I had held myself as a greater man,
A soldier aloof from the whims of life.
The only things I cared for were the gladius in my hand
The screams of my enemies
As their blood dripped from my blade
And they lay clawing at my feet.

I went ******* with the boys
Played with them games of dice
Laughed at their jokes.
It was all lip service.
I did not care for their ways,
The ways of lesser men.
I was a soldier whose only lust was for blood.
I was better.

The new recruits came
With their beardless faces.
They huddled together for comfort,
Some cried to their mothers
Others prayed.
Those simpering wrecks were of no interest
Except for one
Erasmos.
With the stature of a god
The confidence of a titan
He stood amongst his peers
As a man stands amongst children.

It was not long until we sparred.
As good soldiers there was no need for words.
We both knew what was obvious
What was as certain as life and death
We were brothers in arms
Of the same breed
We were as one.

The fight came.
Outnumbered ten to one
We fought
Until blood soaked our faces
Our enemies and our own
Until crimson flooded our eyes
Our noses
Our mouths.

Before night fell we were the only two left
Alone in a field full of ravenous beasts
Of coprses waiting for the crows
Left to rot in some far flung land.
Their gaping snouts salivated
Waiting for the chance to sink their blades into our flesh.
A new emotion filled my veins.
I was no longer fighting for myself
To satisfy my lust for death
But for my kin standing next to me
The god made flesh

It was as we stood back to back
As I felt him stand firm against Fortuna’s whims
That I knew I was finally what I claimed to be
For Erasmos
My love
Has made me a greater man.

Riding by the upturned glen
forever chaste
she rarely stopped for gasping men
wan and waste
but riding and ridden
she flew into the trees
seductively bidden
parted her knees
and enveloped by sighs
she opened her thighs.

The ruins peered out from behind
The blue-flecked crag
Where eagles nested.
Wind-blown, storm-tossed
Only the walls remain.
The turrets are now heaps of grass covered
Bricks, the keep a muddy mound.

Here, once were warriors,
Draped in furs, bearing swords
That glinted across the sea in defiance,
Defending the land from strangers.
Here, once were warriors-
All long gone!

Time itself has altered what once
Was considered unalterable.
When kings ruled from inland palaces
And long powerful ships caressed the jagged
Shore; now washed up on the beach
Like the kingdom they protected, flotsam:
Cruelly ruined planks of elm, distorted by
Sea and salt; masts broken and disfigured.

A once glorious people, now gone!
Palaces overthrown!
All hanging onto unforgiving Time
Like fossilised carbuncles.
Ripped from Time in a plethora of
Anguished voices dying slowly-
Calling out for resolution.

I loved you for a moment, then
that moment was gone-
where once was life again,
now there is none.

I should have held on
to the flicker of light
that briefly flared like winter sun
passionate and bright.

I should have held onto your hand
in case I strayed
but I couldn't then understand
the price to be paid.


I couldn't understand that love
is not necessarily scheduled to arrive,
not stapled to a plan, that kind of stuff,
not an adjunct to being alive.

I knew only not to renew,
something I casually dispensed with;
I know when something is through,
when remembered with grief-

I said goodbye to what might have been
to quiet walks, caresses and days in bed,
I said goodbye to a beautiful thing
half remembered, once alive, full of wonder, now dead.

A rude dawn over the city
Where Pepys once fought with his beautiful wife
After seducing whatever servant-girl chanced
To be around, where kings
First ruled from cold castles full of cockroaches,
Murderous cousins
Lurking through the baleful halls of history
Eyeing the empty throne. The stinking
River long shorn of fish sweeps elegantly before
The crimson petticoats of multiple ******
Promenading along Thames Street,
Winking at under-washed gallants.

Vauxhall gardens a pithy cavalcade of priests and doxies,
Of flower girls, flaxen haired girls selling fruit,
Anxious to reach home before the ****** hour of early
Evening when beaus gather in alley ways establishing
A testosterone gauntlet in the dust-spawned gloom.

The road to Tyburn is littered with lost hopes!
On hanging day bodies swung like debutantes dancing
To jazz tunes-
Aristocrats quartered with precision squealed like common folk,
Bleeding as much. The city watched all this
And didn’t murmur-never complained-
Smiled, as only a city can smile, at gin-drunk matrons, pie eating aldermen
And the ****** activity in street shadows by relieved young women on
VE day 1945.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.*

W.B.Yeats




In a time such as this, in darkening days
        Without screeching witches
Frightened banshees, buggered old men
Searching for solace, eyes streaming with icicle-lust-
Gangrene facebook: torn-up, shredded twitter

The cries of the disconnected,
Wailing!
Wailing!

In a time like this, in darkening days,
The disconnections come in waves!

Searching for reason amongst the unreasoning,
Hunting for sanity within the insane,
Identifying the dead from amongst the living.

Wailing!
Wailing!

Email excreting venom
Internet exfoliating lies-politicians wrapped
                         In deceit-
A cold time of it, a wretched time of it.

Only within our hearts does hope lie.
                      Only there
Away from conflict and disorder
                             Away
From the capricious cacophony of biased debate.

Wailing!
Wailing!

In the morning I walked out

leaving you like a

crumpled sheet, slumped across the bed.

It had been fun the night before

but sunshine cracks open the mind

and slaps the fertile brain

into consciousness.

I knew we weren't made for each other

By the curve of your lip

and ***** sink stacked with food-caked plates

the music you listened to

and the photograph of your ex.

A deepening hue, packaging crisp and dry,

Telescoping skies, hard bitten with dust

A sly moon, scarred and half-lit.

It didn’t end with a whimper

After all,

But brightly and loudly like a celebration.

It was proud of its going.

