Best Laid Plans

Cherry

By jennifer

Fri, 14 Feb 2025
  • 106 reads
10 comments
 
Best Laid Plans (for Valentine’s Day)
Jennifer Pickup, 11.02.2025
Is it time yet to take down all your pictures from the wall?
Am I ready to admit that I could not have it all?
I think about your number still saved safely in my phone,
And how many times I’ve nearly called when I felt alone.
I wander round this empty house where we both used to live –
The pain obscures the memories when I try to forgive.
I wonder if you’re out there somewhere thinking (just like me),
One day we’ll speak again, and then, each set the other free.
One day, someday, never maybe, (oh!), we shall wait and see,
I had a foolish notion once that you’d come back to me.
But lately, (hate me if you want), I’m craving not to be
Caught in the past, (time moves fast, I don’t have eternity).
I find all our best laid plans lying hidden in a drawer –
I recall putting them away so many moons before.
Why did I keep them, I don’t know, perhaps it was too raw?
I knew they’d come to light someday and torture me some more.
I gave away the things you bought to save me endless tears,
Softly, slowly, one by one, (but it took me many years),
Of all the things for me to keep, the brochure with the ring,
The diamond band you never bought, (hurts more than anything).
Someday, one day, (maybe never though), my heart will move on,
I had a crazy idea once that you might be the one.
But baby, I’m not what you want, and I will never be,
And so, it’s time, your heart and mine, forever to be free.
I wonder if you’re happy now, and if you have moved on.
How would you feel, and what would you do, if you heard this song?
I wander past all our old haunts and linger for your face,
Strangers might see a lonely girl stood staring into space.
I scroll through the photographs that still clutter up my phone,
So many never printed out, the world was never shown.
Why not delete them? All could go; I do not need them now –
I should move house, try to move on, (I can’t let go somehow).
One day, someday, never maybe, (oh!) I will exorcise,
Every single piece of you from my future, bluer skies.
I will set sail into new waves, and drown the ghosts of you,
I wrote this song to set me free, (I wish that it were true).
Certificate PG
Poem
Hurricane Warning (2025)
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by jennifer on

...it's a song. 

Only, I can't sing. Or play the guitar. (Only the piano, once upon a time, and badly!)

And I can't write the music to go with it. But I can hear it in my head!

J x

 

Submitted by celticman on

yeh, it's got a good rhythm. relatonships have that too, but the best laid plans of mice and men. Same old story again. 

 

Submitted by jennifer on

'Of Mice and Men'. Used to love teaching it. If my parents hadn't moved down south, I might have been speaking like Robbie Burns.

Saw a mouse today... a tiny one, in the horse fields. Now thinking about all the mice making plans.

I wonder if they do.

J x

 

Submitted by D G Moody on

This had echo's of my own long ago relationship that lasted for 13 years; and now I have no idea where she is or even alive; and yet the memories persist.

Dougie Moody

Submitted by jennifer on

...it's so hard to let go. Perhaps humans are too much creatures of habit. Which is why so many people stay when they shouldn't. He doesn't even have Facebook, so I can't...see.

Do you think writers can ever be happy? I don't write much when I'm too happy. 

Loneliness is the writer's curse. And also their inspiration.

Maybe I'm happier on my own...?

J x

 

Submitted by D G Moody on

I think lifes trials are often the manure in which we can grow our poems

Dougie Moody

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Your song resonates with me from way back when I was young, though thankfully I've moved on many times since, but still I wonder sometimes what might have been in quiet times.

Some lyrics that have great rhythm and rhyme.

Very much enjoyed reading.

Jenny. 

 

Submitted by jennifer on

Every choice led you here.

I sometimes wonder too - where all the other roads would have led.

Particularly this one.

But there are new routes beckoning always. Which way to choose next?

Thank you.

J x

 

Submitted by Sooz006 on

I'd love to hear this played and sung. It's beautiful.

it must be what 15, 20 years on? And you still have a gorgeous gentleness in your writing. I don't know if I ever thanked you properly, but you inspired me to write one of my books. After writing my dark and psychotic books, I'd read yours, it was the story about the band of people in the forest with the animals and purple crystals and I could literally feel my blood pressure dropping. I loved your story so much that you inspired me to write a NICE book. As it happened it all went horribly wrong and I reverted to form in the first 50 words, but it's one of my most successful books ..and that's thanks to you. 

Did you ever publish that story? I would love to buy it. 

If you didn't, please do, I remember it being wonderful. 

 

 

Submitted by jennifer on

If only I could sing. I have a wonderful friend who can sing and play and she has converted some of my poems into songs, over the years. It's incredible hearing them.

I've been reading all my older writing on here because of this comment. Some of it made me cringe, and some of it was weirdly inspirational. Did I write that? I used to be able to write free verse! I'm so controlled now, when I write poetry. And both braver and less brave about what I reveal.

I can't remember the story to which you are referring. I don't write many stories - mainly poems, some songs, and I'm inevitably thinking about writing books - I have so many ideas and never the time to write them. I wrote a whole sequel to Unbelievable, but it's never been published. I started to write a third, then life got in the way.

If you read the story on here, it will still be on here, unless it's been lost in one of the site revisions. I've been posting on here for over 20 years - I registered in April 2001, just found the email! Maybe it wasn't my story, but it does sound like something I'd write. I'm thinking of The Dark Crystal now, one of my favourite films! 

If I inspired you, I am grateful. Thank you. So many writers inspire me. We fuel each others' ideas. I've always been enamoured with the idea of the collective unconscious, too - maybe it's that?

J x