NaPoWriMo - April 20th

April is National Poetry Writing Month. In celebration of poets everywhere, and to encourage those who are just embarking on their literary journey, I will be posting poetry (not mine) each day for the month of April. Please take a look and enjoy this special art.

Salwa Samra

Salwa Samra is a writer of ‘Poetry' and 'Non Fiction.' She is most passionate about 'Poetry' and prefers to label her writings as - 'Writing Pieces' rather than Poems/Poetry for the specific rationale that her writings are 'Pieces' that reflect nature, emotions, sentiment, and experiences of the human body, mind, and spirit.
Salwa has a varied and wide collection of Writing Pieces.

More of Salwa's work can be found on her blog and her facebook page.

Please NOTE:
All Salwa Samra's Writing Pieces are protected under the Copyright Act 1968. Copyright gives its owner the legal right to take action in certain circumstances if someone else uses these Writing Pieces without purchase or permission.

I’ll Be

I’ll be your flower in the sun
I’ll be your rain in dry periods to come
I’ll be your tears in trials of sorrow
I’ll be your lender in times to borrow

I’ll be your strength when you are weak
I’ll be your light from darkness to peak
I’ll be your calm when the storm arrives
I’ll be your peace in peril and strife

I’ll carry you through each mountain height
I’ll tread you along each heavy plight
I’ll be your stream in the valley low
I’ll pace you through any frightening blow

I’ll be your touch when it’s too hard to feel
I’ll be your warmth from the cold to seal
I’ll be the straight trail from the crocked path
I’ll be your joy to impart a candid laugh

I’ll be the gold when you’re being refined
I’ll be the pearl in the oyster you find
I’ll be the colours in your rainbow
I’ll be your unquenchable gusto

Salwa Samra © 2009
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.

ASPIRE

In the rush of the wind
A whisper is eager to ascend
In the twinkle of an eye
A raindrop releases its cry

As the fawn shadows the doe
A prey surrenders to its unrelenting foe
As the seed is soiled to the land
It emerges to something quite grand

During the Winters rain the storms roar
In its fierceness unforeseen victory may soar
Within the splendor of the sun new life is created
Inside the wonder of Spring much is mated

Through the dark of night when all is still
The mornings dawn contains its silent fill
Soon dusk appears in its misty haze
Weaving the day for the next to amaze

Endeavour to grasp the unknown design
When a new day greets another entwines
As the twilight comes and the stars appear
Seek to understand the unfamiliar near

For each individual is a unique creation
In every personality a diverse foundation
Aspire to embrace what is yours alone
In each of us a gift is fervently sown

When the bird orchestrates its familiar songs
Contemplate nature to you it belongs
When the grandeur of life leaves you in awe
Aspire to discover just a little more

Salwa M. Wills © 2008
 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.

Rooms in my Heart

One day I discovered many ‘rooms’ in my heart
As I walked down it’s passage, doors set apart
On these doors were displayed the title of each
Travelling life’s journey, everyone I’ve beseeched

The first room I entered ‘love’ was its name
I was touched by it’s settings, warmth it attained
Recalling many memories from child to mother
There glittered unconditional love for many another

Leaving the room of love coldness invited me
To view a room quite dark, it was ‘anger’ you see
The walls were covered in irritable black
Retracing many experiences of looming tracks

Separated from anger was brightness of ‘joy’
Throughout this room many colours to enjoy
Dancing, laughter, celebration & success
Rekindled many memories of moments blest

Then suddenly a haunting sound caused a fright
And led me into a room so dismal in it’s plight
‘Fear’ had inhaled this space and it’s extent
Causing many an opportunity abandonly spent

Continuing nearby was harmony I heard
its door and ‘peace’ greeted me without a word
How I longed to linger in it’s victorious liberty
Rest had heralded me to stillness so free

Many other rooms in my heart reside
Each one I exhibit a portrait inside
To enter and view with an attitude of trust
Furnished with an aspiration to polish not rust

By Salwa Samra © 2009
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission is prohibited.

NaPoWriMo - April 19th

April is National Poetry Writing Month. In celebration of poets everywhere, and to encourage those who are just embarking on their literary journey, I will be posting poetry (not mine) each day for the month of April. Please take a look and enjoy this special art.

