Poems by Robert Kyriakides

My Poems are now available on amazon kindle eBooks. I wrote them between 1967 and 2021. many of them were set to music composed by Chris Calcroft. I hope that you will enjoy them.

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Perceiving the Doors

In the sixties songs developed a profundity which was quite unlike anything known in modern popular music. The words were in some case not only graphic but also poetic. Bob Dylan was an earlier example, choosing part of his stage name from Dylan Thomas, and occasionally there was good poetry in rock songs. 

Black Light

Black light and the dolphins swam

Into the darkest sea

Black light and the mermaids came

To swim around me

My canoe is fraught, the paddle lost

The earth extracts relentless cost

In invisible gold and jewelry

And wear and tear on my body

That cannot swim in black light sea

Until eternity.

Good Advice

Good Advice

Remember  I taught you and never forget

The rules of the game and the rules to upset

Sleep late in winter rise early in spring

Promise me thrice and smile at the wind

Think while you sleep and dream wide awake

Hold hatred fast while your loves you forsake

Lose your possessions find your lost way

Sleep late in winter at the dawn of the day

 

Think in iambics and speak just in rhyme

Die when you need to die all the time

Windy London

The wind makes music as it blows the city, and I once made music when winds blew another city, rainier when I was young. It is a windy day in London Town and all day the wind has blown the city, shaking trees and making those who have choice stay inside and watch the trees move. the wind has in some parts of these Islands blown too strongly for the wind turbines to operate. You can have too much of a good thing, as the still turbine blades in high gales testify.

When someone dies

When someone dies

 

The world is seen with different eyes

The skies are greys

And cold wind bites

On saddened days

And frozen nights

 

Good friend death has come to stay

And dull eyes cry our tears away

 

The long fine lines that scarred

One who died

Marr no more

Dull eyes cry the tears away

On frozen nights when

Good friend death has come to stay.

Making Notes for the Planet

It is time to make notes for the planet.

Disappointment

Perhaps it is that I expect too much intelligence from humans. They disappoint me. A lifetime of disappointment is not long enough to become accustomed to it.

I Heard The News

I heard the news, O, tales of murder, salacious relationships and confounded politics, peppered with bribery and corruption, salted with tears of the oppressed. The weather is misbehaving, for typhoons come and go. The moans of the disadvantages reach mini crescendos, complaints without blame and  while journalists and policemen and politicians spy on us, just in case, just in case. The greed of humanity is such that sufficient is never enough.

A Winter’s Tale

Few birds sing these mornings and those that do stutter their songs. The light is cold and the road is ice shiny, dull and dead leaf littered damp dark lampless. The cold air pulls at the steps I take, trying to persuade me to return to the home warmth and comfort. It cannot hold me back but it can wear me out. I am lost in an unwelcome world, unwelcoming. I must not complain. It is, after all, a winter’s day, on a deep and dark December.