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Best Poems Written by Brian Cooper

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

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Together we are like crisp morning snow and dry sooty oil poured onto the ground in our different ways. I putter around the home like puppy dog waiting for his next meal and she toils away at her job as an angel looking for her wings yet to be put on. Her words sweet like honey butter and light as a crisp cool spring morning gentle breeze while mine is both gruff and gentle, being abrasive at her lovely unique humor and at times cuddly as a big teddy bear.
Don’t know why she loves me so, but I am glad to know her loving heart compared to my sometimes dark and light temperament. Luckily for me, the glow of her bright soul of winter’s snow covers up the dry personality of black oil that is mine. We are of two hearts entwined where the heat of my oil in the bright hot sun will melt away the brightness of her snow, so I let her go be the person she is as I slip further into the background to be covered by the green grass.
I reside still in the ground permanently whilst she has floated to the clouds ready to rain her beautiful light touch on someone else who is easy going as the green grass swaying in the gentle wind. Together they shall hold tight together and she shall nourish him before the cycle begins anew. She will melt into him and him into her as nature’s course was meant to.
I remain in the ground subdued, anchored where I am by the very nature that gave them a life together.
It’s early spring now, the snow is melted into the green grass, but nothing will grow where the sooty black oil was. He scooped up the oil and dirt that mixed together into a container marked ‘recycle’. Keeping busy with work, he was no longer a puppy waiting on his next meal. Running on automatic though, his heart black like the sooty dried oil, he cleaned up around the small cabin. “Time to make old things new again” he silently told himself. His mind sought an answer for the scorched heart he still had from years of pain. Peace had found him, but the loss of his wife and son still haunted him, like the darkness that closed in around him.
He sought to drive away the pain as far from the dark house he had hid in. He drove away from his memories stopping at a nicely lit dancehall where he could get lost in the crowd. Sitting in the background, he noticed a spark of light in the dark. Like an owl’s piercing stare, a woman with fire in her eyes held his gaze from across the room. They grew ever so close, until the world seemed to fall away. They danced the nights away like flames on a bonfire reaching for the sky. One bright day, he sought to quench his black heart’s desire to fill his empty soul.
She came to him and they danced skin to skin. His heart beat with black oil hot as her flaming eyes. A well erupted in him like an oil strike in the desert; she quivered against him and both collapsed in a passionate embrace. As each lay satiated, the night passed in the blink of an eye and night became day. Both stayed together until the winter was upon them decades later. Both clung to each other with the strength of his heat and the fire in her eyes keeping them warm.
One day, the cabin’s caretaker did stop by to see them. They held each other in a lover’s embrace; the fuel expired and their fire had gone out. He made arrangements, stayed until things were done, and off he went. He drove into the cold winter’s wind to find relief for the vision stained upon his heart. “What makes things come and go?” he asked “Lucky are those that find another and nourishes each like snow melting onto thirsty grass and quenching each other’s needs” he thought.
The next night, he thanked the brightly burning stars above in the black sky for lighting the way home to his wife in the gently falling snow. “A fire in the dark” he said as he looked up, remembering the couple in the cabin. As he stepped out of his truck, the bright snow glided on the invisible wind, pushing it to fall where it would meet the grass in nature’s seasonal dance.

*Copyright 3/15/14

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Bipolar Zen

Unhappy face then
   Happy face now forms again
      Zen      a transitory friend


Copyright 3/11/14

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What Am I

What Am I?

I am long, dark, and sleek
I carry death and life with me
Others like me this I do seek
I can deliver death to those that I see

I have heavy doors; no windows thick 
I have a tail that is long and thin
I have a surface that is slippery and slick
Pushed by composite materials outside my skin

I have a sail and rudder but I am not a boat
I have fins but I am not a fish
I can swallow air without a throat
I can keep in the air however long you wish

I can not talk but I can make a sound
I do not travel fast but rather slow
I can see only the surface but hear all around
I can not travel high but I can go low

On the surface I may seem small
But I am larger than you will believe
I am teardrop shaped but not tall
Those I protect I hope soundly they do sleep

What am I?

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The Human Spirit

The Human Spirit

Look into my eyes
And you will see
Maybe just lies
But they can see deep

Feel my hands
They may not be rough
And feel like sand
But can return your touch

See my ears
You may think they are small
You may think they do not hear
But they listen to things heard and unheard; all

Listen to my words
You may think they are insane
And you may get bored
But I make sense even if I scream, wail, and wane

Feel my chest
You can’t feel the tightness
You can’t sense the distress
But you can’t see my feeling of righteousness


Look at my feet
you may walk down any road
You may drive any street
But you can’t navigate my soul

Then look at my whole being
You may not think I have merit 
You may not think I am worth believing
And you may not think I have fidelity

But for you I will not have contempt
And for eternity will I persist
To confront the unperceptive
For I have the human spirit

