Once

Breathe in the sun and touch the sky
Set a smile on your lips and
A fire in your eye
Drink in this life and smother the cracks,
You’ll live this day only once.

bobby stevenson 2019

To All the Love

 
To all the love that died unspoken,
To all the hearts, so quietly broken,
To all the tears that fell unseen,
To all the things that might have been.


bobby stevenson 2019

We Walked a Path Once

 

We walked a path once,

You and I,

And shared some gentle time while basking in the sun,

We walked a road once,

You and I,

Fighting with the storms that blew upon our way,

We walked a highway once,

You and I,

And dealt with all the loss and hurt that fell before us,

We walked the Earth once,

You and I,

And broke with everything that Heaven threw in our direction,

But now the time has come for the parting of the ways,

And you will take one path and I will hold the other,

And we will walk the Universe,

You and I,

But with other souls as company.

 

 

bobby stevenson 2019

My Favourite Thought

 

 

You are my favourite thought, favourite smile, favourite life,

You’re my first thing in the morning and my last thing at night,

When I speak to other souls, it is you in my head,

I long for you beside me, I dream of you in bed.

You are my favourite thought, favourite day, favourite night,

When I stumble through darkness, you carry the light

No one can fathom this smile on my face,

It is you - it is you, who makes my heart race.

You are my favourite thought, favourite deed, favourite one,

You are my moon and my stars and my sun,

You are the body where my dreams have been caught,

You are my love, my favourite thought.

bobby stevenson 2019

The Morning of the Day......

She could feel the sun on her heart, as its rays broke through the window. There was a bird, a blackbird, singing in the old twisted trees. She heard the cyclists from the city, shouting to one another as their bikes sailed past her front door. 

The aroma of the freshly made coffee had skipped the stairs and had, instead, entered her room through a little opened window. There was a quiet tap as a Bee kept hitting on her glass pane, looking for somewhere new to live.

Then without warning, the heat started to bubble through her veins, and pumped her lips and brightened her eyes. No longer did her heart skip a beat, it was like an engine, blasting a way forward.

She had done with the dull days, and the rain, and the mist that had arrived with the darkness. She had done with avoiding mirrors and reflections. She was finished with treating herself as the enemy, and listening to the sourness of others: their paths were their problems, their responsibilities.

She sat up in bed, smiled for the first time in a long time, and decided it was the day to be happy again.


bobby stevenson 2019

Meet You on the Dark Side of the Moon

 

 

My Granddad is on the far side of the Moon.

Well, he used to call it the Dark Side, after his favourite record that he would never stop playing, but later he found out that it wasn’t dark, and that it just pointed away from us all the time.

“That’s the kind of place I’d like to go for a holiday,” he would say to me, then kiss the top of my head. “Nice and quiet, and if I wanted to look at my old home, I just need to pop around to the near side, and there Earth would be. You could give me a wave,” he said, then he would spit on his handkerchief and wipe the chocolate from my face. I never did like the hanky.

When he would take me outside to look up at the Moon, he always said:

“In the name of the wee man,” is what he would always cry out, although I wasn’t sure who the ‘wee man’ was.

Sometimes, if it was a really bright full moon, he would shout out, “Jesus, would you look at that, isn’t it just the bee's knees?” Yep, I was none the wiser too, but I think he was either telling Jesus or shouting to him because I think Jesus might live on the Moon.

When I was 8 years old, they put my Granddad in a rocket ship, a wooden one that sat on a table in a hall. But they didn’t launch him into space (as I had hoped) instead they slid him in behind some curtains, and we all sang songs. I guess that’s the way he would want his rocket launch to be like. As everyone sang about this and that and Granddad’s pal, Jesus, I counted down, 10…9…8….the curtains closed just as I got to ‘lift-off’ and I knew then he was gone.

Some nights I look out the window of my room, and I say, “In the name of the wee man, would you look at that.”

I know he can hear me, and I know he sometimes pops around to the sunny side to wave.

I miss you, Granddad.

bobby stevenson 2019

Pink Willie

Pink William or ‘Pink Willie’ as his friends called him, did not have a bad bone in his body, but that didn’t stop people bringing misery to his little life. 

You see the small town he lived in was run and controlled by the Mafia of The Mediocre. They couldn’t see stars or blue skies or breath-taking wonderment – for they were born only to see what was just two feet in front of their sad little faces.

Now some might say that they brought order where there was none, but others might argue that all they did was reduce life to the mundane and in that truth - the mediocre found that they would no longer be afraid.

If they couldn’t see the wonder in it all, then no one else was going to either.

“We are only doing it for the good of all,” was their usual war cry.

Now Pink Willie had always considered himself not the best of men, in his mind, he had too many flaws, too many wild ideas, and therefore bowed to the graces of those Mafia people who probably knew better than him.

But sometimes with age comes a sort of wisdom and in those grown-up thoughts he realised that perhaps all that this Mediocrity was about – was control

Control is all that the weak and stupid have in their arsenal.  They make you feel ashamed to think differently, look differently, behave differently, love and care differently.

