Dave Pearson

Despite always having been interested in literature at school, I studied Mathematics at university on a random impulse, and at 23 am now working as an accountant in Birmingham. I've been writing ridiculous amounts of
poetry ever since the age of eight when i was encouraged by being published in a children's anthology. For me, writing is therapeutic. I tend to use writing poems as an outlet for my frustration when life goes wrong, and for this reason I think my poetry can sometimes be a bit dark. Letter From Stephan, which won the March competition, is based on my experiences of an unhappy love affair with a German pen friend and most of the things I write are somehow based on my own, slightly crazy, life. Your Daffodil, I hasten to add, isn't; that's a random piece I wrote when ill in bed and condemned to spend a entire week staring at an irritatingly cheerful daffodil a well meaning relative had helpfully placed in my line of vision. So far I have failed to write any poetry inspired by my profession, but am occasionally tempted to attempt something along the lines of Ode to Caffeine, or Sonnet to My Photocopier. Watch this space I guess :)

Monday morning, dark and dreary, heavy clouds and
heavy eyes.
Pull the curtains; bleak and bleary, weekend feeling
swiftly dies.
At the breakfast table, yawning. Cold burnt toast and
scalding tea.
Feel the revelation dawning; youre there sitting next
to me!
Brain feels sluggish; madly early. Strain my eyes for
better view.
Features shadows, outline blurry. Smiling voice
confirms its you.

Fluid English gently flowing, German torrents; rapid,
clear.
Your words embrace me softly showing the ecstasy of
being near.
Precious moments; you and I alone together, separate
sphere.
Fleshy figures sat nearby flicker, fade, then
disappear.
Intense connection pulls up tight surviving moods and
miles and years.
Emotions soaring like a kite, we transcend barriers
and fears.

You pull away. Reluctant pause. I see its time to say,
farewell.
My hand goes out to feel for yours and as it does it
breaks the spell.
Apparition fast dissolving, disintegrates to nothing
much.
One final smile, amused, absolving: I know Im not
allowed to touch.
Fleshy figures here again. Return to world that knows
me better
And realise, with a stabbing pain, Ive reached the
last page of your letter

Today was my first day of Never.
It had a certain novelty about it.
The first day I never heard your voice again.
The first day I didnt see you any more.
I survived this day, and I was proud of myself.
Ive already got through one day of Never, I
congratulated myself.
How many are still left?
Only then did I realise
What Never actually means.
Only then did it dawn on me,
That Never never ends.

The ambush comes in the dead hours of the night.
That desolate time in the early morn
When the earth still lies fresh on yesterdays grave
And hope for tomorrow still seems forlorn.
Time lies in a stagnant coma. Those who have
Not achieved the sweet oblivion of sleep
Lie suspended in a fretful wakefulness.
I too am one of those condemned to keep
A lonely vigil. In the furthest shadows
Of my room the predator lies in silent wait.
He bides his time, until I drop my guard
And he wins the long awaited chance to sate
His appetite for blood. When the assault comes
It is as soundless as a sharpened blade
Which slides softly into living flesh.
There is scarcely time to be afraid
Before the pain, which defies words, catches me in his
jaws and swallows me.

Last week I went to Heidelberg. I had to see it once,
this town of shattered dreams...

Thursday. I stand in Heidelberg station, experiencing
a moment of blind panic as I struggle to remember your
address through the fog of years.

What am I doing?! Finally standing in front of your
house, I realise too late that there is nothing for me
here. I must go home.

As I turn to stumble back to the station, a man comes
towards me.

I freeze.

For he looks how you would look, were you all grown
up. Who can he be, this balding, middleaged man, who
has stolen your eyes?

Excuse me please, I say breathlessly. Im a foreigner
here. Can you direct me to the bus stop?

As soon as the stranger opens his mouth, I recognise
his voice. It is you, then. You stand here in front of
me, without knowing who I am, and explain to me the
whereabouts of a bus shelter.

I dont want you to stop speaking. I have waited an
entire lifetime for this moment, and I want it to last
forever.

Do you have the time, please? I ask, desperately, for
what else is there left to say?!

And you, who wiped me from your life twenty years ago,
stare at me in confusion and ask yourself absently,
why this strange, foreign woman is beginning to cry as
you inform her that its already quarter to three.

You brought it home in troubled days, when life was
twisted as a maze.
It slashed the blackness with its blaze of shattering
gold, its sunshine haze.
As time scraped by the light grew dim and pain
consumed us from within.
The world was cruel and sharply grim. It flowed with
brightness from the brim.
The days went by, it grew and grew and made me glow
with thoughts of you.
Whatever walls you rammed us through, it filled me up
with love anew.

That fateful day. It wasnt there. The stem stood
lonely, sparsely bare,
The flower hacked with ugly tear. All I did was stand
and stare.
Dead and withered the youthful bloom; I found you in
the living room
Expiring in the gathered gloom. The dusk embraced you
like a tomb.
The crimson circle on the floor, the knife slung by
the kitchen door,
The body leaking, red and raw. The soul at peace for
ever more?

I watched them while they laid you down into a bed of
moulding brown
Standing with an anguished frown. I left your house, I
left your town.
I left the world we used to know to roam a world of
empty woe
Where the sun died long ago, the night you used my
penknife so.
But one memento I have still. One small hope you could
not kill.
Sitting on my window sill it blooms again; your
daffodil.

Said the Lord to the angel,
I give you a mission.
Go to the troubled land of Iraq
Where formerly stood our Eden vision
Saddam now exploits nuclear fission
And the US blindly attack.

Said the angel to God,
Ill do what you say,
Go tackle the hatred at this conflicts source.
And with your grace, I may,
I hope Lord and pray,
Spread on both sides an air of remorse.

The angel put on his halo
And jumped from his cloud
And flew to the tense air space of Baghdad
Where the Generals were proud
The rhetoric was loud,
And the people were hungry and sad.

The planes; how they roared!
And the guns; how they pounded!
The bombs; how they dropped!
And how deafening they sounded!
The fires; how they burned!
And the smoke; how it spread!
As the casualties mounted,
The wounds; how they bled!
The death, the destruction, the suffering the pain,
The anguish, the torment ... and all for what gain?

Said the Lord to the angel,
Theyve chosen to fight.
Theres nothing more you can do
To help with their plight
So come home tonight
Before anything happens to you.

The angel took the Lords advice.
He left that hour, to be precise.
But soaring through the No Fly Zone
He heard a planes mechanic drone
Come swooping from on high.
The American air force had orders to kill
And hi-tech weapons to wipe out at will
Any unidentified feature
(Or heavenly creature)
That trespassed US controlled sky.

Later the President issued a statement.
At 1900 hours, US radar had located an enemy presence
in the Southern No Fly Zone.
The brave servicemen of the national armed forces
Had acted promptly and risked their own lives
In order to confront, shoot and successfully destroy
it.

Submission Guidelines: Poems of no more than 30 lines in length each will be considered.