In one of my uni classes we were asked to share a poem we wrote when we were younger. As we were all English Lit graduates, we had all written poetry at some point. I went to find my poems, feeling sure that I'd find at least a couple of them in my trunk, that reservoir of my memories.
I found the right journal immediately, and after flicking through it a bit, found that I had put a small collection of my poems in the back of the book. There were seven, including one that I thought I had lost completely. Just in case I do lose them, I'm going to put them here. Don't feel obliged to read them - or critique them!
The Block of Flats
The sun is a shimmering wave of heat,
Beating relentlessly on the red brick walls
Of the block of flats.
The still air is thick with humidity;
Behind the silence is the hum of traffic,
Vast distances away,
For a moment there is a slight bustling,
A baby cries; a blast of music; a door slams;
A slight wind moves paper.
The flats look as if they are deserted.
People remain indoors in the thick shade,
They wish it was winter.
Snow falls silently over the grass,
The cruel wind swishing it to and fro
To cover the flats.
Now everything is sparkling silver and white;
Children look out over the snow, but they
Are not allowed out.
A snowplough scrapes snow off the streets,
Piling it high on the sides of the roads;
There is just ice now.
The flats look as if they are deserted.
People remain indoors in the thin warmth;
They wish is was summer.
Feb 1985 (Age 14)
The Old House
An old, decaying house.
Once, once it was beautiful;
Once it was clean and bright and
Full of people.
People with laughing, ringing voices.
Once it was loved by th 4echildren
Who ran in the yard that spolled over
With flowers, and the whole place
Teemed with life.
Once.
An old, decaying house.
The garden is matted with weeds,
And brambles grow through the door;
The timbers rot, and the paint flakes.
But maybe, someday,
Someday someone iwth come.
They will come and see
Past the brambles and the cracks;
They will see past the
Black, empty eyes and the grim mouth,.
They will fall in love with it,
For what it was, and what it
Still wants to be.
They will caress the rotten timbers
And tend the strangled garden,
And bit by loving, caring but
They will restore life to the
Old, decaying house.
Sept '88 (Age 17)
This one's in a similar vein:
Will Someone Save My Rotting Timbers?
Sometimes I feel like an
Old, abandoned house,
Standing on the edge of a busy road.
I fell that, although once
I was beautiful, elegant and upright,
Now, through years of neglect,
My paint has cracked, my garden is
Hopelessly overrun by
Evil weeds,
My timbers are slowly rotting away,
Soon there will be nothing left
But an empty shell,
Incapable of housing anything
Save vagrants and mice.
People see me every day;
They see me rotting quietly away,
As they pass me,
Pass me by,
With their happiness and laughter
Saved for someone who can
Share in it.
If only someone could see me for
What I really am.
If someone would only weed my mind,
Clean me, paint me,
And I would be as new,
Ready with an open door,
To love.
Sept '88, again.
Summer Solace
Trees. Trees that invite me
To enfold myself and hide
Within the
Graceful waterfall of foliage.
To be wrapped in leafy arms
That will never abandon me,
That will caress me
With tender strokes,
And whisper quiet comforts.
Trees that challenge me
To wrestle with their
Mighty boughs.
To climb and climb until
I am so sprarate that
I can shout and laugh
And cry without shame,
And find new strenth in the
Leafy branches that hold me.
Trees that offer soothing shade;
A gnarled bench on which to
Find repose for my body and soul,
And absorb the calm and colour
And life that surrounds me,
And breath deeply the scents of
Sap and leaf and the
Deep, dark dankness of the Earth,
And to be at one with it all.
Sept '88 (again!). My 19-year-old self thought this was my best work yet.
Sonnet (!)
I woke, and from my bed I swiftly rose,
Stretching and stirring myself from my repose,
I fling the dimming shutters open wide
And view the visual paradise outside.
Each morning when I wake I see this sight,
And loathe I am to close it out by night.
The brightest sparkling greens of lushest lawn,
Glints in the sunlight caught by dew at dawn.
Fire-blue flies, a flash of military red,
Attracts the sleeper early from her bed,
The morning breeze bright flowers gently sways,
Sweet mingling scents and birdsong fill the air.
