Long London Poems
Long London Poems. Below are the most popular long London by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long London poems by poem length and keyword.
The question itself begs interpretation,
The word 'where' concealing so many implications
Is this 'where' a physical place, or state of mind?
Perhaps it's with a higher consciousness aligned?
Boston, London, Paris, or Rome? Cairo, Lisbon, Moscow, or Gnome?
Were you abroad? Were you at sea? Were you in space? --Or just at home?
Perhaps you were in Timbuktu, or basking in the ambience of Xanadu,
Sailing away on pink Chablis, sipping winter-blossom chartreuse tea.
The word itself is a siren, inviting by utterance unimaginable peregrinations
Of connotations, demarcations, gesticulations, imprecations--divinations!
Fathomless depths, layers of meaning, shells of encasement, particulars
beaming:
'Here' is in 'where,' and so is 'were.' Were you here? Where? Posibilities
teeming..
Not to mention 'Ere' and 'Rhee:' Ere you were here, where were you, Rhee?
Ah, Rhee, my bold, my courageous, my daring--yet compassionate Draupadi.
Now ere I bid this poem adieu: Where were you in the 70s is the question.
Hmmm. I can't really say. Forgive me, please, this slight indiscretion.
Even folks that are not attracted to feet
say your feet are pretty.
Your neck is long and graceful
even those that don’t give a heck
about necks, say
your neck is long and graceful.
I could go on,
but let it be acknowledged that you
are a very well put together girl.
Some say you are the daughter of Zeus
but I am more a Neptune kind of guy
and your mother and I
know you were born in a Hospital in Islington, London.
Mum had low blood pressure -
you nearly killed her
as you made your way
to the surface of her ocean.
You grew up, more beautiful year after year.
Yesterday you phoned saying
you were losing your powers;
I had to inform you that being pregnant,
you were now ready to ascend to your celestial throne,
and that I do hope the new baby,
(even though the royal blood of a million interstellar gods
flows through my veins),
will not look a bit like me.
Manchester Lad
by Robert (Bob) Moore
We used to live in Manchester, in England, the UK
till one day, our dad said, we’re going to move away
Australia’s where were going to, a land of sand and sun
with lots of jobs, and lots of space, a life there will be fun
I didn’t really want to go, at 18 my life was here
but dad had made his mind up, he made that very clear
it’s all or none he said to me, we go together, or we stay
so we agreed we all would go, and I’d return home one day
We caught a train to London, and as we crossed the Pennine Chain
little did I think, that I would not see them again
I’d hiked and camped all over them, since I was just a lad
Glossop, Hayfield, Kinder Scout, and all the fun we’d had
The train got to St Pancras, in the early morning light
time to have some breakfast, look around and see the sights
I had never been to London, this was my first trip,
we saw Nelsons Column, but that was about it
We had to go to Tilbury, a ship was waiting for us there
to take us half way round the world, to a land dad said was fair
it needed population, to help it build and grow
and people came from many lands to try and make it so
I never went back to Manchester, once I had settled here,
Australia became my home, but one thing was very clear
I was born and bred in Manchester, life was tough, but not so bad
and no matter where it is I live, at heart, I’m a Manchester Lad.
Bob Moore ©2022
Louis the Fifteenth, king of France,
Adored Madame du Barry.
His royal ardor was not bound
To the person he did marry.
His paramour was hard to please.
The king brooded day and night
On what act of loving kindness
Might appease her appetite.
One day he called his jeweller,
Whose face turned pale, then green,
When told to make a necklace
The likes of which no eyes had seen.
Vanity of vanities! Let nobody forget:
All humankind proposes yields to a Higher Will.
For the king lay dead and buried
When it was time to pay the bill.
They asked:' Who has got the money?
Who is there so rich
As to settle payment
And haul us from this ditch?
Louis the Sixteenth was now king,
But not long on the throne.
To purchasing the necklace
He himself was prone.
His wife strongly objected.
She thought the whole thing crazy.'
'We need to spend on self-defence:
More vessels for the navy!'
Now Cardinal De Rohan was a worldly priest,
Not averse to 'oo la la.'
Especially not in the matter of
Jeanne de la Motte Valois.
As a young girl she was naughty,
But she confessed in style.
The priest let her off counting rosary beads
All for the sake of her sweet winning smile.
