New Classic Poems – Contemporary Verse That Rhymes

New Classic Poems
Then and Now
The Odeon
Neil Harding McAlister
They say The Odeon went bust –
That graveyard of desire! –
Where unrequited teenage lust
Produced more smoke than fire.
Old movies blurred into the haze
Of all we’ve done and seen.
The remnants of our salad days
Reluctantly we packed away
In trunks of might-have-beens.
Now, half a lifetime later, greet
The friends whom once we’d known;
And in their ageing faces meet
Reflections of our own.
Now at long last we can set down
Worn baggage we have carried.
When we return to our home town,
It’s friendly handshakes all around
As someone’s Mom is buried.
Somewhere between the smiles and tears
A childhood gets misplaced:
The landmarks of our younger years,
Torn down without a trace.
Nostalgic hearts seek what is gone,
Reality explains.
She gently chides, the curtain’s drawn;
The show is over. Run along.
You can’t go home again.
Dragon Days
Angela Burns
In dragon days, on nightmare flights
They soared in hard-scaled, slit-eyed might
O'er lands of myth they burned their way
Yet only tales remain today
But now reports show brimstone breaths
Where plated forms shoot fiery deaths
Dark feral things patrol the skies
... Seems dragon days have been revived.
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