy water
Let storms be gone today
For the voice of life seeks a tender heart
Away from these fields of despair
A soldier needs God to recognise me
This letter of life, this beacon of hope
Pray land on mother’s doorstep
And give my family the hug
That I cannot bring
For this brings peace to me
The hands of the children
Reach out to fathers gone
I pray that they will remember me
For time has made a stranger
In my babies memory
I fear on my return
They will not know me
And wife you will not see
The handsome man of marriage
For war has made me old
This withered face will tell no stories
So pray do not ask me
My youth has been lost
In generals words and one more push
And my mind has accepted this slaughter
The man that closed the door of home
Cannot return
Life will never be the same for me
My words belong to the soldier
Not to my lovers tears
For we compete with the dead
Epitaphs are our confetti
Littering every street
These once happy bodies
Lay in no man’s land
And they’re pain
Are companions to me?
Their faces call out
“Come join the ranks”
And we who know our fate
Scribble with trembling hand
Will this bombardment never cease?
For fear is all over me
Concealed behind my pencilled words
Except from all who share death with me
Lies a truth lost in the darkest night
The darkness that possesses this life
For war is a father to me.
I am the guardian
Of this decomposing life
Only my corpse can give you the truth
So this letter will stay with me
I will send to you, my beloved wife
Thoughts that will protect your life
I cannot write fancy words
I am fine and I miss you
Hope you and the kids are well
It’s not so bad here
And with gods will
This war will return the man
That is me.
Love Jack.
P S your love will always be with me
Should I die please remember me.
Let me sleep in English soil
For England is my home
Though England will be the death of me
They were in her mind,
She pencilled them in her heart,
They came forth from her,
Asimov’s children,
She bore them,
One after other came forth,
Generation after generation,
They were transformed,
There was a transition,
Artificial intelligence hit the
the crescendo of the technology world,
It has held bound in the corners of the world,
It infiltrated the realms of space,
Agile robots and androids
interface with humans,
Humans are overly
dependent on them,
The laws of robotics
have their shortcomings,
So also robots are flawed beings.
They are no match for humans,
Despite their pitfalls and stumblings.
March 29, 2022.
To walk in dreams
upon this vale of illusion.
Each footstep of your being
crossing the labyrinth
of a shy but guilty soul.
Sleep can be your witness
As Galaxies collide creating life
for we all belong to infinity.
That place beyond our imagination
where the darkness hides
a beauty not meant for human eyes.
Reality is the myth
for you now walk with gods.
This world is a reflection of you
where water and mirror are one.
The shimmer of a distorted face
lies on the see saw of humanity.
The light you inherit
the darkness you manufacture.
But in death at least
your priest will lie for you.
Life is but a feather
It glides through the winds of time.
Sometimes rising to your endeavour
more often it is a passenger
falling on a broken wing.
But no matter
your feather is immortal.
For it caresses the meanings
of such wonderful things
and you beat the odds to be you.
Morning brings a pencilled rubber
the mind will leave this page.
and somewhere in the universe
another being will dream,
of things beyond this human race.
To hell harbinger, niggling winsome words,
has grasped the devil's share, for menhir size
Has pencilled in his own and crossing swords-
It errant's change which seeks the high rewards.
As such they'd yammer the athiest priest
Prepare to skewer faith that's what we've done
With raffish grin, the template from the East,
Has built ferocious men to form this Beast.
Defy, that would no penitence be claimed,
To bask in carmine etchings, someone's blood
Somewhere, where an idle worth is blamed,
Adapts these xeric rituals therefore tamed.
To vilify each state, the wordsmiths curse,
Has first to reach the west, a destination
Jitter free from consort, ends his verse
While kohl can camouflage as matters worse.
Before the tinsel shrinks the bask shall glow,
A zephyr hailed along, with fan to blaze
Contained as one explorer, which we know-
Oblivion, auras mentor steals the show.
The umbra can indeed produce some shade
While gullet quenches low, as food shall be,
Where evil grows the size that man has made
He brings the lions share for masquerade.
