David Mellor's Poems

Born 1964, (Liverpool, England) to a difficult birth, David didn't find his voice until his youth. Years of thinking he was nobody and treated as such. Including a period of homelessness in the desperate Thatcher Years 

However, he hit the paper papering over the scars. Found understanding and belief through words. He has been published and performed widely from the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs and everything in between. 

His poems are autobiographical, others topical and several his take on life. 

Snowdrift 

I can 

Still feel the 

Freezing cold

Air on my cheeks 

An air long since gone 

Like the people I used 

To greet on the streets. 

And you so small 

I could fit you on the 

Back of my bike 

Sitting under the slide 

So the cold rain wouldn’t bite. 

I can still feel the freezing cold air...

And I worn out by life’s daily chores 

Pulling the sledge to school carrying 

the groceries that could feed a school 

All done with love of course. Then one day 

on returning you told me where you had been. 

I can still feel the freezing cold air

My lips that wouldn’t move 

And the

ice gripping

My heart

In Every Moment

I am stuck in every moment I have lived or

Not lived enough 

Each drags me back

To sort out what I 

Forgot 

To settle the score

Paper over the cracks 

I am stuck,

In every moment 

I failed 

To live

I was,

But 

Just not enough 

A Speck of Cruelty (a true story about a dear old neighbour of mine)

One tiny story

One tiny life

Not picked up on any radar

Or satellite

Not even

A marking in a road

Or unfortunately

No CCTV

Old Ray’s tools were stolen

From his ransacked allotment

Leaving

Very little of him left.

One tiny moment

One tiny heartless mind

Just started to bury him

Further

And further

In the ground

He wasn’t my father

He wasn’t my dad

But I thought he was…

Hunched up at the bar

Cracking jokes

Stealing the show

I felt like tapping him on the shoulder

And telling him

“I have so much to tell you.”

But the words lay as flat as the beer I had just bought

And the lost words we had never spoken

Built up in the ashtray

Are gulped by the beers

And the distant murmur of cars

Signaled, goodbye…

Everyday Tears 

There are pockets of unhappiness 

When limbs don’t move at all

You feel short changed 

When you fail to see 

What is before

And you quickly become

Less

And more means

Pain

But in each and every corner 

There is someone just like you 

Picking up the pen

Picking up the fork

Rolling the dice in the casino

Gulping down another fall 

But each is losing time 

In the pockets ripped and threadbare 

But

At least we all held something 

Which is still there

Under the Sun, I Was a Good Boy

Under the sun I was a good boy

I never did wrong. 

The trees were very giving

As I climbed 

The highest branch 

Under the sun, I was a good boy

Who never did wrong 

The light would stay 

Till I was too tired 

To kick a ball 

But at home, I was bad boy 

Who always did wrong. 

The dark spelt

Foreboding 

Trembling 

Till...

The light broke way