Poetry Links
Life's Questions...I'm just asking (NEW)
Poetry by Angie Bowie
GOD & MR. BIG
I have composed a letter
To ask a common question.
Whether to live life better
Or is it mere suggestion
That remaining puritanical
Will end in heaven’s leisure
Or should we be mechanical?
Should we heed your beck and call?
Pay tithes, say prayers and go to church?
Before earth’s final fall
Leaves mankind in a lurch
You are privileged and wise;
You are older than us all
Time and fate are your best mates
You’ve watched mighty empires fall.
I know you have a trick
That is a Chinese puzzle game.
As we tire grow old and sick
Gradually we learn it’s name.
Questions asked are what you want
Your answers given are so diverse
That with philosophy you taunt
Man’s quest for spiritual rebirth.
Dear You up in the sky
I have had a try;
And now methinks
It’s time to quit,
Forget charades and mental skits
I love you for the care you take
When we acknowledge our mistake
Asking questions you will not answer.
They have become our intellectual cancer.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett
Silly Satan
Silly Satan, you’re a clown.
Never will you make me frown.
As you play your silly tricks.
Words and tuned play with sticks.
As you cast your fiery spells
Conjure up your tired old hells;
I can tell you plain and straight
Your promises are too late.
You pretend to make them rich
While their souls are black as pitch
You cannot win while I laugh aloud,
I will not join you, I am too proud.
I will stamp on your tail and pull off your horns,
Jump on your back and avoid your thorns.
When I am close to those I love,
I require the peace of the dove
You are banished as of now.
Out you go, kerpow!
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1979
A Thought of Heaven
I have come upon a thought of heaven.
Open empty paper must promise paradise.
But why write beauty so others may admire your vision?
Is not the knowledge that you saw the truth
More blessed than the appreciation of others to this art?
An empty page holds promises of joy and ecstasy,
No written work can be superior to the promise.
It may be great and sweet and heavenly
In its inspiration but there is no assurance
That the emptiness of space
May not paint perfection more poignantly.
Words describe my thought.
Let them not be cursed for being written,
Let the idea rise above my ugly ink imprints
Let these words squeeze admiration from your heart
And satisfy my soul.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1975
Your Sweet Love--for STACIA--lyrics
Verse 1:
You bring the best of times,
All the summers and sunshine.
You are the light in my heart
I cannot bear to be apart
From your sweet love
Chorus:
For your sweet love is
Why I face the day
Your sweet love is here to stay
You are all I crave and why I care
Sweet love is what we share
Verse 2:
You are the morning dew
All that shimmers and is brand new
You bring a smile to my lips
By the touch of your fingertips
Of our sweet love.
Chorus
Verse 3:
You are a doll in human form
Your sweet love is why I was born.
You are my future and my fate
I cannot make you wait
For our sweet love.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1984
Soul House--lyrics
In my soul house,
There’s a place
Shady rest for a daytime face.
No-one enters in that temple.
My heart alone aligns the zone.
For you are my peace,
The keeper of my eternal lease,
The lover who makes this body warm.
Now I’m standing very still,
Heart ,mind and soul to accommodate.
The time for love is here.
I leave solitude
Way in the past.
Maybe I’ve learned at last
You are right.
I may be day,
You’re surely night.
So trust in this promise I now make,
It’s easy to give, far less than take.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett
Recorded by ROY MARTIN for TRACK RECORDS 1976 (?)
King's Cross
What a Dilemma! What a Predicament!
Someone’s soldered my soul to sentiment.
Stir up the waters, I am in suspension.
Reformed, a new substance born by reflection.
What an exciting stress-filled moment,
To further confuse and confound my torment.
I crave your brain but that takes time and
And time is something “there is just too little of.”
No time to play in your brain,
No time to be driven insane
Time was for collecting memories,
In a jelly jar for looking at,
under the bed at night,
with a flashlight.
No time to play in your brain,
No time to be driven insane.
Time was for collecting memories.
My memories are the written word,
Crouched under the covers, never heard,
And those words enliven me still
They are my “Enter”
My software for life.
I like your words and I like your brain
But you’ve already driven me insane.
I am fire and you are ice;
Got to give each other space…
Or emotions will spill onto your face.
You know how you hate that
Like the Greek boy who after he came,
Said, “Sorry I have dirtied you.” Really?
