Happy 50th Birthday for Garnet Meekings

This is short verse I wrote for my brother-in-law's 50th birthday (we were all asked to write something about him, so this was my contribution). He has a Facebook page, and recently he posted an enigmatic comment - Garnet is doing things differently - without going into detail of what was meant by this. He is also a red head with curly hair. So that's the background

Happy 50th for Garnet

Facebook proclaims, though not really how,
That Garnet is doing things differently now.
Have you noticed a change, in his hair or it's hue?
Things aren't quite the same, I know it is true.

The curls are back, I'm sure I'm not wrong,
They used to be short - but now they are long.
The ringlets are growing all over his head,
The amazing thing is, they're still Simply Red!

But as he gets older, what do you think,
Will they turn grey - or maybe just P!nk?
I'm sure he will say, I'll wager a bet,
"I'm fifty today, but I'm not dead yet!"

Stefan at the Nursing Home

I don't want to write this poem
I don't want to see him
He sits there wilting forward, head bowed, as if he's praying
But he's fallen asleep, in his wheel chair.

I hate to see him like this
I hate feeling so helpless
Him feeling angry, undignified and out of control
And he's fallen asleep, in his wheel chair.

I took him to the dining room
Where he tries to eat squashed carrots, something sloppy and white
And something that passes for meat
But he's fallen asleep, in his wheel chair.

I get out the iPod shuffle and
Shove the earphones in his ears
It plays the old tunes from his home land, languid laments and sad songs
Then he wakes with a smile, in his wheel chair.

He tried to kill himself last week
But he's so feeble he never succeeds
So he's angry, frustrated, just wants to go home
And he's fallen asleep, in his wheel chair

He's becoming a nuisance
To the nurses and their assistants
There aren't enough to watch him all night, and when he wanders they wish
That he'd fallen asleep, in his wheel chair.

And still,
I don't want to write this poem
I don't want to see him like this.

Remembering

Old age sometimes leads to forgetting. This is a poem, each verse in cinquaine form, which came from thinking about this.

The words
Don't come to mind
As quickly as before
Other words come, but I wish for
Silence

The things
That used to be
Familiar, now are strange
My home has now become a house
Unknown

The soul
Is woven from
Our words and memories
And when these disappear, will I
Vanish?

But if
I write these down
And make them dance and rhyme
And sing, then will my soul live on
Forever?

A Visit to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair

So restful, sitting, silent on her chair,
You deeply breathe the vista here spread out;
Dismiss our time, the breeze transports me there,
No opera house, no quay, no bridge, no doubt.

Existing in a time and space not mine,
You hear a voice, just there, beyond the tree!
She whispers; “Look! You see this chair so fine?
He carved this rock to show his love for me.

At once I saw the feeling in his heart,
Relinquished fear of former lovers past.
By simple act of kindness from the start,
Our love’s confirmed; I know now it will last”.

Undying love remembers little things,
Rejoices in the gifts a lover brings.

Happy Birthday

I put this onto Susannah's birthday card:

This pendant captures colours of the sun
A sparkling jewel, a precious living one.
You're proof that youth is wasted on the young
Let's celebrate this day; you're fifty one!

Wedding Anniversary

Thank you
My darling for
Loving me all these years,
For being my lover and
My friend.

Thank you
Susannah for
Putting up with all my
Strange ideas and the swinging moods,
My love.

Thank you
My darling for
Twenty four years and two
Beautiful sons, the centre of
Our lives.

Each year
I love you more
Each year is better than
The one before, and it will last
Forever.

For Jamie, on his 21st Birthday

It seems
Like yesterday
You were just a baby
Lying peacefully in the cot
Asleep.

It seems
Like yesterday
You were just a schoolboy
Running, jumping, playing, laughing,
Falling

Like boys
always seem to.
It seems like yesterday
That your voice broke and you grew tall
And strong.

And now
You are a young
Man, making your own life,
Finding your own path, learning to be
Yourself.

It seems
Like yesterday
You were just a baby
And now you've reached age twenty one
My son.

- Vergil Iliescu

Gone Forever

Here is a lovely little poem about finding the right words when writing a poem ...


Half way through shaving it came -
the word for a poem.
I should have scribbled it
on the mirror with a soapy finger
or shouted it out to my wife in the kitchen,
or muttered it to myself till it ran
in my head like a tune

But now its gone with the whiskers
down the drain. Gone forever,
like the girls I never kissed,
and the places I never visited,
the lost lives I never lived.

- Barriss Mills