Nurse Me Goodnight

Desperate effigies of the powerful

Nightly adorn our television screens

Political power comes from the barrel of a camera

Brexit favoured the bankers

Before bailouts blighted fragile brightly

Forever in debt, the deceit just gets deeper

They made us sing for the NHS

The campaign to turn it into a charity was a success

The PM was happy to give his girlfriend a slap

When all they could muster was a weekly clap

A fully funded health service should not need charities

Pleading for money in its own name

It’s not a sick child,

It should be the backbone of a nation

Nurse me goodnight, NHS

You were there when I was born

And I hope you will be there when I die

I am not lost

Trying to catch my thoughts

They spin

Like needle & groove

Capitulating in perfect harmony

To evade my quiet heart

 

So I smoke and smoke

Watching my dreams

Drift away in the air

And my memories

My memories begin to sing

 

They tell me

Of all the pleasure

All the pain

I have chased

Longing for an escape

 

In the past I must not dwell

Long have my ghosts

Tried to seduce me back

Haunting my present with their nightly presence

 

Day breaks and they are banished to the dark

With a melody so melancholy

It will turn your very soul

My past will not be present as my future grows

 

Or at least until sleep scratches at your door

And the ghosts fade

In their cyclical rage

While I am shut in behind my eyelids

 

When the demons come to play

I will fight with a light that

Invokes the essence of my being

And repeat the mantra

I am not lost,

I am not lost

 

 

Leaving

Cold, dark and moody her face did shine

At the cold steps of his disgrace;

Lost in the snow, away in her mind

No more could she relate

She had to leave it all behind;

His emotions she could not translate

Tears warmed her cheers to remind

Her time was not to waste

Her heart she had to unwind

Years would not go by in haste;

To the tangled memories weaved, that two hearts designed

Time to pack her case

Her future more refined

Solidarity with herself she will find.

Daily Rants

Silently my words fall upon the dawn

I’ve been writing all night with fervent delight

My mind hollows itself through this pen

The echoing thoughts that reverberate

Evolving the emotion that spills from my head

 

To articulate

To express

To explore

To implore

 

Even when you think you’re going crazy performing

Soliloquies to yourself

At 3am

This poetic ego will not stop

 

This energy

That sends my mind

Up to the highest heights

And the lowest lows

Can all be contained

On a page

To gauge an emotion

To the devotion of words

And what they embolden

 

What is hidden in fear

Will one day hold you

In prose

In between your warm toes

As you sit in the bath

 

To let go

Through the nib of a pen

And relish what the ink releases

 

Similes create serotonin

Superlatives hold the truth

Contradiction and alliteration

Subjectives and suffixes

 

That indicate the infinite

Repentances through sentences

For all of your sins

For all of your loves

For all of your dreams floating up above

Your daily existence

Imagination is limitless

Reality is what ground us

As we search for meaning

In these murky streets

 

This pre Brexit landscape

Chimes with the bells of dystopia

Wicked in this dawn light

Industry churns

Economy burns

The vulnerable yearn

The greedy never learn

In their blinded, self inflicted

Struggles Sisyphean

 

And the words, the words just keep coming

As the political class

Spout chaos in spasms

Widening future chasms

Of war

In the name of the free market

They are all con artists

Bleak is the mid winter they said

Bleaker still is the shattered future we see

 

These rants scurry across lined paper like ants

Testament and paramount to the poise of a pen

That lets the healing power begin

I am not lost on a page

Take my hand

I’ll show you what is within

Fuck it

I’ll share my story

As if we were kin

While the kings and queens

Wage for our dreams

Our culture can forge the future

The elected forgot the neglected

And Britain’s Brexit is burning bright

 

I can’t get away from the news

As populism looms in sight

And the masses shudder with uncertainty and urgently

Worry what is to come

Will nothing relieve us

Of the sins of our fathers

My solace is contained on this page

An emotional stage

Where humility kisses vanity

And our egos mock us with a grin

 

The world just keeps on turning

And the page springs eternal

Opinions can be expressed

A day can be relayed

In a snippet

 

As this poem

Has just done here

This rant is over.

