Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse
    From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse
    From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse
    Ebook283 pages1 hour

    From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse

    By Martin Brits

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Here I write of life in a language permeated by fear...
    dreadfully suppressed memories of the child beaten by a drunken father, waiting for fate to forgive me. A carbon copy repeated in brutal patterns and destroying the faith of my family: my wife and two daughters. They bore the brunt of my alcoholic dependence, which ultimately resulted in divorce and alienation. This tormented man, when challenged about being drunk and abusive, plunged further into darkness...

    The lonely period without a word from them and then finally seeking help in rehabilitation... five years of sobriety leading to forgiveness and reconciliation...

    This book of verse is a visionary journey.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris UK
    Release dateDec 7, 2010
    ISBN9781456821586
    From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse

    Related to From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      Jan 20, 2020

      My year off was also interesting, in that I didn’t feel any less loved, or cherished, or wanted. Why? Because my life is already rich with soulmates, and I got the chance to behold that. You don’t have to shag someone for them to be a soulmate. We do

      7 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      Day after Thanksgiving. I give thanks for Eveto beat the rush of appreciating hernext year and let her sleep inuntil three hundred o’clock.Thank you light on the mountainfor being my star on cloudy nights.Thank you all the guns I’ve never ownedand ki

      6 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dear Frankie

      Aug 1, 2021

      Dear Frankie
      19 min read

    • Article

      The Inherited Imagination

      Aug 18, 2020

      The Inherited Imagination
      9 min read

    • Article

      ‘We Are Bridges’: Featured Nonfiction from Cassandra Lane

      Apr 20, 2021

      Lane's memoir, which won the 2020 Louise Meriwether First Book Prize, explores the author's ancestral history in order to give her future child a family history. The post ‘We Are Bridges’: Featured Nonfiction from Cassandra Lane appeared first on The

      8 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2022

      If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say itenough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic, I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting, slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Final Truth

      Jan 21, 2020

      The Final Truth
      5 min read

    • Article

      Nikki Gemmell On Family

      May 2, 2021

      We must love one another or die,” urged the poet W. H. Auden. Yet growing up, my riven family seemed quite beyond any of that. Snippets of unwelcome memory. Thuds in a room. Anguished sobs. The flash of a police siren in the suburban dark. Having to

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Happy

      Feb 1, 2023

      MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Brand-new ending

      Jan 29, 2022

      A Brand-new ending
      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Little Love

      Apr 5, 2023

      A Little Love
      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year

      Jan 3, 2019

      Poetry Rx: This Is the Year
      7 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      I The teenaged girl is searching for a placethat goes through, the holeto put the tampon inside. When she finds itshe asks her mother, Is this where the penis would go?Yes, her mother explains.Then I will never have sex. II Sweltering New York City.

      5 min read

    • Article

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Love Is All Around

      Jan 16, 2020

      IT’S a leap year, gulp. As if the Valentine’s gush isn’t enough, now the girlfriends and single ladies among us must publicly announce our undying love by proposal. I’ve spent at least two leap years and nearly a decade of Valentine’s Days concentrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

      Jun 10, 2020

      Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding Peace—and Briefly, Freedom—at My Grandfather’s Funeral

      Oct 11, 2019

      “Saying goodbye with the people who loved him—and me—I remember that I am not the tomb that imprisons me.”

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      From Hell to Paradise – a Journey in Verse - Martin Brits

      From Hell To Paradise—

      A Journey In Verse

      Martin Brits

      Copyright © 2010 by Martin Brits.

      Library of Congress Control Number:   2010917558

      ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4568-2157-9

      ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4568-2156-2

      ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4568-2158-6

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      This book was printed in the United States of America.

      To order additional copies of this book, contact:

      Xlibris Corporation

      0-800-644-6988

      www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk

      Orders@xlibrispublishing.co.uk

      301111

      Contents

      Introduction

      Foreword

      This Verse, a Memory Still Haunting Me

      Clown or Clown

      My World Torn Apart

      To Jenna

      When I Was Young and Afraid

      Home at Last

      Cake on Sundays

      We Are All Pencils in the Hands of God

      Edge of Insanity

      What a Waste of Life!

