Poem a day challenge #117 (Galaxy)

Galaxy (A Nonet)

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Black hole quasar NASA
Black hole quasar NASA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Swirling, whirling milky clouds of stars
Spiralling down to the black hole
Supermassive hungry dark
Swallowing all it can
Axle of the wheel
Sparkling star arms
Shining cloud
Holds our
Home 

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Poem a day challenge #116 (The House of Bailey)

The House of Bailey

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Heart lifts
When I lift him high
Heart skips
With her every kiss
Through darkness and troubled times
Our place has held us
I return with joy
To the walls
My son
My wife
My home

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Poem a day challenge #115 (Nostalgia)

Nostalgia

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Worn wooden floor
Distant, ancient scent
Tobacco long gone
Beer, deep red in thick glass
Salt and vinegar crisps
Pickled eggs
Pickled patrons
Warmth and welcome
Long gone like the smoke
One missed

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Poem a day challenge #114 (Uncaring Mirth)

Uncaring Mirth

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Laughter echoes
In rarefied halls
Between clinks from glasses
Raised in champagne toasts
While expensive soles
Walk heavy
On broken dreams and despair

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Poem a day challenge #113 (Errors)

Errors

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Mistakes seep into
Our minds through repetition
Habitual truth’s born

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Poem a day challenge #112 (News)

News

By Scott Bailey © 2013

What’s behind the story
What is the reason for that news
Who gets the benefit, the prize
The envelope with the bread
The law successfully passed
The company tracked greased
Somebody’s life made easier
At the cost of somebody else

 
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Poem a day challenge #111 (Repeating Lives)

Repeating Lives

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Taking my son to my old school
Following the bus I used to take
Still the same number
Basically the same model
The same smell of classrooms
And I wonder
Is this it?
Are we destined
To repeat lives?

It is not enough
I want more
More for my children
Than was there for me
No fear
More doors
No prejudice
More joy in knowledge

Is that too much to ask?

 

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Poem a day challenge #110 (Gathering Clouds)

Gathering Clouds

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Dark gathering cloud
Brooding and beautiful
Waiting for the flash of light
The spark
The piercing blue white crack
And the wind
The raw whipping wind
And the release of rain
and the rainbow

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Poem a day challenge #109 (Twentieth Century Taliesin)

Very tired and stressed out so today’s is an old one – but one of my favourite old ones.

Twentieth Century Taliesin

By Scott Bailey © 1999

I am the factory wall, despised and so defaced
Covered with graffiti, defiled and disgraced.
I am the concrete tower that holds up the concrete road
Bleak and faceless white, bearing my toxic load.
I am the bin on the street, bursting full with waste
Where rats and vermin crawl, around me in distaste.
I am the battered traffic cone abandoned in the hedge
A used forgotten prize of lives lived on the edge.
I am the street side gutter where dirty water flows
A place of infestation, where all the darkness goes.
I am the discarded knife with bloodstains on the blade
The close but unseen menace lurking in the shade.
I am the lofty tower spewing clouds into the air
That speed across the oceans, killing without a care.
I am the broken shelf with screws rent from the wall
That supported all the books and caused them all to fall.
I am the sodden cardboard box flapping in the street
Broken, limp, forgotten, always under feet.

Once I was a poet, bright-browed​ with golden haired
Playing harp and singing, songs into the air.
Once I was a druid learning from the trees
Drawing strength from bark and wisdom from the leaves.
Once I was a warrior with proud and shining sword
Singing with my war band​ a deep heroic chord.
Once I was a chieftain with princes round my hearth
Against war and cold and famine our mighty hearts did laugh.
Once I was a king whose soul was all the land
Who tended all his people with a strong and generous hand.

But I made other people suffer
Now suffer myself in turn.
But as you wreak your vengeance
What lesson do you learn?

What lessons do you all forget?

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Poem a day challenge #108 (The Pool)

The Pool

By Scott Bailey © 2013

They trickle in
The protesters, the bitter, the dispossessed, the poor
They swirl in slow currents
Exchanging thoughts, views, ideas.
An oasis for the outcasts

The Man sits by the pool
And fishes
Taking what he needs
Watching the rest

The pool holds no threat

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Poem a day challenge #107 (Late)

Late

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Eleven fifty
Nine and almost out of time
Yet still ploughing on

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Poem a day challenge #106 (Proud Dad)

Proud Dad

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Hushed concentration
Then with a sudden surprise
His name is written!

