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Best Poems Written by Allen Ansell

Below are the all-time best Allen Ansell poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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GAPS PERVADING

I have an awful memory. It's sad.
Seemingly destroyed by that madman
Who, sixty-one years ago, pulled out
Without looking,and crashed into my car
Sending mine careering towards death.
Ha! I've got news for him, wherever,
I survived! 


But you robbed me of some dreams!
Dreams that, like all memories, are passive
And cannot be completely lived again.
But it is the words... sixty-one years !
Who would have thought there'd be so many?


Amongst them, through the gaps pervading,
Are gems: Memories to be grateful for.
The tin box of silver thrupences
I hid beneath a floorboard in 1952!
Did anyone find it? Or did they rain
Down upon heads of demolition men
Like angel's tears at all destruction:
At things that should have aged and died
Naturally, in the most usual and intended way.
Gone tomorrow but here today.

 

 

© Allen Ansell 2024

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THE SPACES THAT ARE LEFT


I never knew what to fill the spaces with
Sometimes I didn't even see them
They were disguised under many coats
With hidden pockets of shallowness
And oversized buttons to mismatched holes.
It didn't matter most of the time
Because the tailor never stopped sewing more
And I was content to let them lie
Beneath the growing pile of tweed
And gaberdine and wrinkled linen
Kind fabrics who wrapped them up
And kept them warm and unprepared
But as time went on and more people
Left the party, the pile of coats
Gradually disappeared and the tailor
couldn't keep up the pace of making
The spaces could be easily filled at first
With dreams, with passion, with sorrow,
With the wrap of a Cherub's leg in bed,
With the carefree knowing there'd be time
To butter them with tears or laughter
Or use their emptiness for meditation
But in the spaces that are left
A greater contemplation is required
It is necessary for them to be filled
With greater aspiration which in itself
Brings further sorrow for deep within them
Is the simple indication
That I will not have enough time
To fill them all.

 

© Allen Ansell 2025

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PIXELS IN THE MIST

Pixels in the mist
Morph into images.
White noise my brain
Cannot leave alone.
You are so clear.
After all these years
Your image is there.
Legs going on for ever,
Hair shiny and bright,
Eyes promising bliss.
But I cannot touch

Or feel your flesh.
I am just forever
tormented by the pixels
Of your lovely phantom.

 

 

 © Griffonner 2023

Details | Allen Ansell Poem

HOW GREEN IS MY VALLEY?


Just how green is my valley
Below those dark satanic hills?
How many familial bones
Lay there molding to greyish dust?
Do the words of my forefathers
Echo on beyond my ancient head...
So that future ears clearly hear
What wisdom they actually said?

I long to see the rain fall
On those grey slag built mountains,
Where trees are straggly specimens -
Sometimes misted by the clouds
So low that their moist kiss remains
On my upward stretching hands.
It's where the belly trembles
And my heartache truly resounds.

But how much better would it be
Were this a sun drenched paradise,
Where everything was plentiful;
Where everyone was fulfilled
And could afford their daily bread,
Where cries of pain became instead
Joyful smiles with ease instilled?

 

© Allen Ansell 2025

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ONE DAY TIME WILL END


One day time will end.
The sweet nectar of making love
And the desire to kiss your lips
Will become just a distant
And diaphenous memory.
I wonder whether I will exist
outside of your brain
Or will I be just a concept:
A shadow, like a puddle of drying rain
Fading into some oblivion;
Gaseous, fumate molecules
Blending with nought but air?
Will it matter to me then?
When time has ended?

When time has ended
All things must have come to pass.
Having been, having gone, having ended,
What is left but to start again
If it will indeed be a possibility.

 

 

© Griffonner 2024

Details | Allen Ansell Poem

WISHES IN A FIELD OF DREAMS

I wished for sunflowers to lift their heads.
Feeling the warmth of your breath
They gently sway in tune with my love.
I wished for passion and earthy sweat
Feeling every inch of your sweet skin
Its totality, outside and in.
I wished for starlight to sprinkle dust
That sparkles like fireflies in the night
That I might see your eyes light up.
I wished for soft warm welcoming sand
To feel it bathe my eager feet
While wavelets lap at your tenderness.
I wished for nectar to quench my thirst
And found the memory of your first kiss
That took me to paradise and beyond.
But above all these things I desire
Ii is more time that I need the most -
To spend over and over again, with you.

