Poetry and Creative Writing for All

The Top 5 Poems of the Month

May 2006

	Paul Willis is now a Featured Poet! Read his biography and more of his poems

Late 1940

How innocent is innocence?

Shrapnel is such a beautiful word
When you're ten turning over debris
In search of the ultimate prize.
Terrace homes once uniformed in English pride
Now united in uniform grief.
Their broken windows rip flapping curtains
And smouldering mounds of red brick rubble
Hide bombs, bullets and bodies.

Shrapnel is such a beautiful word
When you're ten turning over debris.

How innocent is innocence?

London's burning under the enemy's iron will,
White heat from the incendiaries of hell
And all the while,
We played beneath the black cloud of bombers
Oblivious to the roar and wheeze of their mechanical power.
Spitfire,
Beautiful, sleek and stylish
Unlike your cousin the Hurricane,
Dog eared ruffian of the skies
Fill you full of lead and spit in your eye.

Winston awoke from his dream
And watched the shadows on the wall.
Comtemplating he silently prepared
A speech of power, panache and wit
Gift them a smile while they ponder the hardest truth.

How innocent is innocence?

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Here are the other four winning poems for this month.

Autumn Leaves

There seemed no sense, there seemed no point
They must have known he's poor
Yet four score years mean little now
A swiftly-yielding door

A well-kept flat, a still-bright mind
Were trampled underfoot
As trainer treads squash flowerbeds
And fear invades the gut

So little there of any worth
Except in heart and soul
A medal case, a captured face
But hardly worth the toll

He can't stay now, it's all too much
He stands under the eaves
A backward glance, then head in hands
He shunts through autumn leaves

John Knowles

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Pensées of a Poet

Thoughts of a poet,
Eloquent in style,
Will I make their depths profound?
Lost in liturgy, what sweet communion of the mind.

Stanzas long or stanzas short
What to use for my cohort,
Rhyming couplets come for fusion,
Spilling out in gay profusion.

Verbs and tenses vie in jest,
Superlatives are better, best,
Comparatives seem just as good
As similes, like poetic food.

But oh what perfidy is mine
To mould a verse into a rhyme,
To catch a tune so out of season
And call it “poem”, what act of treason.

Yet silhouetted in my mind
With small silesia gently twined,
This is my literary piece, 
These are my thoughts until they cease.

Joyce Langlands

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Who Cares?

The old man shuffles about the hospital ward
Incontinent he's wet and he smells
Kind hearted old middle class widows
Console him but they don't dare dwell

His family arrive its now half past five
Visiting time has begun
They completely ignore his appearance
Hoping that someone will come

The smell? It gets worse as they call for a nurse
Who's in charge of the ward on her own
His two youngest are thoroughly embarrassed
That their dad's in this state all alone

The old man knows something has happened to him
Despite his memory loss and confusion
But as he sits in such squalor with his son and his daughter
They don't offer to help, is all this some kind of illusion?

That two of his own would sit there and moan
And not lift a finger to help
Through the haze and the maze that is partly malaise
He feels like a pup with no yelp

The ward door's pushed open
And bright words are spoken
"Hello dad? How d'yer feel? What's that smell?
Nurse I can see that yer busy
But me dad needs attention as well".

The nurse is concerned as soon as she learns
The old man had been given a slight
She promises the family that as soon as she can
She will do her utmost to put such things right

"Don't worry nurse I've seen him much worse
Where's the shower and I'll clean him up"
He gets a plastic apron and a clean pair of pyjamas
Then with dad who is sad off he struts

The old man now sat on the toilet
Is almost starting to cry
Just then the son who he had one time shunned
Wipes the sad tears from his old dads eyes

"Don't worry dad and don't feel so sad
You're poorly and these things will happen
It'll take a few minutes to get you cleaned up
In next to no time you'll be happy as Larry"

The old man sure brightens up as this wayward young pup
Washes and tends to his all
And his other two kids who had left him like this?
Are still stood noses up on the ward!

Kevin Raymond

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When We Were Young

the wind bit at us
trying to rip our hair from our little heads
we balanced on the rail and as we smiled
it seemed as if the headlights were laughing
red and white flames cutting into the dark
the best time we ever had

taken and exposed 
the day as plasticine
it was carved into our own images
trampled on and broken down

time held like a flickering candle
held aloft against our fears
daring anything to be greater than us
we could do anything

the bridge on which it happened
became a monument of our youth
the moss on the old stone
holding together the gaps in our lives

Mark Sargeant

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To submit a poem to the Online Poetry Competition, email inbox@forwardpress.co.uk (Enter Top 5 Poems of the Month in the subject line, including your name and postal address)

Or post your poems to Top 5 Poems of the Month, Forward Press Ltd, Remus House, Coltsfoot Drive, Peterborough PE2 9JX (Write your name and address on each piece of work you send)