Tony Jolley

Tony Jolley Poems

Fire on your finger,
Fire in your eye,
Fire in your spirit,
Fire that won’t die.
...

Today you’d have been a happy-go-lucky girl:
A teenager up to your eyes in make-up and Maths,
Chatting on MSN and mobile,
Reading chick-lit
...

...For my daughter, upon watching her play piano and finding melodies of a beauty so far out of my reach...

Your left hand looked a lot like mine – but it wasn’t.
Your left hand moved a little like mine – but with far greater grace
...

Reflection

It didn’t look good, that barely recognisable reflection –
Didn’t look at all like it should.
...

….Ah, no, not us, I'm afraid…

[Trans: for 'I'm afraid' read 'hallelujah! ',
What did Douglas Adams call it? –
...

What is it about your skin?
I touch you and it is as natural as breathing,
As right as being
That I don’t even have to think about it.
...

The pavement waters parted…
No need for a Moses:

On one side an old man
...

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month,

Loaded with significance,
Charged with a memory of a reality
...

Don’t understand deliberate hurt.
Just don’t.
Never did.
...

Strange.
Strange how the moments come;
Those moments upon which one’s world turns.
...

The cenotaph sighs
Under weight of the words:
A marble-white marker
Bridging two worlds.
...

No foregone conclusions
No faites accomplis
No ducking of decisions
No get-out-of-jail-frees;
...

Pigtails.
She had pigtails.
Long pigtails:
Out of the ordinary pigtails,
...

He wasn’t carried from the ring
Upon shoulders of adulation and adoration.
He wasn’t paraded before the populace
As ‘Local Boy Made Good’.
...

Life.

It starts.
It ends.
...

Being One:

Neither
Dependent
...

They were suddenly all around me.
Every sense told me they were there.
Then they gathered me to them
As if the eye of History
...

Everything’s gone.

Everything’s gone tender,
gone soft,
...

Silent at first;
A duet danced and sung by eager eyes
Across a distance ineffectually imposed
By dining-table dimensions,
...

It lay incongruous:
At an angle oblique to its own belonging,
Languishing lonely between retreating tide
And the blind feet of the Good Friday beach brigade
...

Tony Jolley Biography

I'm a University Lecturer who loves teaching, but who is beginning to find that the yen to write from the heart for a non-academic readership is more important than to write from the head for a narrow academic audience of cognoscenti. That said, I have started my own business in France: 'Tonyversity' (www.tonyversity.com) doing management and English coaching for business people and finessing of English translations. Am presently building a personal poetry website called 'Tonyverses' (www.tonyverses.com) but it is slow work! I used to play guitar and write music in my early years and had, until recently, thought that the muse of my youth was lost to me. She isn't. She took me by the hand and led me home to a place where there is no barrier between the heart and the page anymore. I no longer have an office. It has become a study, a library, a haven where small miracles happen every day between nib and nap. Oh, and did I mention... at long, long last, I love and am truly loved.)

The Best Poem Of Tony Jolley

Fire On Your Finger

Fire on your finger,
Fire in your eye,
Fire in your spirit,
Fire that won’t die.

Fire in the bare bones of being,
Fire to uphold what’s right,
Fire in the heart of darkness,
Fire to fuel Love’s light.

Fire to burn but not consume,
Fire to learn and not assume,
Fire to live and give living room,
Fire to love and sing her tune.

Tony Jolley Comments

Jerry Hughes 03 January 2009

I have no hesitation saying Tony Jolly is one of the best educated, and imaginative writers gracing the pages of poemhunter...

7 1 Reply

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