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Henry Thorpe – Poetry and Storytelling

~ Writing, Poetry and Storytelling by Henry Arthur Thorpe

Henry Thorpe – Poetry and Storytelling

Category Archives: folk

Skald of the Hills

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by lonpops in folk, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

adventure, age, bard, breeze, coming home, decicated, defense, exile, family, father, hills, home, leaving, life, meadering, meandering, migration, Mountains, path, people, poem, poetry, rest, singing, skald, skald of the hills, son, travel, travel poetry, wandering, war

Skald of the Hills

 

He climbed to the hilltop,

To sing his king’s name,

Into the valley below,

So that all would hear,

The gods would bless

The travellers,

This pilgrimage,

As they trudged towards

The hope of a new land,

Praying that, in slowness,

They were at least fast enough.

 

He stood on the walls,

Bellowing song,

As they defended their home,

Hard won, long ago, founded

Far from their enemies grasp,

In an improbable basin

That could only have meant

They were favoured.

 

He sang as his son left,

Carrying his bags,

He hoped that

In a new life

Full of strangeness

And adventure,

He would listen

To the wind,

Hear a fragment

Of the song, on an

Erstwhile breeze,

And long for home.

 

 

 

This is dedicated to Jack Warren, fellow poet and Westcountry exile in Yorkshire 😉


 

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here.

https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

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Carving

11 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by lonpops in folk, nature, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blizzard, carving, footsteps, forest, goodbye, hunt, hunter, line break, loss, lost, love, sleep, snow, waiting, wandering, winter

Carving – a poem of line breaks and missing endings, about loss in the forest in winter and waiting.

 

 

Carving

 

He left a message in the ice

Before he went out

Hunting

Into the blizzard

But I woke too late and missed

My chance

To say

Goodbye.

I told him I loved him,

I’m sure

I

Did.

But enough?

Who knows. He left to hunt

Without me,

Left me snug in bed,

And

I never got to tell

Him I loved him

Again.

Watch the forest

Children,

One day he’ll return,

He went to bring me

Food

When I was small

And

I never got to

Say I loved him

Enough.

We stand out every winter

For a while in evening‘s

Cold,

For he can’t have left

Like this,

Things were so unfinished

He left us

Without

 

————————————-

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)

https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Post Modern Faerie

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by lonpops in faerie, Faerie Stories/Folk Tales, fantasy, folk, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bards, faerie, fairy, hunt, iron, myth, poem, poet, poetry, post modern, post=modernist, reinterpretation, song, stolen, style, what if

 

 

Post Modern Faerie

 

They used to bring

The poets to fairyland

To entertain the folk

As they ran and danced

And hunted,

The bards

Marching tune.

 

They were used

To the outcasts

All too willing

To join

The never ending song

That took worlds

And made them theirs

To see their songs

Made manifest

At last.

 

This new breed,

Taken by the faerie,

As was the custom,

Confused them,

Too much,

Even for chaos,

Unused to

Being asked

Why.

 

This post modern

Faerie

Took the old

Tricks, distorted them

In ways the fey lords

Were not

Ever prepared for.

 

Nobody ever asked why,

before.

Nobody ever raised

An eyebrow,

before,

At the ridiculousness,

Of this whole business.

 

Faerie faded with

The post-modernists.

Iron had held them true,

But skeptical,

self-loathing poets

Finally drove them

Away.

 

This piece is dedicated to the lovely Phoebe Boleyn Vowles-Webb, as a 2017 Christmas present. I wanted to explore the idea of a post-modernist poet or bard being drawn into Faerie like a traditional bard, and how faerie would react to that situation.

————————————-

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)

.

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here –

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

 

The Holly King

02 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by lonpops in Faerie Stories/Folk Tales, fantasy, folk, myth, poetry, recordings

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cold, curse, curses, dead, death, folk, folkie, ghost, ghoul, hanged, heart, holly, king, madness, murder, old gods, regicide, spirit, the holly king, traitors, tree, undead, vengeance, winter

The Holly King

 

As the season’s getting colder,

There’s a madness that comes down,

From an ancient murdered king,

Whose corpse rotted

On the holly bough,

He was pierced right through the heart,

Atop his oaken throne,

Then left hanged on a tree.

