Poetry and Creative Writing for All

The Top 5 Poems of the Month

January 2007

	Ed Cesar is now a Featured Poet! Read his biography and more of his poems

Feline

Feline fantasia
Tired princess of old
Pale skin of satin
Silk hair of gold
Like the Victorian sunset
Carving deep scars of fire
My heart is a corset
A cage of desire

Feline fantasia
Bright princess of youth
Your smile tells a story
A legend of truth
You enchant me with silence
A look and a grin
In fairytale castles
A quest shall begin

Feline fantasia
Your eyes I have known
In times long forgotten
In faces of old
The ancient connection
I can never sever
So I stay by your side
For now and forever

Ed Cesar

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Here are the other four winning poems for this month.

This Spirit

This spirit is as old as empire
This spirit sings wet weather songs
This spirit cries along the frontier
‘No more hasty orisons.’
This spirit wears brass buttoned blazers
And stands behind the cannons
Facing out to sea.

This spirit launched a thousand ships
Ten thousand keels supporting
Our coal for tea and opium
In drawing rooms cavorting
We gave you your Elysium
The ballast in the cabinet
Or beneath your stainless steel

This spirit has four million eyes
This spirit shadows movement
This spirit controls desire
This spirit is devolving
This spirit will tag you electronically
For its data mines.

This spirit knows nothing of sad lonely highways
Or sunflower sutras of Babylon
This spirit cast a pall over my brothers
Its fresh-pressed shirt stained with the grime and smoke
Of Turner’s train, we rabbits on the rails.

This spirit has many names and yokes itself to mine
But this spirit will die, in time.

Lee Mackenzie

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Small Life

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Next Week I Will Go to Barentu

I’ve had enough! I’ve had enough
Of dull routine and empty days
That lead nowhere by narrow ways.
Next week I will go to Barentu
Where the women wear gold
And the air is warm, and fruit
Hangs down from the branches.

Week in week out long lines
Of grey and rainy days I spend
Commuting to the office but
Next week I will go to Barentu
Where birds with rainbowed feathers
Flit through forest trees and fill
The air with their lingering cries..

All day I sit before a screen
With mindless fingers pounding keys
Enough to drive me mad save that
Next week I will go to Barentu
Where the burning sun will shine
Like a river of silver through the leaves
That flutter in the Tropic breeze.

My evenings are no better spent —
A ‘dinner for one’ in the microwave
And then the boring telly, but
Next week I will go to Barentu
Where the flickering flames of the fire light
The limbs of the dancers every night
And the scent of the lily wafts through the trees.

Pete Crowther

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POPPIES

In the fields of France where poppies grow
Lighting the days with their crimson glow
They paint a moving picture bright
As they dance together in the sunlight
Beautiful flowers for the eye to see
In the fields of France where they grow free

Standing in crowds without a care
They bow their heads as if in prayer
Bending swaying nodding heads
With delicate petals of brightest red
Red as the blood that was spilt long before
In the fields of France in the midst of war

Such a peaceful picture before our eyes
Where the poppies nod ‘neath clear blue skies
Casting their warm and brilliant glow
But what are they hiding? What do they know?
As they gently sway on, many secrets they hide
In the fields of France where so many men died

Joan M Jones

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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)