(Deceit and its outcome).
With a favourable wind at your back
and me leant forward, eyes stinging
we, surprised, stumble together.
Once more you peel off another raffle ticket
from your library of lies,
the rest are shuffled together like paper money
banded by the hallmark of your guilty conscience.
But lucky for me, the one I take
slips from my suspicious fingers
thus ruining my afternoon.
As you leave me
with the swagger of a gambler
who can afford to lose her money,
at least today,
you notice the disappointment in my eyes
and re-chalk your cruel bookmaker’s slate
with the long odds of my tortured truth
© Graham Sherwood 11/2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Two Minutes
(A personal armistice reverie).
The giant bell commands a silence
with its muffled clarion,
hard struck upon my leaden heart,
self-consciously I stop, put down my work
and fall into the darkness
of a solemn solitude.
From right to left the boys go running by
towards their sure oblivion
into the angry spitting guns,
I see them sprawled across the wire
abandoned laundry hanging
stained by the stench of tattered flesh.
But from the devastating shells no sound
and all anguished cries are mute
in this living hell, seen from the darkness
of my two-minutes silence.
© Graham Sherwood 11/2011
The giant bell commands a silence
with its muffled clarion,
hard struck upon my leaden heart,
self-consciously I stop, put down my work
and fall into the darkness
of a solemn solitude.
From right to left the boys go running by
towards their sure oblivion
into the angry spitting guns,
I see them sprawled across the wire
abandoned laundry hanging
stained by the stench of tattered flesh.
But from the devastating shells no sound
and all anguished cries are mute
in this living hell, seen from the darkness
of my two-minutes silence.
© Graham Sherwood 11/2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
Saturday Night Sunday Lunch
(The futility of misplaced faith).
You push me from the crumbling edge
of a tumultuous Saturday,
into the torpor of God’s Day,
to drown there
in other people’s dreams.
But tumbling through that thicket
of the faithful,
washed by the splash of cheap communion wine
my wafer-thin atheism
is passed from mouth to mouth
for Sunday lunch.
And later, replete, our friends depart
to gird their egos once again,
sated by the tasty flesh of my
defenseless crucifixion.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
You push me from the crumbling edge
of a tumultuous Saturday,
into the torpor of God’s Day,
to drown there
in other people’s dreams.
But tumbling through that thicket
of the faithful,
washed by the splash of cheap communion wine
my wafer-thin atheism
is passed from mouth to mouth
for Sunday lunch.
And later, replete, our friends depart
to gird their egos once again,
sated by the tasty flesh of my
defenseless crucifixion.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Road Man
(A study on inappropriate footwear).
Those battered soles
that seem to walk half a pace behind
slow-hand clap your every stride
an irritating desultory applause
the metronomic drag and slap
rasps such gritty rhythms.
to a journey without destination.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
Those battered soles
that seem to walk half a pace behind
slow-hand clap your every stride
an irritating desultory applause
the metronomic drag and slap
rasps such gritty rhythms.
to a journey without destination.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
Friday, October 07, 2011
Waiting for the words to come
(Word block can be a very difficult condition, not often written about
but often complained over).
The atmosphere in the room is deafeningly silent,
gently squeezing my temples, tasting like fog.
A pregnant desolation, brightness is dark,
your face is firmly turned from mine,
choosing not to hear my cursed appeals.
I am waiting for you, I know you will speak, always do.
You lift a shoulder to give me hope,
but hope flares like a damp match, then dies
a death of cynical dissatisfaction.
Once again, I am face down in this muddy chasm
and all is quiet once more, I sleep.
Then in the warmth and turmoil of a dream
you’re there, unexpected, arms outstretched,
courting me with pretty words.
My muse.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
but often complained over).
The atmosphere in the room is deafeningly silent,
gently squeezing my temples, tasting like fog.
A pregnant desolation, brightness is dark,
your face is firmly turned from mine,
choosing not to hear my cursed appeals.
I am waiting for you, I know you will speak, always do.
You lift a shoulder to give me hope,
but hope flares like a damp match, then dies
a death of cynical dissatisfaction.
Once again, I am face down in this muddy chasm
and all is quiet once more, I sleep.
Then in the warmth and turmoil of a dream
you’re there, unexpected, arms outstretched,
courting me with pretty words.
My muse.
© Graham Sherwood 10/2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Black
(It wasn't the fact that Amy Winehouse died today
but more that so many talented people squander their gifts).
Today is black,
and deathly quiet
the music lies under a veil of black.
A tormented life has now turned black,
and talent stifled, in vague outline
is coloured in black.
Notes and words on vellum
of beauteous youth
now play starkly black,
charred and burnt.
© Graham Sherwood 7/2011
but more that so many talented people squander their gifts).
Today is black,
and deathly quiet
the music lies under a veil of black.
A tormented life has now turned black,
and talent stifled, in vague outline
is coloured in black.
Notes and words on vellum
of beauteous youth
now play starkly black,
charred and burnt.
© Graham Sherwood 7/2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Retrospect
(An observation on the irrelevance of things
that were once both important and beautiful).
Cold bedclothes strewn, abandoned parachutes
occasionally billow in rhythm to
this winter chill in summer’s sun.
I drift back to the reality of a day
from the smoking tallow of a night
blinking quickly, thinking slowly.
There the door awaits, open for me to fall through
once again bringing all my uncollected baggage
to stack neatly on your mat.
We were all beautiful once but didn’t know,
then, unhindered by regrets and
without the knowledge of the life to come.
Behind our banal conversations
we hear those old songs that
were the wallpaper of our past,
now abused in advertisements for goods
we’ll never need or want.
Now sadness for those wondrous never-ending days,
when touching flesh, hearing words and seeing love
rebounding from your lovely eyes
was all that mattered.
© Graham Sherwood 7/2011
that were once both important and beautiful).
Cold bedclothes strewn, abandoned parachutes
occasionally billow in rhythm to
this winter chill in summer’s sun.
I drift back to the reality of a day
from the smoking tallow of a night
blinking quickly, thinking slowly.
There the door awaits, open for me to fall through
once again bringing all my uncollected baggage
to stack neatly on your mat.
We were all beautiful once but didn’t know,
then, unhindered by regrets and
without the knowledge of the life to come.
Behind our banal conversations
we hear those old songs that
were the wallpaper of our past,
now abused in advertisements for goods
we’ll never need or want.
Now sadness for those wondrous never-ending days,
when touching flesh, hearing words and seeing love
rebounding from your lovely eyes
was all that mattered.
© Graham Sherwood 7/2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)