Lying entwined
An awkwardness of arms
Back to my chest
My wrist crushed
In attempted tenderness

© Ian Lilburne 2017

A bow tie cut in half and a quickly forgotten poem
Buried together in a back garden
A young boy’s epitaph for a too early dead father
An appropriate start for a dark poet of song
A sense of longing and loss imbrued with seriousness

This father, a tailor, bequeathed him the suits
And left him to interpret the scriptures
Free of fatherly strictures
Free too to explore without intermediary
The parameters of what it is to be a man
And to love many women
Fathoming their mystery a lifetime’s quest
His poems and songs field reports from the edge

A deep voice beyond fashion and time
A magnificent oeuvre diligently done
The soundtrack of my soul

© Ian Lilburne November 2016

The children were told not to stare
Or ask any questions about the war
At night, when he retreated to his bed
They were told to walk on tip toe
Or stay outside lest the thunder
Of their footsteps remind him
Of the gunfire and tanks in the trenches
Or the explosion of shrapnel
That hit him in the face
Leaving him hideous.

Dark in the night
When the children forgot
And made a noise
He’d wake screaming
In the relived pain
That was forever with him.

They called it shell shock
The way he’d change without warning
Turn a complete circle from a kind
Loving man to an angry ghost
And scare them with his shouting.

Haunted
For him the war never ended.

© Ian Lilburne 2014

Time accelerates as you get older
A day becomes an hour
A week, a day
And so on …

It’s to do with proportion
The bigger the figure below the line
The swifter the one above
Blink—middle age
Blink—old

‘In my heart I’m still wild and kicking
In my head I’m still seventeen
But in the glass a time bomb’s ticking
I’m heading straight for smithereens’

© Ian Lilburne 2012

He got a lot of mileage out of that Z
Three letters in one
W T Z
Mow-t-zart
But not as much as we got out of him
He died a pauper
Was buried in a common grave
His body covered in lime
So it would quickly disintegrate
Leaving no trace
Thank D-g they didn’t throw
His music in with him
Imagine if he’d received
Just one cent for every time
One of his tunes were played?
Not to mention all the kids
At their piano lessons
Would there be enough
Currency in circulation?
Has any moneyed mogul
In the centuries since
Given as much?

© Ian Lilburne 2012