Tag: youth

Poem: Carousel Kissing

winter

And so I followed you,
holding desperately your trailing hand.
From dodgem screams in head-on collision,
to long kisses on carousels,
sitting the wrong way—
facing you,
holding you—
Yes, I was daring you!
That smile behind your eyes like a loving sun
which I met devouring candy floss;
sugar highs spinning lips together,
meeting and melting our cares;
suspended in ghost trains,
scaring you, opportune for me.
And later, strolling slick sands,
the far bass thuds
tripping our hearts,
setting off our lives.
Still in motion

copyright Leofwine Tanner 2019

*If you would like a personal astrology report, please contact me at: leoftanner@gmail.com for further details.

Poem ‘City Nights’

London

City Nights

Though your faces
change these same streets
remain. Same high
sights in floodlit stone,
city nights abased
by brawls and chilli fights
in queues

Where were you when
I was this green
and victim?
Your fashion is the masque
of fools, disguises nothing;
your life like mine is
still waste

But somehow you’re
preoccupied.
Laugh in my face and deride
my reticence— won’t you!
So it always
was, for soon the dreaming
is done

© copyright df barker 2012

Poem ‘Barricades’

Barricades

My home is a castle in need, because
of who I am, for all that went before.
Living close to a sea I rarely saw,
I rode bikes, losing trees, clothes on the way,
all scale of self to glimpse some grey ocean,
a lone redshank wail from his muddy creek
and rise into blanket skies, scorning me.
I didn’t know then, nor do I pretend
to know now exactly what’s hurting me,
but the funk of youth is bitterness now.
The shining ship which might’ve saved me, white
sails riding threshold waves — it didn’t come.
Abandoned, the sailor who never was,
behind terse barricades, counting the days

poem © copyright df barker 2012
*image © Neil Smith

Poem ‘Doing it all’

Doing it all

you are like a meteor
and you’re young.
I am a metaphor for middle-age

I watch you smoke,
I can’t tell you
how it makes me feel

one hand wants to snatch
while the other loves
patting your head

so why do I smirk
at your facebook smile? – oh
this envy takes many forms

though the worst is knowing
you’re doing it all, and that I,
for all my whittling

have nothing to show

poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012