Poetry Competition Short listed Entries

English Blake
By Debbie J Elliott

William Blake was ironic yet serious
As he sang & painted the mysteries.
He was told by angels to listen to God
But he had already seen him when a tot.
Blake searched for ancient truths & golden times
He found the answers in his mind.
He had one foot in this world
The other stood in the spiritual realm.
He talked to his beloveds all the time
No matter whether they were dead or alive.
Blake painted & etched
And wrote poetry & prose whilst he sketched
Biblical scenes & historical encounters
He made into art whilst he sat at the counter.
Visions of his dead brother Robert
Taught him to etch proper.
With a mirror backwards he learnt to write
So that his etching came out just right.
He didn’t believe in a natural religion
Yet he was god-fearing.
Blake produced illuminated books about the soul,
Spirit & mankind’s ultimate goal.
Blake created a system so that he would not be a slave
To any other man’s belief in a deity or way.
He believed himself a spirit of prophecy
Looking for innocence amongst the cacophony.
And as his feet walked the streets of London
The paves became Jerusalem.
He opened the gates of Paradise
To find that it was now Hell & full of vice.
He believed in Liberty,
That every man, woman & child should be free,
Free to sing & free to dance
Blake liked to hear the children laugh.
For everything that lives is holy
And to Blake life should be holy.
But he saw the torment & pain
As he walked London’s lanes.
Blake protested with rhyme & verse
And pictures to explain his universe.
Stubborn in his thoughts & obsessive in his work
He came across as a bit berserk.
He wrote the marriage of heaven & hell
And cast young Catherine under his spell.
So William Blake used his imagination
And gave us songs of experience
As he travelled in his mind
And wrote a new bible
On the creation of mankind.
To see & behold his wonderful art
To hear his words of light & dark
William Blake & his visionary prose
William Blake the English rose.

The Ghost of Milton
By Stephen Micalef

The ghost of Milton drinks still
at the Fox Inn and wanders round Felpham –
I see him kiss Ololon in the church graveyard
and standing under the old quince tree on Hayley’s
lawn by the ornamental pond –
I see him standing on Hayley’s horse mount
at the Turret’s gate
waiting for a groom to bring Alphonso’s pony Bruno
to ride quixotic to the mountains of Jerusalem –
Sometimes he looks like Blake himself
staring into the apocalypse of the sea
seeing the Beast rise –
In calmer weather
I see him bending down
gathering angel wings on the seashore
and staring at the psychedelic atoms
of glinting sunlight
forming the Albion of us all –
And now Milton’s ghost -or is it Blake’s –
huddled into the corner of the Fox Inn
And now angry red faced Schofield’s
staring in at the pub window
banging and shouting
I’ll get you Blake!
You dirty rotten military painter!
Your time is up!
But Blake’s Time is never up
Immortality is only just beginning 

The Forge of Angels
By Khudeeja Begum

O London’s river, darkly crowned with fire,
The bridges span the bones of sleeping years-
Where whispers of prophets still aspire,
And Angels wade through humanity’s tears,
In cobblestone light the spirits gleam,
Forged from labour, dream by dream;
While iron hearts in taverns low
Beat molten hymns the heavens know.

A child I saw beneath the hill
His breath a gleam, His eyes the will,
Of long-dead saints who strove for grace,
And read God’s fury on man’s face.
He spoke: “The lamb and lion bleed,
That wisdom’s star may intercede.”
And lo, the sky in rust unrolled,
Where dawn was burning , fierce and cold.

Might not the poor soul , crushed in clay,
Sing brighter than the golden day,
For truth is forged in shadows cave,
And tyrants tremble at the grave,
The beggars cup, the widow’s sigh,
Are censers to the sceptred sky.
In every soot-black street there gleams,
The angel of the people’s dream.

O Blake! Thou hammer of celestial flame,
Who saw through pallid flesh the Name-
Return, return, thy children cry,
Amid the wheels that choke the sky.
The Thames still weeps its silver prayer,
Through iron dust and poisoned air;
Yet in each brick and burning spire,
Lurks vision’s spark, Devotion’s fire.

For where the sun on st Mary’s reigns,
I hear the choir through factory chains;
And through the bankers build of gold,
Their towers crack, their hearts grow cold.
But in the singer’s trembling throat,
Eternal melodies still float:

The Lamb is risen, the Tyger roars-
And creation breaks its prison doors.
O England, forge thy soul anew,
Not in iron, but in dew;
Let every street become a star,
Each life a blazing avatar.
When heaven’s gate at dawn is flung,
Let justice rise with radiant tongue;
Then Man and God, through night and fire,
Shall fuse again in one desire.