SIMPLE POEMS FOR COMPLEX FOLK
by Cliff Howard
For those interested, I hope you enjoy some of my 56 short poems in rhyme,
published on ISSUU – ‘Simple Poems for Complex Folk’.
Paintings can stimulate
poems yet born,
that comfort and uplift
the old or forlorn.
Poems can conjure
a memorable time,
of loveliness, warmth
and passion sublime.
My poetry has largely been influenced by:-
Eighteenth century poets:
William Blake; Robert Burns; William Wordsworth; Charlotte Smith; Lord Byron; Percy Bysshe Shelly; John Keats.
Nineteenth century poets:
Ralph Emerson; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Henry Longfellow; Alfred Lord Tennyson; Robert Browning; Emily Brontë; Letitia Elizabeth Landon; Adam Lindsay Gordon ; Thomas Hardy.
Twentieth century poets and lyricists:
Banjo Patterson; Rudyard Kipling; William Butler Yeats; Henry Lawson; D.H. Lawrence; T.S. Elliot; A.A. Milne; Judith Wright; Les Murray AO; Bob Dylan; Paul McCartney; Carole King; James Taylor.
Epitaph
Some read or write
Ramblings or prose,
Best seen when fresh
Like dew and the rose.
They’re not new words
Not even the rhyme,
We are but a wing
On the breeze of time.
Haiku is nice
Like sake and rice,
But poems take my thought
To Stilton and port.
Thoughts are like breaths
In a sonnet or song,
Part of life’s symphony –
Too short, never long.
Is it a blessing
Or is it a curse?
Relentless rhyme
Hypnotic verse.
Cheers, Cliff