Awakening
in the twenty four hour embrace of a few moments sleep,
where half a lifetime eludes dreams;
and feeling you were cheated
by too much gin and lack of sleep
in these unconsummated fumblings.

Travellers Whom We Met

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Another fork away ahead
Exactly like the one behind
And twists and turns to leave you dead
As choices in your mind.

Tools for life

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Has life ever dumped you in a heap?
Perhaps youve found self belief so strongly
reinforcing that doubt never enters it,
nor divorces you from your own reality.

On the Bill Which Was Passed in England For Regulating the Slave-Trade

© Helen Maria Williams

The hollow winds of night no more

In wild, unequal cadence pour,

I thought my father was far too fat eagerly I told him so,
if he was offended it didnt show and I dont recall
where that strange conversation went. Now I know
he was offended as I am too, it is not a jibe to

The Price Of Parting

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Will they be there for you when you die?
Will they hold your hands and cry until youve breathed
your last? Is it too much to ask? While love is free
in tearful task the price of parting wears

Dreams

IF every thought shall weigh in the award,

And every dream as if fulfilled shall stand,

Terra nullis ignorata

We came to find the place contained
in legendary tracts, the hidden land
of fulsome wealth that we had sorely lacked,
an empty land of winsome dreams.

So Let Us Dare

How do we discover an antidote to each other,
a faculty to commune in spiteful space?
Our bleeding hearts and noxious farts
tie us in a hopeless chase to free this place

To Roosevelt {2}

© Rubén Dario

It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.