Get Your Premium Membership

Best Poems Written by Patrick Silke

Below are the all-time best Patrick Silke poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

View ALL Patrick Silke Poems

Details | Patrick Silke Poem

Schooldays Over

The auld fella’s auld fella left the tech
after Ripening for sixteen summers.

Camden-Wagon-Gravity landed a
shovel and a pick at his lonely boots.

‘DIG’. he knew that Language. and by God
did he dig. there is a dignity

in breaking your back To Stuff A Ganger’s
Pockets, And His Belly With Rich Porter. 

That aching rhythm of pick and shovel
Made certain - he would never reach his height. 

sure look at him now, all stooped and bended
A Tunneller’s Posture. There Is A Man!

Breaking New Ground, Smashing Sediment and
Poverty. With every drive, slam and crack

You made Certain we would never go back. 
Thanks to underground suffering and penance

and pain. Schoolday’s are over. 
You’ve broken the Chain. 

Copyright © Patrick Silke | Year Posted 2024



Details | Patrick Silke Poem

Day Trip

Leave it all behind. There’s no room for your baggage,
but your togs, towel and the factor 50 promise.
Sail the roads west.

Teenage freedom is in the bottom of the lidl bag,
clung by ice-creamed fingers, up the grassy dunes.
In summer’s kindly kiss. A freckled pretty face.

The Brave’s charge into the cold. In the flirtatious slide tackles.
These easy feelings. Is there a hidden weight
to the sandy socks, to all our fate’s?

Remember friend, when grey tides are high
The blues and hues of Enniscrone’s sky.
Where sand is soft and the world might yet rhyme.

Maybe there you’ll realise.

Copyright © Patrick Silke | Year Posted 2024


Book: Shattered Sighs