 

© Griffonner 2023

Details | Allen Ansell Poem

SLEEPLESS IN MY BATTLE

(Perhaps the desire to find Nirvana has become tainted?  A worm of a man has done this to me; has burrowed into the fruit of my dreams.)


We who wield the mighty sword
leaded and sharpened neat and straight
search vainly for hearty tales
where Eros or God has placed a hand
and turned the wilderness we have made
back into the garden with apple trees
and juicy synonym pairs and plums.


We yearn to taste the flesh sublime
to feel its secretions dripping
and with them ourselves slipping
into a whirlpool of sheer delight
from which we never rediscover
loneliness, despair, and pain.
Oh to be in that blissful state again
this side of the great divide!


So I put my pen and sword aside,
straighten my back and feign content
when in truth the World's goodness
is so well and truly spent
that it has bled me completely dry.
For every orphaned child I wish to cry,
or for widowed mother lowly bent
her home a shattered withered wreck,
I stay safely at home cocooned
my tears long since completely dried
desensitised by gory media information -
I count them one by one instead
as passing dark amorphous sheep
whose task is solely to prevent my sleep.

 

© griffonner 2022

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FALLING LIGHT

You shouldn't know the colour of falling light
As it descends into the abyss of passion.
When limbs intertwine in sweet complete delight
And the thin skin wraps the fiery flesh
In the soothing caress of the conductor's hand
Cris crossing and cutting the air afresh
With his smooth effervescent and pulsating baton.
You shouldn't know the colour of his seduction,
His ragged jagged downward pointing chin,
The tangled mangled wilderness of his beard,
The forceful resourcefulness of his kisses,
The colours of that fascinating rude tattoo.
The feeling of injection and quick retraction,
You shouldn't know the colour of his flame,
Or the sound of his intoxicating and secret name
You must somehow savour with hungry lust.
Eyes rolling back as you inevitably fall
It is all some God almighty magnetic rich taboo.
His name, his eyes, the things you will recall
In the lonely moments of night time longing,
When you know it was all a dreadful act of wronging
That must be forever pushed aside, inside, denied,
Far away from the colour of the falling light.


 © Allen Ansell 2025

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PRETENDING WE KNOW -



I'm looking back in time, it
doesn't strike me straight away
I'm too intrigued to see  those
faces once again.  A small group
of six apparently happy relatives
posed on a hilltop somewhere
with aerial view of fields behind.
With all the knowledge I have
it occurs to me that these smiles
they wear were really masks
and beneath were the concerns
of holding their individual
loves and lives together.
Each of us are doing that each
and every second of a day.
Four of the six have passed on:
But not before their bodies
were aged and weakened
simply by being alive.
It is a strange path we tread
from oblivion to oblivion,
and along the way we might
be captured in some nanosecond
of time in a photograph, where
we bravely put on a smile
as if we are comfortable and
know what it is actually all about.

Have a happy new year folks.

 

© Griffonner 2024

Details | Allen Ansell Poem

NO NEW BREATH

"Can you see Fred, Rita?"
Were the only words spoken.


The caring nurse said them
Whilst I was consumed
by a torrent of tears
My eyes shed with shame.

My frame was rocked by
That final breath she took
As she left my World.
I should have been strong,
My spiritual understanding
Should have held my hand
In just the way I had
mentally held hers...
tucked beneath the crisp
White hospital sheets.

Instead I had stroked
Her smooth cool forehead.
Such gentle stroking
Hopefully imparting peace
And helping remove fear.
Here was the fated comma
Preceding 'goodbye' full stop.

These were her life's
Final moments, predicted
By the doctor who had called
And advised me to come.

I hung on that doctor's words,
And dared to whisper
She should not fear death
She should just 'let go'
Her struggle, her past,
The pains she'd endured,
Her life long story
Now come to an end...
A new story just beginning.

She must have heard me.
She must have listened,
Even fully understood,
For there was no drama,
Nothing to mark the moment
Save for no new breath
following the last.

 

© griffonner 2022