Anthony Ward

Kent, UK

I was born on 31st December 1949. My parents, James and Enid Ward gave my brothers and I a happy secure home life. I was educated at our Lady of the Rosary School and secondary modern. From the moment I could read I fell in love with the English language and poetry in particular as its purest expression. Favourite poets are Keats, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath. I had considerable illness as a child which kept me in hospital and out of school for long periods with the consequent effect that I still feel myself to be something of an outsider.

Mirror

I soak up all you give me
Words and sweat and love
I am the sponge that never dries
The multipersonal man
I am he and she and them
I am a mirror, reflecting
Alice was my friend
There is no core engraved with me
I am a pool of water
Look and see a face appear
Do you recognise the eyes?
Do you think these depths are yours?
Sometimes a mirror lies.

Bleeding

I pass through smiles untouched
Avoiding grasping eyes
Laughter cracks like alien vowels
Desolate as forsaken thighs
There I go again with rhynes
To dull inverted rage
There I go a walking
Stifling the silent scream
Bleeding cut the joyless days
Ca voice whispers do no mistake
The ache of self pity for the sea of dreams
I hope to wake
The tourniquet still seems to tight
Ravels as the cloak of night
Enfolding me
Tomorrow opens like a wound
Tomorrow with a thousand spurts
Of crimson stains the skies

On A Birthday

There is no point at which the years crush
The on rush does not prevent a tantalising glimpse
Of unattained desires
Beyond the campfirles
We bide our time
Still we gleam like the eyes of the wolf
Fierce in the night of his hunger

Nativity

Long distance friendships
Cards at Christmas
The rattle in the closet
Dust on the keyboard
Of an untuned grand
Reports and exhortations
Telephone bells, death knells
Christmas trees light up
The bones beneath the skin
The holly bush and silent sin
Beside the river huddled down
Sleeping faces crib and crown