Details | Brian Cooper Poem

Ode To a Blunt Affect

Wind cuts to my feelings of indifference
for my impaired emotionless state
air freezing my facial expression 
glad of the change in environment
but can not seem to express it
living on my own like a hermit
any difference in my normal 
is like water to a dying plant
Eager to spread roots and limbs
and to bask in the warm sun 
It would be a reprieve like a
stay of execution to a convict
But here I lay or sit or stand or pace
doesn't matter which I do or don't
in a drowsy state of mind
befuddled from the medicine 
as much cure as curse
Screaming inside for relief but 
serotonin won't open my mouth 
or form the facial expression
trapped in an alternate reality
not sure if the old one was
really worth letting go of
not sure where to go from here
because I have been down this one before
too many times before I fall flat
either into overwhelming emotions
without medication or not enough
or back in a dull labotimized state of mind
how to go on standing on a double edged sword
the thing that I miss most is 
the thing that can save me 
- inspiration???
words leave my mouth with thought
but no passion involved
leaving friends and family wanting more
but more I can't provide
I feel so inept
I feel so cowardly
I feel so unworthy
I feel so lost in my own mind
Amid all this is the growing concern
I will die lying down without a concern
where I end up afterwards 
- Heaven or hell,
for either will be a welcome relief
from nothing

Details | Brian Cooper Poem

Night's Finality

Night’s Finality

by Brian Cooper

While with a therapist one day I did ask for guidance up Above
I asked for advice, my mission, or some relief
I asked for Him to show me a sign, an answer, or someone to love
My therapist said it may or may not happen; she gave me nothing but grief

That night my body had chills; my head a fever
My mind seemed to rise to a cloud soft and light
I came to a hall that seemed to go on forever
To the end stood a door of white

The door opened easily, but the air was quite still
A wall within had scenes from all of time
The beginning seemed familiar, but the end made me shrill
In the center of the room there stood Thrice

The final scene was all ladders in different countries and regions
A thought crossed my mind like Déjà vu
They seemed to be different races and religions
All climbing to the same place but could not view

I stood between the Thrice and storyboard
A creature on the left, a man in the middle, and an old man made of light
All seemed to ask silently “Choose your reward”
Speaking to all three I said “of free will if I might?”

All nodded yes, with the old man’s hands forming a steeple
The creature with horns grinned ear to ear
The man in the middle looked toward the people
My mind raced with questions, thoughts, and fear

The man in the middle caught my attention, and I looked to the end of time
I saw great chaos on earth and a sea of flames devouring an angel
Ladders led into the clouds with many believers climbing ever so high
But on the bottom rung stood a woman in white beginning to dangle

I turned back to the Thrice with tears and a frown
I drew a deep breath and couldn’t help but feel rejected
The creature grinned, the old man looked firm, and the man looked down
It seemed I had little choice but to be one of the demented

Then there came a gathering of those remaining around the sea of flames
They were just ordinary people; their faces graven with their own regret 
The woman in white wailed as the angel was no longer and ‘twas a shame
But a thought in the back of my mind said “I am NOT done yet.” 

My senses don’t seem to come, but rather just change
My being doesn’t float up, but does come alive
My thoughts before seem vivid, clear, and strange
As I wonder, “Is this Heaven, Hell, or… just Life?” 

My answer for a reward is simply this:
To be able to dance in the light
To know truth, reality, sorrow, and bliss in full view
To be able to sleep through the night
And to know finality as an Angel alongside You

Details | Brian Cooper Poem

Introduction To the Poet

Hello. I am a 20 year military veteran with a service connected disability and I don’t work.
I was born in a very small rural town with one general store that still had a kerosene pump next to a gas pump. Moving closer to the city I had more friends besides my brother, but when we moved to a major metropolitan city for my father’s job and retirement benefits, I fell short of their education expectations and realized what I was missing by being secluded in a rural town. I graduated number 301 of 600 students with new cars and even jaguars coming from a school of a class of 102 that drove older rusted mustangs and trucks.
Work life was fast food, restaurant service, and factory drudgery until friends joined to live a challenge in the Navy. I eventually caved to get a job of challenge and less of a life full of monotony. I eventually saw a life of service as an honor to those gone before to protect me. Now I am proud to keep that memory of 20 years spent honoring them and ensuring my family and friends slept soundly at home.
I now live alone quietly in the country where hustle, bustle, and the noise of strife and war are far away to allow me to relax enough to be the person I always wanted to be and not what the world wants to make me.
Rhyme and creativity comes to me in spurts because of my antidote’s side effects, but when I do I save to write and re-write when I can find the ability to not be so restless. I live to write because it seems to be my only purpose left to me because of the constraints of medication’s side effects. I often want to write on the constraints of side effects on the mentally ill that make them alive emotional and physical couch potatoes rather than the men they dreamed to be as a small child.
What I hope to accomplish here is not to just post as many poems as possible, but to accumulate more responses than poems through friends that I can learn from and improve. This in turn can help make me produce a masterpiece to be the star in a book I may pass on in death’s bed to my son, Nicholas.
Feel free to drop a line whether good or bad; I take it all in unless just dribble from haters. So please challenge me to become better and let me know where you are coming from in each comment – what you like as well as dislike both. I do not mind a negative comment as it makes your positive comments that much more gratifying.
Please keep writing my new friends although I have not met you.
Until next poem,
Brian

Best Poems Written by Brian Cooper

The Glass

Snow and Oil - Oil and Fire

Bipolar Zen

What Am I

The Human Spirit

Ode To a Blunt Affect

Night's Finality

Introduction To the Poet