National poetry day 2015

A Morning Walk… 

The pink hues of the morning are a welcome release

Their fingers reaching into the midnight blue

The clouds that have muffled the sounds

As the hours creep across the clock

Are gradually losing their menace.

 

 

The shadows have danced a secret waltz

Entwined together in a formal masquerade

They have spent all night melted into darkness

For these short sunrise snapshots

They can rejoice until they are lost again.

 

 

The gentle hum of the world has already begun

And yet just the flutter of the birds waking

Decorate the delicious silence

Between my footsteps

A soft drumbeat.

 

My eyes have forgotten to look for the signs

In moments we’ve gone from darkness

Into the pale yellow light of discovery

A painter’s palette of prose

Just waiting to be found.

 

A whistle as a bird weaves through the morning

Its feathers caught in the first hints of sunrise

A watercolour wash is gradually fading

The deep blues of a sunshine day emerging

Its warmth tickling my skin as a walk.

 

 © 2015

National Poetry Day – 2nd October

I am often found, on national poetry day reconnected with the work I find is the true calling of my heart.
When my office was just 5 of us crowded in a small space I would write a poem and send it around, promoting poetry and my love of it. I was scared today to do this as we are not a group of 16, but I bit the bullet. Sat with my coffee and the theme of ‘remember’ I wrote this…
I will email it around work later and the wider world, it’s not showing of, it’s making it accessible… I hope!

REMEMBER ME

I am that breath you held as you heard
The first echo of morning battle
The darkness had made ghosts of us
All settled behind the trench line
Upon the rising sun a symphony
Of war cry hallelujah attacks towards.

I am the slide of soil as you stretch
Your body morphed into a soilder
Alert and prepared you find your fingers
Grasping for the trigger of an imaginary gun
The grey light of dawn has dulled all
The flashes of fire fights behind your lids.

I am the memories dancing around you
Soldiers with their bodies pressed against
A mother sitting so patiently in the watch tower
Her son will not return and she’s yet to know
The bird songs have long since gone
Just the light of morning as our blanket.

Today we move.
Today we fight.
Today we collect colours and images 
A scrap book of horrors we’ll hide away
Grasping for the trigger of his imaginary gun.

(C) IRWMRH 2014

View of the estuary

The splash of colour has burst through

It’s red and pinks against the full green

A tree so full of life it dances in place

Reaching high into the sheer blue sky

It has taken a deep long breath of the

Salty sea breeze that sweeps around here

Today the blue is flat and bright with sunshine

Two boats in once place as the ripples breaks reflections.

 

 

(c) IRWMRH

A threatening outlook

Those clouds are dancing
Winding their way around us
They do not seem to care if we are covered
Or laid bare to sun and wind alike
They reflect only the white of the marked lines
The grey of our chilled skin can be found
In the distant threatened storm
A call, or shout gets lost amongst the whirling winds
If we all jump as the gust comes through
We might fly and dive and swoop
Instead, we fight, faces turned, into the day ahead.

IRWMRH 2014 (c)

I do what i do… (A Sunday Afternoon Verse)

“I do what I do…”

 

I do what I do

No more no less

For love

That is the final

Reason for anything

Because I love you

The smell of autumn

Of any season at all

The silence of an afternoon

The echo of a favourite song

The burn of muscles –

After a extra hard run

The cheer of winning teams

The feel of souring joy –

At the moves of a dancer

The way the sun shines

The way my heart sings

The way you smile at me –

When you catch my eye

Colours all lined up

A smell of new –

Or old –

Books lined up waiting

Your laugh when I joke

The way the blanket falls

The job well done

The dinner served

The clink of glass

The lights turned down

The photos turned out just right

I do what I do

No more no less

For love

That is the final

Reason for anything

Because I love.

 

IRWMRH(c)2013

Water – an ode on National Poetry Day 2013

“Water”

I hear the sighs escape quietly
I have to listen hard to number them
The breathes settle across the sand
Each four I hear a deeper lungful
And the exhale almost reaches me
It’s ghost moves the shingles closer
The Colours are almost non existent
A greyscale montage of sky and shore
I let my own breaths mirror it
Deep in then out for longer
Letting the pace settle me with its regularity
The depression of the surroundings bring a happiness
Like a rainy day from the inside viewed
The cold air does not bother me from here
Again on the fourth a louder sigh from inside the beast
And I feel it, inside me this time
I have sat here too long it seems
The sea water has seeped into my being
I shall return again tomorrow
Watch the crashing waves and maybe even venture in
Let the water surround me
Let it sink back into my soul.