So one dark, grey night, when all the folks of the town had gone to their bed at the proscribed time of 10 of the clock – Pink Willie went to his garage and found the old paint that he had used as a kid, until his parents told him that such bright colours were probably the work of the devil and should be locked away.

That night Pink Willie got up on his roof (and with a little giggle) painted it all the colours of the rainbow. Then he did the walls and the door – and by the time sunrise came, he was absolutely giddy with the joy of it all.

Of course, they came. Someone across the street had made a call.

“He’s gone crazy,” said the neighbour. “And I don’t use that word lightly.”

Needless to say, he was lying. The neighbour described everything as ‘crazy’ that he didn’t agree with.

“That snowflake over the road is ruining this town,” he continued.

And so the henchmen of the Mafia of the Mediocre came and took Willie away.

Pink Willie was ordered to repaint his house in the regulation grey, and also complete some community service and promise on his life not to be so stupid again.

The next night Pink Willie did it all again, and once again they took him away, except this time the judge said he was to be confined in the Mediocre prison for 5 days – after he had repainted the house.

On his release, you can second-guess what Pink Willie did? This time the judge banished him forever from the town.

Pink Willie was gone. Never to be seen again.

In another house across the street, a kind father noticed that his small girl didn’t smile any more. When he asked her why she said the nice house was all grey. So the kind man decided to paint the inside of his daughter's bedroom in sparkling colours. That way, the neighbours would never know  - but they did because if there is one thing the unhappy are always on the lookout for, is to destroy other peoples’ pleasure.

It is what drives them.

The man was only issued with a warning as he was known to be kind. However he repainted his daughter’s room, then every other room in the house when he got home.

Then he painted the outside of his house. A friend who lived beside him knew that his pal might possibly be banished and so decided to help him. He too painted his house with many colours.

And a couple of other friends down the street did the same. For soon the street realised that they couldn’t arrest everyone and why should everyone suffer because a few hearts couldn’t see the wonderment in being alive?

The town doesn’t have any grey houses anymore, but if someone feels they would like a grey house, well, that is their business, and they should do what they think is right.

They renamed the first street to paint their houses to ‘Pink Willie Street’.

I wonder if he knows?

bobby stevenson 2019

One Day You Will Even Make the Onions Cry

There is a little village in the South East of England; perhaps it’s yours, maybe it’s mine. Perhaps it’s a little hamlet with a Cross on the hill above it. Who knows?

Sarah hadn’t set out to be a writer; in fact, when she was at the village school, she found that she had difficulty in reading. Everyone else seemed to understand the words, but not her.

Probably later in life, she would find out that she had some little mix-up in her head, which stopped her fully understanding the way words behaved. She didn’t see what others saw but then again, didn’t we all?

So she started to write down the words, one at a time and traced them out with a pencil. She got to know their shapes and meanings. Soon she was putting two words together, and finally, she was writing whole sentences.

By the time Sarah was twelve summers old, she had become a gifted writer, a very gifted writer indeed.

She wrote little essays in school, which she would proudly read out to the class. To be honest, even her teacher smiled in admiration.

By the time she was twenty-two, she was writing for a newspaper in the big town next to the village and she loved her job.

One day in the autumn of 1939, her editor took them all into his little office, offered them cups of tea and then mentioned that there was a war coming.

“It will be our job to keep the people informed. It will be our job to tell the people what they need to know, and to keep their morale high.”

And that is what they did.

In this little village, of which I speak, which may or may not have a Cross above it on the hill, hard times hit. This little group of houses lay right under the path of the bombers flying overhead. So much so, that it would later be known as the most bombed village in that area.

Every single building was wounded in some way, as was every single heart.

The folks at the newspaper kept their promise of telling the people the stories and keeping their morale high, but there was a limit. The government man who visited their offices from time to time would instruct the editor on what could and what couldn’t be printed.

So one evening, Sarah hatched a plan. She started to write little stories of the village and how it had been before the war. They would include some real characters and some that she had made up in her head but had wished that they had lived in her little hamlet.

These were little stories which brought smiles to peoples’ faces, or perhaps a tear in laughter or one in sadness and with the help of her editor, she managed to print off enough sheets to put one through every letterbox in the streets around her house.

At one end of the High Street, lived an elderly woman who inhabited a big house with empty rooms. No one came to visit, and her own contact with the outside world was Sarah’s little weekly stories.

So one summer’s evening, the old woman lay in wait, and as Sarah came up the path, she opened her door.

Admittedly it startled Sarah at first, but the elderly woman invited her in for a cup of tea. She sat Sarah down and told her that her writing should never stop, unlike the war that was happening in the city over the hill.

Sarah smiled, and then the old woman said something that stayed with Sarah for the rest of her years.:

“One day, probably when I am long gone, you will be a great writer, and you will make even the onions cry.”

Sarah leaned over and kissed the old lady on her head.