This was inspired by an amazing drawing by Suzie
I thought I had drawn a pattern
From the image in my mind
But with no shape or form
Or reason I could find
But then it started moving
With a breath that was its own
And before I had blinked once
I noticed it had grown
And from the spirals wings came
Pencilled flames rolled off its tongue
And its roar was so loud and mighty
Like the loudest bell it rung
The celtic knotwork dragon
And the haunted way that he could sing
Caused him to come to life and
He left the page and took to wing
Standing up the easel and putting on a scrap piece of paper,
the person with grey eyes and olive skin blinked
aimlessly at the new found lay out of the untouched page.
A smile was not apparent on the cracked lips of the mouth.
Above, the stars did their thing and twinkled.
A single petal of blossom floated into disappearance
amongst the nightfalls navies.
The hand pencilled a staggering drunken man,
covered head to toe in an alcoholic quiver; he was
slowly killing his own liver.
Then the hand smudged a river under a delightful starry sky;
the man in the picture too bewildered in mind to feel
the piercing coldness from the rivers wind.
The drawing a work of amateur art that nobody had not yet seen.
Tan leather boots with fancy stitching
Butterscotch vest with pencilled fringe
Polished black Stetson size eight and three quarters
Faded denim shirt with copper snaps
Silver oversized belt buckle that shouts rodeo
Deep gravelly voice with cigar precision
A pronounced limp unnoticed for years
Shoulder soreness no longer felt
Calloused hands scruffy with purpose
Symmetrical Unadorned hatband
Chiseled well mapped chin
Blue eyes faded by hundreds of suns
Hawkish nose with brownish patch
Saturday night cowboys stare in awe
Trying so hard to look the part
He wears with ease, unaware
He is being studied, real cowboy
Doing his own stuff, no agenda
Unconsciously perfect
In his maleness
The moon appeared whole that night,
at rest, deep within your eyes,
unsure am I of the heavens now,
‘though musings of you stay.
Our lips became acquainted once,
fervour was in abundance,
the season’s phase unrecalled,
‘though musings of you stay.
Honeybee tended to timid rose,
I, in your snug embrace,
winter winds almost forgotten,
‘though musings of you stay.
Joyous faces on a frozen lake,
turn sour with pencilled lines,
nor are you, my love, faultless,
‘though musings of you stay.
The broken egg shows alas its golden heart
And crumbled shell too thin for glory
But perfect still for passion's pencilled art
The magician tells you the dream's story
Young boys twisted by the aroma of desire
And fledgling girls flapping dreams for joy
This, whole dusty worlds rake and inspire
Making out of liquid lust flesh in flesh's alloy
I was born for more that death or vacant dream
Of love, something in the hope of lovers' heart
Yet lost in the illusion of our gospelled theme
All words and wonder, wobbling copper green
Foam and guano floating
In the sea cave’s lee
A flock of gannets raucous on a rocky pile
And the ever-growing echo as the men came by
Climbed from the boat
And dragged it from the water
Bare feet on painful pebbles relieved by sand
And, at the back of the cave, they dug on their knees
Scooping with their hands
A tiny purple phial was found, ancient and Phoenician
The granite stopper plucked
And, instead of a salty seaweed smell,
An oozing, resinous scent
From the darkness of consciousness
A rose and orange essence
Though not exactly a smell
Rather a panorama of far-off painted and planted secret messages
Kiss-kept by a woman
The tinkle of her bangles upon her wrists and ankles still
Echoed in the cave as if the lady was there
Her glancing eye gripped one cold
The press of her heel as she posed before dance
The burst of laughter with friends
Admiring her pencilled eyebrows and plum-blushed lips
Hips and elbows endearingly tipped
She leant forward and whispered into the traveller’s ear,
All words and wonder:
“Find me some ambergris and bring it to Arabia
Find me some ambergris to perfume my breasts
Find me some ambergris and bring it to my tent.”
I read about a mom and son
Who chose to mark the days
Since Covid struck by making cranes
In most creative ways.
One paper crane a day displayed
And posted as amassed
Allowed them to acknowledge
The uncommon year that passed.
I love a daily noting
Of the march of Father Time,
Whether origami-folded
Or some pencilled words in rhyme.