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Best Poems Written by Paul James

Below are the all-time best Paul James poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Larks

The tangled sadness of souls lost 
Between Heaven and Earth, 
Eternally on their way, 
Lifting upwards, 
Soaring, 
Climbing. 
Only to feel the ground’s pull, 
The unseen ropes. 
Trapped in intermediation. 

They have left us without leaving, 
Departed without arriving, 
No sweet Lethe for them, 
No afterlife among ethereal 
Beauties bathed in eternal light, 
No rest in a perfect balance, 
Outside the toss of seasons. 

So this is purgatory, 
This hell of a half-way house. 
Stretched out in an 
Agony of elongation, 
We can sometimes see them 
In the wriggle of smoke 
In striated clouds. 
They are the larks, perhaps, 
That dive into the sky and climb 
Climb 
Climb 
Until their frightened tiny frantic panic 
Sends them spiralling down 
Down 
Down 

To the thin air over the cruel stubble 
Of dead wheat.

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Light

(I discovered the poem below in a drawer I was clearing out - it is certainly mine, but I have 
no idea when, or why, I wrote it; I have not changed a word of it, but left it as it is)

Don't wait for me
Where the black moment stoops towards the day
I'll be fine, you'll see.
The night is kind, the sweetness of 
The breeze, the still greater darkness of all things unseen.
Who needs the morning
The crack of dawn
The break of day
The fast fall of footsteps on shocked concrete
The shrill call of blackbirds
As the bottles topple like skittles, but into place.
No, the night is kind,
Where the serpents stalk in slithers
And unhinged mothers go in
search of their lost children;
Where tree-branches scratch against windows
Without drawing blood.
Where ravens-in-waiting cluster
Around the thought of death.
What need have I for 
The last cold grip of
Your lost hand, lost to him,
Against the wrenching light of day?

I loved you once;
Go now, somewhere else another waits.
It is the lesser pain.

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Waiting

Wake me in the spring, 
When winter has moved along; 
A touch of your warm hand, 
And I will break out in song. 

My sleep will unknot my brow, 
And soothe my tired heart; 
I will dream of your soft beauty, 
And that we never came to part. 

But if the world should find me 
Still asleep under summer’s sky, 
Then know no kiss can wake me, 
For I have lain down to die.

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Loving

The sweet unfocused dream of love, 
Wandering summers, fireside winters, 
Autumns drifting deep in red-russet-gold, 
To say nothing of spring, the lovers’ month. 
Let pens drop and conversations falter, 
Watch wistfully from windows, 
Forget your waketime reasons and 
Stand lost, for a moment, in 
Sensation of feeling 
Unencumbered with the day’s 
febrile fugitive motives. 
Look up lost at questions, 
Lose the fork among the food, 
Float in and out of rooms 
With the lightness of ghosts. 
And in all of this unthereness 
Know you are holding her close 
Across the ocean of darkness, 
Cruel distance bridged through 
The soul’s own flight.

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San Luca

He walks, rosary in hand, up the steps. 
His tread is broken, fragile, and the joggers 
Might hear his breath, each sharp inhalation, 
Each hissing exhalation, were it not for their 
Own breathless haste, their pounding feet, 
Strutting out their health in upward bounds. 

He takes a rest; age has bowed him. 
He wipes his brow. Sweat runs. Through 
The portico wall he watches the landscape 
Sizzle in the heat. Yet his feet are cold, so cold. 
No warmth can touch his extremities. The 
Deafening din of the cicadas sends him on. 

“Maria, beloved, only one, let me reach you, 
Give my feet strength, give my heart strength.” 
(666 arches up to San Luca, and how many steps? 
The devil is in the detail.) “Thank you, Maria, you 
Came to me in my dream, angel-light into this 
Dismal exile they call a Home.” 