“Thank you,” said Sarah.

When Sarah eventually wrote her book after the war, about writing her little stories in a village in the south-east – a village which may or may not have had a Cross on the hill above it – she dedicated the book to the old woman and what do you think was the title of her book?

‘One Day You Will Even Make The Onions Cry’.

bobby stevenson 2019

MARTHA'S ROOM

 

Martha had a room, one that she would refer to as a ‘spare room’. Not that the size of her house allowed for such extravagances – she had a kitchen, a little area to sit, a small toilet at the rear of her house, and a little bedroom upstairs. Next to that was Martha’s spare room.

When she and Ted first got married, it had been kept ready for a little child. Ted told his wife that he ‘wanted’ two sons and two daughters, Martha said she would be content with a happy, healthy child.

Ted had painted the walls of the room with characters from books – he had done all this himself in the hope that one day his own child would look up from a cot and smile at the paintings.

In the first two summers of their married lives and with no blessing of a son or daughter, Ted put some of his old books in the room. Martha was understandably upset, but as Ted said, there was nowhere else for them to go.

The years drifted by and no child was gifted to the couple. Then one quiet May morning, Ted went into the spare room and noticed all the junk covering the walls and floor.

He also noticed, sadly, that all the characters he had painted had faded in the sunlight.

“There ain’t no child coming, Lord, I can see that now,” Ted said quietly to himself, and so, that afternoon, he went out and bought the whitest of white paints and decided to throw out all the junk and re-paint the room.

Ted and Martha never talked about children again, but she was delighted with the new white room which Ted had painted.

“This shall be our room for all the good things,” Martha said to Ted.

And that is what it became. All the presents given to them at Christmas or birthdays were placed in the room in order that they could be admired and kept good. Dishes, cups, paintings, bottles of this and that, were all placed in the spare room to be kept good.

Once in a while, Ted would go into the room and admire all the gifts and would ask Martha whether they could use a plate or a dish, but Martha would always say ‘no’ and tell him that the room was to keep everything good in their lives and keep those things safe.

When her few friends came back to the house after Ted’s funeral, she took down some of the china cups and plates from her room and allowed her guests to use them.

With Ted no longer there, Martha didn’t notice her mind beginning to wear away. Sometimes she forgot things; then she forgot names of those who came to call. One morning Martha came down from her bedroom and couldn’t remember who she was.

These days Martha looks out of her hospital room window and not far away is her own home with the spare room. She can see all the good things stored in that room – but Martha doesn’t know that it is her house, or that the objects are all the things she and Ted kept for better days.

bobby stevenson 2019

Nelly from the Elephant and Castle

It was another evening’s bus journey from Elephant and Castle to her cleaner’s job in Stoke Newington. She’d been born in a house in Crampton Street and would most likely meet her maker there.

Before the war, she’d had good work in Mayfair and Kensington. Really top class stuff in nice houses, with posh people who paid well. But the war had been over three years, and a woman had to take what she could get.

It was a nice setup she was working in, and the family well all right, but they were new money. The father, Jacob, had made his pile in munitions and was now looking to move nearer the centre of town – that probably meant Nelly looking for another job sometime soon.

In the Thirties, she’d been a cleaner up at one of those Oxford colleges. My - how she loved that one. All those students with their gowns floating around the streets, it was right jolly, that was what it was – right jolly.

She thought about the years during the war, then she felt she shouldn’t and tried to think of something else. She had been warned. Never. Ever.

It must have been in 1940 when she took that train back to Oxford, in fact, she was certain it was that year because that was when her mother had been struck down with TB and had been taken to some place in Essex. Her mother never returned home - the place got bombed, later that year.

The train had been crowded with students travelling back to their studies, and one kind soul had got up and given Nelly his seat. He looked like a professor of sorts. As the gentleman stood by the door lighting his pipe – and billowing smoke around the carriage – Nelly had picked up the man’s newspaper to return it to him, when she noticed an extremely difficult crossword or puzzle in a sheet between the pages. Well, Nelly could never resist that kind of carry on and took it on herself to solve one or two – okay all of the puzzles.

A little later she saw that the gentleman was getting ready to alight at Bletchley, so she handed the paper back to him. She noticed a strange look on his face as he read the sheet she had completed. Probably upset at me ruining his puzzles, she thought.

A seat became vacant next to her, so the professor type sat beside her and said the strangest thing:
“This is my card; I should like it if you could contact me on this telephone number some time next week.”

He then got up and disappeared out of the train door.
She had been about to ask him if it was a cleaning job, but she never got the chance.

Of course, it turned out it wasn’t a cleaner's job; it was working at B.P. – even she felt guilty about thinking about the letters. ‘Station X’ as the bigwigs referred to it.

She knew she could never tell anyone about her code-breaking days up there at the big house, not even her Bert. Like the man had said, never, ever.

As the bus pulled up to her stop, she wearily stepped down on to the pavement for another few hours of cleaning other folks' houses, for very little money.

bobby stevenson 2019