      Fear No Evil

      Africa My Home

      Children Born to Write Poems

      Graves of Stone

      Only the Broken-Hearted

      The Death of a Dream

      I Dreamed of Peace

      A Crowded Room

      The Spell of the Sea

      The White Cot for Me

      Open the Gate

      Poems to Set Us Free

      Note

      My First Kiss

      The Door to Heaven

      Dance with Me

      Forsaken Circumstance

      I Must Be Dreaming

      A Friend to Love Me

      No Tears to Cry

      The Reaper in the Fields of Hay

      Meg and Mark—Max and Lady

      The Beggars’ Poem

      When Death Calls

      Wedding—Thank-You Note

      Down by the Bridge

      The Man I Trust the Most

      It Can Happen to You

      Darker Than Black

      Love Never Forgets

      Epitaph of Life

      A Cross to Bear

      Open Your Eyes

      When I Lost You

      Footsteps in the Hall

      My Confession

      Midnight Dreams

      The Maiden Betrothed

      Democracy—Unplugged

      Teaching with Reasoning

      Moonlit Kisses

      In My Mother’s Arms

      Just a Touch of Spring

      Love Is the Fire of Life

      Your Lying Eyes

      Colourful Illusions

      Bipolar on My Mind

      My Road to Poetry

      Born a Fiddler

      Happy Birthday for Stacy

      The Scent of Wonder

      Under Lock and Key

      You’re the Prayer in Me

      Old and Grey with Memories

      No Need to Cry

      The Shadowed Room

      Midnight’s Kiss

      On Borrowed Time

      Sagacious Sergeant Major

      The Fifteen Butterfly Ball

      Will He Marry Me?

      The British Soldier

      Ode for a Friend to Guide Me

      Ode to My Mother

      ‘Praying in a Poem’

      Torn Apart

      Shades Crystal

      Death on the Streets

      Graves of Stone

      What Love Means to Me

      Spinning a Web of Deceit

      A Gate to Hell

      Thankful for You

      Spells Are Dizzy Allusions

      Where the Lights Are Bright

      Screaming Ghosts

      My Best Friends: Pen and Paper

      The Old Lighthouse Keeper

      Starless Nights

      May God Be with Us

      My Father to Hold Me Close

      Share a Smile

      Buried Alive

      My Dad Is All I Need

      Confused to Madness

      Sweet Valentine Kisses

      The Beginning of Something New

      Love for Lazarus

      Paper Hearts Can Never Break

      Christmas Cheer

      In Search of Music

      High on the Mountain Top

      The Wondrous Wonderland

      Child of Silence

      The River of Trees

      Take Me to the Fire Below

      If You Could See the Real Me

      Why Me

      Trapped by Evil

      Freedom in America

      Multicoloured Dreams

      The Adversary of God in Man

      Storms Never Last

      Democracy Denied

      The Ring of Old

      Once Remembered in Time

      Beyond Lightning

      Weeping All Alone

      Introduction

      Here I write of life in a language permeated by fear . . . dreadfully suppressed memories of the child beaten by a drunken father, waiting for fate to forgive me. A carbon copy repeated in brutal patterns and destroying the faith of my family: my wife and two daughters. They bore the brunt of my alcoholic dependence, which ultimately resulted in divorce and alienation.

      This tormented man, when challenged about being drunk and abusive, plunged further into darkness . . .

      The lonely period without a word from them and then finally seeking help in rehabilitation . . . five years of sobriety leading to forgiveness and reconciliation . . . This book of verse is a visionary journey.

      Foreword

      Martin Brits is a reformed alcoholic. He is also my father.

      My memories as a child were of being constantly anxious and deeply afraid of my parents. When drunk, my dad would shout and argue with my mother and she, living in fear herself, was an angry, aggressive person towards her two daughters. She cared for our physical needs well but seemed to have no ability to care for us, emotionally and compassionately.

      My sister and I entered into adulthood deeply scarred and damaged. Now forty-three, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder three years ago. My younger sister is a depressive.

      There came a time in our lives, many years ago, when both my sister and I, growing weary of the drunken abusive phone calls from our father, decided to estrange ourselves from him.

      Ironically, our mother, who was long divorced from my father, had become a loving and integral part of our lives. Having removed my father from her life, she was reborn, and released all the loving and warm intimacy she was not able to for us previously.

      Five years ago, my father became sober, and he has managed to live that way, only, through his deeply spiritual beliefs that changed his life.

      And so began the most peaceful, loving, and rewarding relationship I have ever experienced in my life. He is my confidante, my best friend, my most loyal supporter, and the person I spend most of my time with, through my own troubles; he has never judged me, but instead, has come to my aid at my worst times of traumatic troubles.

      Martin’s magnificent and moving journey, over the past five years, is reflected in his poetry. I have no doubt it will move you and inspire you. As a publicist and journalist, who has had her own PR agency, for thirteen years, I can say with confidence that his talent is deeply moving.

      Tracey Brits

      This Verse, a Memory Still Haunting Me

      I am like the palm tree

      Shaped palmate my hands

      Fingers spreading, screaming,

      The parasite to hide away

      On the shores of home

      Before death takes me

      Where I soar on high,

      The sun shining aglow

      Behind the mountains

      So beautiful there,

      The sparkling diamond

      Charcoal before light

      My fate cast in the fire

      Far

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1