Back there they will be wondering where he is. 
Nurses frantic, ringing round, searching. 
For months he sat slumped in his chair, they saw 
Him as already dead to the world, bled white of memory, 
Hands twitching to death’s tune, his soul dribbling down 
His neck, wan eyes watering into dissolution. 

But his pallour was contempt of all around – 
Dead to that, yes; turning inwards, away from 
The reek of disinfection toward memory fragrant 
With images of youth, his fingers dancing, his body 
Welling up with tears as he remembered her smile, 
An incandescence, illumination, true beauty. 

Onwards, upwards, she will be waiting like the last time, 
Her bridal tresses spilling from the sun, her gaze towards 
Him, a bouquet growing from her hands, from her waist the 
Cathedral train carrying all their dreams, and behind her 
San Luca, the organ music swelling the oleander-sweetened 
Air; she will be there, waiting for the last time. 

He climbs the final barrage of steps, and turns the corner. 
That is where the police await him, and Sister Grace, 
Who claps her hands in what could be indignation or relief, 
And he falls to his knees, his lips murmuring her name. 
“But your Maria is dead, Giorgio, long dead!” (Sister Grace shakes 
Her head), and she takes his hand and leads him away. 

She had found the faded photograph of the wedding by his 
chair, the rest had been intuition. Back in the home 
He appears confused, restless, in his bed he complains of 
Knocking – “don’t you hear it?” – and when the morning 
Comes he really is dead to the world, across his wizened 
Face an expression of grief too hard to bear.

Details | Paul James Poem

Last Walk

I shed, today, tomorrow’s tears. 
They flowed unseen within, 
yet tarnished still the golden 
final time together – not weeks, 
nor even days, but hours, 

the minutes pressing in tight embrace. 
Were it not for you, timid 
dweller on ends that must come, 
this would all have been so true: 

My heart full with hers on hills unbuttoned 
By rays of sun so ripe the light lies 
Heavy like fruit from the sky’s 
Boughless blue, or: 

Eleanor, our love is enchantment, 
This I say, and more, as we walk 
And talk with hands entwined, 
Limbed together from the heart, and: 

Sweet Eleanor, our hearts beat 
Together, we pulse soft protest 
Against the circumscription of clocks, 
Taking our time in these last hours, 

Singing, deep from within, songs 
unsung and unheard and never to be 
heard and sung again, each the brief flower 
Of each unique moment of our love, blossoming 
into the soul's albums of its own sounds. 

Yet every inch we covered together, I knew, 
and know – and this is the pain of it – lay in the 
unseen shadow of separation, and my hand gripped 
yours also in fear, my song an also too, as it sang 
strident against the coming silent nights, 
The future’s unlit boulevards. 

Did you feel it, gentle Eleanor? 
And take with you into that far-off land 
A memory tinged by my cowardice of heart? 

To love without fear or regret 
in view of life’s end, embossed with light; 
untouched by the darkness we fear.

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Too Late

The night would steal his love away 
across the bridge of the moon. 
He knew that it might try one day, 
But it has come that bit too soon. 

It cut itself a creature, 
From its own satanic cloth, 
And a rider plucked from Hades 
Did bestride this behemoth. 

Oh hear the sound 
Of pounded ground 
Beneath its fissured hooves! 

See the craven ravens 
Seeking highest high-up havens! 
And the dizzy weak-kneed witches 
Hiding timidly in ditches. 

The bats, the rats, 
The mice, the owls, 
The creatures that slink through the night; 
The foxes and stoats 
And blubbering toads, 
My, how he puts them to flight! 

Evil will fear greater evil, 
more than it fears good; 
And even the daemons and dusky elves 
Risk refuge under the Church’s rood. 

Oh hear the churning of crumbling earth, 
The turning helpless ravaged turf, 
The creaking croaking breaking trees, 
The rivers sprinting to the sea, 
The children crying, 
The weakened dying, 
And the distant hiss of burning hope. 

My prince, my prince, wake up, wake up! 
The gate is opened, the drawbridge down! 
Where is your armour, where your sword? 
The lady will give you just reward! 

