Poem for the Day

A poem a day by Arthur J Plant

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A Happy New Year and a Goodnight From Me

Well folks, 1800+ posts and 360+ followers later I’ve decided to call it a day on this fun little project. A new year brings new beginnings but also means putting some things to bed, as I have now decided to do here. 

I certainly won’t be giving up poetry, just finding somewhere else to put it. I also won’t be deleting this blog but will be leaving it for posterity (and for a couple of side-blogs I still wish to tend). I’ll also be around to stay in touch with the Tumblr sphere. 

 I want to thank all of you who followed, liked, reblogged and even left kind messages since I started. Each and every one one has meant more than you could know. 

Thank you and a Happy New Year to you all. 

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A Year On The Road

Battered and bruised, ultimately victorious still we must leave a friend by the road, another year with a smiling dirty face well used, well worn, well enjoyed or suffered, moments of present receding with a setting sun pulling a new morning over the Earth.

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Pay The Toll

You have to pay the toll at the bridge where the river rolls because without the toll the bridge keeper will go and the river will take you in lieu.

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Brand New Boots

A good Prime Minister always has his wellies on but never any mud on his trousers tramping through the devastation with enough make-up and costume to keep the figure trim and face young, all news can be good news every catastrophe an opportunity to shine and show off those brand new wellies.

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Effects Of Clinging Rain

Modern man is not invulnerable yet as it clings to the hills so will the rain cling to you, creeping with sodden fingers deep into the lungs of overconfident young who know from experience that they are immortal, oceans of medicine being driven back behind a dark veil, the eternal friends of earth leaping nimbly around on their side of Darwin's great tree spiking our bodies in thrilling ways that we did not expect, or did depending on if you went walking in the cold clinging rain.

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The Lucky Hearth

The sun never rose on Christmas day the rain clouds filled the shift instead, all the better to share this glorious hearth and think deeply on how lucky we are this family, in this house, hearts together the fire under our control.

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For The Love Of Christmas

Christmas isn't like in the songs or the cards, never has been these are fantasies for the rich who can draw curtains over large windows and imagine that everything is as peaceful as the TV assures them.

There is struggle at Christmas, pain, starvation, rage and sorrow but the children carrying those will still make their own, in the cold and the rain given the chance, given the will given the love that makes Christmas special.

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Walking

Men, women, and children are walking as the the ancestors of all humanity have, mountains to plains, seas to oceans, against the many suns, winds, and rains scattering the many varied birds through all the great cities and mighty forests seeking fertile lands to make a harvest or a kingdom to pay taxes to without fear of the old life coming back, catching up when they have finally lain down their children for the night.

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Running Numbers

The numbers keep getting bigger, it's making me dizzy: What was millions was billions, billion running into millions, a few hundred is now a hundred thousand in a town near you.

The money is more, the people are more the people without money are more, everything is faster, smarter, more efficient an abundance of everything save time which can't get enough of, we're running out of everything.

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The dark was made for excitements and those they need not press upon, drinkers, addicts, perverts, and poets committing the consensual sins behind bushes in the parks while children walk with family dogs on the evenings far too short for such merry innocence never guessing surprising futures already being played out back at home in their parent's darkened bedroom or bathroom, or shed.

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Vanishing at the Table

Dear God, let me be alone let me fade as a mystery at the table to be accepted and never wondered about a shadow that can be snuffed out and returned but never paid heed, allow me to disappear and never hear the questions circulating the busy head sat around the table.

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Voyage in the Bow

I would like to voyage standing in the bow of a violin, watch myself skip merrily over shining strings and feel the tremulous air whipping at my body and soul propelled by a passionate hand steady and mighty driving my own soul and vessel forward.

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The Stabbing

It's a stabbing, the handle of the knife towering out of the giving Earth while the lithe tongue of a blade skewers deeply, twisting the rocks until the guts of the mother have been destroyed and extracted, food for the grim addiction fuel for the devils, a pain we promise to stop and can, but won't, we stab again.

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Home of Vice

The smell of vice hangs in the air, the new smoke that kids love mixed with scents of semen flavour a quiet night when people can be lonely with each other or busy with themselves, stacks of books and a television left on while curtains blow in a December night far too warm, the coffee gone cold on a cluttered counter top.

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News Reader

I lock myself up in my home but the news still finds me there, bad opinions spilling from screens until I am drowning in dirty mud lodging in my lungs.

I run away to the woods but the news still finds me there, the face of a bloodied screaming child pleading for dignity on the newspaper I can't wipe my ass with.

I run away to sea just me boat and me but now the news is all around, refugees in the water and a Ruskie bearing down, there's no escaping the news I'm in it now.

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Waiting to Heal

Our children inherit our blood and the wounds they bleed from, legacies unknown and unseen hanging from their clothes on the way to and back from school on the way to and back from work on the way to and back the old home where their mothers and fathers still live heavy on their beds and in their chairs still waiting to heal.

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Music History

Strange memories on the radio, deaths of presidents and sporting triumphs obscure informations of old worlds rolling with the rapid beats of cities since built over, dead men singing about dead women playing guitars that were recently sold for an obscene sum, controversies made quaint by memory bleeding into the news segment at half past the hour.