Nightingales

Nightingales are the birds of poets

Moonbeams bleeding from their beaks

Tasteless harmony, sung sweet and hollow

Casting shadows in my mind.

The quiet song

From bushes and brambles,

Illuminating the endless evenings and sunrises

With their lovely calls.

Their wings spread like ivy,

Blotting women’s bosoms

And piercing men’s hearts

With thorn-like claws

And snowy black eyed puddles.

And the poets drown in them,

Consumed by their own dark innards,

Which once summered so sweetly,

But is now an echoed call from the past,

That only dreamer’s chase.

The Unknown Soldier

Oh, that he have a name, a name,
Even skull bore Yorick's crown
Even Hodge found home in Hardy's harem.
That he have a name, a name.
As if such manned moorings bound celestial to the earth.
The name. The Name.
Like so many predecessors buried without
Became fertilizer, sawdust instead of
Stardust.
That he should have a name,
Should save him from the waste.
And lay him last beneath a tree
With romantic interest
In a name,
Soon to be forgotten,
Lines on stone curvatures.
No more, no name, no one.

                                    R.H. Carew

Inspired by History Boys. good film/play, check it out if you can

The Dreamers Poem

Am I trapped or suffering

In this eternal dream?

As I burn in midnight,

As I toss and scream?

On the cold cement

As the daylight burns

As my life goes by

As I take my turns

I drift out of now,

Trapped in my dreams

Ensnared in silence

In the icy betweens

A whole world out there

Yet here I sit

Folded in unreality

In the sins I commit

All the good is lost

All the faults burn bright

Times are hard for dreamers

In this awful neon light

Oh, folded dreamer,

Creased in a book

Slipping through pages

In the reading nook

Fingering ink stains

Drinking up story

Rolling and lolling

In wonderments glory

Happily lost in the other

Far, far, away

Twisting up in fiction

Drowning in cliché

Oh folded dreamer,

Free and soaring,

Creased in a book

While my tears are pouring.