A roarming stream arond stones and bushes plays;
Soft rippling music draws the walker near.
Dec '89
Candle Wax
A candle shets teardrops of molten wax
More easily than I can cry.
Lingering a moment in its pool, the droplet
Slips, running down smoothly and quickly -
A relief, it seems - it streams and trickles,
And as it cools it makes strange shapes and patterns,
Ripples and waves caught in motion, in wax;
Crests and leaps and overhanging droplets
On the pointing of falling, hanging, seeming
Precariously suspended, yet firmly held.
A brief glimpse of emotion,
Quickly cooled, its flow checked,
Precariously suspended, yet firmly held.
June 1990
The Diarist
Opening my Book, my thoughts begin to mass,
Ready and poised to fly, and then to swoop and wheel.
Conflicting emotions vie with each other
For a place in my solitary musings.
Rave and dove compete in a flurry
Of beak and feather, voice and talon;
A confusiong of images: reality and dreams
Hopelessly blended as my brain is swamped
With a deluge of thought and feeling.
Joy soars and glides on an outstretched wing,
Graceful and without violence, but vulnerable;
Anger packs and claws its way ruthlessly
Through the tranquility, trailing debris.
Passion seldom shows itself, but each time
With devastating flashes of fire and colour;
Grief circles slowly, around and around,
Heavy and cumbersome, seemingly waiting...
Happiness darts freely in and about,
With bursts of music, laughter and sunlight;
Love flies into the sun, glorious and dazzling
And blinding, and exquisite torture,
Its heat and light defying mortal endurance.
Each cries out simultaneously in joy or pain,
Each utterance more intense than the last.
My pen is too slow to catch more than a
Fleeting impression, a vague suggestion,
Scrabbling in vain to capture the sound,
To distinguish one from another.
I sob at my impotence to still the beating wings
Within my page, my words insufficient cages
To hold such magnificent, overpowering creatures.
I sigh, and tear at my hair, a handful
Of tailfeathers the only prize for my efforts.
18 Aug 1990
If you have read this far, I thank you. But I also remind you that I never said that they were any good!!
I found the right journal immediately, and after flicking through it a bit, found that I had put a small collection of my poems in the back of the book. There were seven, including one that I thought I had lost completely. Just in case I do lose them, I'm going to put them here. Don't feel obliged to read them - or critique them!
The Block of Flats
The sun is a shimmering wave of heat,
Beating relentlessly on the red brick walls
Of the block of flats.
The still air is thick with humidity;
Behind the silence is the hum of traffic,
Vast distances away,
For a moment there is a slight bustling,
A baby cries; a blast of music; a door slams;
A slight wind moves paper.
The flats look as if they are deserted.
People remain indoors in the thick shade,
They wish it was winter.
Snow falls silently over the grass,
The cruel wind swishing it to and fro
To cover the flats.
Now everything is sparkling silver and white;
Children look out over the snow, but they
Are not allowed out.
A snowplough scrapes snow off the streets,
Piling it high on the sides of the roads;
There is just ice now.
The flats look as if they are deserted.
People remain indoors in the thin warmth;
They wish is was summer.
Feb 1985 (Age 14)
The Old House
An old, decaying house.
Once, once it was beautiful;
Once it was clean and bright and
Full of people.
People with laughing, ringing voices.
Once it was loved by th 4echildren
Who ran in the yard that spolled over
With flowers, and the whole place
Teemed with life.
Once.
An old, decaying house.
The garden is matted with weeds,
And brambles grow through the door;
The timbers rot, and the paint flakes.
But maybe, someday,
Someday someone iwth come.
They will come and see
Past the brambles and the cracks;
They will see past the
Black, empty eyes and the grim mouth,.
They will fall in love with it,
For what it was, and what it
Still wants to be.
They will caress the rotten timbers
And tend the strangled garden,
And bit by loving, caring but
They will restore life to the
Old, decaying house.
Sept '88 (Age 17)
This one's in a similar vein:
Will Someone Save My Rotting Timbers?
