Poetry and Creative Writing for All

Michael Bryant

I am 22 years old and have been writing since I was 18. I was first published in a magazine called "Poetry Church" and have been writing for this and several other magazines ever since. Much of my poetry is based around my childhood, where I grew up in Senegal, West Africa. This was a very inspiring experience where I met so many people whom I will never forget. My family lived through a guerrilla war and were evacuated amid gunfire and landmines, and seeing the suffering of the local people and refugees created by this conflict has had a profound effect on me.

I will hopefully qualify as a medical doctor in June and much of my writing reflects a struggle to deal with the human suffering that I see on a daily basis. I have a vibrant faith in Jesus as a saviour that is based not on religion or meetings but on a personal knowledge of Him living in me. This is reflected in my poems which I pray bring pleasure to Him and to readers.

Shipwrecked

Sailing swift I ride the pride of my fleet,
Feels like I’m a legend swept off his feet,
Like I’m an admiral to them all but my heart sails to one,
My pride sails faster and funnier than it’s ever done.

Smash-Crash! Her hull tears with a crunch,
Crushing wood like Jaws at lunch,
Splash! She drowns in memory’s sea blue,
I’m tossed off, old pancakes for new.

Heart thrown out into a frantic blender of a sea,
Behind my ship’s memory goes under without me,
Leaving me to struggle up and down dodging waves,
As my fleet cares not for the loss of their braves.

Fading out into that twilight zone,
Grieving that I’ll soon be all alone,
Body fades out like a lamp at dawn,
Heart wishes it was still safe- still unborn.

Then finally I’m thrown out of the whale’s mouth,
In a land not mine, not the North or the South,
I peel myself up off the beach like sunburnt skin,
To find no one knows the first thing of my name or kin.

But my eyes find one comfort in the sky’s dome,
The lighthouse in the rocks looks the same as in my home,
So I run blindly to what stays the same,
To what may still, even after all, know my name.

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Car Rapide

Rapide?
Not especially,
Klunkety-bump,
Door springs loose,
Flaps like an uncertain sparrow,
Thud,
Tires splinter,
Like glass against an angry soil,
A diamond-hard blood-dyed surface,
Always visible below floorless feet,
Drift off a frozen bowel road,
Into sand,
An ant swimming through custard,
Revving only to slowly sink,
Thundercloud exhaust fumes,
Merge into swirling dust,
Like a child’s watercolours,
HALT!
Fatimah’s fallen from the roof,
Four legs trapped in a tangled bush,
Hopeful face peers out,
Bemused, unaware, innocent?
She’s stuck,
Rooted like a generation’s lie,
Call the shepherd!
Later she splutters,
Coughs black and white from her windpipe,
Yet never quite exhumes the blockage,
Passing it on to the next passengers,
Never quite working,
Never quite finishing.
Car?
Not particularly,
Wheel shoots down ahead,
A misfortunate shooting star,
Windows rattle off,
Spaces for technology,
Yellow paint fades,
Leaving black and blue,
Seats collapse in mini-avalanches of cloth and metal,
Reflecting falling roofs of flip-flop homes,
The arthritic gear stick crunches,
Substitute for long-rusted brakes,
On a fallow, featureless dashboard,
Wind is her speedometer,
Dying engine the vocal fuel gage,
No one knows where she’ll end,
But I know she’ll stop around every bend.

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Cry in Your Arms

Her slalom-surviving smile slipped so silently,
The falling mercury, her fading hopes and fears,
Reflecting a torrent of tinsel twinkled tears,
Whose dissected veil let her songbird soul fly free.
She could take the blinds from the windows of my house,
Showed parts I was afraid the world would wash away,
But the world rejoiced in her wisdom’s kind display,
As light brought me to a life shyness couldn’t douse.
Yet we swam together in a slipstream of sober salvation,
When thorns cut my head she washed them out,
With a surpassing sympathy and life rope truths,
She let my homeless heart cry in your arms.
Whose arms can I cry in now?
For a short showroom second the church smiles at me,
But then she stares through me at the ground, at the white,
Of her bridal dress with a plastic boy band hem,
My tears are far too grubby for her posh hen night,
She shouts tongues at me across an indifferent canyon,
But she won’t give me a soft shoulder of love to cry on.
Where can I go now?
Dare I approach the Almighty with a tear-stained soul?
The spirit says come, and the bride…..
I’m still waiting.
Yet His arms reach through her failings,
And I feel my tears dissolve into His redeeming blood.

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Happy Sad Happy

It’s too easy to make you happy,
Is that really so sad?
Inert innocence in isolation,
A stable stagnation, blessed blankness,
Blank sand resonates with a heart’s protest,
Yet your smile is fuller than a rainforest.
Laughter fills the holes in your shorts,
The only medicine for tears and blood,
Broken toys make you royalty, tiny imports,
Crowns Europe despises, hand-me-downs trodden into mud,
Make you happy,
Makes me sad.
Accustomed to tears, as one gets used to a frozen ocean,
As a subsistence farmer stares at an inhumane sky,
You gaze up at America standing so proud,
So every drip of rain, any likely cloud,
Any hint of justice, not yet grace, any love so shy,
akes you far too happy.

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Storm Outside a Teacup

A merry-go-round of polite teacups rotate,
A flightless spinning plate of flat churchy debate,
Peter pan spirituality,
Grace held down behind smug completeness,
Inward-studying eyes that can see,
Yet have no will to cry with Jesus.
Tea drifting into wine, moral desires contort,
A lying enchantment of TV and comfort,
Like an ornate tablecloth covering a stubborn stain,
A bowl of plastic fruit on a broken blood-weeping sphere,
As the banquet stays up by a baby’s wrist in a chain,
Crumbs fall down to pay for our sin and polish our veneer.
Outside the teacup,
A stark strafing storm rages,
We should too,
Lightning strikes,
Rods of love hide in cliquey buildings,
Hearts turn from gateway to prison,
Waiting,
Eternally poised.
Jesus turns the banquet over,
Where beggars and children, tramps and widows cascade,
Waterfalling through heavens gates,
A glorious, glowing gladiatorial parade,
He never slept to their cries,
So they awake to hear His voice.

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They're

A seamless patchwork quilt without decay,
Elmer the elephant, rainbow on grey,
Sparklers that never burn out or grow faint,
Swirled together like watercolour paint.
A cool mango tree in a desert wilderness,
Their leaves complement each other,
Their arms hold me safe from the thorns,
Their roots grow wide so we stand firm.

He sees through me like a roman road through a wood,
Sees so clearly the world seems tilted to him,
His young mind is a multi-faceted orchard,
Built into a precise ornamental garden.
He resonates with my soul, we laugh together,
Two trees blown by the same wind, we cry together,
His original, versatile and sharp humour,
Preserved under a snowfall of polished shyness

A parallel universe of they’re own,
The only souls I let my heart out to,
Set apart to do Your will.

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