Flickering and fanciful,
the shadow of a flame touches your face on
a cold and quiet Saturday evening in paradise.
Flickering once more in the fire, it unfolds the prayer of a love desired.

With warmth and wondering my eyes steal upon you in
a bed made just as much for lingering as for loving.
I linger over every part of your body,
every part of your mind and the way you work causing delicious chaos inside.

Night times last forever and yet it’s never long enough for
me to make you understand.
I would wrap you in the warmest coat to shield you from the cold,
and keep you wrapped in love until we’re passed, and past all memory of being old.

Syllables can rhyme, as well as sounds
The Beginning of a line, the (middle) or The End.
It’s the micro not the macro, the devil’s in the detail.
You start with grand ideas but they end up fairly foetal.

I could conjure up a rhyme, or at least the feeling of one
With just one pivotal con-so-nant.

A vowel, I think, is the easier thing.
An i for an i, just slot them in
Like so.

You think you have it now?
The poet’s gift, the creative flow?
But where is the meaning, the image, the feeling?
Your rhyme is full, but your poetry?

Demeaning.

thetwelfthfret asked: absolutely amazing. excellent. I love the imagery it is very strong. I'll publish it.

Thanks for reading :)

Thanks Josh, I’ve never really shown my work to anyone before Tumblr, so that does actually make me very happy :)

When did you first see beauty in words?
You poets of old and modern day.
You who mould words so easily.
Like the potter, teasing a bee’s wing out of clay.

Where, first, did inspiration strike?
A search for beauty – one shaft of light so
Sudden, so illuminating, so awesomely bright –
Was there nothing else about which you could write?

How did you learn to carve your craft?
You Kavanaghs, Heaneys and Behans of this world -
Uneducated, grounded, politically stirred.
Your art crying out, demanding to be heard.

I’d tread your every step, devour your every word
To inspire just one poem worthy of being heard.

By Harry Clifton

A childless, futureless road
And then nothing… Is that it?
Or start believing in a God
Beyond the temporal limit

Of westering skies, wide, melancholy,
Uncut fields and paced-out walls
As we drive towards it slowly,
The house that has us both in thrall.

They are gone, now, the hours of light
It took to get here. Might-have-beens,
Lost wanderyears. But that’s alright—
We are trading it in, the seen

For the experienced, the car keys
For the end of the journey,
When distances have lost their power
And the heart beats slower

In tomorrow’s cold, a coming weather
One degree north of yesterday.
High latitudes—as they say,
There is nothing up here

But wind and silence, passing clouds,
Light diminished half a tone,
A dish left out all night for the gods
By morning turned to stone.

So take a right, go down two gears
And stay in second, where the church is
And the pig farm. Only the approaches
Are terrible, only the years,

The getting here, which takes forever.
A boy in tears, a barren crone
On a bicycle, a man alone—
They’re waving… It’s now or never

For the final self, I assume—
For the shape of the house
On the skyline, the release
Into childhood, and the coming home.