I Rise in Joy
Oh skittering magpies
Harbingers of perdition.
Black tongued cajolers
Chattering on the bare limbs.
Do you foretell my death
Or do you laugh to scorn,
Cackle at my misfortune?
You ill omened birds,
Be not the augury.
You teller's of tales,
Bringers of despair.
You heralded my loss
And fed upon my despair.
Flee from me, away,
For I am a sun reborn
And, Nemisis.
A scourge to burn,
Scour with penetrating light,
To leave you only ashes,
Wind blown memories.
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poem by Paul Brookes
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A War to End War.................
Where poppies used to grow
Now a theatre of muddy war.
Hear England’s best did bleed
To seed the earth with death,
Upon the killing fields;
And shell shocked men did quake
With each blaze of cannonades that
Shook the already savaged ground.
Here sad corpses lay unburied;
Never to see homeward shores
But to lie discomfited, lost;
In the cold discolured earth.
A war to end war?
No, so here we are again,
Our soldiers bravely die.
Lost in another foreign field
Where opium poppies grow.
poem by Paul Brookes
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Waiting For A Call
The telephone lies silent
It has laryngitis I fear.
I sit staring at it,
Mutely it stares back.
I'd gladly take a call from the double glazing people,
You know the ones who call on spec,
Just to hear a friendly voice.
Is the instrument still working?
I call the speaking clock,
Just to make sure,
Just to hear a voice,
Reverently replacing the receiver.
I watch the clock.
Time crawls.
The silence gnaws at my ears.
And still, yes still,
The telephone lies silent.
P H Brookes Copyright 2012
poem by Paul Brookes
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Joy Will Return
When in a pit of deep despair
And no light pierces the dark.
Remember there will be a day
When joy will return.
When hopeless tears are shed
And life seems bitter, dead.
Remember there will be a day
When joy will return
When days seem drear and sad
And you feel you'll never laugh.
Remember there will be a day
When joy will return.
Then suddenly the day will dawn
And you give that first guilty laugh.
You will know deep inside,
Though won't admit,
Joy has returned
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poem by Paul Brookes
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A Faining Faineant
An idle thought
Idly thought,
By a thoughtful idler
Idling away his time
In timely thoughts.
Unthoughtful at the time.
Timely brought to the fore.
Idle at four, a forethought.
Insolent in his indolence,
With indolent thoughts
A faining faineant.
Thinking hearty thoughts,
Complacent contemplating.
Mental mentation.
A mediating meditation.
Ruminating the rudiments.
Reflecting inflexion.
Musing on amusing musings.
Head in the clouds,
Not averse to consider verse.
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poem by Paul Brookes
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Finale (Stream XII)
What is what
And who is who,
So where are we.
Are we where we want to be?
Ah that's the thing,
The thing that intrudes.
An intruder,
The silence roars it,
Unseen it's there
Separating us
This wall of glass,
Makes us mute.
We drift apart,
A space between.
We cannot span the gulf.
Islands we drift apart.
Fall apart.
We are divided
And divided we fall,
Fallen out of love.
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poem by Paul Brookes
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No Pity.
Hear the anger of spoiled youth,
With their hard words.
They have no pity.
Spewing out their bile
To mangle and eschew.
We live with their forbearance.
We the old and frail.
Who once like them
Gloried in the sun,
Were gods in our day.
Now we moulder
Like staues left out.
Too long in the tooth
We peal and crack.
Split by iron frost.
Weathered by rain.
Worn down, tired, by
Untenable trials of life.
Ah but our inner lives,
There we live again as gods,
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poem by Paul Brookes
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Safe Haven
Where speaks thought?
The inner soliloquy.
That which builds mountains
Creates entire worlds
That float with no substance.
A deep inner life non dare see.
The fevered overflow that sustains,
Gives life the earthly desert
To endure the everyday.
Enables a life rich and fertile
Whilst mundane tasks performed.
Yet all around madness flows,
The insanities of greed and lust
Where beauty's lost and love despised.
These inner thoughts do give me strength,
Help to ride the tortuous path,
And bring me home to you.
poem by Paul Brookes
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Morning After
When morning comes with its dewy light
And the first shafts peak through the window.
I see you gently slumbering your lips slightly apart
You lie passive and gentle.
Unlike the passion of the night before
When wrapped in the velvet night
We ate hungrily at each other, insatiable,
To gobble up each tender morsel.
We savoured the taste of each other
You smelled of roses, a deep musk,
I drank you in like a fine wine.
We coiled in the serpent act.
Then we lay sated, replete,
To gently drift into sleep
P H Brookes Copyrithg 2011
poem by Paul Brookes
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Forgotten Dead
In this city of death
Sculpted stones lie prone or tilted
Like crooked teeth much decayed.
Fallen markers and forgotten names.
The RIPs of the dearly beloved
Lie here muddied.
No floral tributes laid.
The forgotten dead.
Laid here by the equally forgotten
Man's construct de-constructed.
Scattered.
Demolished.
Marble words once carved deep
Now weather worn or greened with moss
Are muddled, becoming a problematic script,
No translation,
An undecipherable code.
Soon the words will be dust.
Erased from memory.
Mixed in earth.
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poem by Paul Brookes
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