paulcarpenterpoet poetry

The Prince (1502)

I followed the Prince and his retinue along the passageway
Towards the screaming,
Our progress dimly lit by guttering torches 
That threw our shadows on to its stone.
A bejewelled beauty quickly turned her head to me and smiled,
A smile of no apprehension but only fluttering amusement at my expression,
Of someone so helplessly beguiled and grimly shivering to the bone.
The screams grew ever louder as we continued down,
Screaming of uncontrollable anguish and pain,
Screams beyond a torturer’s dreams,
Assaulting the innocent silence with a violence unknown,
Nerve shredding in their hideousness,
Yet I alone of the company seemed affected by their piteousness,
As I fought the fear in my soul in vain.
At length we stopped before an old iron door of black,
From behind which the wild shrieking still rang free,
Then all the glittering court as one fell silent and turned its stare upon me.
And as arms of strength suddenly grasped mine tight,
Lord Cesare spoke my name,
Saying that regretfully it was now time 
For his honoured guest to re-join his friends,
And how happy they would be that he’d came.
Then amidst the screams and laughter unconstrained,
I heard the scrape and clang of bolts drawing back. 

©2015 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book:

‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations’

To buy this book £6 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

The 7th of July 2014



My eyes fought the city’s sodium yellow glow,
To survey the starry sky shrinking violet without show
From my summer night opened window,
Where I sought some consolation in my leaning out
At 3a.m., unable to sleep in my burning doubt
Of her feelings now, and my guilt at the verbal blow.

©2015 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book:

‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations’

To buy this book £6 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

Reveries

In the half-light gloom of the dreaming hour,
When reveries of past love bloom and flower
Soft as memories whispering in twilight elegies,
Eloquent is their fragrance of bittersweet romance,
Lingering on so long after its last dance of mysteries. 

©2015 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book
‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations’

To buy this book £6 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

Sky-Blue Raincoat


No longer able to lift her head to the citadel,
She only has eyes for its pavement of stone.
Bent double by some catastrophe,
So cruel in its inexorable evolution
Beyond any hope of reprieve or sins absolution,
She is pushing her trolley in a sky-blue raincoat,
With his once promised land now forever at her feet;
Bereaved and alone,
But for the persistence of a sweet memory
That comes to set her free with its secret light,
In the bewildered amnesia of the transient street.

©2013-2017 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book:

‘Initium Sapientiae’

To buy this book £9.99 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet Uncategorized

Le Quattro Stagioni


(The Four Seasons)



1. La primavera (Spring)

The dawning breeze from the lagoon holds a promise of warmthIn its morning ease,Gently rippling the turquoise water and winged lion banners,Then dancing on across the piazza where yawning waiters complainAnd early romancing lovers teaseWith laughter and whispers, As La Serenissima prepares to reprise once again, Her entrancing comedy of manners.

2.  L’estate (Summer)

The sun was ostentatiously flouncing around its glamorously empty sky,High above the languidly languishing, flirtatiously sighing town,Fluttering and fanning and smiling amorously as if in love,Beguiling the nervously stuttering man with her gorgeously sly summer gown,So carelessly and breathlessly and deliberately coming undone.

3. L’autunno (Autumn)

From the top of the Campanile the circus girl jumped,Dressed in the clothes that she kept for best,Blessed with her secret she had leapt towards the scarlet sunDeclining in breath-taking splendour to the west.Visitors and pigeons scattered terrified when she landed amongst them, Then quickly recovered and gathered around.The horrified tourists speculating on her motive or reason,While the spectating birds simply fussed about the fallen one,That had flown just once to never again leave the ground.

4. L’inverno (Winter)

Etched by white acid burning out of the north blown night,Boiling and turning in a vortex of frozen crystal light,Stretched tight with ice was the alley from the midnight square,Coiling with snow serpents rising venomous from their lair,Writhing and striking and biting like bright cutting diamonds, Behind the dark shadowed cathedral mysterious as a prayer,Where the jealous blinding took place in cold blood,Any flood of screams lost with a tongue to the howling air.

©2015 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book:
‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations”

To buy this book £6 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet Uncategorized

Trilogy II

I made love to a woman in tears

I made love to a woman in tears
And then I wept.
For all her shining years were there condensed,
And in their salty tracks I sensed an ending;
Before we finally slept.

She had the face of a Russian doll

She had the face of a Russian doll.
A beautiful doll that concealed another,
Then another,
Dwindling in sequence to an empty space,
Never to be revealed;
Hidden forever beneath her layers of experience.

Where’er you walk
          (for SJ)

Where’er you walk
All is gentled in its condition;
And in the very air
Music from above plays unbidden,
Breathing softly of grace and beauty,
Descended with love of its own volition
To accompany this blessed and beloved odyssey; 
For where’er you walk
All is gentled in its condition.

©2013-2016 Paul Carrpenter

Extract from Paul’s books:

“The Storm Dove”

and “Homecoming”

To buy these books £6 each + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

Trilogy


For all beauty that passes without acknowledgement…

For all beauty that passes without acknowledgement,
Unwitnessed by man in his absence or indifference,
I say there exists a blessed reverence,
An immortal testament unseen,
A hymn of praise,
Sung forever by exalting angels in heaven’s eternal dream.

Her hair blew in the innocent wind like flames

Her hair blew in the innocent wind like flames
Licking the night.
A fragmenting halo flying free,
Burning all that knew and sinned,
Within its holy tornado of blessed golden light. 

Beauty should not toil

Beauty should not toil,
But in parables be
As the lilies of the field
Spinning only their mysteries
Of purity,
Like their blessed creator,
Unto the end of all our simple destinies.

©2013-2016 Paul Carrpenter

Extract from Paul’s books:

“Homecoming”

and “The Storm Dove”

To buy these books £6 each + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

The Harbingers

Skittish in the greenish guttering corners of the terracotta waves 
Tessellating like a childish sea,
The careering harbingers of the sun are returned from Africa 
Without ever divining the why.
Beguiled into their pilgrimage by some caprice of its gravity,
They are the obedient congregation flocking to dance for their deity,
For the blinding star, 
Reigning omnipotent once more 
Over the modestly stuttering and reticent, 
British summer sky. 

©2016 Paul Carrpenter

Extract from the following books:

“The Storm Dove”

and “Homecoming”

To buy these books £6 each + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet Uncategorized

 Quia multum amavit


There were only four at the end, just four,
To witness the last sad ritual;
Oh, and of course a priest,
Weary and perfunctory,
With another office to perform in an hour.
The guilty husband, the teary father, the angry son
And curiously to some, the husband’s mistress;
Gathered in the echoing empty crematorium,
Each displaying various degrees of regret and distress
As they contemplated the eternal mystery
Of our human frailty and her precious departed spirit;
Quia multum amavit.

© 2017 Paul Carrpenter

Extract from Paul’s book “Initium Sapientiae”

To buy this book £9.99 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com

paulcarpenterpoet poetry

On the steps



We paused after we passed on the steps, 
To exchange the briefest of backward glances;
A stranger’s eyes meeting mine,
The merest hint of a smile;
A smile of regret at the passing of too much time,
Too many lies,
Too many romances.
It was only a flattering moment in the ship-passing night;
Too little and yet too much for words,
Everything already said that needed to be said;
Just the fleeting acknowledgement of an understanding
Of life’s mysterious circumstances.

© 2017Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book “Initium Sapientiae”

To buy this book £9.99 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com