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Poem a day challenge #105 (Two Years)

Two Years

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Pardon me for interrupting
But that was just a step too far
Not really a sporting move
Two years
Two years you have been playing straight
That is to say
Murdering
But with the proper tools
The ones from our markets
Hardware, hard and solid and paid for
That gas – tut tut – just too far
So hand it over
There’s a good chap
And we will let you
Get back to your war

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Poem a day challenge #104 (Storms)

Storms

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Clouds piling up dark
Lightning flashing – sky to ground
Rumbling all around

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Poem a day challenge #103 (Explorers)

Explorers

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Wandering the shore
Through new lands everyday
Ancient fishermen

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Poem a day challenge #102 (The Joke)

The Joke

By Scott Bailey © 2013

I am a mirror
Distorted
Even cracked
But a reflection still
I share with you my fear
And passion
My fear is blue
Deep dark blue
All sharp angles
Like shark fins
And knives
Fear that turns me
As white as a clown.
Alas, my fear is my passion
My love
I seek it out
To taste the thrill
Of the fear and the chase
And I share it out
While I play my games
with the orphan
the fear
the dark, dark blue
that bears
the sign of the bat

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Poem a day challenge #101 (Twines)

Twines

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Silver twines
intricate wires
thin and delicate
stretching from misty past
to infinite future
Each one a story
a thread of life
Twisting they come together
Winding, entwining
Further down the road
The twines form a rope
Stronger
Older
Wiser
Thicker
Stiffer

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Poem a day challenge #100 (Reality)

Reality

By Scott Bailey © 2013

No reality.
That’s what attracts them
No history, no baggage
Only dreams of the night
That’s the attraction of the mistresses,
the hookers and the one night stands.
No reality.

Better to live in real love
Than empty dreams

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Poem a day challenge #99 (Steely Stress)

Steely Stress

By Scott Bailey © 2013

The lights on the corners of the boxes of steel
Are giving me a pain in the head
Like the fools who drive slowly in the outside lane
They are driving but their brains are dead

They have a purpose those lights you see
And I expect them to flash
Maybe that is my big mistake
Forgetting people are so rash

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Poem a day challenge #98 (Divine)

Divine

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Imagine
Me
I kill without discrimination
for race, for age, for sex or sexuality
I take saints and sinners
I take your loved ones
in return
I deal you pain
without explanation
when asked
the answer is
that you cannot hope to understand me
As a man
you would lock me up
revile me
or label me insane
But I am divine
So that’s OK then

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Poem a day challenge #97 (Walls)

Walls

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Chalk Poem in Heathridge backyard WA
Chalk Poem in Heathridge backyard WA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yet another wall
How many before we’re home?
Prevaricating

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Poem a day challenge #96 (Shadows)

Shadows

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Our voices are simply the shadows
Cast by our dreams and our thought
If the shadows become ineffectual
Then our voices will end up as naught
Yet shadows can give us the outline
Of what is looming above
If we take note of the darkness
We can give those dreams a shove
One thing we must yet remember
To give those shadows a shape
Sunlight is needed behind it
From brightness the dreams will escape.

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Poem a day challenge #95 (Debt)

Back to work tomorrow. So much to do – so this is an old one today.

Debt

By Scott Bailey © 1998

Do not lightly discard them
with tales of the foolish bold.
They sat for weeks, for months, for years
in trenches freezing cold.
Sometimes feet simply mouldered
in the sucking mud.
And now and then they’d rise and run
and spill their loyal blood.

Do not belittle the suffering
of soldiers now long dead.
With nothing but talk and songs and bombs
bursting in their head.
Bound together with chains of love
shattered by leaden death.
They ended as they had begun
with cries upon their breath.

Do not lightly remember them
with only paper flowers.
they faced the fear, the pain, the cold,
for hours and hours and hours.
They ran together and fell alone
upon those foreign fields.
Protecting those they loved
those frightened human shields.

Do not read these words and think
that these things are passed​.
Do not think you will not hear
that deep and dreadful blast.
Do not sit in decadence
and take for granted peace.
You owe a debt to those who died
and that debt will never cease.

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Poem a day challenge #94 (Web)

Web

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Glistening silver
A delicate spider web
Fallen tree around

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Poem a day challenge #93 (Fallout)

Fallout

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Taut relationship
Strained over a bloody mess
Chemical fallout

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Poem a day challenge #92 (Boxy)

Boxy

By Scott Bailey © 2013

Worn out, knackered, done
A brimful of boxy fun
In old Legoland

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