 

The Holly King,

His crown of leaves

Stained crimson,

As he breathed his last,

He swore a dreadful curse of sorts,

To find his way back to the earth.

 

The Holly King, he found them all

One by One by One,

These traitors who had murdered him

His spirit found them as they slept,

Took their minds, and led them hence.

 

They all ended like him,

Their bodies, naked,

On the bough,

On their heads a holly trim,

Their hearts pierced

Blood melding with the snow.

 

They call the madness of the Holly King

A curse for traitors all,

That they will dance naked,

Out into the cold,

Singing of their crimes,

With nothing but a Holly Crown,

Nestled upon their heads,

To their deaths they dance and smile,

‘Til they are merry dead.

 

 

 

 

————————————-

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)

https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Trick Bird 

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by lonpops in classical, Faerie Stories/Folk Tales, fantasy, folk, myth, Norse, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

aesir, air, ancient, bird, chaos, faerie, fantasy, Feather, Feather Dress, flight, freedom, freya, freyja, games, Loki, magic, medieval, Mountains, myth, mythology, Norse, outcast, poetry, release, roles, selfishness, shape, shapechanger, sky, surt, Thrymskvitha, trick bird, Vanir, viking, wind

Trick Bird – which is a Loki Poem, written for a night of Norse-inspired poetry a while ago. The Feather-dress which grants flight appears in several myths, and belongs to Freya, Loki borrows it in Thrymskvitha despite being a shape-changer himself.

 

Trick Bird

I wear my feather dress

Flying across the mountains

I am free,

No longer constrained,

No longer outcast,

This never belonged in her hands,

This was always mine,

Arrogant, foolish, petty sods,

They never knew what they had,

When they had me.
I wrap my feathers around me,

Let them change me,

As I shift they become

Part of me,

Runes glistening

On feathery scythes,

I let it guide me,

Across the eddies of the storm,

As changeable as myself,

I find kin in magicked things.
I am not the old man’s son,

No friend to chaos’ fire lord,

When I fly I am not a liar,

I am simply gale-borne,

Riding the ever-changing ripples

Of the sky,

I could almost sleep,

I could almost trust,

But a traitor sleeps with one eye open,

And I am that,

Treated with scorn.
I am not a traitor to myself,

I would burn first.

 

They never wanted me,

The wind does not care,

So I soar,

Invisible, at last,

Until I find myself

Drawn back to Earth

To play another game.

 

 

 

————————————-
I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)
https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:
paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Steam

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by lonpops in fantasy, folk, ghost stories, Ghosts, monologues, Short Stories, vignettes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bar, choo, death, disaster, ghost, ghost train, halloween, haunted, haunting, life, loneliness, loss, memory, normal, rail, railway, steam, steam train, stranger, student, table service, train, visit, waiter

 

Steam

 

” You know what sucks? Being a waiter on a ghost train. No, not one of those fairground rides or anything like that. Very funny. Destined for comedy you are, dear.

I mean one of those big orient express style jobbies – I was working my school holidays on it, this great holiday experience, see the world and make some cash doing it kind of thing. It was the pits. Seriously, i’d worked table service before but this was something else. What is it about service work that inspires the worst in people? I don’t even mean just the punters either. Some of the folk I worked with were just the *worst* arseholes that I had ever had the pleasure of sharing very cramped sleeping quarters with. Do you know where the staff get shoved on sleeper cars? There’s a reason they chose their staff small and skinny, and it’s not all aesthetic, bunks the size of bookshelves to cram us all in at night.

I’m surrounded by aristocratic arseholes, worker-ant waiters who barely acknowledged me, and worse, actors. So, obviously, i’m having an absolutely wonderful time, wondering why I didn’t just stay home with my family for the summer. (yes, it’s that bad). When the train only decides to go on a little adventure by itself, down the wrong track and straight off a bridge that hadn’t been there for about sixty years. Not sure why they left the rails there, lazy engineering I guess. Or how we managed to go down the wrong way at all. Drunk driver or something? Who knows? At this stage I’m even prepared to think it was all some sort of spooky bloody coincidence, ugh.

