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Best Poems Written by Brian Terry

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

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The Shifting Sands

The Shifting sands
Kingdoms of Dunes
Desolate sands
No life. Low tide
Landfalls now twixt mud and sand
And then the seals appear
Their sad calls staying in my memory

I walk the dunes
Why am I sad?
I’ve just returned
Alive and not wounded

The girl I left behind
A friend I thought
No commitment
No declaration of love

The enemy advanced
I was hard pressed
But while in deep despair
I thought this was my end
I realised then
I loved her

But when I came to her
She’d found another
she said “Just a one night drunken stand
So ashamed
Could I forgive?”
Logic says I should
I made no promise
Nor did she
My ego’s not so sure

More seals arrive
Floundering on the mud
They call to me and say
“Forgive her? What’s to forgive?
You had no right
You do not own her.
Go to her now and beg forgiveness,
Declare your love.”
I walk the dunes
Why am I sad?
I’ve just returned
Alive and not wounded

I go to her posthaste
To beg forgiveness
“What for” she cried
“Because I turned my back in wounded pride” I said
“I have no right to judge
Can you forgive me
I love you please take me to you heart.”
Oh Joy unbounded
She forgives me
And offers me her heart

Kingdoms of Dunes
Desolate sands
No life. Except us two Low tide
Landfalls now twixt mud and sand
And then the seals appear
Their sad calls staying in our memories
We walk the dunes
I am no longer sad I’ve returned
To meet my love

Details | Brian Terry Poem

Artio Forest Goddess

See her bathing in the limpid pool
A gentle Goddess
The mistress of the forest.
She plays with the dappled fawn.
Under the twisted Oak
She cares not for the creeping form
the man who plans her body to ravish
Oh, fool she is divine.
no man can touch her, too brutish.
I spoke to her of love and passion
greatly daring I touched her
my life she made me abandon.
She stands triumphant, at her brightest
and since she vanquished me.
She is the mistress of my heart.
Under the twisted  oak 
See how She sleeps 
with those Lily breasts 
And crocus arms 
And wild, wild daisy hair.

Details | Brian Terry Poem

A Sonnet

Oh say, have you come from heaven above?
Art thou, perhaps, a goddess in disguise?
Yes you are. I just looked into your eyes
And yes! It’s true. You are for me to love

I want to feel your body close to me.
Your skin, smooth as silk or maybe satin.
My sweet I really love to kiss your skin,
I touch you with my tongue, a taste of honey.

Your scent, your very own, I breathe it in,
It is your own you are adorable.
Good God, there must be something magical,
how else to cause my head to spin and spin.

That’s it. I shall seduce you once again
The first, it was so special even then

Details | Brian Terry Poem

The Great Lie

The Great Lie

Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori
I believed that once
I laughed and chatted to my friend
As we boarded the troopship
To take us to the far side of the world

Never been abroad before
We were excited in Colombo
Marvelled at Singapore
Fell in love with Hong Kong
Then north to the fighting

My task, set up and operate a field x-ray department
Wherever I look there's mud
Ubiquitous mud
Even the women, four foot by foot with a ‘tach, smell of mud
Bill said 'but that one's not bad'
They shipped him out, he's gone mad

It all seems quiet
Is there a war?
One night we hear the thunder
Of heavy guns

Then only in a few hours
They come like a flood
The laughing smiling young boys I knew
Now bloody, broken dying old men

What is so bloody sweet?
This is not our home

Days and days went by
With no respite
Amoebic dysentery struck
A major battle raged
My patients come
Like a tide
A remorseless powerful tide
With broken limbs to be X-rayed




 So I, with *****running down my legs
Stood there without protection and X-rayed them one by one

How bloody sweet indeed
I had never seen Death before
A lull, and they hose me down and my floor
But still they come

I mourn the loss of so many

Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori
Sweet my arse
I curse the cynic who coined this lie
Quintus Horatius Flaccus should have been strangled at birth

And still they come
Hoping for succour
Hoping for relief from pain
Some times only the peace of death is theirs
Some welcome him; you can see it in their eyes
We are not uplifted but coarsened
A callous round our hearts protects us
And still they come

Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori

O Christ the Guns are louder
Are they nearer?
Dysentery cured
Still I *****myself
This time in fear
Only discipline holds me to my post

And still they come

Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori
It's in Latin so it must be true?

