Tag: poetry

So you say

Keep believing in the good

It’ll all come right enough

See children with no food

And bodies wet with blood

But it’ll all work out in time

Everything will get better magically

So you say.

You can feel pity and do nothing

Say nothing because you don’t need

To worry if your own back yard

Is looking neat with poppies growing

Pretty as a picture grown for the dead

And you tell everyone you did your best

Or so you say.

Children washed up lifeless on beaches

Or in a box on a city street if they’re lucky

Convince yourself they all go back

To a safe warm bed, and a meal to eat

Before you have to consider reality

And then say you turned your caring back

So it’s not offensive

You see all the things going on

Kids in cages, bullets flying

Because extremists are taking over

But it’s nothing to do with you

Am I understanding that right?

When they knock at your door

Shall we ignore it as you’re taken away?

Oh it’s never going to happen to me

I hear you say.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry2019

Promise the North

Let’s look at the North frozen wastelands

Win them over boys again.

Tell the same stories, change the words

Dangle carrots full of powerful pain.

Yes, I know we told them that last year

Also probably the one before

Saying we’d give them help

It’s the North, they only settle scores.

Subdue, substitute and ignore

All we’ve ever done to the place

We’ll keep our powerhouse for us

Tell them it’s impossible, save our face.

Forget it now, this promise to the North

All they do is march, pour forth

Didn’t go to our old chaps schools

They can’t see we’re a ship of fools.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Eruption

It’s bubbles are hot and the lava like acid burns

My throat tight from tasting anger

Twisting and turning as turbine

You spout nothing but searing air

To then forget goldfish-ly as the wind changes.

Your world has no room for anything of logic

It contains your grand vision

You the star of your own show

Roses falling at your feet in the hurrah

That you decided you deserved

And still you wait for it…

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Differ and change

Undercurrent flows into conversation

A bitter edge that says you’re not better

Yet I never said I was

How do you explain it?

That you just need to see what else there is

Know what other choices there are

Make decisions without fear of

The failure that surely follows

If you dare to change

And allow Times mist to swirl around

Carrying you with them to new things.

If you’re happy where you are I’m happy

For you are living your plans

As I am

Neither of us better or best

Just different and happy with our choice

So we shall have to beg to differ

And I will follow my change.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Queen of arrows

She sits there like a queen on her throne

Sceptre a fag hanging down

Flicking ash she makes her choice

Of which horse is worth the money

Not a gamble, it’s a definite winner

Mind you, she’s usually right

Her arrow throwing hand would’ve made her

A formidable opponent in war

These days she’s making sure that in the corner

They’re not messing up her score

As she hits the board to win the darts

Knowing once more she’s nailed it.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Fireside secrets

Listen girl keep looking you’d say

Watch that fire flicker with dreams

See pictures of life cross it

And swallow the future whole.

Tell yourself you can see and you will

Shadows of orange flame become futures

Worlds of opportunity open to you

If you only believe they are.

I’m not talking magic or hocus pocus

My words are meant to convey

The simple life you can make

If you should need to escape.

The rat runs here no more comfort

Than the days when I was small

Well, in some ways it is but really

I’m only saying why have the same

When you could have it all?

Written about conversations with my nana as a child

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Broken man

A broken man skeletal but proud

Walks in daring anyone

To mention his weight loss

Haunted face deathly gaunt

Knowing each day brings him closer

To the end.

He knows what is happening

Will tell you after a drink

Wants no sympathy, fact dealing

So there’s not speculation

As he hears them discuss him

Talk about the ‘condition ‘

Coming to take the life he knew

Your words are not accurate

This thing filled him with stoicism

While eating away who he was

Wanting to tell them while asbestos eats

He can still hear every single beat.

Written about the close friend of my dad who was a fighter and battled asbestosis, a very brave man even as he was being broken down.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2019

Pushing

Try pushing, cajoling

Screaming and wails

Hurl insults like boulders

To get through the day.

Try threats coated in treacle

Not subtle or sweet

You’ll wait till I’m ready

I bow at nobody’s feet.

Watch through cracks in the story

Make your own fairytale end

I can see through your mask

Don’t break and don’t bend.

I may say little to you but read

You so well

I’m wary not scared

You are but a shell.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2018

The black sheep

She was the disappointing one

Who could have done better

Given her chances (insert finger wagging!)

She could have given bragging rights

But dared to follow her path

A line she forged in the dust

How dare she?

Everyone else content to toe the line

Or fly really high by , well

Towing the same line but differently

Not her

Always accused of being in the wrong

Before checking she was in the right

She rebelled in the eyes of some

And her coat became that

Of the black sheep

So long spent trying to fade the colour

Change it, do something to blend

Until one day over many drinks

She met another

Also a black sheep and they decided

That black sheep were the lucky ones

The ones who escaped

The ones who didn’t allow anything

To just happen

They made the things they wanted appear

By hard work and black sheepishness

And between them they decided

That that was just fine

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawley2018

Fooling all and none

He says he’s misunderstood and made

Into a devil of someone else’s choosing

As he fists hands and his woman bade

Face in sneering but charm oozing

Like an oily glut from his mouth.

He orders her to do something small

And it’d be easier to do himself

But he’s proving it just takes the call

For him to take precedence over herself

And she even considered dissent.

His words more chilling “she’ll learn eventually ”

To me “you all do, after you’re shown..”

Cold smile and words mock me

But eyes say loudly she you own.

I see her eyes and wonder if she’s quiet always

Or if she’s learned that silence is safe

Silence is the way to survive a day

And I’m asked later at another place

How I could stay in the house of a monster

Who thought he fooled all

But just because you choose not to see

Means only that you’ve chosen blinkers

You might not see the blood he spills

He still spills it saying it’s her, always her

She made him by whatever she didn’t do/say/think/like

He is fooling only himself

Your knowledge in silence is fooling all and none.

And he carries on knowing he has accomplices

She dreams at night of peace

No escape she will maybe see she needs to

She may leave it too late, could be you or me

Does it matter if she’s fooling all and none?

It may be all that keeps her alive.

Ailsa

©️AilsaCawleyPoetry 2018