Robert Heath 

E-mail: contact@carpe-somnium.com
Website: http://www.carpe-somnium.com
Twitter: @RobHeath1969
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003492794082

What can I say; this bit is harder to write than the poems themselves!!

Forty something project manager in the engineering sector by day and in the very early hours, before work, a dream of being a writer. Avid reader. Keen Allotment grower. Proud family man. Happy. Living with my long term partner. Two great kids.

I am a recovered heroin addict who lost a good portion of his twenties to drugs. Having redeemed myself somewhat I am now in the position of being happy enough to try again for the only personnel dream I have ever had, that of being a writer.

As a man I am massively influenced by my late father, who taught me how to read and therefore how to learn, and my partner and our children, who taught me how to be free.

As a fiction writer and a poet I am influenced by the greats as I see them – Kafka, Dickens, Bret Easton Ellis, Hubert Selby, Cormack McCarthy, William Faulkner, William Burroughs, Phillip Larkin, W H Auden, Adrian Mitchell, Brian Patten, Roger McGough and myriad more – people who could paint the inside of your mind with words. I like to think in some small way, I am following in their footsteps, or at least trying to.

I have to date won an online short story competition and had several pieces of poetry published in various magazines. As well as posting my debut novel on Authonomy which is Harper Collins online slush-pile.

For me poetry represents freedom to explore and explain – Poetry is distilled prose, the frozen second immortalised in a handful of words whose power lies in their form and construction as well as their given meaning.

Poetry is the very heart of the writer – the mirror to the inner self.

EVERYTHING’S BLUE IN THIS WORLD

I’d say Christmas and birthdays are the worst.
It’s like a hollow pull in your guts.

Eight years ago....................
And I don’t seem to have even moved.

Bernard helps.
Though he locks most of it away.
Sometimes a sherry or two will set his eyes bright
And he’ll reach for his hankie and mutter something about dust.

In the mornings I awake and wonder why I can’t just sleep
In dreams I see her as she was
In the day......
....well, you can’t hide from it can you

It’s in everything
The lack of her laughter
The silence at mealtimes
The slush in your groin when the news talks of another
The stupid way people are with you.

I know she’s dead
Some think, because her room is just the same
That I’ve gone a little mad.

They talk of moving on
And how time heals.

But I have nowhere to go,
Just here and the clocks tick
Just the guardian of a memory.

don’t eat as much cake anymore
used to make my own but
The taste’s gone.
And as for the garden,
It’s lucky if it sees attention once a month.

We just sit around I suppose.
We like to watch telly
And, on Sundays we put on faces and play bowls.
I hate the quiet
I hate the (w) hole in me
I hate this endless drift.

I think I’ll go look at her picture
That helps.
Sometimes.
For awhile............

HOW HE DANCED

How he danced when youth was the currency of long summer days,

And she with him. Red fire dizzy in the meadows,

And now this uncalled for haze.

A shutting up.

A pawning of trinkets.

A closing of days.

But solace, half caught like glimpses of dragonflies looping by,

to achievements never tarnished by time.

Quicksilver laughter chasing her white ankles through slurping streams.

Ambitions of becoming immortal,

yet how short the summer seems.

Too vague at times,

The holiday by the river,

The time she tripped and he caught her arm.

her breath misting in the winter air.

Too vague to grasp. Just sit and stare.

Back to a time of simple things, joined by common desire.

Just left to him embers of that fire.

And no more breath.

A simple slip.

A culmination that lasts an eternity.

Oh, how he danced.

BE ADVENTUROUS WITH THE CRISPS

Be adventurous with the crisps dear,

The salted can’t be ready this time,

No, it’s not that I am different and

Yes dear - everything is just fine.

I rather fancy denying the clocks tock today – that is all,

Beating back the reapers hand –

Like the day we spent in Haringey

Shopping on Green Lanes – now that was grand.

We were ageless then, zeal crazed too,

imbued with a desperate fire,

Yet it leaks away so darn quick,

Dear, make sure you take your walking stick.

And no cheese and onion dear,

that I am afraid will never qualify,

It’s as banal as the others are dear,

Oh hurry lest I cry – a little admissions tear

I’m so coffin crushingly alone - aren’t I dear.

No one actually to fetch the crisps,

Adventurous or otherwise.