Two Poems by Bernard Pearson

 

Good Friday Mourning 1975

Safely seated, half in slumber

In front of the electronic maw

that spits us down the tube,

tenderized, emotions raw,

As white faced reporters

intone to sofa dwellers everywhere,

A carnival of carnage,

in the field of dreams appear,

and disembodied voices,

describe dismembered lives,

interactive 'pay to view'.

Is this sharpening the knives?

For while ironing the shrouds

Only mothers will recall

the boys that never where

given any life at all.

So 'Keep the powder dry boys,

Keep the powder dry'

Its stain removing properties

mean you may never die.

While on a green hill far away

A little skull like mound.

The curtain rent asunder

A temple gone to ground

The night at noon begins,

As pilate washes up

The Easter Egg has addled

chickless in its cup

Then out from a borrowed grave,

Yesterday's man some say

has found the cure

and showed us when 

it was we died, for we are

dead men that's for sure

Unless we stand quite still

tick tock we are in the dock.

and before eyeing our next kill.

Stop the chimeless murder clock

*

Tender Plants

There is a residue

In every human heart

Of all the people

That they have loved

And that have cared for them

For we are like a rose

Which blooms

When it draws up that love

As water through a stem.

__

Bernard Pearson’s work has appeared in Aesthetica Magazine, The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, North West Words and FourxFour. In 2017, a selection of his poetry ‘In Free Fall’ was published by Leaf by Leaf Press. In 2019 he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing.