Falling

(The futility of falling in love).

Of happiness, but does he ask
the venerable, winking Hotei why?
With a smile, though some would say a cynics grin,
laughter leaches from his mouth unbidden,
wrapped in the paper-thin sarcasm of an unwanted gift.
He dances to the merry tune,
but heavy feet may be his downfall yet
as songs of emerging love and longing
start sweet and low
then finish in a hale and hearty lust.
So happiness is indeed within him,
he feels her warmth
wrapped tightly to his chest
caressed, as with the hangman’s noose
he swiftly falls
through the waiting, gaping trap of love.

© Graham Sherwood 12/2011

Tomb Angel

(In a graveyard).

Captivated, I can only stare as
you appear, a ghost to me.
Tell me how I should love you?
Without a touch, the feintest scent,
nor hidden smile on chiselled cheeks.
Ageless, set in such nubile torpidity,
your sombre marbled eyes
propose the question that stony lips
are doomed ne’er to form.
Demure sentinel, beautiful guardian
waiting for me.


© Graham Sherwood 12/2011

Friday Lies

(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

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

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

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

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