Thanks for explaining Frank The bloke was a fool doing that, but a total of £985 is a ridiculous amount More money for the coffers I guess, when a stern caution would probably have worked and saved time.


Oh right - I just type them up normally


A fascinating write Seren I read this twice because it's so intricate. I love the struggles with light and darkness described throughout the poem.

The file's complete 780 poems safely stored at last

I'm knackered now

Do you mean the enter button on your keyboard? If not, try it at the end of each line.


Congratulations.........and now for the next stage.

Hello everyone else!

Well I'm glad that once wasn't too much, so alls good

Hi Biz & Seren

The Designer

Who designed the apple tree
Abundant with ripe fruit?
Who designed the busy bee,
The polar bear's white suit?

Who knew that a leaf of green
Alone is frail and small
Yet if autumn woods are seen
Their tone surpasses all.

Who produced the swan that glides,
The sparrow prone to dart,
Who commanded rolling tides
To break the poet's heart?

Who arrayed a billion stars,
Tall mountains, forest glades?
Who gave every rainbow bars
Of seven different shades?

Who placed sand upon this shore
And here when dusk is due
Who designed an evening for
The most romantic view?

When I watch the final swell
Of sun absorb the west
Then I ask who cast the spell
For us to live so blessed.


©
 

I do hope you have hard copies of all of these. The computer is a wonderful thing, but you can't beat a paper record.

Pleased to see Troy. Are we taking bets on when he'll be back?

My brother has a copy on his computer Biz and more are being made All the poems' titles and their DS locations are written down in a book - it took me ages doing this but it made the copy and paste job I've just completed much quicker in the end. Today I bought a smart new hardback book to write the list out again, but neater. Old habits die hard for the techno-numpty Biz

Troy will be back soon - he's a dude

Great stuff Musty, the eternal question in a superb poem..

As for Biz, it's good to be back.

Thanks Troy - The Designer is the first poem in my file, it feels like a curtain-raiser

the quiet path

I walked the quiet path ever-winding
By cornfields where weary suns set,
Dark lengthening shadows were minding
The place where we usually met.

Embracing, what warmth we created,
In breezes of eventide air
You sighed like a mermaid elated
As I stroked the sea of your hair.

Through purple dusk glad to meander,
Secluded where our hearts could sing
To nature we’d opted to pander;
For us the world’s only good thing.

Stars gleamed then from thoughts detrimental
My loneliness melted away,
When asked, I replied sentimental
To love you and never once stray.

Alas, fate’s design meant we parted,
How I miss your face and sweet laugh;
To heal the pain now you’ve departed
I still walk the old quiet path.


©

That says it all really, doesn't it

Wonderfully poignant tale Musty.

The Harvester

With gentle brush on window’s pane
Light strokes across the floor
He’ll gather up his golden grain
Replenishing death’s store

Soft touch upon her sleeping face
Blow gusts of fragrant air
Caressing with his cold embrace
Ice fingers comb her hair

Exhausted by the kiss of youth
Her body blanched and free
Concealed within is every truth
Bygone and not to be

Unspoken words on yearning breath
Entombing all desires
Gathering up his crop of death
And smug with his acquires

Contemptuous of his fruitful yield
Or tears we’ve yet to weep
The mocking smile he keeps concealed
While in the dark he creeps

Licence To Kill

It is not the gun that kills
But the man who fills the gun
Said actor Mr Charlton Heston
Staunch proponent of the NRA.
Yes, let no man defy or naysay,
An American's right to bear arms;
His logic: it's not the gun that harms,
A convoluted construction for it allows
A civilian weapons of mass destruction.

Can someone ever prise the gun from
The dead, dead hands of dead thinking?
Add deaths at Aurora now, to Columbine,
Oakland, more murdered citizens in a line.

Legislate for new gun law now USA, make that Moses leap,
Or just ring and wash your bloody hands again, and weep
And when those hands are really pure, pristine and clean,
Serve your people more succulent meals of Soylent Green.

Thanks Biz & Troy


An excellent and it has to be said, very creepy poem. It seems to be about how death visits stealthily and almost unnoticed to do the worst. I love the cultured Gothic tone of this; on reading it I felt like I was stepping back into the past, one of poetry's greatest assets.


A topical and thought-provoking write Frank. Canada has guns but doesn't suffer these constant mass murders. Conversely Britain contains far fewer guns per head, but we've had the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres and the more recent one in Cumbria. The trends seem to vary from nation to nation, but what happened in Colorado was truly awful

Soylent Green was a sci-fi film about the mass production of human flesh as food I think.

[quote=mr. mustard;59751456]


An excellent and it has to be said, very creepy poem. It seems to be about how death visits stealthily and almost unnoticed to do the worst. I love the cultured Gothic tone of this; on reading it I felt like I was stepping back into the past, one of poetry's greatest assets.