 

 © Jack Nugent

Lover’s

Sand blows atop the dunes.

My lover’s voice is lost in the wind;

The vast stars shine above us,

A lizard scuttles by.

 

The waves of our love soak the endless sands;

A spark in the night.

 

Hand in hand we criss-crossed with nocturnal creature’s footprints.

 

We slept under rugs in a nomad’s tent.

Curled close,

The moon turned the sand cold;

The fire lost its use.

 

We searched each other’s bodies for warmth,

And found it in the desert silence.

Watching the sun return;

The morning rays shone love.

 

Years later,

In times of solace

That night keeps me warm.

 

© Jack Nugent

Sunset

The clouds blanket the sky

Field of cotton

Pink

As the sun sets

Behind a dark ridge

The spires of Christ

And the trees of England

Silhouetted

In the unearthly flame

Of a dying star

Endless Possibilities

The endless drawl of planes above, mathematically guided to their destinations
Bound in an endless loop cleaving the sky in transitory bliss
A hiss of engines, a whine of wind
How long will we glide too far off lands searching for something that’s inside us
We mistakenly forgot that the power lies with us
That can lead to beautiful moments of endless tranquilities

We create screaming demons and baneful angels
Silhouetting as unknown shadows in the deep recesses of our minds
Occasionally masquerading as devilish nightmares and delicate fantasies
Invading our thoughts complicating our beautiful psychologies
Distorting and intrinsically fragmenting into echoes of the servile self
Crescendo-ing cacophonies of emotion spill seamlessly
Our identities pervade it, losing out on all sensibility.

We are kings, we are queens, and we are saints and sinners
The realist and the surrealist, the good and the bad, the clever and the naïve
The compassionate and the jealous, the ambitious and the competitive
The sensitive and the hurtful, the part and the whole
Yourself and ourselves, simultaneously.

 © Jack Nugent

The Beginning of Something

I am still at a loss for words as to how you’ve caused me such wonder

In such a little spell;

Maybe your feminine magic has been weaved so well,

That I fall into your arms and could indefinitely dwell;

Nestled in your wholesome bosom listening to the rhythm in your chest,

All day I could rest this way until the sun sets in the west, at our bodies behest.

Your chestnut curls adorn the bed and whorl the worries from my head;

There is a bond in fondness

And all I know is I am bloody fond of you.

 

© Jack Nugent

What This City Coughs

This city sings a cacophony of chaotic harmonies

Drenched in the sludge of silent hysteria

As another day begins

And rush hour reveals a stinking posterior

 

The city is washed in grey rain

And we all trudge in our little riverways

The tired faces navigate the gridlocked landscape

The daily commute regurgitates the same ensemble

Who long for escape

If the city had walls they would read

Here lies civilisation

 

The school kids who’ve had no breakfast

Steal sweets for the morning to come

The youth who don’t go to school

Hooded and half lean

Think the streets hold more promise

That bag of green

More important than a GCSE

 

The lonely widower gets jostled as he queues for the bus

Underneath the surface his heart is ready to erupt

But he looks to the sky and knows his wife is there

Smiling down at him as he stacks shelves at the supermarket

Work he must

Because his pension isn’t enough and there’s stain upon stain

On his lonely living room carpet

The heartbreak, he can’t adjust

 

The mute street cleaner listens to a podcast about microbiology

As the rain falls about his ears

How many years has he swept the same pavements

Immersing himself in knowledge

On the same level as a doctorate

Destined to live a life where he can’t use his gift

But he still smiles at the passers by

Because in his intelligence he found solitude and reasons why

He could live

 

If you’ve ever walked these streets

It is almost a given

That you are in rhythm

With these people

I have just described

They are not in disguise

They are in plain sight

Sitting opposite you on the bus

Sweeping up the cigarette butt you just dropped

People are not puddles

They are oceans

Too rough for you to navigate

Without listening.

 

© Jack Nugent

 

 

 

 

Honesty

Honesty is not found in voice;

Actions will convey this.

 

© Jack Nugent