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Best Poems Written by John Blake

Below are the all-time best John Blake poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | John Blake Poem

A Difference

I see girls send each other cards and cake,
Condolences or hugs, the sweetest rhymes,
Given as free as breath, to share or take,
True friendship’s memories of happy times.
  
How much is meant or lied I cannot guess,
But when men wish for kisses, ears to hear
Our dreams and heal our grief with tenderness,
We fail in finding ways to bring us near.

I see girls send each other cards and cake,
Men don’t. The very most that men will do
Is mock or give strong words. It’s our mistake
To hope the same old ways may bring us through.

Men still believe in strength, coping alone,
Deluded that a heart is made of stone.

Details | John Blake Poem

Multiplication

Trying to fall asleep in Spring,
I found the trick of counting sheep,
Grazing in flocks and wandering,
Could not succeed in bringing sleep,

Following one another too,
Bleating meanwhile, and eyeing me,
They sauntered by, as all sheep do:
I watched them, counting patiently.

In Spring’s lush pastures so sublime,
It seemed that every flock would grow,
Filling the fields at lambing time,
In numbers more than I could know,

No rest would come, no pillowed bliss:
I saw there was no end to this.

Details | John Blake Poem

Red Phone Box

I liked its comforting and quiet
Enclosure from the time and rain
Designed to be impossible to sleep in 
(Some vagrant friends reported miseries)
Shutting out the rest of the world
It became a space for answers
A sea-shell or confessional
Calming the small change of your soul
Adored no less by travellers 
No doubt for its already ancient
Novelty it would not admit
The weak or infirm to its secrets
And such room inside limited 
Admittance or forced proximity 
Upon us if we shared a call.
Revered by Mum and Dad as
One familiar part of modern living
To me unvalued then missed
As a lost limb when it was gone.

Details | John Blake Poem

Love Is a Shining Coin

love is a shining coin.
only one,
of high or low 
denomination.

see its two sides:
what is said
and 
what is done.

spin it now and call
and we’ll find out
which side 
it’s landed on.

Details | John Blake Poem

Blank Greetings Card

I have things I want to say,
But lined up in my mind
Are a hopeless football team of words,
Who’ve arrived all anyhow, the fools,
Hung over, bootlaces undone, 

With no real idea or notion of the rules
Confusing one another, indifferent,
Just fools, willing to give up the game,
My good words with good intentions,
Facing the empty field, the open goal,

They’re no good at all, although
I plead for help, they’re only wanting
Rest and their bus ride home, but still
I have things I want to say,
And somehow, one year, I will.

Details | John Blake Poem

A Dream Delayed

Yes? You may call it cliché,
This song or cry of love,
Its desperate and dark petals
Falling as the year bleeds out
To frost. The leaves dried or dying,
Thus to be described in crisp
Expected terms as “gold display”
Or “copper-bronze” and you
Would have me wait, you say,
Until another Spring, although
My question’s sown for answering.

Details | John Blake Poem

A Box of Fishing Flies

Congregation of deception,
Sitting in darkness and decked out

In fineries: the silk, the fur,
Feathered dull or bright, just waiting

To be called by river’s song, rings
Of rises yet hoped into fish.

Some are returned warriors,
Blunted and twisted out of true,

Though truth’s a lie for them and blends
Somehow beyond a memory.

Some new-made catchers of the eye,
Wait for their opportunity to come.

A hundred hopes and falsehoods rest
Under one hinged roof, lined up

To do or die, and every one
With a sharp point of view,

A heartbreak to be driven home.

Details | John Blake Poem

Moon's Emissary

You are the Moon’s emissary:
In mood and shades of dark and light,
you share your purpose with your will
equally, mixed in the same bowl
and pour that bright power bestowed
or denied, it seems, according
to both season and circumstance.

You are the Moon’s emissary:
In ebb and flow of human tide,
within a chord of disquietude
you bring the rebalancing word,
stemming here a flood, there dispute,
all in the cause of harmony, unless
declared as love declares itself.

You are the Moon’s emissary:
you serve the altering grey sea,
hearing its whisper day by night,
knowing meanings of silences
and seeing the clean horizon
at dawn you look where man must be,
watching sails shrink to memory.

You are the Moon’s emissary:
Recognise in her circling dance
time tracked as sands of silver ran
and know her care is a command
extended from the distant stars:
To live and love yourself always
as you are, others as you can.

Details | John Blake Poem

Socks

Not the conventional topic for a poem
I mean, it’s difficult to engage socks
Emotionally; they provide no loam
In which to seed a rhyming song that shocks

Or indeed wrings a tear, even remorse,
Even remembering drawers sorted through
After that death, discarded in discourse
Or gleaned in thrift, unworn, brand new,

But somehow not part of my own living,
Put aside to give away, out of sight,
And you would suppose that in the giving,
Peace could descend in that unwelcome night.

Sorrow abrasive to a threadbare soul,
May ease in time; it does not wear a hole.

Details | John Blake Poem

Contact Is Hope

Walk with me, although your hand
Extends through strands of wire
Beaded with thorns; be careful now
But let us walk

Talk with me, although your words
Must pass through cords of steel
Binding these limbs; be careful now
But let us talk

Sing with me, although your song
Sounds faint through walls of stone
Keeping us apart; be careful now
But let us sing.