Friend by Barrie Purnell

FRIEND

Your leaving left a scar across
The landscape of my life,
When you changed from someone I know
Into someone that I once knew.

When I lost you I didn’t just lose a friend,
I lost a part of my identity,
I didn’t just lose a person,
I lost part of my history.

We lived through each-other’s hopes and fears
With love and anger in equal measure.
A million shared experiences,
Now I have no one to share them with.

You liked me despite knowing all my secrets,
And told me things I wouldn’t tell myself.
We knew too much about each-other
To ever consider betrayal.

Your world’s a lonelier place
When an old friend goes away.
They can’t be replaced by someone new,
You cannot replace time.

I go whistling past the graveyard
To drown the echo of your voice.
Your memory sits gently on my heart
And leaks out of my eyes in my tears.

You have left a scar that will not heal
It’s inside of me so no one else can see.
We promised that we wouldn’t grieve,
I couldn’t keep my part of that deal.

      

His Death by Angela O’Connor

His Death by Angela O’Connor

The roses flutter in the wind;

In an instance their faces have

disappeared

What is left?

Follicles of death

Yes, near to me,dear to me,

painfully

Your petals, blown

This Loss by Michael Healy

This Loss

How can you say what has been, when you do not know,

How can you tell how it feels, when it does not show,

How can you say how it is, when you know not the cost,

How can you think you understand, when you have not this loss.

 

Let only those who really know speak of what has gone,

Yet they may also hide behind a simple phrase, ‘life must go on’.

The jagged stabs that knot inside, the hidden inner rage,

The tears that well, the pain that swells; such a young age.

 

Do not tell me you understand or that you really know,

Do not tell me how it feels, when it does not show,

Do not say how it is, when you know not the cost,

Please God you never understand the feeling of this loss.

 Michael Healy

Still by Tony Burrows

Nobody in particular is present here,

Here in the old churchyard,

Though they all come to rest,and lay beside,

The weary and the unaware, the late,

The dearly departed,

Faithful servant abide,

And those who just fell asleep,

For others to weep, and stand aside,

Uncomfortable in unmetered mumbling,

Mourning uncommon prayer,

With so so many bleak wreath words unsaid,

And wipe away tissue tears, to be left,

On the soon to be lost, and never found,

Still forgotten graves of the dead,

Seeking salvation with upturned palms,

Blanket blind, woolly flock,

Grazing by their shepherd not,

Crosses and prayers and twenty third psalm,

Stand shoulder to shoulder,

In the still and calm,

Of the church clock marking tick by tick time,

Time past over to trees that reach and etch four seasons,

And in its quarters beats the stone ’til,

Truth is gathered as dust, and time is no more,

Only still,

Still, there is no time for the dead,

For tomorrows tomorrow are on the march,

In warm September sun dried sun,

As bright as a star new,

New grow into uniforms with polished pop out faces,

Full of gilded parental promise, eager eyed, wide,

Wide as the green gates they must pass by,

Whilst in the still, leaves hold their fall, and

A young swallow hesitates before turning to fly,

Confounded, disappointed Mary rises and spirits away,

And something strangely empty now,

Now, nobody in particular, is in the old churchyard, bar I.