Jeanne told the cardinal
They could have a sales deal signed
As friends at court had signaled
That the queen had changed her mind.
The queen and cardinal soon met
And the queen signed with aplomb.
De Rohan was too befuddled
To sense something was wrong
The queen received the necklace
But the queen was not the queen.
Charming though the lady was,
Who knew where she had been?
The necklace was picked to pieces
And sold off part by part.
O woeful desecration
Of this glorious objet d'art?
The cardinal faced the music
A victim of delusion
'Gullable, not guilty,'
came the court's conclusion.
Madame de la Motte Valois
Had no basis for a plea
And she was branded on both arms
With the letter V.
This letter stood for 'Voleuse,'
Meaning in English 'thief.'
Somehow she got to London,
And there she came to grief.
When fleeing from her creditors,
She fell from an upper floor.
Those creditors she did escape,
But only at death's door.
During her interment
Wagging tongues spoke of her guile
But someone chirped in her defence:
'But she had such a sweet winning smile.'
James has been rowing since he was aged eleven,
At Peterborough rowing club and at junior events,
But whilst at London Uni a crash sadly broke his back,
So that now he takes part in disability sports contests.
He’s a Legs, Trunk and Arms, LTA mixed cox four,
Racing with Grace Clough and also with Oliver Hester,
Pamela Relph, also Naomi Riches or Oliver James,
Who co-ordinates with cox efforts as he’s no jester.
In the 2014 Worlds in Amsterdam, the Nethherlands,
James with the team won the gold, patted the water,
And in 2015 at the Worlds in Alguebelette in France,
James won with the mixed team another gold garter.
And in the World Cup in Italy in the city of Varese,
In 2015 they collected yet another gold, tight rowing,
And in Rio they rejoiced for a very long few days,
After they took top spot again, owing to their training.
London’s clock just struck three
A forewarning of events to follow
The gloomy afternoon, an old mans delight
The weather of no concern, working late into the night
The village was in a festive mood
Of good will towards all men
Mistletoe and family gatherings
A twinkle in the eyes of young lovers
As midnight approached, on this special night
There appeared a spirit of a thousand souls
He woke the old man, who shivered in fright
Who are you he demanded, feigning his bravery
I am the spirit of all that was, and all that will be
Was the cold reply
So dress yourself old man, for I am taking you
To where you have been and were you will be
I will show you how you loved
I will show you how ambition consumed your love
Now you sleep counting pennies not from heaven
This path shall render you a dried heartless corpse
Come with me and my chains
As I show you the destiny of the unloved
Where spirits toil in the bowels of the earth
Hells fires fill them with painful regrets
The want and ignorance of the poor
If your life has amounted to earthy possessions only
You shall wander the afterlife in wanting and suffering
As these wisdom's you ignored here on earth
The old man remembered the soft touch of a kiss
That fate stole his bliss
The spirit spun his words so wise
The old man came to understand
The spirit of a thousand years
Drifted away with the morning light
So the old man, wrote his final wishes
Of good will to all of mankind
Then in silence, rope in place
He pulled away his chair
All of life’s efforts seemed fruitless now
As he escaped his life’s despair
Notes: Dickens meets Poe
“The Queen-Sized Bed”.
A queen-size bed was coming slowly,
down the rough dirt track.
As it drew closer,
The wheels clumsily mounted on the base of each leg,
rattled like a hospital gurney on the stones.
The bed was being pushed slowly,
ever so, carefully.
By a weary old man in tattered clothes and worn-out shoes.
as he drew closer, and closer,
I saw that he was pushing his dying wife who was,
lying in a dressing gown under the covers,
in the Queen-Sized Bed.
He pushed carefully trying not to shake the bed,
excessively.
His wife's head was supported by four pillows,
she had wispy strings of silver white hair.
She was dying.
Several I.V. Bottles dangled off a hook,
And dripped painkillers into her arm.
She was awake but barely conscious,
I wondered where they were going,
but in my heart, I knew...
privacy for an hour,
I came back as the sun was setting.
I found them together sitting on the bed,
Looking over the ocean.
The old man was holding his dying wife,
in his arms… stroking her silver hair under the sparkling,
southern cross.
They were sharing her last sunset as,
the dying embers of a fiery sun faded into the ocean.
