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Best Poems Written by Terry Robinson

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

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The Hangman's Whisper

A gathering of whispers travel from breath to breath,
much like trains picking up chattering gossips along its 
route. With breath held, they stand and wait to join the 
last exhale of the wretch standing on the hanging platform. 

Whilst a judge washes the atrocity from a hand that held 
a vacillating gavel. Forced into a considered judgement,
his conscience is clear. Much as a whip of feathers 
forces the killer into killing more. Whilst the birds 

above scream a lurid act of contrition for the return of 
such pathos, their miniature thoughts oscillating between 
current events and the feeding of hungry chicks. And hubris 
carries a last meal beneath distaining eye, lost to nature's 

sight, as it nears a fading gaol door. And whisper's finger 
crawls around the corner, ready to cosette a neck held within 
a gallows noose; hanging bulged against the fibre of its hemp 
curtain call. Like a veined muscle strains against the skin. 

And so, black in thought from the final deed, whisper 
reaches its sanctuary hole, shaped long in the ground. 
And whisper's voice, watching the earth worms preparing 
the way for the soft flesh to come, speaks one final time 
'Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine'

And an earth-harried soul is finally released

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Cancer

Hold back the hour.
Stop the tears from flowing.
Breathe again untainted air.
Take back my bones, my breasts,
and race forward to passion once more

Hold back the hour,
before the ravaging of every sinew
and fleeting glimpse of salvation, and
forced pity encroached upon my earth

Hold back the hour,
before tested strength
proves weakened failure
and commitment runs a ragged road

Before privacy alludes
and birds no longer sing for me,
or the pinch of reality is drugged 
away before the fluttering of breath 

Now bring back the hour
let the tears flow
I’m ready

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

A Reasonable Crime

Dark to black and beaten skin to living bone. 
Chosen by name and marked by birth. 

You hang me, cajole me and yellow badge me. 
You segregate, strip and stick me. Jackboot, 
shoot and gas me, but most of all you humiliate 
me. You denigrate my living soul 

A nation of teutons, with stiff arms and 
hearts fired with ice and faux compassioned 
isolation. You, who possess the freedom to hate 
without reproach are abhorred, like the 
craven lice you name me to be

Now, free from your chains, I rise up. And,
without trial, I beat you with relish and hang you
with my revenge-filled heart. Is this not a
reasonable crime? Will my peers turn away an
understandable eye? Where does my revenge end 
and your piety-ridden justice begin? 

You, sat in your smug-filled homes, wearing your 
warm coats and smoking your dollar-cancered cigars,
eating your belly-filling beliefs. Drinking with your
full-sized families while reading through your 
victory-fogged lenses.

I am hungry and I shall be fed. But I;  I shall feed upon
dead beliefs and drink without a full-sized family.

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

Suicide By White Horses

Strong white riders saddled atop tempestuous verdant freckles,
roil like flecks of spittle across a horses hard ridden muzzle.
The charging equine manes of the waves thrash the tormented sea livid, 
towards the perfect storm

Vicious white caps wait for foolhardy prey to cross their path.
An obliging soul stands upon the quay, eyes anchored upon
the maelstrom.
Breath synchronised,
to the seething ebb and flow of earth's pulsing feud with its moon. 

A rush,
to join the dance of scourging testament to roughened waters
brings panicked breathing at the bottom of light-starved troughs. 
Where the crashing sounds of retribution meets the ears 
and a vengeful smothering of mouth stills the breath. 

A pointless struggle where none exists, and the triumphant sea
has its victim. 
The victim? A solution

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

I, In the Third Person

I feel the sweat of a race not run
and hold the clench of a stomach churned,
as I crumble and fall, using artifice to
fool this world of my consummate ease

This daily pulse has blood flow restricted, 
like the sparrow evading the falcons dance.
And I,  in the third person try so hard
to solicit speech from this frozen mouth

My time has come to stand upon this stage
and fill the pledge to tickets bought.
And to earn my daily crust, whilst hoping
the ink of fear does not write upon my face

And by the end of day to feel
like an egg dashed against a wall,
breaking into a thousand ruined nerves,
killing all the life within this rain - soaked
hesitant voice

To begin this all again tomorrow.
This troubled journey of wornboards
and featureless landscapes trapped by
a scream hidden in fog

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

The Destruction of Planet Number Three

The sun's savage fingers have penetrated
the calving sheets of ice, delving deeply 
beneath the blankets of the frozen surface.

And the oceans, bruised mauve and swollen 
like a pregnant whore, rail against the rocks
of man's kingdoms with their bowels ripped 
open by bleached coral and rising temperatures;

from which clouds rise up, bitter like a smog 
eclipsed sun, only to fall back to earth with 
corruption pinned to the coat tails of every raindrop. 
And, across the fields, a coal-filled crystalline air 

drives a guilty world's dreams towards unprotected 
lungs and evaporating lands. Where oil worshipped 
totums portray the sordid lucre of promised bounty,
producing lopsided views of a dying humanity

And the keeper of the rain forest's keys deals with a 
polluted man, chain saw in one hand and palm oil in 
the other. Leaving the abandoned trees to rage 
unheard against the indignity of their rape. 

