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Best Poems Written by Errol Young

Below are the all-time best Errol Young poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Covid Waltz

A Rondo In 23 Verses

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my soul and my movements
It has ruined my life for sure. 

I hate masks but I wear them.
Fogging my view with each breath
They blind me to dangers in traffic
Forecasting my vehicular death.

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my soul and my movements
It has ruined my walking for sure. 

A haircut or facial nice to conjure.
I look like a portrait of doom.
My grey roots protrude and grow longer
The mirror reflects all of my gloom

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and my movements
It has ruined my beauty for sure. 

And Zoom every day, I hate it.
Playing Hollywood Squares with the mob.
At least I can work here pantless.
Until I find a new job.

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my soul and my movements
It has ruined my career for sure. 
 
At gym I used to sweat bullets.
Admiring the bodies around.
But now its reduced to a laptop.
And some formless voice counting down.

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and my movements
It has ruined my physique for sure. 

Homeschooling my children is stressful.
They hate every thing that I do
They look upon me as a jailor
A bossy mal tempered old shrew. 

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and my movements
It has ruined my family for sure. . 

And why can't we use our own dog walkers
Metabolically relieving the hound.
The city has forbidden this action.
Another way needs to be found.

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and my movements
It has ruined my pet’s life for sure. 

And please don’t repeat this around
I have a lover every Wednesday afternoon. 
Since they're not strictly in my bubble,
We can’t, you know what, in a room.  

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and my movements
It has ruined sex life for sure. 

Look, I know that millions are dying
I’m not insensitive to that. 
But my lifestyle has taken a beating
You can’t call me a brat for that. 

COVID is very inconvenient. 
Difficult to endure.
It controls my being and movements
It has ruined life for sure.

Details | Errol Young Poem

As Flies To Wanton Boys Are We To Th' Gods

66 Million years ago
Fireball from the sky hits 
Echoing life-planet,
Snuffing almost all in darkness
Mouse like burrowing under the inferno. 

1750
People harvested like wheat
Strong men, children and women
Especially women
Packed into sea vessels 
To Build America

1854
Holding stinking potatoes they watch as 
Ships bulging with grain leave port.
Children’s hunger 
Leached their lives,
Imperialism flourishes

1953
We lived in fear.
Sky could light up Incinerating us all.
Duck and cover. Duck and cover.
It was real.
Military industrialism thriving.

1954
They live in fear.
Numbered arms came to supper and talked in accents.
Lives buried by decrees and camps. 
The future: unbelievable, unliveable.
It could happen again.

December 2-3, 1984
As they slept, in the night
Creped over town 
Phosgene gas, denser than air, close to the ground
Coughing, eye irritation, burning lungs, suffocation.
Union Carbide profited.

9/11, 2001
Towers dedicated to wealth crumble to the streets
3,000 gone in dust.
Opportunity for war
500,000 and more slain abroad 
The dominance of oil and hate.

March 11, 2011
Millions of sea tons put boats on roads. 
Doomed reactor irradiating the world.
Wait for the effects. 
Don’t eat the fish.
Living better electrically.

Now
Phone rings in Gaza.
Get out now!
Run!
Rubble.
Precision bombing.

Gaunt polar bear on the top of the word
Fires scorch earth in  the night
Huracanes eat shorelines
And people migrate to find water.
Carbon-wealth legacy.

Soon
Child smelling, picking lilacs 
Drinking specks of nectar
Future, hope 
Before us.

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Saskatoon Berry

What is a saskatoon berry? 
All I know is that it arrived on my doorstep this fall. 
Looking like a dried up stick in a pot of soil.
The community farm had too many for it’s food forest so I got one. 
It is out in my garden, in the hole that I dug, in the cold.
It may be dead for all I know or it could bloom and feed us. 
Or it just might be a metaphor.

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Bed Tanka

You curled around me.
I feel bone, flesh, contentment.
I need to turn over.
But it feels so warm and good.
I wait just a few minutes more.

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Mourners Anger

How are you doing?
I say OK.
But OK is not an answer. 
It tells them Nothing. 
I want to tell them Nothing.
It is none of their damned business.
I actually don’t know how I am doing. 
I’m OK damn it!

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The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy

The soul is here for its own joy. 
It floats somewhere behind my eyes.
Existing in breath and relationships 
It responds to and is created by
A Chopin Etude, Round Midnight, a fralich, 
Starry Night, Girl with a Pearl Earring, Guernica,
A pas de deux, a tap dance, Tango,
War, HaShoah, Covid,
The look in a dog's eyes,
Ruby Bridges, Nelson Mendela, grandchildren,
A partner’s embrace, 
Love, hate, acceptance, 
Old age, infirmity, and the end.

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I Dont Like Poetry

I mean, long Victorian verses pining for a pure lover who never scratches her own ass.
The bronzed paeans to those who died in war or a meaningless cause. 
Or the inscribed moans of the armature bard holding a petunia. 
I hate it. 
BUT
“If music be the food of love, play on.” OK, OK. I love Shakespeare. But he is Shakespeare.
And then I always had a thing for Viola.
And the Tower of Song. Lennie can and does bring tears to my eyes.
Or “45 years from now” the vaulting words of Stan Rogers. Gone too soon. “I wish I were in Sherbrooke now.”
So maybe I do like poetry. Some poetry.
But I don’t like my poetry. That’s for sure.
So there.

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I Would Like To Meet Me

I would like to meet me.
Me. That person sitting inside me, watching me, feeling me. 
That’s not me in the mirror or in that photo.
Me. The person, personality, the human.

I would like to talk to me.
I’ll bet I would have some interesting things to say.
Observations from a long lived life.
Considerations stemming from life itself.

I would like to smile at me.
A smile that understands the contradictions
That can never be resolved.
That harbours delight, fear, longing, belonging and love.

I would like to feel that I know me.
After all these years, who better to know me than me. 
I think that I would like me. 
Who knows?

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Tree Tanka

Tree, fills my window
Red, dotting its massive green
Soon, it will glory
Rioting colours in all hues
Until, it's stark, bare and brown

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Dark Waters

In these dark waters
The whole world is reflected
Rippled by tadpoles