Night fell and I walked home alone,
I had witnessed love real love,
something I had never experienced,
something I had never known.
If you’re near Cowell and you look hard enough,
You may just find the queen-size bed,
with a tattered mattress and exposed springs,
quietly rusting away outside a decrepit ruin of a barn.
Take a closer look at the legs and you will find four rusting,
gurney wheels.
and if you approach quietly on a moonlit night,
you will hear soft sobbing in the whistling wind,
as it dreams of that dying sunset,
under the southern cross...
and the milky way lights up the sky,
soaring into the heavens
as the angels sing.
I wrote this non fiction poem
For Debra Jean..
(C)London F. BuSS. 2022
Did Robert Browning say it best when he
wrote, “winter takes the old ones”? Possibly.
Bronchitis, pthisis, whooping cough, T.B. –
they ran amock in 1863.
I trust it’s not too jarring if I jump
from modern miseries (ecoli, Trump)
to mid-Victorian London’s social rump,
and John Snow (doctor), and the Broad Street Pump.
The City Hall had never heard of germs.
They dealt with filth and foliage and firms,
and knew that there were parasites called worms.
But cholera? They couldn’t come to terms.
The water pump in Broad Street was infected.
Bacteria, back then, went undetected.
“Miasma” and “air pressure” were suspected:
how could the population be protected?
Oh lucky London! By sheer happenstance,
within the metropolitan expanse
young Doctor Snow was working, and by chance
had learned of recent studies made in France.
“They’re tiny animals, too small to see.
I’ll prove it, if you trust the Pump to me.”
Officials sneered with incredulity:
but, faced with daily deaths, gave him the key.
He knocked on every window in the quarter,
and showed (despite initial mayoral hauteur)
that cholera was carried in the water.
And, single-handed, John Snow stopped the slaughter!
Nigel is Britain’s most successful boccia player,
Having won eight major titles at the Worlds, Paras,
And so spoke out when Rio’s organisers, clever,
Refused to televise boccia’s intriguing blethers.
He says that boccia sports people need to get,
“our foot in the door” of live television coverage:
“I was disappointed in London [that] we didn’t get,
the media attention other sports did,” sacrilege,
which is frustrating because we [do] really want to,
showcase our sport. It’s very easy for me to say
boccia is fantastic. It’s brilliant, but unless [you know],
other people can get access to it, [okay, make way],
through the media, the wider audience are not,
going to get to know about boccia [sport straight].”
He refuses to retire so that he can get and pot,
“more publicity for the athletes in future.” Wait.
Born on 22nd May 1964 he’s an experienced man,
And won in Sydney 2000 a gold for the individual,
In Portugal 2002 two golds, Brazil 2006 he did can,
A bronze, then gold, silver in Beijing, he did angle.
Czeslawa Kwoka
#26947 04/12/1943
(c) London F. Bus
Auschwitz Birkenau.
Killing is hard work,
but the schnapps is fine.
Czeslawa Kwoka the beautiful girl
with innocent eyes,
She is Polish, Catholic and only forteen,
but they dont care.
Beautiful girl tied to a chair
Beautiful girl they hacked off her eyebrows
and her hair.
Beautiful girl beaten and raped.
SS killer awaits.
Syringe full of Phenol,
hidden behind his back.
Beautiful child with fear in her eyes.
Stares straight ahead,
She fights and struggles
and wont co-operate.
Click fires the camera shutter
but she wont smile,
Damn it smile! Lachein Schlampe, .
The SS sneer and laugh.
Damn it smile! .
They Punch and slap her
face again and again,
Beautiful girl, defiant, angry and in pain.
She doesn't smile, so they beat her again.
If she smiles they will kill her,
If she doesnt smile they will kill her anyway,
Like the way they
killed her mother yesterday.
Her death will be the same.
Click goes the camera again and again.
Turn sideways, click.
She is naked, blind folded
still tied to the chair.
She doesnt see it coming
The syringe full of phenol,
with a six inch needle
they stabbed it into her heart,
between the 4th and 5th intercostsl ribs.
Injecting the Phenol to end her life.
She passed out in 15 seconds,
She cried for her mother as she died.
In thirty seconds she was dead.
Then her naked body turned pink.
Her name Czeslawa means Glory..
One more dead, 250,000 children to go.
Arbeit Macht Frie.
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