And still they come

O God will it never end
I'm tired but have no backup
I'm on my own and near despair

Then the tide of battle changed
The flood drops to a trickle
I could sleep now.
And she is not bad, warm and gentle
Who cares about a little 'tach
And she's brought me tea
I will sleep now
Until it starts again

Details | Brian Terry Poem

The Saltmarsh

Dark Clouds are gathering over the sea,
and shadows now race across the mudflats.
What use to me now is fitful moonlight
I pray to the gods, for I am in fear
What the sand seizes, it never lets go
Oh Matrones I need to see my way

Sea birds call,
Calling from the marshes.
But are they birds or maybe sprites?
I am the father of the chosen child



This is our holy place.
As it was for those who came before.
A threshold betwixt both Sky and Land
Liminal
A threshold between the land and sea.
And between life and death.
This is our sacred place

I am the father of the chosen child
She has eaten the mistletoe

Here we built our Henge
To worship those we must.
Who knows what they who came before did worship.
And from the Henge we built our crossing place,
A causeway along the lines of power.

Dark Clouds have gathered o’er the sea,
and  shadows race across the mud.
What the sand seizes, it never lets go
I pray to the gods, I am in fear
I can hear their priestly chanting
‘Oh great God Taranis,
We offer this life to you’
With one sharp cry
She gives her life
So that the world will carry on

This does not help my pain
I have lost my first borne
Oh Great earth mother, wife to Taranis
Take my child and bless her and save her soul






Something in us fears what’s buried,
What we cannot see.
But we honour this the winter solstice,
With sacrifice.
To Taranis sky king
To Esus earth king
To Matrones wife to both
In the centre of the Henge,
The holy of holies,
The chosen Child.
This blessed child
The saviour of our world
Through her the cycle will renew
Dance round her grave
Widdershins
Lift our voices
In joyful song

Great Gods the clouds have lifted
The new day has dawned
Her sacrifice was not in vain

Details | Brian Terry Poem

A Love Lost

How could I be so careless with you?
	Allowed my dreams to be expectations.
	I loved you so much but now I have lost you.

	To another’s arms I flew,
	what were my intentions?
	How could I be so careless with you?

	She laughed and bid me adieu,
	was I fooled by her fairy like tokens?
	I loved you so much but now I have lost you.


	Why could I not stay true?
	All that is left, just disillusions,
	How could I be so careless with you?

	While I was alone my love blossomed anew
	I think of you and my life sweetens
I loved you so much but now I have lost you.

Details | Brian Terry Poem

The Debate

A Debate

The Atheist
I see no reason for a god
Indeed for any type of god at all
I look around at all the churchmen
The pompous richly dressed ones
And wonder what their founder would have thought
And then at the other end
The shabby unpretentious lot
More primitive, more fundamental and literal
They have however one thing in common
Unshakeable belief in their virtue 
and in their God who’s always there
Despite the evils and the sorrows in this world
They prate so endlessly
About sin
Sin as defined 
in their narrow mind
They cheerfully pray that we can overcome some other systems of belief
by force sometimes.
How can they justify the killing and the torture of other humans?
by their beliefs they are all God’s creatures.
Nobody knows for sure how life was started
But from a simple single cell
We evolved until we’re here
But few accept the clear evidence for evolution
And what about the soul
Of which they speak
What is it?
Where did it come from?
Where does it reside in us?
Where does it go?
Or does it die with us?
That’s if it’s there at all

The Agnostic
But my friend you’re just as bad
Your position, or as so stated, is rigid and admits no other view
I’m with you
I also reject the Churches
They are only human constructs
And have been a source of evil
I don’t know if there is a God
A personal God who cares for us
Or any other sort of god
But until I know for sure
I keep an open mind
Where did we come from?
Again I do agree with you
Why did the first cells appear and how?
I do believe and have some evidence
That there is something in our nature
Which yearns for more
Is this a soul?

