These Ships

For 8 November we have a poem about new starts and the lives and people we leave behind.

Made of sticks and stones

photo credit: Immagini 2&3D The Land of the Brian Boru via photopin(license)

These ships are sailing
Leaving behind everything we’ve ever known.
The lights, the familiar sights are receding,
Departures sadness as the horizon
Hides us from home.

These boats,
These boats we are burning.
For these bones will not be buried
Beneath the turf of our island home.

The surf and the waves
And the storms on the seas,
And the funnel cloud of infernal steam.
Take me away,
Borne away from where I long to be.
 
© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

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Nothing

photo credit: kbetty An angel who doesn’t know he has a halo via photopin (license)

I keep hearing that song.
That song you played
When you were still something.
When you were still alive.

I remember you placing
Your hand in mine, trusting
You had the moments left
To do anything.

You had your whole life.
A million breathes to take,
A whole life and everything.
When you were still alive.

© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Originally published 14 December 2016

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Missed you

photo credit: Space Oddity via photopin (license)

I should have kissed you,
I wanted to so much.
I should have leaned in closer,
I was aching for your touch.

I could have kissed you,
The lights were turned down low.
There was a moment,
Electricity, between us a glow.

I would have kissed you,
But the shadows were too long,
There had been too much wine
And in the morning I’d be gone.

But I should have kissed you.

photo credit: Rachael. via photopin (license)

© 2018 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Originally published 8 May 2014

Parting the Sea

photo credit: Taylan Soyturk Photographe The Time I Was Daydreaming via photopin (license)

A forgotten realm calls out to me
From the darkness beneath the sea.
It sings songs of memory, loss
And tragedy. Of sacrifice and cost.
Sings of the brothers left behind. Who know,
And cry, because we’re never coming home.
 
© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Unravelling Twine

photo credit: Piyushgiri Revagar Centre via photopin (license)

I never knew my father. I recognised him of course, I’d see him every morning silently cutting up his bacon rashers and sausages before forking them into his mouth; while us kids bickered and fought using our cereal spoons as make-believe swords. Then in the evening he would be found hiding in the dark shadows of the living room while the rest of us hovered like a family of moths in adoration around the flickering light of the television screen.

The rest of the time he seemed invisible, apart from the odd glimpse of him sat on the old wooden bench in the shade of the crab apple tree at the bottom of the garden. Mum used to send him there as she hated the smell of his tobacco. There he would sit his pipe gripped between his teeth while his hands worked unravelling a twisted mess of green twine. He never seemed to unravel it, every time you saw him there he seemed to be, starting his own labour of Hercules anew.

I never found out what he was doing it for or if he ever finished, and now I’ve left it too late to ask him.

 

© 2017 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Last of the Line

photo credit: Soap Creatives Time travel via photopin (license)

A time of dying
Leaves no one alive to keep
Memory alight.
 
© 2016 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Too Blind

Day 9 of the review – and a poem about ‘too much’

Made of sticks and stones

photo credit: Standing at the Gates of Hell via photopin(license)

I can’t see you,
Just the echoes
Where you used to be.
Because I’m a lost boy
Confused about the direction,
Whether I’m heading
For heaven or hell.
For I stopped feeling
When I started bleeding
Many moons ago.
And all that’s left
Is half a bottle of whiskey
And these scars
That keep my eyes shut,
I’m down on my knees
Begging for redemption
Knowing the game is up.
For there is just an absence
A black hole in the aether
And the echoes
Where you used to be.

© 2016 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

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Drifting

 

photo credit: Impressioni portoghesi – Lisbona di notte via photopin (license)

I didn’t see, I never heard
The silences lengthen.
I never noticed that you had drifted
From out of my embrace.

I never missed your gentle caress.
I never stopped to consider,
I never stopped to just care.

When did we stop dreaming together,
When did I start building walls.
I didn’t see, I never heard
Until I heard the slamming door.
 
© 2015 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Originally Published 27 March 2015

Shipwrecked

To the night another soul
shipwrecked on the rocks.

For the night’s not over
‘til all hearts are lost.

© 2015 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.

Originally Published 13 January 2015

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Amnesia

photo credit: Dark Dream by James Alfred Meese, 1952 via photopin (license)

She’s falling,
Memories drift away.
All the pills in creation
Won’t save her.
These failing reminiscences
She clings to can’t bring back
The brightly coloured yesterday now gone.
 
© 2016 | Frank Regan, All rights reserved.