Leaving embattled tribes, gentle guardians of the land, to
stand defenceless against the idolatry of the dollar; whose
spiteful colours of destruction are spreading their kaleidoscopic 
tendrils across a world full of dust bowls and refugee famine

Proud are we who stand tall against a world that gave us
a garden to play in and a sea to banquet on. And proud are 
we who make the toys that blast holes out of creation and 
bind the full power of the sun's wrath against such a tiny emblem

"Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much. Wisdom
is humble that he knows not more" (William Cowper 1785)

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

Jack's Frost

The grey mists of a sleeping dawn, cosetting birds still
wrapped up warm in bed, watch a stoat emerge from
its burrow and sprint across his meadow, like a caterpillar
making humped back bridges in Concertina motion

The stoat approaches the discarded shape and sniffs it 
for signs of danger, life and food. In that order. Looming 
like mountains on the ground and covered in a Turin 
Shroud of frost, are a child's pair of crumpled denim blue 

jeans, vapoured brittle-stiff with ice crystals overnight from 
the nearby stream . Which still wends it's course beneath 
ice-capped plates, upon which faux steam rises up like 
volcanic springs. 

The shape also manifests a pair of very small dumpster boots, 
made for the tough little boy of tomorrow. The set is 
completed by a vibrant red jumper, a little too big for the lifeless
form it covers. This hoar, this frost of disjointed frozen dendrites, 

rests calmly upon this physical testament to the now peaceful 
soul that lies within. Whose lungs beneath lie dormant and past 
caring, whether or not the air is fresh and cold on its failed 
breath. Alibaster-marbeled skin profers one hand raised in a 

Post mortem wave. And a lid's refusal to fully shut one eye,
desperate to remain in contact with a living world and deny 
the truth of having passed. What the eye has really become is
a dull reflective mirror for the twitching movements of an inquisitive 

proboscis. This draws the eye of a man, standing at a man's 
full height, able to see across two hundred paces of a frost 
bitten meadow and light upon the vivid colour of red, set against 
a backdrop of rime white. Eventually, a voice from the ether 

confirms the location by a frozen stream and supports the 
recommendation to keep the mother away. The devastation
of a hundred heart-stopping caught breaths yet to be lived.
Before the tears can flow and the utter destruction begin

The startled stoat runs away from its own reflection. Back 
to the warmth and safety of its hole, in the bank on the Stream. 
And the grey mists sadly watch the final act, before its last few 
screaming tendrils are burned away on the coming sun

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

The Last Time That God Lost His Faith

I was there, the last time that God lost
His Faith. Admittedly, since the death 
of His Son, there have been a few bad 
years that could have influenced His 

decision. He sent a note to the self-
regulating Heads of His Church, 
those collectors of the faithful, that 
they had lost their 'Master of Ceremonies '.

And yet, like the perpetual turning of a 
water wheel, the world continued to turn 
on its axis. And its ghostly moon continued 
to reflect the sun. Man still either hated or 

loved his fellow man. And, in His absentia, 
the deacons of His faith still pressed on with 
their own brand of unctuousness, ensuring 
every reverent man remained in tow. And 

that the much needed zealot didnt become 
rudderless without the smoke and mirrors of 
Dorothys Grand Wizard. Too many careers had 
come to fully rely upon God's franchise. Perhaps

that was what He had lost faith in? The burden 
of carrying an overloaded workforce. However,
the Lord did eventually regain His Faith.
How do I know? Well, for a while I was one

of the chosen. So, there you have it. No poets 
code, no similes or rhyme. Just plenty of irony 
and pith. Sorry to all of the faithfil if I didn't use
enough parable or the requsite dose of deference and guilt. 

For you see, I've lost my faith.

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

Culloden

Paler than the hills I walk
I hear the bleat of sheep long still
and see the thistles of the Saltire’s home,
yet wear the weave of no clan’s name

The red of my discordant neck carries
the match of a thousand morning skies.
When shepherds take warning and
storms make wilful sport

And those same maelstroms
that play a dirge upon my soul.
twist my limbs like the elasticated 
stretch of an eviscerated gut 

So, let me taste this air of
bitter sweet remembrances,
and at last set forth toward
that brightest of lights

Details | Terry Robinson Poem

Sleeping In the Rain

Every step forward brings an 
energised momentum. Leading
me toward a portal which leads
me to the Styx ferryman

I am confronted with this resoundingly
unique shape, the emblem of its industry.
His coffin puts out its tentacle seeking my
name

Past aisles filled with 'fag-ash' Lils and lipstick
smothered whore's, I walk inexorably 
on. Past the row of walking stick,
benefits claiming, blue badge carrying,
hand-me-downs. 

And those 'mutter-under-the-Breath' blue 
veined brigade, always ready to Judge the 
dress you've chosen for such a solemn occasion. 
Well, today I didn't let them down!

When I get there, what I see is a pseudo-realistic
pantomime.  A Frieze of alibaster-marbeled 
features, a mask of barely recognisable
'What used to be'

I'm confused. Am I supposed to love
this empty form of you? Should I kiss 
your brow? And taste the loss of you 
on my lips.

 Or enter into a pact of believing  that 
you lie there, waiting to kiss me back.
What I want is to be  guaranteed  this 
will never happen to me again. 

I want to be able to give my love to 
someone and not have it thrown back 
when their 'use by date' has expired

I want the time, before time stopped,
to start again. I want the muscles in my
neck to become unknotted and my wine
bill to become averagely normal again.

Oh, and I want his wife to know I 
was the other woman