IRWMRH2013(c)

Poetry about a Novel…

My coffee cup has long since cooled

it’s contents just a shallow pool of brown

my feet pressed against the red leather armrest

a gentle numbness sits at my ankles

cross and uncross legs until i’m settled

I have let too much distract me to now

and yet my mind has little to fill it

the carpet vacuumed long ago and dishes done

it is easier to find the perfect soundtrack

research the ideal recipe for meatballs

contact friends from days already passed

and yet I am settled here and waiting

excited anticipation to tell this adventure

the words too many to count whirl around

the flashing cursor sitting ready for me

sitting ready for me

sitting ready for me

sitting ready for me

instead i click shuffle on the playlist

and hope the gentle emo drumbeat

will inspire a sentence soon.

 

(C) IRWMRH 2013

We stand as Nine

The eyes of our mythology gaze across
Histories of titans rise to meet again
The red tail of monsters brought to life
Sweeping across the blazon cross of rivals
We are caught in the cross fire of waiting
anticipation and excitement bubbling
under the reds and greys of branded armour
we are brought together
Armed and ready.

Upon the 3rd call we hear the roar of Cymru
shouts melded together as one
hand raised in prayer to the cloud filled skies
muscles warmed and stretched
spring to action the thud of footfall on grass
The swoosh of ball through air
Hands to hands to ground
Repeat.
Hands to hands and score?

The scream of cheers and celebration
Played out upon the outer reaches
Well away from the white tented village
The red our colour worn brave
We fight our demons imagined here
Created wars and conflicts
Played out amongst the calls of play
A smile well hidden amongst the set faces
Five times we fought them all.

Arms wrapped around our warrior friends
Tired legs just barely standing
Smiles no longer forced as cameras flash
Celebrations spread long into the dark
Glasses clunked together raised high
Horizons already promised and day dreamed
Future hopes kept moving by liquid joy
We stand as 9 plus two, stronger.

(C) BWS2013

Rhythm Inside…

At the start of April, 30 days spread out like a horizon of golden wheat, barely moving in the gentle wind, it felt like a battle, a long and up hill battle.

Now I’m in May i’m a little overwhelmed that April is over, it was lost to work and weekends and sport, but amongst all of that, poetry flowed through my veins, everyday, I had to find the words, pluck them out of my mind and put them into some kind of order.

It was utterly exhausting on some days, finding those words when all i wanted to do was sleep, or curl into the splitting headache that was reverberating through my brain. But I wrote, and they were not elegant, or perfect, or even anything I would click ‘SAVE’ on if I was just working. But I set myself some rules, rather than pick words from poems already started, every evening I would open a new post on my blog, and write straight into it, no drafts, no re-writes, but what i wanted to say on that day, and it worked.

All of these 30 poems could be worth something, I may only edit 3 of them, and only 1 may become anything that I try and do anything with, but after just 1 month, i have 30 poems to play with. That is a massive step forward for me.

One of the comments from my College poetry professor when he saw my work from the term i was with him, was that i was prolific, that doesn’t mean that it was any good, but at least I was able to get the words out of my mind.

I’ve struggled with that for a while now, it has become too easy to have the conversation with myself in my mind, and hold the verse under lock and key, worried that it is just a waste of time and I wasn’t good enough to waste the paper with my words. 

Forcing myself to write has opened my heart up to so much more, it’s given me a freedom I didn’t really know I needed. Each night I would ready my wife a ‘bed time poem’, she would cuddle in and comment on the bits she liked, or didn’t like, and sometimes, she’s just smile and say ‘perfect’.

In my heart there lives a poet, and a writer, and everything in between, and this challenge has just opened my eyes to exactly what I can manage when i try….

… After all if one poem can be written as a I walk up a hill in the Devon countryside, I’m sure I can find the time to write in the coming months, right?!

Day 30: If… (NaPoWriMo)

If Morgan Freeman narrated my life

I would walk tall

head held high

with a swagger

although not all the time

sometimes I would sit

against a tree

and dream away the day

with a wistful look upon my face

He would explain my dreams

to anyone who listened

I would settle my sunglasses

upon the top of my head

pull my jacket collar up

I’d be the image of attitude

but I wouldn’t be smug

he’d comment on that for sure

I’d let him just sigh

when i’d had a bad day

and laugh when I stumbled or fell

If Morgan Freeman narrated my life.

 

 

(c) IRWMRH IP2013