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Best Poems Written by Brian Sambourne

Below are the all-time best Brian Sambourne poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Existence

Life is music that drifts in open spaces
        sometimes a brash crescendo 
        that brims with the fullness of now
when stories break from narrow, rigid scripts
        stifling random routine

Life is free wheeling inventiveness 
        peacockish
        a feathered tapestry
        parading like a wedding dress down the aisle

Sometimes life is a ping pong bounce of sorrow
        giant ball
        that blurs the sky
        that covers our eyes
                              a fog creeping into ruined places

Life is a tumble of forces
        a counterpoint of malice and joy
        that goes in an unexpected direction
                              like the connective chords of love
                 an airy drift
                 amplified
                 in the ringing rush of time





Poem composed: July 2/2022

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November

...carries the wilted weight of autumn
                                                     in its broken beauty
           with fields of brown stalks,
           unharvested pumpkins that rest like mislaid dreams
                                                      patient where they are

November, detached from the moorings of green
when golden leaves, sparse, cleave to skein branches
                                                   to thwart the creep of cold
the leaf brown baggage below curls at its edges
                                                              like fickle affection 

and yet,
        the busy abundance of harvest
        foretell platters of gratitude 
Thanksgiving 
            a mix of deliverance and charisma
            tangible
            like the elation of coming home

month of nocturnal stabs of frost bring foliage to weeping
          L i s t e n
          L i s t e n
to what murmurs beneath half frozen furrows
fields that know what pushes through seasonal loss
          radical roots
          stored in darkness
          a spring-to-come growth
          thronged with voices
          that never lay
                             far below
                             the surface




Poem written November 6th, 2022

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Two Sparrows

predictable pairing
        like plans and lovers
two sparrows fly, flirt
wing beats hyped
          to dull the scent of overcrowded news
in spring air, grinning

scrappy species
two birds that pitch and swoop
                  an operatic flow
their sheen of relatability
                   braided together
a courtship gallantry
                   in circled bolts

when two birds fly about you
            suspenseful joy
like an untroubled sigh
             re-directing thought
             seasonal movement
             a flight of promise
                           that opens to the sky

Details | Brian Sambourne Poem

Vanilla Pudding

nobody sees you the way I do
in your wheelchair
with your unopenable arms
where everything crashes to a gray twisted landscape

my brother
alpha male
of demon strut clashes
in our shared childhood
once you flipped your hockey stick between my thin legs
           to see how many stairs I'd tumble down
your yells to me to "toughen up"
cursing a younger brother
               "bookworm sissy"
               "vanilla boy"
to expletives that ran like tap water
when proximity was a contact sport

at the care home
to your lips
I spoon in pudding
its dull tranquility 
vanilla 
into a body that feels itself liquid, limbs pliable and porous

I'd like to re-touch our brotherly photos
                 to change them to accuracy
or crumple them like a wasp nest knocked to the ground
for nobody sees you the way I do
for nobody knows you the way I do

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What Feeds the Cold

Barren fields of November
Corn stalks ragged
        broken soldiers
        bleak beauty
        stripped of green
Beige bones on autumn's carpet

Margins of daylight that disappear
        blending frost to the pinched ground
Corrosive wind like a wet slide of mourning
       seamlessly folded into what
                            the landscape feels

Crows circle in their swoops of survival
         seeking the scarce sweet zones of
         lost kernels
Momentum to snatch scraps, bits of decay
         in field rows that crack like smiles

Under a moody sky, gravestone gray
         sparked by the cawing of crows 
         that scrubs us clean
         in the exit wounds of autumn.

Details | Brian Sambourne Poem

Shadowland

the sun 
low in the sky
yearns for a leap into night
as shadows squeeze their way into bedrooms
like shapeless dragons
for children
cocooned to an early bed
staging thoughts like puppet plays
on a wall terrain
of mossy caverns or whispering vines
that never merge dreams smoothly
when children imagine the huff and puff of shadows
like creatures swimming in circles
overlapping at a patchwork distance
before the painted black of night
quiets the pull of imagination 
in the candy cane bend of sleep

Details | Brian Sambourne Poem

In the Clearing

two boys racing
dash, dart, tear
airburst in a clearing punched open
arms of piston pumping disperse white funnels
                                             dandelion fluff curling
                 scattering flowered stems
as water streaked, streams down joyful faces

clearing, 
            a clawed out seclusion
child claimed freedom unspooling in summer heat
                         pulling back its gauzy veil
                         pushed to disarray 
in this seething space, holding promise

two boys, breath weary, tumble into the tall grass
laugh and roll,
confessions shared like wanting to drift somewhere
                                                           - imaginary to real
claiming turf needing no repair
stories whispered before they're pushed off the page
              in a green clearing, its window-heavy future
till tall tales take a different slant
to rest like beaded sweat
                                  upon lined brows


Poem composed February 21, 2023

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Lost

Roots of memory battered by erosion 
          a tempest that edits thought
Aunt Em fears "stupidity's spread"
          her words for Alzheimer's 
          she sometimes babbles like a baby blowing bubbles
She knows her husband's philandering 
His escape from gibberish accusations 
His exit door, unashamed
                         "Can you just shut up for once!"
 His words that hammer the air
That throb through her thoughts

My Aunt Em
                unbracketed
                depression that marinates
                that simmers in disillusion

The delicacy of her mind
                 string tied balloon 
                 that drifts away in night
                 to what's imagined and unseen
                 breaching all her walls
                 detachment's silent
                                          branching




Poem composed: June 1, 2021
Contest: Open Poetry (5)
Sponsor; Charlotte Puddifoot

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Autumn

Autumn unreeled
Forests shaken hollow
               settling
               like shipwrecked beauty
Tree masts of moss
Colourful mobs of decay
                 unspooling
Last strands of conceit
Rag tag laurels
        capsized
        casual drift of sacrifice

Diced leaves of October,
         change
         that drains potency
Resplendent wreckage
An unraveling season
                    faint
                    in slim, silvered light
Outcomes unavoidable
       with fertility plundered

Gold leaf patches 
                 fallen
        treasures washed overboard
        a trail of flotsam 
        in the lost ego of summer

 Ragged contortion
                in sea-water cold
                in a quiet that marks 
                                         transition











Poem composed: Spring 2020
(Revised September 29th, 2022)

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Raked Leaves

autumn fills sparse spaces we occupy,
               seasonal change that closes in like shutters
briskly paced days of chilling charm
leaves dropping like wooing words of fidelity 
leaves that flatten the ground in patterns
             displacement
             in re-configuring trees

purposeful moves to rake stained prints of color into piles
rhythmic strokes that quicken in musty air
tedious chore to some
                          to me, contemplation
                          buoyant day dreams

my raked pile of impressions 
leaves tumbling over the ground like memories
                                                          of lost days
             some marked by brown edges with black blotches
             some colored vibrant, in reds and yellows
                                       like victory

I drop backwards into a stacked pile
autumn's luminous shred
ragged cohorts
withering in traces of unease
                      that touches me like absence 

I rise up
          gaze at the approaching clutch
          when clouds weigh the shambling sky in gray
          when cyclic tales take green to red-flamed lineage
          capricious leaves 
                              fall
          in the irrefutable tow of change




Poem composed: September 13/2022