POEMS OF HENRY HOPWOOD-PHILLIPS

Tommy

Little Tommy died today
Six years and five months old:
No one ever saw again
The stars in his eyes
The cobweb of his orbs
Had caught

He'd killed a baby you see
That hadn't stopped screaming
Rolling about on the bed
A little angel
Nay, a devil;
Somewhat inhuman.

Tommy smothered it
Until it stopped
And it lay, a polite lump,
He had let out a tear,
And left the silence
With a little sigh

The police did come for Tommy
But Tommy wasn't there
Tommy was in heaven
Existence a memory.


SPRING

The lips of the daffodils' buds are pursed
Their faces washed in the morning dew
Anticipating the coming lark song
Scattered by the feet of ancient yew

Salvation's ghost fills the air
As the Gospel rides the bells' peals
Releasing Love and Hope from fetters cast
When Adam had Man's fate sealed.

A turbulent palate of grey and blue
rages and splashes o'er head
Whilst Boreas whistles his mischief
Over the warbling voices of the Lethe.

Man, laid down in earth's mossy bosom
absorbs his being in stony silence
An ecstatic quiet, a mute felicity,
As it was in the Beginning.


Ex Animo

People lost and never met,
Though they swim with
Nay, haunt me,
To neither do I belong,
But with the old crones of stony hearts
That loved too much, too well,
They that so bitter in retreat,
Let wounds swallow them whole,
Those who sat in flinted silence
As all their frisky charms spilt out
And breathed in a story to replace the woman.


Aponoia

Large eyes filled her face
Damaged but defiant
Tainted with an innocence
That never spoke
But screamed or whispered

A kiss meant more
Than a fuck
A sure sign of rigor mortis
Rivers flowed in and out:
Never with

Thin lips
Bitten but still nubile
Had gone through so many
Like an animal lashing out
Bleeding life

Built up
And let down
Photography: reality’s idealism
Was her religion
Of unhappy beauty

Hope hurt
Hate’s heaviness grated
She forsook conversation
And returned to a silence that smiled
Upon the words
That were never meant
To fill it

Lonely Promiscuity

'A lady of innocence and virtue' he reads quietly
As his mates chant 'we're off on the pull'
Before one stoops over the page and grins
'Would you like a kingdom with that too?!'

'A goodly man who'll do me right' she scribbles in her diary
As her mates sing 'we're gunna get some action'
Before her twin snatches it away and sneers
'You've been watching too many movies'

His mates plaster him with cheap aftershave,
Gel, and some imitation shirt,
'Not that we've got to, is it mate
I mean you only gotta get 'em a drink'

Her mates tell her to put a shorter skirt on
And a bigger push-up bra,
'Get those shots right down ya girl
You're so ditzy and fun when you're drunk'

'Some one I could talk to; they'd understand me' he thinks
As a girl with ironed hair splutters 'ya fancy a dance?!'
Before he can decline, she's cavorting on every angle,
Reeking of the last guys sweat...

'Some one who'll love me for who I am' she thinks
As a guy leans over and grunts 'fucking nice tits'
Whilst trying to rub his groin on her behind
Before puking on her shoes...

Trampling on each other's souls to a violent rhythm
To the same soulless drone
The perfect setting for a philistine crime
They can't even hear the church toll midnight.

He sighs in the morning -
Heads straight for the door
Steps on a photo of her man
The sun's different from the last he saw

She cries in the morning -
Heads straight for the shower
Nobody told her about lonely promiscuity...
The life of an exile.



Auspicium Melioris

You came upon me blooming
With breathless aching eyes,
You were late
But not sorry
For butterflies don't apologise
To the flowers they would rob.

Besides, t'was not the time for sorrys
The moon yawns when we would blossom
The breeze coughs when we would speak
And the stars, they would bury us in yesteryear,
Given half a chance.

No, now's the time to appreciate
I saw you once,
A laughing butterfly
In your prime,
And not when the world has failed you and,
A broken reed
You die.



Saeva Indignatio Cor Laberabatet et Mentum Conturbabat


He Whispered to the candle's Flame
To Lick away his Sins
For surely Dido's fate was Lighter
Than this Crucifixion on Cupid's whim

All that Love Bequeathed him
Was Shadows, broken Dreams and Mem'ries -
The Rotten fruits of Yesteryear
That Reminded him of a meaning

Left wandering on the Backstreets of paintings
Between his lost sweetheart
And his Death
Leaving him one Hopeless salvation:
To Cry and Forget.



Arcadia

We'd mumble fragile words
On country lanes
Where only bramble-bushes
In Autumnal glow
Could hear

We'd steal kisses
On the benches
Raised on lonely hills
Under a crisp winter blanket
Of delicious frost

We would lie in fields
That the blazing sun
Had kissed
Roll in straw laughter
And Consummate it

Few years later
Fresh from defeat
Arcadia promises much again
A new Queen
Takes her seat...


Femme fatale

Shackled to MTV:
Oracle of 'the culture'
In Perpetual motion with 'the fad'
Boasting about her 'magazine complex'
With its patronising pseudo-cure
As if it made her interesting
Lost in an orgy of the insignificant
An ocean of fiction badly disguised
Which drips in garish colours
From great big generic celebrity smiles
Invented wants and fancied needs
The consumer-customer par excellence
With straight dyed hair, a made-up face,
Ash-tray breath, plastic tits, a rotting gut
And done the whole 'feminist thing' with men
'Cos Cosmipolitan told me to'
Enervated by the drone of a 'dancing' rhythm
A poor excuse for a human.


Homage to Nietzsche

To know the truth
Is still to feels its steel
And suffer ten hundred fold
because of fools' peace
Wear your wounds
With pride on your thoughts
Like a diadem on the brow
Innocence might lose its shine
And love, its gloss
Time might lay thee low
Reclining - smiles, laughing at your loss
But though mens sana corpore sano
Is not a bad command
Only spectacles are worth their slot
Life doesn't rot with these pages of mine
But glows in gladiator blood
Slowly watch the dressings
of civilisation wear a little thin
Trampled by its own design
A dirge of ugly rhythm
The heathens present our only hope
No salvation do they promise
But the rise and fall of a day in time
And a truth that ever hurt.

Free Verse to a Boy and a Duck

Prisoners of the office drift by – they’ve been liberated for a day. Heaving in their topman coats and even blander wives. The younger men, divorced from a world of meaning, waft, in this menagerie of souls. They’re so cool with their cynical eyes and totalitarian t-shirts. The babies and old ones on the benches laugh at everybody in between. ‘Slaves of money of sex’ they say, but no one seems to hear. They can only hear their own voices hidden behind ray bans, mags, and phones. A little boy attacks some ducks. ‘A step forward on the human face my friend – It must be the only way out of this place’, this nutters masque, this fest of kitsch, of nothing more affirmative than God’s grace.


What path?

Run, run! Through thicket, quick!
Choose a path, dark or lit,
To make your own
But do not slack
For time weighs heavy
Upon your back

Dash this way, then that,
Think back and forth!
Have dusty tomes served your cause?
Or did they spurn
The vigour, the élan,
The heat and burn?

Stop! Halt!
There’s water deep,
A silvery grave for you to leap:
No monsters or demons lurk within
But a mirror, vast,
That reflects your sin.

Look, Espy the waters source!
Guineveres and eyes
From which tears are forced
All claiming they loved you… until they did not
A waste of time
Or heaven sublime.

Pause! Inhale the heavy air,
The grey carpet divine, those lofty stairs,
A painting of doom and ecstasy
Nature’s tragic symphony:
A music which will drown out the noise
Long after we are returned to silence.

Henry Hopgood Phillips