Not everybody died? I think? I don’t remember that bit so well, some things are a bit.. Fuzzy? I had just gotten off shift as well, bloody typical, closed my eyes for 5 minutes and got woken up by all this screaming and rattling. I mean, it was a bloody murder mystery train but even I thought that was a bit much, really. I just remember thinking it was bloody typical. Then, all fading to black, un-utterably clichéd if you ask me, but that’s how it was. I’d expected some drama, a reaper man or some revelation that at least someone had the right idea. I’ll let you in on a secret. I’m still as bloody clueless as I was when I was one of you lot.

 

 As it was, I woke up, semi-incorporeal, in my bunk, to find the train running, but everything was a bit translucent. This was made even better by being woken up by a towering ghost waiter demanding to know why I was up late for my shift.

That’s how we got here, I suppose. Minus a few – I don’t know who or what decides that some people get to become ghosts and some don’t? I didn’t believe in anything when I was alive, this was something else. I wasn’t really given much choice in the matter, even though it was utterly and ridiculously stupid. It was as if all the worst personalities were destined to spend our afterlives together – them, and me. I can’t be as bad as them… can I? I’m travelling the world in the ghost of a forsaken ghost train, and they’re still re-enacting the camped up trash they were before it all ended. I’d spent the whole time longing for an escape, then when one finally presents itself, gloomy although that sounds, it only goes and traps me here forever. It’s just my stinking luck.

I’m not sure if i’m the only one who’s still just myself, of if the others are just that weird.
If actual full size trains could be ghosts, everyone would believe, right? But it’s true. It’s beyond cliched, throwing itself down the tracks of the ridiculous at full speed, but it’s real. We go everywhere, stop at platforms (of the real and ethereal variety). We seem to sometimes be more… corporeal? Than other times. It’s hard to tell, really. I think i’m losing things from when I was alive, as the nights go on.

I can get out, for times like this, every now and then. When the train stops for a little while, i can come into the city for a bit, go off on my own. I don’t know if it has to refuel or anything, or even how often we stop, but we do, and I slink away to see the sights. I can come out and meet people, like you, make myself feel a bit alive, human, again, I suppose.

When I first found i could do it I used to go to the sort of places I liked when I was alive, the student haunts and places full of people my age. Or, I suppose, my age when I died? That got depressing fast, trust me. It got pretty sad, this sea of youth, changing faces, styles, and i’m just watching, it’s a bit weird. So, instead, I come to places like this. Slightly seedy dives where nobody cares that I look a bit off, or thinks twice about listening to me. You guys make me feel a bit better about my blasted situation, really! Hah! I’m just kidding, you seem alright. Being dead makes everything seem even more ridiculous, trust me. I’ve found a new perspective on things, they don’t seem as important once you’re not really part of them anymore. I can watch, I suppose, sometimes even touch and be almost alive again but I always seem to fade away in the end.

So now, that’s what I do, I guess. As I said, I seem to be the only one who ventures out of the train when I can. The others just stay there. It’s like it all goes quiet when we stop. They go to bed, or phase out for a bit. I don’t really know. I just go for a wander into wherever we happen to be, for a while. I did come to see the world, I guess that’s going to be my modus-dead-er-andi or something (gosh, aren’t I funny? ugh…)

It’s not like i’m even the only ghost waiter, there’s a load of us, and if i’m honest I wasn’t even close to being good at it. I tried, for a bit, but really I was pretty shocking at it, and i’d realised that if I did the minimum of work, enough to get along and avoid getting in trouble, but not be asked or expected to produce wonders. Full team of awful silver service caricatures, including the arsey sommelier and puffed up Maitre D who were the most ridiculous pair of old queens i’d ever encountered. I’m pretty sure they still think that they’re alive. Bless ‘em. They were characters, not people, before the crash, and I think they’ve gotten worse since they died, they loom over the rest of us, their death suits them. Proof that actors have got nothing on the grand peacock pillocks of silver service. They’re literally serving the spirits of spirits to spirits.

