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Best Poems Written by Nick Ravenswood

Below are the all-time best Nick Ravenswood poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

The Unknown Woman of the Seine

She.
Serenity’s relief adheres to alabaster sleep from the rivers own pale fruit.
There is majesty in the tides annihilation that polishes cheek and lip.
A smile as slight as sanctity anoints reflections saturated, ineffable.  
Not even her amused sediment mask could locate her distant shore.

She. 
A blink gives birth to locked gaze that gorges itself upon the unblemished.
Possession thickens the surging blood that flows only for the unknowable.
He cannot resuscitate, cannot embrace what has drowned, drifted.
So, she holds him while he presses plaster to eye, mouth, and nose.

She.
Preserving fleeting pores that gape beneath the thunder of the adoring gaze.
Seraphic visage is captured and crafted with his heartbroken perpetuity.
Confessions of devotion wash up on empty banks and sink into blackened silt.
Lonely as a legend she leaves him and walks silently into deaths duplication.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

Amoxicillin

I sleep while nature squeezes under my door.
A dream of the swamp blooms like a water-born disease in my polluted
senses flooding my throat, nose and lungs.

Breath rattles heavily through damp fabric and pushes tears through
infected lids.
Salt cracks and crumbles from my eyes in brittle flakes.
Nature is in this house.

From within the walls, soaking wet tendrils transmit intricate messages.
Tapping. Smearing.
Mud at the water’s edge swallows my legs in muscular contractions that grip me hard and hold me sucked into the slime.
There is comfort in my restful sludge as I slowly become a celebration of waste.
A new smell is in this house.

I fumble, prod, rip, and slash at the dirt-smeared welts in the hope of exposing bone through paper-thin skin.
Insects have burrowed beneath bleeding fingernails and laid their sodden eggs inside tear duct, nostril, and mouth.
Swollen and stretched, the engorged tissues begin to rupture as they rhythmically pump soupy discharge onto saturated sheets.
I hear my laughter in another room.

From the banks of the swamp, I watch amber lilies drift away on dark, green ripples that shimmer with an oily gloss.
Their moist, heavy perfume clings to my tongue like a sugary membrane.
I slowly lift my head towards the clean blue sky and open my mouth wide.
I hope God can see me, feel my restructuring.
One by one, black, twitching mosquitos swarm down to feed from my gaping mouth.
They bite and suck the blood from my blistered lips and force their way down into my lungs and stomach, filling me to bursting with their fluttering wings and delicate stings.
I cramp, bruise, tumefy.
Cells divide.
Segments fall away.
New organs grow.
This is my fresh suit, my next phase.
I do hope God can see me.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

Perfect Imperfect

Framed blemish.
Heavy as a tumor.
Solid as surrender.
Dig into epidermis.
Uproot the moment.
Unclean kernel.

Hard, cold reflection.
Show me pretty.
Clogged pores.
Yellow teeth.
Rheumy eyes.
Ugly is as ugly does.

Smile at the mirror. 
Try to forget.
This is you. 
Forever unlovely.
Look at what you did.
Children are so cruel.

Rose scented perfume.
Disguise the stench.
Excrete from every orifice.
Sweat soaked lace.
Urine stained ribbons.
Paint and purify the meat.

Shave the head.
Smear on foundation.
Sever the lips.
Dust with powder.
Extract the teeth.
Cauterize with lipstick.

Amputate the feet.
Brush on eye shadow.
Saw through hip joints.
Smudge on blush.
Open up the abdomen.
Suture with mascara.

Remade.
Smiling through distortion.
Deny the trauma.
Repair the shell.
Convincingly Beautiful.
Improbably clean.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

The Riddle of Shiny Helen

Love hearts and scabby knees.
Dead flies and stinging bees.
Dirty nails and sweaty lips.
Fishnets with ragged slips.
Eyeholes in a hessian sack.
Pimples on a tattooed back.
Toys that she just can’t unpack.
Helen. 
Secret Helen.

Lies from a mother’s heart.
Secrets that fell apart.
Beauty too divine to see.
As purple as a Judas Tree.
Singing from her cradle jail.
A baby crying weak and frail.
Giggle, breathe, inhale, exhale.
Helen
Splintered Helen.

An infantile brutalist.
A wide-awake somnambulist.
Mamma’s bile and Daddy’s fist.
A kiss, a slap a broken wrist.
She hides within a dark recess.
She dances with her own distress.
A monster wearing fancy dress.
Helen
Sacred Helen.

