About this book:
Back in the 1970s the objects of my desire were boys with long hair, flared trousers and fully-stamped passports to my tender teenage heart. The poems in this collection were written when I was aged thirteen to fifteen years, between 1972 and 1974. This was a time during which, like most teenagers, I felt everything too acutely, too deeply. I still have my original handwritten copies so am able to offer the poems unchanged and unrefined; although I have grown both as a person and a poet, I believe they have a naïve charm. Despite being written by a teenage girl, the subjects are actually quite diverse: it seems only 99% of my waking thoughts were filled with boys! So I hope you enjoy this collection of seventy easy-read poems and that some may even prompt you to recall your own teens, those times of much confusion, exhilaration and wonder.
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Seventy from the 70s
Easy to understand poems
from harder to understand times
by Julie Stamp
Copyright 2013 Julie Stamp
Cover Image & Design © 2013 Gary Stamp
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Contents
About this book
Front Matter
Myth & Legend
Mystic Lady
Lady Night-Time
Midnight
When Moon was Ripe and Round
The Seasons Will Pass
Her Picture
Old Dusty
Silver Lark
In My World
Lonely Seagull
Ebb Tide, August 9 pm
Morning in June
Summer Butterfly
September
Watercolour Sky
The Man
Snowscene
Hoping
If I Could
Remember
2.00 pm Thursday 11th April 1974
A Valentine’s Verse
The Gift
Midsummer Strangers
And yet I only know your name
Our Song
You took my dreams away
Daydreaming
Friendship
Seashell Summer
That Day
Butterflies For Keeps
The boy who doesn’t believe in dreams
Golden Autumn
Time No More
Happy Love
Dear Heart
Dreaming of You
Beautiful Things
Forever Together
Our night of love, the first time
Two Stars in the Night
Night of a Million Stars
Anything You Ask
You Are Everything
You and a year of my life
Separation
Sad Love
Summer Night
Only We Understand
Ziggy
Sweet Pain
Mummies and Daddies
Memento
Don’t
Stone Love
The End
Each and Every Time
Colours of my Life
Time to Forget
Black Moods
The Hurt
Behind the Tears
Star
Yesterday’s Tomorrow
Empty Land
Words and Pictures
The Record
Lessons Learned
Acorns to Oak Trees
A Strangers’ Smile
Oh, I do hate to be beside the seaside
Summer Longing
It’s Sad
The Healing
This Last Time
Love
About the poet
Myth and Legend
Mystic Lady
Mystic lady in the moonlight,
Casting shadows on my heart;
Skin of ivory, eyes of onyx,
Smile that makes my senses start.
Witch of darkness, queen of starlight,
Hypnotising mind and soul;
Dressed in black, my devils’ daughter,
Evil I cannot control.
Brush my cheek with lips so tender,
Moment to be gone so soon;
Mystic lady, dawn is coming,
Time to fly now, with the moon.
Lady Night-Time
She throws her veil of darkness o’er me,
Making tired my weary eyes,
Lays her precious dreams before me,
Sets the scene for midnight skies.
Lady Night-time steals my troubles,
Soothes them with her silken touch,
Bursts my world of dreaming bubbles,
Takes me in her blissful clutch.
Silently, she waits for morning,
Faithful ‘til the sun’s first ray:
Lady Night-time, day is dawning,
Time for you to drift away.
Midnight
The room is bare;
There’s no-one there,
The wind grows cold,
And night grows old.
A shadow dies
Before my eyes,
As sky grows dim,
And moon goes in.
A century past
Relives at last,
As history weaves,
My mind believes –
A frozen room,
A crowded tomb,
Where midnight faces
Leave no traces
Of crying souls
As death-bell tolls
And spirits fray
At break of day.
When Moon was Ripe and Round
(how moonstones are made)
She tried to tell him one dark night
When no moon shone above,
But he just couldn’t understand
The reason for her love.
She tried to let him know the truth,
But he just laughed and said
That witches don’t exist today,
And black magic is dead.
She tried to warn him of the nights
When moon is ripe and round,
When seeds of magic overflow
And splatter to the ground.
She tried to push his arms away,
To kill his ardent love;
Then, creeping out from cobweb clouds,
A full moon shone above.
She tried once more without success,
The moon had cast its spell;
He felt a prickling in his neck,
A fear he could not quell.
She tried to stop the evil work
Of full moon on her soul,
But magic has a strange effect
That no Witch can control.
Her eyes became a brilliant green,
Her grasp became much stronger,
The fear alive within his mind
Could stand the pain no longer.
She’d tried to make him understand
But all too late, it seemed;
For where the seeds of murder fell,
A precious Moonstone gleamed…
The Seasons Will Pass
The mist of her tears cling close to he
r heart,
Each tender thought stabs her with pain;
For she and her lover must tragically part,
She never will see him again.
No more will she hold his hand close to her cheek,
No longer his tender words hear.
No sunsets together will these lovers seek,
No more will he hold her so near.
The seasons will pass, with each thought in her mind
Of where her heart longs to be led,
Breeze dries her eyes as her steps leave behind
The grave of the one who is dead.
A year had gone by while her sorrow has grown,
The pain was just too much to bear;
Yet, while she had life, in her heart she had known
That in death she’d be meeting him there.
Her Picture
Here she rests upon my wall,
A picture from the past;
I lost her to the other world,
But she’ll forever last.
Her picture captures all the peace
That she once made in me;
Her eyes are soft and shine
Within her quiet serenity.
She’s always here for me to love,
To cherish and behold;
But portraits only lie, because
Her once warm smile feels cold.
Old Dusty
Old Dusty was a friendly dog,
I raised him from a pup:
A dog who always liked to play,
Who never quite grew up.