Why did I have to get stuck in this parody of a bloody parody. I can’t even get drunk anymore. I can try, go a bit too far, try and get as far away from the train as possible, but i just close my eyes and find myself in my bunk again. That, or i’ll shake my head and find myself carrying a tray of precarious entrees into the dining carriage, an elephantine, puffed-up, penguin-suited, ghast glaring down over gold rimmed opera specs at me. They notice you more if you don’t play along, I realised it’s better to just go along with it all. I just have to imagine i’m still getting paid. Imagine the overtime! Hah!
I wish that as a ghost my uniform had magically begun to fit, but it’s still three sizes too big or too small in different parts of my body. I can still feel the cheap fabric, only made worse with overuse, despite the fact that the physical part of it is all dust now. It’s as if the clothes themselves are enjoying a miserable afterlife as well. I was coming to the end of my shift too, so I still look like i’ve been dragged through a coal shed backwards. I mean, it could be worse? At least I don’t have to endure my afterlife in my underwear. There’s a couple of the folk in the sleeper carriages who just wander round in nightgowns, like they’re Ebeneezer Sodding Scrooge.

Not sure how long it’s been now.. I keep forgetting things?
I can feel myself fading a bit, it’s like that when they want to move on, or have to, i don’t really know which it is. We keep moving, we keep travelling, it’s just how it is. You never know, we might stop again this way one day. You seem nice, anyway – some places we stop, no-body notices us at all. Then I can’t find anyone to talk to, and that’s always a bit sad. Nobody listens to me on the train, I get lonely sometimes. It’s been good to get out for a bit.

Keep your eye out for us, the confused ghosts, the ones who can’t really get into this whole haunting lark. We’re probably around than you think, lurking, or just waiting for someone to talk to.

I hope we’re not the only ones out there, running the tracks across the world at night. I like to imagine phantom steam trains in the big stations, great demonic horns sounding in chorus when they’ve closed up for the night. “

 

 

 

————————————-
I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!
If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)
https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .
If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:
paypal.me/henrythorpe
Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/
Follow me on twitter (I’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops
Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Pegs

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by lonpops in folk, Mountains, nature, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

coat, depths, dusty, earth, empty, enough, hope, life, loss, mine, Miners, mountain, Mountains, Pegs, sacrifice, take, village, wild, working

 

Pegs

Each Miner put his coat there,

When he came up,

From the depths.

We took pride in our delvers

Coming back unharmed,

More than most,

When a miner doesn’t come home,

His peg stands empty

Just in Case.

 
The Mountain that sustains us

Takes her toll,

She can be hard and she can be cruel,

But she feeds us.

When a miner does not come home,

His Peg hangs empty,

Just in case.

 
The Mountain gives her

Sacrifice back,

Dusty and wild,

We know the earth rarely gives back,

We take enough.

 
Once, she gave us back our son,

Now, in case we forget them,

We keep the pegs

For missing men.

So when they come home,

We can welcome them.

 

 

 

 

————————————-
I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)
https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:
paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops
Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

The Roving Men

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by lonpops in folk, ghost stories, Ghosts, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

adventure, alone, atonement, bandits, beware, blood, danger, darkness, death, earth, end, ethereal, evil, fantasy, fate, folk, ghost, Ghosts, hills, hillside, kind, leerers, light, lonliness, moor, moors, mortal, old gods, pistol, poem, purgatory, robbers, rovers, safety, saviours, sword, the roving men, theives, unkind, unlikely saviour, vengeance

 

The Roving Men

 
There are ghosts of rovers in the hills,

Men who were not kind

When they roamed the earth,

They were roaming men

Who took all that they could claim.

 
These men who died alone,

Hateful and cold,

In the ancient hills,

Woke curse with their malice,

Old gods watched as they fell,

Felt their malevolence fail

And called it sacrifice.

 
Enthralled are they, in spirit,

To roam alone on the moor,

Forever wandering until

Three lives they save

Then they’ll be no more.

 
So if you spy a ghostly bandit man,

Pistol or sword bared,

They’re looking out for danger,

So you must be-ware.

These are the ghosts of evil men,

That surround you as you trail,

They are not here to hurt,

They cannot touch a mortal,

Not for long, not to hurt,

In the darkness, leering,

You’d think they came for worse.

 
There is no atonement in their eyes

The hillside gods were of blood, of death, of earth,

Their curse is bitter irony,

These men were cruel,

Their fate is worse,

To wander ever lone,

‘Til one day they might

Chance to save a soul,

From men like they were,

Who’d wreck it on the hillside.