The night has stolen his love away 
across the bridge of the moon. 
He knew that it might try one day, 
But it came that bit too soon.

Details | Paul James Poem

Shona Mcfee

She lived in a house in a deep dark wood,
Her name was Shona McFee.
When she let down her hair where the oak-tree stood
The mist rolled in from the sea.
It curled and it twirled and enfolded itself round
The remarkable Shona McFee.

She walked up the hill where the snow leopards stalked
The indomitable Shona McFee.
The animals came and they walked where she walked,
How I wish they could have been me.
She turned right round and embraced every one,
For she was loving, was Shona McFee.

As night stooped down she came down too,
The delectable Shona McFee.
She lit a fire by her hut and she clapped with her shoe,
Come, little creatures to me!
And the owls and the bats and the forest’s deer
Came dashing to Shona McFee.

In a town not far from the deep dark wood,
I dreamt of Shona McFee.
She lets down her hair in romantic mood,
And the startled animals flee.
She walks and she walks and her heart beats fast,
Come hither, Shona McFee!

In a town not far from the deep dark wood,
I lie dreaming of Shona McFee.
I hear her steps step on the stippled grey road.
And know she is coming to me.
I run downstairs and throw open the door,
To no sign of Shona McFee.

Details | Paul James Poem

Night

If you would only look out, 
you would see the star-studded sky and a 
swooning sickle moon, and down below 
a fleet of quiet snails sailing gently over 
lawns scented with newly cut grass. 

You might glimpse the ugly awkward 
gait of a dishevelled fox, trotting across 
a road that had lost its cars by midnight 
to the garages of suburbia; and perhaps 
spot a motionless hedgehog sleeping 
soundly beneath its mattress of bristles. 

If you would just open up your ears 
to the night outside, you might hear 
the howling owl in the primary school wood, and 
the on-the-hour Swiss cuckoo-clock over 
at Number Eight crying out, absurdly, for urgency, 
through an opened window. 

You would hear cats wauling 
and hear the swish of bats in the thick 
dark air, hear the wind softly turning the 
leaves of trees in search of only the wind 
knows what, and perhaps hear the tide, 
which sighs through the night from far 
away to someone, somewhere. 

But you won’t. You are lost in the night 
within, that deepest darkness where no 
stars shine, no moon lies recumbent, 
a birdless night shunned by animals, too, 
a night without roads, without lamps, 
a nightless night on the edge of death.

Details | Paul James Poem

The Singer's Cloak

The singer sang from beyond the grave,*
Or in his grave, to be true.
His voice reached up to the architrave
And vibrated in every pew.

The vicar called on the choir to sing
As loud as loud they could.
But the voice had an even louder ring
Sending quivers down the rood.

Oh Lord, they sang, oh mighty God,
Gloria in excelsis deo.
But the singer sang of life’s hard rod
And of Hell's undying blow.

The women looked up the pillars tall,
While big-eyed children cried.
The singer had them in his thrall,
But was not to be descried.

The vicar read his sermon out,
As if proclaiming from the mount.
The singer responded with a voice so stout,
He sang of fear’s rich fount.

The congregation lost relation
To the good man’s godly word.
They stood in helpless trepidation,
Their souls so far disturbed. 

The church’s doors swung open wide,
To a cascade of chattering leaves;
The screams and panic and terror inside
Shook the church to its very eaves.

And then, oh then, oh horror pure,
The spectre appeared at the door.
His bloodied hair, his sombre allure,
Chilled the living to the core.

The vicar clutched up bible and ran
Through a hidden door to the side,
The singer opened his cloak like a fan
And wrapped all the children inside.

The women bemoaned this cruellest loss,
They wailed to the crucified Christ.
But bound and weak and nailed as he was,
There was nothing he could do.

* This Poem should be read in conjunction with 'The Pauper's Grave'