Hot Copy » Poetry

A Forest

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:27:22 +0000

I approach the border
Between the land of men
And the land of trees and
Step gingerly past

I wait

They allow me to pass
Into their realm
Where the most ancient
Creatures keep watch

I am strange, an alien
In a world much older
Where time curls around rocks
Like clinging rooty tendrils

It is quiet

A mustiness overpowers me
I inhale with needles
My heart races as my blood
Adjusts to the sudden silence

Suddenly, I am calm
The trees are allies
Beaming life and energy
And peace

I stand for hours
My blood beating in my ears
Each cell in my body joyful
The trees soothing

It is night

The trees whisper their
Goodbyes in the chill night air
I move into the world again
Alive and ready

David Bowie

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:22:53 +0000

Whip cracking of bones as he takes his place
At the head of the end of the human race
He looks down at the mourners
No dry eye in the house
The flowers are dying
Like everything else
He ran a good race
But now he
Wants out

Swim up to heaven, swim up like a trout

He looks
Up above and
Who does he see but
Jimi and Freddie and Mr Presley
Each once had their fifteen minutes of fame
Lit up for a while like moths hitting a flame

New idols are made
More flickering stars
Each day someone buys
a six string guitar

New Text Document

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:13:45 +0000

Your pureness awaits
The gentle pitter patter
Of pixeled ink

You breathe deep as my stroking fingers
Inject you
Fill you

And soon you burst with song
Waves break
On your untarnished shore

Subsiding into quiet contentment
You exhale
And are complete

Fork

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:09:39 +0000

I am the bearer of bad news
That which you thought was chicken
Was not

The Library

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:03:28 +0000

All is gravely quiet
The silence of the ghosts
Of lives captured between the covers
Ashes to ashes
The stories hold fast the hopes
And dreams of millions of souls
I pick up an ancient tome
Dust to dust
What cowardly secrets or noble deeds
Are forever locked in black ink
On your yellow, crinkled paper-skin?
I bury you
Back in your shelf

Shock and Awe

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Twisting bomb fragments
Rupture the rickety rafters
Of my leaky roofed
Home for seven
Ramshackle shack

Nails and wood chips
Rain down like dates
Shaken from a palm
By a hot and violent wind

The searing shockwave
Explodes my lungs
I am in stasis
Looking up
Into the boiling Baghdad sky
As America flies past

Hello America!
Thank you for the freedom!
Please come again!

In Vino Veritas

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:53:48 +0000

The crushed grape
long awaits the grand opening
with much aplomb
The cheeky nose
Elegant yet deceptive
Depraved with a hint of mischief
The truth lingers on every sparkling drop
When you open a bottle of wine
It opens you

Johannesburg Nights

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:51:23 +0000

Night time gathers
The moon that lurks like a mugger
Behind a shroud of smog
Delightless stars smugly
Grease the blackness with streaks
Of hesitating light
An owl hoots an omen
While sirens shriek prayers to heaven

The Memory of Water

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:46:07 +0000

Can you remember?

Each drowning sailor’s final prayer
Quartz rock singing against your molecules
The flames of Pompeii as the lava hissed against you
Nero fiddling as he drunkenly engulfed you

The wooden buckets while London burned away
Noah on deck with his face held up to the rain
The soft caress of ink as Confucius wrote the Analects
Bubbling in vain against the deathly rods of Chernobyl

Cooling Stalin’s sweaty forehead on the balcony
Dripping deliciously from Eve’s sweet apple
Christening each Russian rocket before take off
A mammoth’s scream at the breaking of ice

Can you forget?

Iron Harvest

Tony Lopes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:42:19 +0000

Dark and rusted fruits of the Great War
Still lie buried like poisonous potatoes
Every year farmers collect these
Unexploded shells and ordinances
In what is known as the Iron Harvest

The trenched swamp of the Western Front
Is the grocery aisle of harboured death
A ploughshare ripping the earth
Adds another name to the wall of remembrance

One out of four
Is the estimate
Of shells dropped by the Germans
On France that did not explode

For every square metre
Reaching up from the coast to the Swiss front
A ton of bombs rained down
Sending men to oblivion

The scythe of history
Cuts still
In France
Cambodia
Mozambique

And yet