Jubal's poems

[Jubal]

Jubal's Poems

This thread contains most of my poetry and song lyric writing from the past decade, and is still being added to. There's no particular organising principle to it, and most years only have a poem every few months, in quite a range of styles, from the sad to the satirical to the embarrassingly teenage to the ridiculous. At some point I really should sort out a full index of poems, but in lieu of that the below list of years will take you to the first poem written in any given year, from which you can scroll through the thread further and see what else I was writing at that time. I hope you enjoy the read, and please do leave a comment at the end of the thread if you see anything you want to comment on!

2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024

The original first post of the thread is below:




These poems are random msuings on the world and life in general, I'll post ones realted to something in particular in a different thread.

............................................................

This first one is a few years old now, prolly from 06 or 07, can't remember. I worte it about being a nerd/geek (hence neek). If anyone spots the tangential Dylan reference (Bob Dylan, not Dylan Thomas) I will be impressed.

The Neek

Flashing digits.
On a keyboard, on a screen,
Free in his own world,
Free on his own turf,
On his own terms.
His creation is launched
On a never-ending journey
Into Cyberspace.

Then It is gone.

A frail form battered into a swivel chair,
A mountainous pile of books lies at his side,
Rows of teddies' eyes stare down from shelves and from the bed,
A stuffed toy looks to the ceiling as if it had died,

His mind rests not on worldly things,
What's 'cool' what's 'in' he doesn't care,
But stare
Right past the vacuums of his pixellated eyes,
Into the freedom of his mind,
And the infinity beyond,
You will see
An untamed wilderness,
Wilder than his hair,
A place where he can roam,
Unfenced and unchained.

Flashing digits.
On a keyboard, on a screen,
A world of digits,
A digital world,
The world of a Neek.
My world.

[Silver Wolf]

I like it ... Especially this part :
"A place where he can roam,
Unfenced and unchained."

Good old computer... The only place where you can be completely free and pretend to be the God

[Jubal]

Thanks. Yea, the internet is a place which I think makes people very different.

I wrote this today, just thinking about someone, and then wrote it. Lang is a bit old-style, but I like it that way. The "fresh and rosy-fingered dawn" is an Odyssey reference by the way.

Swanwing
The fresh and rosy-fingered dawn caught me;
I was ensnared by the beauty of the light.
The cold light of dawn that lit my weary face
Turned thine to a miracle of elegance and grace
The beauty of the sun, and the envy of the night.

Was it thy grace that sent my head thus whirling?
The ochre locks of thy hair so free
Thy voice that into mine head crept
The thoughts I had; the times I wept
Are still turning in my mind, and drawing me to thee.

Upon my face dwells no such noble visage;
Outwardly I am unlovely to behold
Although we two may think as one
When I leave thee, from your mind I am gone
But in mine thou stay, more fair than fine-spun gold.

My mind shall dwell upon thee ever;
Its fevered thoughts cannot now turn away
And still I hear your voice so blessed
Yet I cannot to thee confess
That in my mind thou art, for ever and a day.

[Jubal]

My third poem for this thread is utterly wierd beyond belief. It's not entitled Mind Roaming for nothing... I wrote it a couple of months ago.

Mind Roaming
In a tavern,
In a an alley,
In a town somewhere,
There's a man chained up behind a wall that isn't there.
His mind is hidden in a storm of sleet...
In a backroom,
In a rat-trap,
In a backwards street,
There's a man lying there in chains.

Behind a glass brick wall,
A façade of ice,
If he wants to stay alive he knows he has to pay the price,
But the sad thing is...
I know that man's in pain.

And he dreams of...

A castle,
On a mountain
On a great back crag,
Where the dragons and the gryphons all just started taking scag,
Because the knights are dead and gone,
In the castle,
In the tower,
In an unlit cell where day and night are one,
There's the last romantic lying looking down on the world from above...

Behind a glass brick wall,
A façade of ice,
If he wants to stay complete he knows he has to pay the price,
But the sad thing is...
I know that man's in love.

And he thinks of...

A princess,
In a palace,
In the centre of the realm,
A girl in a world that's covered by the press,
Because the realm outside's unable,
To see her bedroom,
Like a cellblock,
Nothing but a bed and table.
And the girl's surrounded by cameras and maids....

Behind a glass brick wall,
A façade of ice,
If she wants to stay on top she knows she has to pay the price,
But the sad thing is...
I know that girl's afraid.


In a classroom,
At a desk,
In a secondary school,
Where the foolish man is wise, and wisdom makes a fool,
And the people forgot how to dream,
On a pile of paper,
In a pair of old young eyes,
There's a mind that can see things that aren't as they seem,
And a roaming idea waiting to be free,

Behind a glass brick wall,
A façade of ice,
If I want to stay around I know I've got to pay the price,
But the sad thing is...
The sad thing is...