Good morning everyone

Indeed mr mustard, The Harvester is the Grim Reaper, gathering his human crop. It's occurred to me that my poetry is often dark and I must appear quite morbid. In fact I am the complete opposite as I'm able to exorcise all of my negativity through writing.

Anyway, the poem I am writing at the moment is much lighter - although knowing me that might change as it develops

Hi Seren I like dark poetry and have written a lot of it too - life isn't always a bed of roses and it's good that the thread has covered its variety

Call me Musty BTW

We found it in the Badlands

We found it in the Badlands of Montana,
A geo-physics outline was observed
Exciting every digger,
A dinosaur’s lost figure
Beneath the soil was resting well-preserved.

I glanced at Jan who smiled back full of tension,
We both loved archaeology, you see
It really feels like living
When you're with friends and sieving
And she was there when we made history.

The hot Montana sun encouraged sweating,
The area was scorched by half past four,
Persistent trowels and puffing
I listened to, yet nothing
Could match Jan shouting 'I can see a claw!'

Routine remains of bone we had expected
And here they were with something more revealed:
A claw with flesh had lingered
Upon a hand three-fingered,
A Deinonychus fragment long-concealed.

We brushed away the dirt and in amazement
Stared at the tone of real Cretaceous flesh,
With expectations shaping
Our dreams we kept on scraping,
Unable to believe it looked so fresh.

A miracle, the team cheered (although baffled),
A few were even crying happy tears,
The skin that time selected
To save would be inspected
By experts working hard for ten whole years.

When Jan and I received an invitation
A decade on from that Montana day
It led us down to Texas,
An e-mail said a nexus
Was due and could we visit right away?

We turned up at the place where an official
Told us to follow him, the scene was weird;
The guarded grounds of their house
Contained an empty warehouse
And once inside it Jan and I both peered.

A guide arrived, I asked him 'Why the rifle?',
'The ammo isn't lead but drugs' he said
And then across the distance
We saw a new existence,
A living Deinonychus, far from dead.

Our find contained enough good DNA for
Experiments to clone a brand new life,
Though fifty feet off walking,
I feared the killer stalking
With claws to rip and every fang a knife.

He told us not to worry, for the weapon
Was fully loaded and would bring on sleep,
That's when it started running,
Twelve feet of speed and cunning
Which rendered any prey as weak as sheep.

The trigger jammed and we stood undefended,
The prehistoric face to face with Man:
The monster they created
Charged and decapitated
The gunman, I fled to the door with Jan.

I locked it but could hear the creature gorging,
That bloodbath made us stop our digging then,
We found it in the Badlands
Yet science entered mad lands;
The dinosaurs weren't meant to live again.


©

A very well written and expressive poem.

I love dark poems and death is probably my favourite subject.

Thank you, I find that the emotions of darker subjects are very inspiring

I've started to look through the thread to read every poem but it may take me a little while. Poetry isn't something you can 'speed read'

Battle of Britain scene

The pilot was riddled with bullets,
The plane he controlled torn in two
And with mission failed
A parachute sailed,
Descending from out of the blue.

The farmer came running in anger,
His temper beginning to boil,
He carried a gun,
Enraged by a Hun
Who'd fallen on his English soil.

A strange thing occurred in the moment
When he arrived there at the scene;
He realized the truth,
No more than a youth
Was dying on that meadow's green.

Words flowed in a strange foreign language
Beseeching release from the pain,
The farmer then knelt,
Surprised how he felt
A sympathy clear of war's stain.

For here was a real human being
And not the foe he'd grown to hate;
With fear in his eyes
Beneath summer skies
The pilot was meeting his fate.

As that body, twisted forever
Writhed slowly to agony’s knife
The end came at last,
A stranger had passed,
The raw recruit losing his life.

Soon jubilant locals assembled,
While they cheered with joy unconcealed
As patriots should,
The farmer just stood
And left a young boy in his field.


©

You're not wrong there Seren - reading all three threads would take you forever

British Folk Tradition

If glades are full of bursting sprigs
And springtime buds are seen
That figure leaping over twigs
Is little Jack o' Green.

A witch lived in this forest dell
Who's long vanished, for she
Transformed herself with one last spell
Into an elder tree.

When you see floating streaks at night
A fairie's left clear trails,
The pearly-dewdrop silver light
Described in old folk tales.

These stones once named the Giant's Dance
Vast men were told to bring,
A wizard kept them in a trance
And made them build the ring.

Here nymphs swam in a hidden pond
And lured a lonely soul;
Because temptation tends to bond
He paid the water’s toll.

The May Queen‘s timely theme is played,
Her hobby horse ahead
Is dancing in the big parade,
John Barleycorn is dead.

The elves knew that the world would change,
In tears but feeling free
They sailed from Britain, out of range
On ships to some lost sea.


©

An amazingly imaginative poem Musty.

Really enjoyed it.