Fantasies of guilt and sin.
Concealed beneath a slab of skin.
Loathe the self and stunt the flesh.
Her impotence and spite enmesh.
To love the girl, she veils the face.
To save the world from its disgrace.
Before she leaves without a trace.
Helen
Shiny Helen.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

Mother, Father and the Birthing of the Angel

You have led my course through fractured lanes.
Your groaning ballad my only light.
Kill blessings from stained lips safely float our steps.
Where would I be without you Michael?

Crow mother lies broken at our hand.
Eyes, lips and tongue smeared on stone.
‘You are just like me,’ she bleats through shattered teeth.
Thank you feathered protector, my septic pedagogue.

Poisoned Papa gags as we grip him heart in hand.
Oesophagus glove binds wrist, forearm and elbow.
Pushing down to Hell, void swallows his crushed vena cava. 
Dislocated mandible squeals leaving the path clear and final.

A baptism from a splintered bucket washes away our rusty halo.
We have built a fine church you and I.
Can you hear me Michael?
Are you there?

From Father’s secret chest, blades, saws and spikes are repossessed.
They are now our beautiful burden, our sanctified implements. 
Ground and honed to a steely whisper that will glide down to the bone.
Beyond the door you beckon to me with your silvery, distant song.

Night air sears through our lungs like freezing ammonia as
Shifting constellations light our winding passage through London.
From Threadneedle Street to Guthrun’s Lane all dreams are devastation.
We select a lost tenement as a playground and trudge through stinking mud.

There is a family within – Mother, Father and Son.
They are the fruits of our maledictions.
‘Cry no more little one,’ his voice congeals in my veins.
Soon we will be clean, huge and stinging.

At my touch the door yawns like the prelude to regurgitation.
In the darkness soiled, saintly fingers caress a razor. 
Taut, ablaze, locked.
Tonight we will sculpt what we never possessed and love what hurts the most.

We are Destroyer.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

Barnabas Oral's Sightless Game

He plays throughout the house at night 
a braille touch for his lack of sight
and dreams of all the crippled things 
with broken legs and shattered wings.

The bandage on his wounded eyes 
will be there ‘til the day he dies
and keep him in a darkened place 
with just a wet grin on his face.

The attic room that he called home 
was locked up tight, so he didn’t roam
but now that he has picked the locks 
he’s lurking in his stinking socks.

‘Twas Aunty Mae that shut him away 
to teach the evil boy just how to pray,
but he only tortured rodents and flies 
and used a pencil to gouge out his eyes.

So now he stumbles down the hall
and drags his nails across the wall
to find old Mae and very soon
play Blind Man’s Buff by the dying moon.

He gently opens her bedroom door
and listens to her gurgling snore
then lumbers towards her little bed
and strokes the grey hairs on her head.

With butterknife clutched hard in hand
it’s all unfolding as he planned
and with his blunted blade held high
he slams it into her left eye.

When old Mae shrieks and writhes in pain
he brings the curved blade down again
and opens up her right eyeball
as blood sprays on her floral shawl.

Barnabas smiles and deeply mumbles
as through his pockets he gently fumbles
and produces a bandage stained and old  
to fashion for her a new blindfold.




He wraps it round her head quite neatly
and tops it off with a bow tied sweetly
which keeps it tight and keeps it close
while tears of blood drip from her nose.

Aunty Mae is dragged up from her bed,
spun three times and then stopped dead
to stand alone in the middle of the room
while Barnabas hides, concealed in gloom.

‘Oh, Mae my sweet just listen to me,
now we’re both blind, as blind as can be
and the game is now even and honest and fair
so, follow my voice but be sure to take care’.

With whimpers and cries she limps in a swoon
as Barnabas whispers and warbles a tune
that lures the old woman out heel by toe   
into suffering, peril, and shadows of woe.

Her arms they flail, her hands they clutch
while she blunders about using only her touch,
yet Barnabas stands only just out of reach
and leers as he thinks of the game he will teach.

She yelps and swipes at the sound of his song
but Barnabas dodges and lunges head long 
out of her path as she tumbles and trips
and falls to the floor breaking both of her hips. 

With grace and care Mae is pulled to her feet,
embraced by her nephew with arms bittersweet 
then violently swung by her grand puppet master
and waltzed round the room going faster and faster.

