Hope Cove

Image from Maxpixel

Idyllic, sleepy

Fishing town

Where bracken cliffs

Come tumbling down

And seabirds wheel

In skies above

Their cries an emblem

Of the cove.

A surreptitious glance

At you

Revealed the feelings

That were true

One night of freedom

In your arms

A kind of drowning

In your charms.

An ambled walk

Through fields of gold

The breakers sounding

As they rolled

And you and I

Together, one

To gaze upon

The glorious

Setting of the sun.

Written for Dawn

2345 hours

Steve Wheeler (c) 23 July, 1997

If

Image from Wikimedia Commons

If you can keep your chin up

And put your back to the wheel

With your nose to the grindstone...

If you can keep on your toes

Whilst putting your best foot forward

And shoulder the responsibility

While bending over backwards

To face the music...

If you can grasp the nettle with both hands

And turn over a new leaf

While keeping your hand in

And getting your finger out...

If you can stand on your own two feet

And pull your socks up

While standing tall...

If you can keep your feet firmly planted on the ground

And show a clean pair of heels

And treat these two positions just the same...

If you can stick your neck out

And put your head on the block

While holding your head up high

And keeping your ear to the ground...

That would all be most unusual

And what is more, 

You'll be a contortionist my son.

2100 hours

If by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England on 7 July, 1997 and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Love out of season

Image by Luke Price on Flickr

When I first met her

In the springtime of life

Our hearts melted

Like the last snows.

Our love grew

Budding like the early leaf

In new green hollows.

When we strolled together

In the summer

Our lives entwined

Like ivy 

On the garden wall.

Our hope blossomed

In the sunshine of our eyes

And swelled

In the warmth

Of our touching.

When we parted in the autumn

Our tears and feelings

Fell spiralling downward 

like the leaves

Useless

Leaving our hearts bare and cold

Damp upon the forest floor.

And while the winter

Knocked upon the door

Like the early winds

We drifted

Irreparably apart.

1600 hours

Steve Wheeler (c) 3 October 1980

Beside the seaside

Photo by Andrew on Flickr

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Where the oilslicks are lapping at the shore

Oh I do like to walk along the promenade

While my feet dodge the hypodermics and the tar

Oh I do like the sickly smell of ozone

And the sewerage that washes over me

There is nothing to compare

With breathing in polluted air

Beside the seaside

Beside the sea

0030 hours

Steve Wheeler © 8 July, 1997 

Wish list

I thought long and hard about beefing up my act

by trying to be streetwise and removing the tact

I thought about using a drum machine

and dressing in a style that was moody and mean

I tried to show I had my finger on the pulse

with a Liverpool accent, but it came out sounding false

I tried to hit the stage like a sex machine

but that didn't work because my shirt wasn't clean

The working class hero was another ploy

but it all fell flat and I started to annoy

I wanted my persona to be witty and wise

but a leopard can't change its spots no matter how it tries

I wanted my words to be smart and incisive

but it sounded insincere and it proved to be divisive

I wanted to appeal to the nation's youth

when all I really needed was to tell the truth

Steve Wheeler © 15 December, 2016

No picnic

Image from Pixabay

If you go down

To the woods today

You'll find

That they're not the same.

The trees are all gone

The land is stripped bare

And you and me

Are to blame.

For everybody in the UK

Is going down

For a Big Mac today

Today's the day

We're swapping the forests

For beef steak.

Midnight

No picnic by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England on 2 August 1993 and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Locked inside

Photo by Nino Barbieri on Wikimedia Commons

George was locked inside his own head.

He couldn't get out. He didn't want to get out. He was quite comfortable, locked inside his own head.

The inside of his head felt safe and secure. Everything inside his head was familiar. Outside his head the world looked scary and unpredictable.

And so George sat there alone with his own thoughts, playing games inside his mind. He never played with the other children, even when they asked him. He was comfortable on his own, free to be himself, inside his own mind. Inside George's head, everything was possible, there was no-one to tell him what to do, and no-one could make him feel sad.

The other children looked at George and were curious. They tried to talk to him, but George said nothing. He wouldn't even look at them. They tried to get him to play with them, but George just sat there, staring ahead. In the end, the other children got bored with George. Then they called him names. Then they ran away laughing. They left George alone, locked inside his own head.

George was always alone with his own thoughts.

One day, George began to wonder what it might be like to escape from his own head. He imagined what it would be like to unlock the door in his mind and go outside. But he couldn't. It was scary outside his head, and he began to get anxious about leaving his safe place. So he stayed locked up inside. All around him, the children played and laughed and danced, and ran. And George just sat there, staring ahead, and locked inside his own head.

Until, one day, Maisie came along.

She looked at him and wondered what George was thinking. But George just sat there, staring ahead.

So Maisie gently touched his hand. George looked down, and then he looked at her. She had a nice face, he thought. George smiled, and suddenly the lock in the door inside his head began to turn. It opened and the light streamed in, and George didn't feel unsafe any more. In fact he was happy. His smile began to widen.

He jumped up, and soon he and Maisie were running around, laughing and playing together. As they ran between the trees and through the long grass together, he thought 'this is fun!'

Maisie agreed, and her tail wagged with joy.



Locked inside by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.