Sometimes I feel like an
Old, abandoned house,
Standing on the edge of a busy road.
I fell that, although once
I was beautiful, elegant and upright,
Now, through years of neglect,
My paint has cracked, my garden is
Hopelessly overrun by
Evil weeds,
My timbers are slowly rotting away,
Soon there will be nothing left
But an empty shell,
Incapable of housing anything
Save vagrants and mice.
People see me every day;
They see me rotting quietly away,
As they pass me,
Pass me by,
With their happiness and laughter
Saved for someone who can
Share in it.
If only someone could see me for
What I really am.
If someone would only weed my mind,
Clean me, paint me,
And I would be as new,
Ready with an open door,
To love.
Sept '88, again.
Summer Solace
Trees. Trees that invite me
To enfold myself and hide
Within the
Graceful waterfall of foliage.
To be wrapped in leafy arms
That will never abandon me,
That will caress me
With tender strokes,
And whisper quiet comforts.
Trees that challenge me
To wrestle with their
Mighty boughs.
To climb and climb until
I am so sprarate that
I can shout and laugh
And cry without shame,
And find new strenth in the
Leafy branches that hold me.
Trees that offer soothing shade;
A gnarled bench on which to
Find repose for my body and soul,
And absorb the calm and colour
And life that surrounds me,
And breath deeply the scents of
Sap and leaf and the
Deep, dark dankness of the Earth,
And to be at one with it all.
Sept '88 (again!). My 19-year-old self thought this was my best work yet.
Sonnet (!)
I woke, and from my bed I swiftly rose,
Stretching and stirring myself from my repose,
I fling the dimming shutters open wide
And view the visual paradise outside.
Each morning when I wake I see this sight,
And loathe I am to close it out by night.
The brightest sparkling greens of lushest lawn,
Glints in the sunlight caught by dew at dawn.
Fire-blue flies, a flash of military red,
Attracts the sleeper early from her bed,
The morning breeze bright flowers gently sways,
Sweet mingling scents and birdsong fill the air.
A roarming stream arond stones and bushes plays;
Soft rippling music draws the walker near.
Dec '89
Candle Wax
A candle shets teardrops of molten wax
More easily than I can cry.
Lingering a moment in its pool, the droplet
Slips, running down smoothly and quickly -
A relief, it seems - it streams and trickles,
And as it cools it makes strange shapes and patterns,
Ripples and waves caught in motion, in wax;
Crests and leaps and overhanging droplets
On the pointing of falling, hanging, seeming
Precariously suspended, yet firmly held.
A brief glimpse of emotion,
Quickly cooled, its flow checked,
Precariously suspended, yet firmly held.
June 1990
The Diarist
Opening my Book, my thoughts begin to mass,
Ready and poised to fly, and then to swoop and wheel.
Conflicting emotions vie with each other
For a place in my solitary musings.
Rave and dove compete in a flurry
Of beak and feather, voice and talon;
A confusiong of images: reality and dreams
Hopelessly blended as my brain is swamped
With a deluge of thought and feeling.
Joy soars and glides on an outstretched wing,
Graceful and without violence, but vulnerable;
Anger packs and claws its way ruthlessly
Through the tranquility, trailing debris.
Passion seldom shows itself, but each time
With devastating flashes of fire and colour;
Grief circles slowly, around and around,
Heavy and cumbersome, seemingly waiting...
Happiness darts freely in and about,
With bursts of music, laughter and sunlight;
Love flies into the sun, glorious and dazzling
And blinding, and exquisite torture,
Its heat and light defying mortal endurance.
Each cries out simultaneously in joy or pain,
Each utterance more intense than the last.
My pen is too slow to catch more than a
Fleeting impression, a vague suggestion,
Scrabbling in vain to capture the sound,
To distinguish one from another.
I sob at my impotence to still the beating wings
Within my page, my words insufficient cages
To hold such magnificent, overpowering creatures.
I sigh, and tear at my hair, a handful
Of tailfeathers the only prize for my efforts.
18 Aug 1990
If you have read this far, I thank you. But I also remind you that I never said that they were any good!!
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