They crash into walls and topple the chairs,
shatter the windows, knock a vase down the stairs,
but just as young Barnabas cooks further plans
poor Aunt Mae’s body goes limp in his hands.

‘Oh Mae, darling Mae we’ll try that once more
and play Blind Man’s Buff and dance ‘till we’re sore.
we’ll bleed and we’ll laugh, and we’ll laugh, and we’ll bleed
and in darkness you’ll follow, and I’ll surely lead’. 

So, all through the night they danced and played
and as the sun rose, they both gently swayed
to a song that he heard only inside his head
as he cradled his aunt who was broken and dead.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

Charming Patterns

Powder-white sand rattles between flexing toes
like tiny, bleached avalanches.

The Australian sky, wide, taut, and impossibly blue
screens my field of vision in a blinding smear as
sea droplets evaporate on my body leaving salted
grains softly stinging.

I raise my five-year-old hand and closely examine its
withered skin from knuckle to nail.
The soaked ridges and puckered lines are as deep as
trenches, smooth as dunes.

Today the sun is savage.
In another ten minutes these charming patterns on my
palms will return to a dry and simply printed landscape.

I close my eyes and listen to the quaking of the surf as
the heat bakes me down to the bones.

Soon, I will follow the path of shells and seaweed back 
down to the waves and again, disappear into the 
churning foam, ready to transform my skin once more.

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

The Audience Is Listening

Seconds to go.
I am locked away, set aside.
Throat opens, body twists.
Face distorts, voice roughens.

The tangle man wakes up.
He is twelve, seventy, eighty.
Sick and lame.
Trembling and tight.

Blank eyes peruse him.
There will be tears, mania and lacerations.
There will be trauma, suffering and death.
Shall we begin?

Spit and panic catapult malignant declarations over open hearts and minds.
The targets are welcoming, knowing, bored.

Stinging verbal percussion slaps bloody daydreams into existence, leaving mental brandings smoking like cigarette burns.

Temples of his stories assemble and collapse from tongue to word as Gods and puppets arise through pages, letters and memory.

With a heaving gag he births a scene onto the stage and watches as it bites through its umbilicus and begins to suckle at the congregation’s teat.

The milk is thick and spoiled but the narrative reflection is a ragged lesion that will weep for days, maybe even weeks.

Their number is too small for hushed, safe exits so they remain trapped and immobilized as putrid projectiles shower them in the malady of his tale.

They are beginning to see what isn’t there and to hear what wasn’t said while he screams, giggles and grunts through his stained euphoria.

I don’t want it, I don’t like it, I can’t take it, it’s too much, it’s not enough, it makes me sick, it’s too dark, It’s too wordy, it’s not funny.

Are you all right?
Are you all right?
What’s wrong with you?

At last he is tightly swathed in the translucent skin of their propriety.
He can now anchor his tale and draw nutrients from their discomfort.

His parasitic imaginings have found a host and his triumph is now germinating in his own humiliation.

It’s not fair; all we wanted was a nice night out.
What’s so wrong with that?

Details | Nick Ravenswood Poem

The Broken House of Lady Lick-Penny

I have always lived in this house.
Yet, these floors I don’t seem to remember.
From parlour to pantry there were once rugs
from Persia and Minton tiles of cherry in the halls.
Now the boards are decayed and rotten and I can
see the earth and worms through splintered holes. 

These walls make me shudder and cringe.
From skirting to ceiling there was once willow bough
wallpaper of olive and cream and a gold Roman frieze
that soared between arch and chimney breast.
Now the panels are damp with mould and peel away
in greying swags that reek of bugs and putrefaction.

I shade my eyes from, the windows.
The light that once shone through the panes was a
mottled spectrum of purple, green and yellow that
glowed alive through the face of the Arch Angel Michael.
Now the glass is fractured and stained with rust as 
freezing winds blow through their sacred cracks.

Today I found something new.
A piece of paper pinned to a tree in the garden.
Upon it, a message read, ‘you knew all along’.
I don’t recognize the hand.
I don’t recognize the sentiment.
I put it in my pocket.

Today I found something familiar.
In the scullery, a clump of hair clogging the sink.
It’s red and thick and not mine.
It wasn’t there last night.
It wasn’t there this morning.
It wasn’t there an hour ago.

Today I found something lost.
A single harpsichord key on the music room floor.
Its edges are chipped and scarred as if bitten by tiny teeth.
I thought he had stolen it.
I thought it was gone forever.
I’m so glad I can play once more.