The Theist
You really are quite wrong
The simplest hypothesis
The one with least assumptions
Is that something outside of us
Maybe two string theory ‘branes
By chance collided
And brought our universe into being.
Or maybe some vast, uncaring intelligence
Caused in some way unknown creation and then
Left uncaring, uninterested.
If there is an environment friendly to some form of life
It seems to start but we do not know why or how

The Believer
This cannot be
My holy book tells all
There is a God
He cares for us
It says so right here
He created all
Us and the animals
And gave us dominium overall
You worry about the sin and suffering
You cannot know God’s purpose
How dare you take HIS holy name in vain
All three of you will burn in hell


The wives
We didn’t marry for philosophical debate
We married, as we thought for love
He spends all day and often all night
Thinking about, what to us, is unthinkable
What about us?
What is our function?
Is it just to cook and clean?
To run the houses?
To do the shopping?

We all decided that this was not good enough
We started to go together to dinners and to dances
We each met a man we called them Hedonist
They made us laugh and feel like girls again
And then one day
We found there were not four Hedonists but one!
This was a shock
But after long and painful talks
We decided that we didn’t care
And would just share.
After all we did not love him
Nor he loved us
We all became friends but with privileges
But never more than one at once!

The Hedonist
I listen to them talk
Their weighty conversation
It is so bloody boring
Never any realisation.
I do not concern myself with such considerations
Life is far too short
And anyway I’ve got to know their wives
Such fun
They are bored stiff with their deliberations
And bored indeed in bed
So one by one I’ve wined them
So one by one I’ve dined them
So one by one I’ve danced with them
And one by one I’ve slept with them
There’s Stella, Dorothy, Abigail and Claire
They set the rules
No commitment
Just good fun
Fine by me
As long as nobody gets serious

At that so important final moment
They don’t cry out
To:
A random quantum fluctuation
Or an entity full of hesitation
Or then a again a being so barren
Or even worse a jealous god, primitive man’s last bastion
But no
They shriek out loud
Sometimes my name
Or sometimes it’s just Oh you bastard!
Or sometimes it’s just Oh you animal!
Or now and again Please stop O stop you devil
Then I know my duties done

Details | Brian Terry Poem

I Love To Dance

I’ve always loved to dance
I’ve looked without success
I found this quite by chance
 
I’m told this comes from France
suppose they’re right, I guess
I’ve always loved to dance
 
around I go almost in a trance
still looking, but I confess
I found this quite by chance
 
I see this girl and glance
she twirls at me with flying dress
I’ve always loved to dance
 
Happy time, I can prance
never once with any distress
I found this quite by chance
 
will she bring me romance
but Oh dear I do digress
I’ve always loved to dance
I found this quite by chance

Details | Brian Terry Poem

The Bee

How busy, busy is the life
Fat-arsed but Oh so humble Bumble Bee
He has no worries. What a simple life
Unhappy. How can he be?

He trundles round my garden where my roses grow
He is so gentle and slow
He always checks each blossom missing none
He drinks the nectar. Even stops to hum

Not like his cousin the Honey Bee
Which dashes here and there Shaped like a wasp
and therefore most carefully watched
Is safe in his hive and lasts the winter through. From cold he is free

The temperature tumbles
Alas the Bumbles 
No hive as such
The Queen her Workers and the independent Drones
Will die

Mind you, the drones live high wide and handsome
Once hatched they leave the nest in mid summer
Their only function is to fertilise the Queen who bids them welcome
The baby Queens live with their mother


Only the newly mated Queens will live
And start the cycle off again

Details | Brian Terry Poem

Women

Women

They can be such a pain in the arse

Never listen unless it suits

Living with them is such a farce

They can be such a pain in the arse

Intelligence is rather sparse

Never listen unless it suits

They can be such a pain in the arse

Never listen unless it suits


If only the good Lord Had been an engineer

What bliss to be a fellow

They would have switches by their ear

If only the good Lord had been an engineer

Speech On or Off and fertile On or Off. That's clear

What bliss to be a fellow

If only the good Lord had been an engineer

What bliss to be a fellow