My Dusty loved a lot of things –
The summertime, the sea -
The crabs that pinched his button nose,
The splashy waves, and me.
Dusty had such big brown eyes
That filled with sudden woe
Then shone bright when he got his way,
The way I’d come to know.
It happened unexpectedly
One seaside summer day,
The sort of day we used to share;
Old Dusty passed away…
Now, on the beach I walk alone,
With just the sea and sky;
Yet often in the crashing waves
Comes Dusty’s playful cry.
Silver Lark
I saw you once within a dream,
Then woke, and you were real;
High in the morning sky I heard
A song lark’s haunting peal.
I looked and saw a silver lark
Against the golden sun:
It spread its precious gilded wings,
It’s flight of love begun.
I held you close against my heart,
And kissed you deeply true;
The silver lark was soaring high
Up in my sky of blue.
We shared our love all summer long,
Till summer sun was dying,
But drifted wordlessly apart;
The silver lark now crying.
We parted one September night
With not one word of goodbye said,
Heard lonely cry of wounded skylark,
Silver turning into lead…
Silver lark lies torn and broken,
Flew too far, for much too long.
Its tarnished, haunting call still sounds,
A silent, sad and silver song.
In My World
Lonely Seagull
Lonely seagull flying high,
Drifting over sea and sky,
Floating on the fresh sea breeze,
Soaring with an agile ease.
Skimming over salty spray,
Silhouette in sun’s last ray –
Bade farewell with dismal cry,
Lonely seagull flying high.
Ebb Tide, August 9 pm
Dusk
pours its opaque film over the sea,
shrouding the silver sun
in a web of pastel pink clouds,
the last slivers of sunlight
filtering into shimmering ripples
aimlessly swimming in the ebb tide.
Shadows
lurk beneath and between
seaweed-clad rocks,
and slowly slip into inky black rockpools,
which hold the face of the full moon
upon dark watery mirrors,
where un-named creatures
thrive blindly, below.
Foam
froths at the sea’s fraying edges,
spilling over stretches of soft sand,
receding with a watery whisper,
talking to the wind, the stars.
From the shadows, a crab
ventures across moonlit sand
and picks its drunken way
towards the tide,
staggering slowly sideways,
sobered in the cool gunmetal sea
where waves unfurl,
and stars have fallen down
to join the moon.
Morning in June
Sun’s first glowing rays
caress the hilltop,
shine on the sea,
chase away dawn.
Early mist kisses the earth
bringing new life to the rose
whose petals overflow with dew,
nature’s sweet reviver,
while stillness shrouds the silence.
Air is clear,
with the fresh scent of morning
tingling in the breeze.
The sky is a vast translucent rainbow,
pastel blue, fraying
into soft glowing tones
of peach, primrose and pink.
A pure white butterfly rests on a leaf
and waits
for the sun to touch her trembling wings,
welcoming her to the new-born day.
Summer Butterfly
She rests upon a blade of grass
With grace of sweet content,
And drowns within the burning sun,
Pure beauty, Nature-sent.
A summer breeze disturbs her drowse;
She trembles at its touch,
But spreads her wings, resumes her place
In mid-days’ breathless clutch.
The perfume of a velvet rose
Invades the crystal air,
Intoxicating, bringing
Dizzy peace beyond compare.
The world stops breathing in the heat,
And melts in hot July,
While butterfly awakes, and climbs
Up through the sapphire sky.
September
Under the cruel disguise of winter
Lies the magic of September.
Trees will glow copper, amber, bronze,
In the hazy honey of the afternoon.
The sun will melt into golden toffee,
Grass will be bleached softly yellow
And leaves silently burnished.
Earth will feel warm from the days’ heat
As the toasting rays fade into twilight,
Leaving a sweet, musty scent mingling with light mist.
Blue shadows will hide in dark corners,
Safe from the pale, full moon.
Stars will blister a deep blue sky,
Crystal clear in the sharp air.
Dawn will break
As the sun repeats its lazy course.
Under sparkles of rain
And the bare forms of gargoylic trees
Lies a misty, golden world,
Waiting for the breath of September
To give birth to Autumn.
Watercolour Sky
Clear sharp blue
Tapering into the soft rainbow
of sunset.
Gold
glimmering on the horizon,
spilling a frosting of sundust
on the hilltop.
Pale yellow
shining among wisps of pink clouds,
muted as the edges fray into a peachy glow.
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Translucent pale blue
deepening into azure,
a clear sharp blue.
Watercolour sky;
a painting in my mind.
The Man
He sits on a park bench, bottle in hand
His mind in a stupor, unable to stand,
His clothes are in rags, he has dirt in his hair;
He wonders why no-one can spare time to care.
He giggles at something just he comprehends,
And thinks that it’s funny that he has no friends.
At twilight he goes to a derelict house –
He’s glad of the company of rat or of mouse.
He lies on a mattress, his head on a sack,
And thinks, as the night falls, it’s good to be back.
He rises at noon to drink away day –
The poor lonely man who has just lost his way.
Snowscene
The dark clear sky throws moonshine
onto freshly-fallen snow,
winters’ silent shroud
glistening purple, glowing white
on rooftop, pavement, tree.
Stars hang suspended, free
from the harsh light of day,
where silhouettes become objects
and shadows just die.
Clouds cry,
shedding intricate snowflakes,
forging frozen butterfly halos
in circles of lamp-light
each one individual, softly bright,
until it merges into the landscape
and becomes just a part
of a part
of a snowscene.
Hoping
If I Could…
If I could have a shining star,
A pocketful of sighs,
I’d throw them to the night
If I could see love in your eyes.
If I could make a diamond
From every grain of sand,
I’d melt them in the sea
If I could hold your waiting hand.
If I could form a butterfly
From rainbow, pastel clear,