 

————————————-
I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!
If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)
https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:
paypal.me/henrythorpe
Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/
Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops
Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Mayflies

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by lonpops in folk, Ghosts, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

age, cobwebs, dance, dreams, evening, forgotten, life, loss, mayflies, memory, poem, poetry, rocking chair, short, silence, summer, the old man

 

Mayflies

 

The old man sits

In his rocking chair,

Wondering at fate.

He was a dancer,

An acrobat, darling

Of the wandering folk.

He’s not forgotten them,

Still tapping his fingers

To a beat in his mind

That played so long ago.

Now

That the musicians

Are all gone,

He wonders

If he’s the only one left who remembers

The tune.

So he whistles alone

Along the dusty corridors

Between cobwebbed rooms,

With Ill-used feet,

Dances with

Lost loves,

In this forgotten place, in dreams,

He can almost remember

What those summer evenings

Felt like.

 

————————————-

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)

https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

paypal.me/henrythorpe

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

Lots of love,

Henry

xx

 

Dancing Shoes

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by lonpops in Faerie Stories/Folk Tales, fantasy, folk, poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

dance, Dancing Shoes, factory, folk, folk tales, jig, magic, poetry, shoes, spells, stories, storytelling, witch, witches

Dancing Shoes

 

Sally Thomas walked out

Of the factory, for the last time,

In a mood so bloody foul,

She sparked and swore

Shouting curses to the sky

At the mediocrity,

The pure bloody dullness

Of the cobbling folk.

 

Shouting Curses in a thunderstorm,

She called to Spirits of old,

For Sally, she had witches blood

Although she didn’t know.

 

In her rage came

Words she swore

She’d never heard before

Some ancient curse

Passed down in blood

She was a witch’s witch’s daughter,

Though it was hidden in the past.

She never knew, what would come,

In that old factory,

Witches words carry power

Those folk soon

Found, to misfortune.

 

It started on the factory line,

With a tapping on the belt,

A shake and a vibration,

To a rhythm all things felt,

It caught everybody there

It caught the shoes too,

Infectious and delirious

To dance along to.

 

In the night, the footless shoes

Jumped up,

And on the factory floor,

Began to dance a merry jig,

Thumping, to a self-made beat.

 

The old and the discarded,

The almost and the new,

Played merry havoc on the floor,

As the machines lurched in tune.

Next day no man could get near,

Without losing both his shoes,

for they’d take him

With them to the dance,

Then throw him to the floor

When he couldn’t keep up

And let him scramble away

Before they carried on the tune.

 

That week no one in town

Could understand

They all were left barefoot.

All the Shoes had upped and gone,

Look as though they may,

They could not find a single one,

Not even understairs

Nothing with a sole was left,

Their shoes had all gone rogue

They had danced away in the night

To the grand old factory dance,

So now the people were all bootless

Walking In the morning light.

 

So now the factory’s had to close,

The cobblers ran away,

The shoe trade’s dead in Pedley,

Every man goes barefoot now.

Sally Thom, she’s laughing,

Her Dancing Curse still strong,

Now Pedley is a dancing town,

So once a year at least,

The men climb back into their shoes

And dance a merry jig.

————————————-

 

I’m putting all this up for the love of writing and your enjoyment, and if you would like to use it for your own purposes that would be awesome. However, it’s my writing, and I must ask you to ask me first, and credit me (obviously). Also, if you do I’d really love to see/hear/watch it!

 

If you’d like to support me, on a monthly basis, then i’d love you forever, and feel free to sign up for my patreon here – i’ll link the blog to here whenever I post something new, as well as a few extra snippets just for patrons (so extracts of WIP larger projects etc)

 

https://www.patreon.com/lonpops .

 

If you would also like to help me keep putting things up for free, and support my writing but would rather not do monthly donations, my paypal is:

 

paypal.me/henrythorpe

 

Share, like, comment, critique, spread the word(s) and thankyou for visiting my page, you’re all wonderful.

 

I’ve also done recordings of several of my poems and stories, which are available on soundcloud here

 

If you’d like to give my page a like on facebook it’s here – https://www.facebook.com/HenryArthurThorpe/

 

Follow me on twitter (i’m afraid I don’t post much) – @Lonpops

 

Or drop me an email at hathorpe506@gmail.com

 

Lots of love,

Henry

xx

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