ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

G'day All,

Here is a dark one, kinda gloom-n-doom, but hey I hear some like this kinda thing. I think I'll take a rest from posting. I don't want to be seen as occupying this site with my scribble dribble...... so here it is........

My somber ways

Somber are my days,
My hours, turn only to joylessness
Summoned in my murky ways
These dreams of sorrow are only of hopelessness
Blood red roses their gifts of prickly thorns
Joyous in my simple wish to
Only you left, these symbols never appeased you

I know my somber moods have removed you
Please don't, not when my heart is forever torn
Gloomy back birds circle, and have empty gifts of nothingness
Emptiness haunts through listlessness on these days
I can't change these deep dark gloomy ways
What if I thought constantly of you?
No, its somber and only my sorry sad ways

Such is my wish this lifeless dream,
With broken love, no money, I've lost it all
My lonely heart can't simply breath
Destiny has decided our love is near this end
Soon there'll be no more weeping candles
Prayers seem hollow, my verse not sadly followed

Let all of them see I weep,
let them know that I'm glad of this soulful heap
Death is life, but not hollow in this dream
Emptiness is endless so it seems
With this final breath I depart my soul
Such is this end on my sad somber day

Wishing, is my sad wishfulness
I sleep in an eternity, your sadly never there
Tangled in depths lost, be still my heart, oh dear
Darling, there's never any hope for me,
that my dreams can ever be happy
O my heavy heart is gladly empty
You'll never know how much I wanted to
A blackness for happiness, this dark and somber day

© PHILIP ANTHONY

G'day Philip, Don't give up. You've obviously tried hard to bring some thought into your verse.
If you don't mind a suggestion. I'm no expert, just something that I have been told along the way and I try to learn from it.
Master poets that I read advise me to show don't tell.
Some of the things you have mentioned like " joylessness" "hopelessness' " empty gifts of nothingness" " sad wishfulness " tell us about your mood but I think perhaps you know what that means to you, but we don't. If you want us to know, you have to show us what it means by concrete examples.

Maybe you could look up on the web; a poem by Elizabeth Bishop called One Art,
Elizabeth Bishop talks about the sadness of loss all through her life. She shows what that means to her by giving specific examples of things that she has lost and she survived the tragedy of loss. And she does it in only 19 lines. See what you think ?