I know that man is me.

[Jubal]

Naelian
iea Estarrioe oetoe;
ouranael, oni esta.
astumavale oni;
oetoe Lahoie irtar.

[Jubal]

Just wrote this.

A Wind-Dream

I dream
Of catching the whistling wind
That whirls through the treetops
Buffeting and tossing the oak leaves
And swaying the branches.

I dream
Of the whirling, twirling leaves
Catching in your hair
And then pulling free
Onwards along the breeze.

I dream
Of your wondrous eyes
Enigmatic, shining and bright
The radiant sun kept within
Trapped, to shine upon the world.

I dream
Of nothing at all
But a wet and windswept wilderness
The place where I can almost dream
That I could speak with you freely.

I dream
Because I know in the end
That nothing can bring me solace
That I am not worthy
That my heart quests in vain.

I dream
Of you...

[Jubal]

Wrote this sitting in a tent.

Breeze of Misfortune
Like the pennants of a doomed battalion
That fluttered in the last wind of freedom;
I see your hair flying in the breeze
The greatest, deepest treasure of a hidden kingdom.

The wind moves with the flow of time
It moves our weariness on each day;
Yet still it takes all or it take nothing
My dreams and wishes blown away.

I will never know the joy of speaking freely of my thoughts
I shall never tell you how I clearly, truly feel;
Ne'er let you realise I wrote this lost and wistful poem
Forgotten name, forgotten dream, a hope that was not real.

[Silver Wolf]

You are a great poet... Maybe you should find some agency to publish some of your songs

[Jubal]

I just get poems in my head and write them down, sometimes they come out good.

Most of my recent output has been at the love-poem end of the spectrum (girl I like, obviously doesn't like me, so what else to do but write poems?).
I should try and get a bit more normal poetry done maybe.

[Jubal]

Last thoughts
The guilt comes creeping
A whisper at the door
A gnawing at the floorboards
A subtle finger on the latch.

The guilt. Speaking.
The voice of ghosts gone by
The thoughts of lost pharaohs
And the faces of the dead.

The guilt is breathing
Taking your breath for its own
Feeding on your memories
The last gasps of your dying love.

The guilt will follow
And find you waking
And find you sleeping

Until

In the end

You surrender to despair.

[Jubal]

Paved with good intentions
"Was this the last stand?"
The ealdorman thought,
As he rallied his men
For the journey to hell.

The muskets were blazing
The sabres were flashing
The guns pounded out
The men's funeral knell.

For god and for country
For family and king,
For friend or for brother.

They died as one regiment,
Man by man by man,
One, then another.

Then another.
Another
Another
Another

Another soul trudging the long road to the banks of the Styx.

[Silver Wolf]

You are a poem writing machine xD .... No seriously, I like your songs very much and i think that you are a great poem writer

[Goldyrulz]

More! More! More!
And these come into your head...
WOW!
Never knew it.

[Jubal]

A falling shadow...

I see shadows fall
across the darkling road
I see darkness draped
over the last house in the town.

I have seen what men can do
I have seen what they have done
To hear the sound of pike and shot
To see the foe and turn and run

I see shadows fall
across the darkling road
I see darkness draped
over the last house in the town.

There are faces in the mud
There are mothers weeping still
Will you remember the noise and blood?
I have been there; I always will.

I see shadows fall
across the darkling road
I see spirits soar
and people who I thought I knew.

I see shadows fall
across the darkling road
And what other man
What other man
Will bear this dead men's load?

[Jubal]

The Waiting Cloud
The clouds darken the horizon.
Harbingers of thunder and bright death.
Oh, foolish world below
Foolish life clinging on to a ball of rock
In the vast emptiness of the universe.

Each tree, each beast, is at the whim of fickle nature
Even if it knows it not.
The clouds remain though
Ready to give the rain that life needs
And as ready to strike the ground and take it away
As the thunder gets closer.

I, standing here.
Of a species too weak to kill, too slow to flee
Evolution's afterthought
And yet masters of a constructed fantasy
Man expands himself onto his world
And his loves and lives
Desires and dreams
Are painted
Across the world on which he lives.

That battered ball of rock
Hurtling through space

And he believes.
Believes in his triumph
Believes in his victory
And he hopes
Hopes for a future
Hopes for a better life ahead.

In his arrogance, he is lord of the universe.
But it is only the universe of his belief.
His power seems to extend forever
But the clouds sit on the horizon
Brooding
Waiting
And ever ready to prove him wrong once more.