Kind of like emotions and you.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1999
Landmarks Touched & Cherished
I am so far from landmarks touched and cherished,
An exiled lover of all that England is
A million soldiers and writers perished
To keep that land they said as ‘tis.
Did no-one tell our wasted youth
Tomorrow’s aims are not their own.
Who warned them of the twisted truth?
Which politicians and the greedy loan
To some group called electorate,
At interest rates so high?
They risk their power every day,
People do not always buy.
How to compare a land as fair as heaven
Sweet as paradise with talent and intellect.
Electorate is surely people even as you and I.
If you now had to leave your home,
Wouldn’t you rather die?
I am sad so deep inside myself,
The shock of this straight fact
Does not really connect at all.
My heart and I have made a pact.
I shall not cry for what’s gone before,
I shall not swear or curse
But every day I am away from home
I shall always be the first to rave about my beautiful land
Our clever intellectuals, our brilliant industrialists
And the entertainers that entertain the world.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1975
Let's Trick Tomorrow
Let’s trick tomorrow,
Make it yesterday,
A sad sweet measure
Of forgotten dreams,
Schemes long past.
Tides turned to face the future
Will be a mirror of today.
If you can turn your thoughts
Inwards, accomplish satisfaction,
Uplift desires to a destined end
Then time is married to logic’s triumph
And pleasure will be the luck of man.
Can reckless ideas govern a scheduled world?
Where laws give place to magic and instinct to control?
A man is motivated by the soul,
The essence of his self, his godhead.
Define God and you negate instinct.
Who has the right?
I fear a time of regression
Where progress is but conditioned energy
Misplaced, misspent and miscalculated
To increase units of a planets’ output
In pillage and rape of her elemental wealth.
Start to undo see not the potential,
But rather wonder that it exists at all
And you will glimpse God.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1976
Touch & Tell
Touch and tell they taught, who gives a damn
I do and bare my heart, it’s all a part
Conditioning my soul was their only goal
Yet prophecies foretell, believing blindly leads to hell.
Who will absolve my soul?
Touch and Tell. We tried to touch with music’s love
We tried to tell with theater’s ironic dove
We sang of future and our fate but even then
We saw destruction wrought by power men.
Did you see them?
In my way I pray and also try
To heed the warnings of the fighter
Patty Hearst, the IRA, Vietnam are not the way.
If we acknowledge light, the future will be brighter.
I try to shine.
My heart’s on fire to cast an ancient spell
And banish everything but peace and love to hell.
I do not want the legacy I leave to old man time
Or watch original sin become his final crime.
I am aware.
Light is clear casts off disguises.
Light pierces darkness, truth surprises. Light is gifted to a million faces.
You cannot catch or color it’s secret choice of places.
I will not crutch my shattered dreams and hopes
Rolling old religions up dangerous rocky slopes,
I cannot pray and thus possess
Power and success are hateful to godliness.
I can but try to Touch and Tell
Judging which is heaven and which is hell.
Heaven is the mainstream conscious thought.
Hell’s cages are the goods and fame I bought.
Infinity come back for us we are so near,
The moment of decision and I am full of fear.
Just touch my heart so I may stay,
Well within your defined secret way.
Touch and tell they taught well I believe
I feel the need and now must do the deed,
Else I am lost as suicide or even death
Robs me of the final and decisive breath.
I do believe.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1976
Time
Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday
Are Geographical Locations
In Time’s Abhorrent Calendar
Where There Are No Vacations
You May Stop The Video And So Rewind
Reel The Tape Back To The Beginning
Time Has No Time For These Mechanics
Youth Is Mirrored Senility Caught Grinning.
I Wonder If It’s Possible
To Make Old Time A Friend
Thus Acquiring The Wisdom
We’ll Need At Judgment’s End.
Times Pass Methodically,
Tick-Tocking Hours Of Our Lives,
Multiply The Product Of Earth Men,
And Our Energy Survives.
Future Is Projected Hopes,
The Gap In Generation,
Different From The Present,
And Vengeful Of Each Nation.
Life Is A Weary Journey,
Designed To Break Us Down,
As We Seek To Conquer,
Become Destiny’s Sad Clown
Fate Is Our Memorial.
And Time And Time Again,
We Ignore The Brevity of Life,
It’s Sweet Beginning And Death’s End.
Mary-Angela Bowie Barnett 1977
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