Generic nostalgia (not related to Primary School), Death, General Friendship (unrelated to specific people), and all manner of other things can be found here.
This poem didn't turn out anything like I imagined it would. I envisioned it to be a depressive take on the concept of getting old, and it ended up being quite light-hearted and fun. I also didn't imagine it as a song, but when writing it, it just seemed to flow quite naturally in that direction. Written again on 1 August 03. The title comes from a Mylène Farmer song of the same name; it's also about getting old but that's where the similarity ends. The title literally means something like "No more to grow old".
The first half of this poem was written on a whiteboard where I worked in late August '03, but finally finished on 2 September 03. It's quite a vague poem, basically comparing how life was in someone's past to how it is now. Of course it's inspired by the Louise incident (which took place exactly ten years prior to me starting to write it), but it could be equally applied to anything where nothing changes, despite time.
Yes it's another poem about death! Written just after midnight on 18/19 November 03. Maybe I'm trying to come to terms with my own mortality as well, but of course writing poems about it isn't going to stop it from happening.
Written 6 January 04; it's about friendship but specifically directed at the same person as "That Certain Someone". It's another one of my attempts at a "structured" poem - it follows the recognised form for a Ballade. I'm not entirely happy with the envoi at the end but the rest of it is pretty much how I feel about friendship, especially with certain people from my past and present.
The main personality test on OK-Cupid defines people in one of 16 ways, one of which is "The Sonnet". Upon taking the test, one of my close friends did indeed come out as such, and this poem was written with her in mind. At the time of writing (feb '04), the firm I was working for was about to be bought out, I was at a low point in my relations with women, and I had some decisions to make ...
The best thing I ever did for my sanity was sell my house in Birmingham, when I moved jobs to Coventry. It was a lovely house, it suited me well, and I felt really comfortable there. But it wasn't *my* house. It was *our* house - mine and my ex-fiancée Laure's. And the longer I spent there, alone, the less I felt able to 'get over' her. This poem reflects the 'break' I made at the time, and how i felt I wasn't just saying 'goodbye' to the house, but also to that whole part of my life.
© Copyright 1992-2004, Ian T Oliver. No copying of these poems is authorised.
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