Colour spawned from a devil’s jaw, not

A god’s dull reason. Fire everywhere,

Referencing volcanic insinuations, the afterbirth of a planet.

The last man standing

Was burnt to a crisp

I feel I have to make my defence
Regarding those who over several millennium
Believe they can speak for me;
I do not need to name names, do I? You know
Exactly who I mean. What can I do?
I speak briefly to someone once and, before
I know it, we’re ***** buddies-they claim to
Know my inner-most thoughts,
My opinions on every subject from what
Clothes to wear to who to marry.

Do I not have more important things to think about?
The well-being of an entire universe to evaluate
On a daily basis?
How you treat one another is your concern-
Just keep me out of your bigotry and spite,
My name out of your books, my voice out
Of your heads. I am not who you claim me
To be; I am far better and, at certain times, far worse.
I am both nothing and everything!

You can nevertheless be assured-
I do not lead your armies, support your murders,
Sanctify your suicides, bless your hatreds.
I do not inhabit your words,
Your statues, your art, nor am I the knowing
Voice in your head or the gnawing pain
In your heart. Own what is yours!




Originally, I was a small-time local deity,
Lord of the mountain, brooks and olives.
Benevolent, ***** and shy.
Nothing special! One god amongst many
In and out of pantheons, attached to this
Goddess or that. Sometimes I was el of the
Desert, sometimes the family god in
The corner or staring out of the tent flap-
Inauspicious and insignificant!

I was happy then. I had none of the obsessive
Responsibilities of a universal god. I seduced
The local women, fathered thousands of mixed-children-
Part deity/part human-received the flow of eager
Sacrifice; the few remaining aurochs,
Bulls, deer and first born. The smoke always revitalised me!
Children’s flesh was always particularly nourishing!
For such extensive insurance for my continued interest
I protected each group who so honoured me, destroying
Their enemies, as well as their friends.
(But, oh, not now! I’m expected now to exterminate entire neighbourhoods,
Nations and cultures! Now I’m expected to be the murderer,
The sole master of death!)

I was without ideas! I accepted everyone, loathe to judge!
****** peccadilloes I found interesting, fun.
Adultery I saw as an aspect of marriage,
Homosexuality, the absorbing antitheses of the endless
Production of new life, from its sterile cusp
Seeping forth new ideas and artistic burgeoning.
I created beauty, adoring it. I danced to
Lively music, sang to beautiful songs.

In Egypt a disgruntled warrior-priest arose, preaching violence,
Preaching conquest. I trembled in his angry presence,
Shaken by his bloodlust. An excitable poet sang of his adventures,
Turning a 100 followers into thousands. The poets used my name-
One fashioned in gentleness-to encourage war.
Then, from the confusions of statehood, prophets emerged
Spreading their misery through my authority,
Grinding my benevolence under soiled sandals,
Telling others what to do, as if the words were mine-
Engaging in genocide with pitiless intention.
They flail my soul with madness!

And so on and so on; numerous messengers
Shouting of sin and retribution,
My voice reverberating with their words,
As I stand in the shadows like a serial killer,
Frightened of lamplight. With nothing
More to do, conforming savants
Described rules for life, a non-existent heaven,
Transcribed my thoughts from their own experiences
Created another reality, ignoring their own.



I am now terrified of my name
(EL, YHWH, Allah) Terrified of what it represents-
Burdened by its acquisition
By the bombastic and cruel.
I, who was once a god, now
Am captive, a prisoner of recitation.
Where once I had priests to beckon, they
Now beckon me. Where once I pronounced on
Goodness, I am now too alarmed to speak.
Where once I was the object of sacrifice
I am now the sacrifice itself.

Mired in history, coiled around by cheap reflections
On previous ramshackle glory,
Roman armies camped in valleys,
Swords trickling with blood from the battle
On the heath. Bodies covering the bracken
Like a foreshortened locust swarm, wingless

Over the town. The triumphant Italians had there
On the high ground, above the sinuous Col,
Built temples
And baths. Marble hauled in from Sicilian quarries,
Loaded on to Carthaginian ships by fierce North African slaves-
Themselves beaten warriors.
They were in the town when the tribes struck,
Dying in chains.

Before their own savage deaths, they slaughtered
Others, cut them into ragged pieces, decapitated, *****,
Choralling songs of victory, leaving none alive.
That day, the dun hills smelt better!
They torched the temples and wasted the proud theatre,
The slender apogee of culture.

Now the town slumbers in the present,
Burying its past under beautiful gardens, purple flowers and
Raffish gladioli peeking out from unobtrusive suburbs
Stinking of ancient corpses.

UNANSWERED



How strange it was to see her there
After so much suffering. Her dying marriage
A bleeding and untreated smear,
Disguising a love neither would salvage.
The music played, the guests danced
With savage partners whose love retreated and advanced.  

His awkward lover lingers quietly in the room
By turn shade, shadow, and silhouette,
She sways slowly to each repeated tune
Too triumphantly passionate to experience regret.
Mistress and wife exchange no glance, assuming ignorance
Of each other’s uncomfortable presence.


The loss of another’s love can wound
More brutally than the lover’s death
The secession of an intimate bond
Becomes a winding, coagulating mess.
When lovers connect they forget
What broke when they met.


A slow guitar riff makes her weep.
She takes my hand. She calls me friend.
I smile, with thoughts of my own to keep,
My own unanswered love to tend.
I kindly wipe away her tears,
But not my own. Those I’ve kept for years.


Beautiful songs, erratically played,
He glances towards her, smiles and leaves,
She turns away, both destroyed and dismayed,
Stands silently in the septic light and grieves.
I take her hand, but she pulls quickly away
I offer her a drink. She declines and will not stay.


I buy another whisky at the bar, tossing it down.
In a cruelly dissipating cloud, her fresh perfume lingers
Mimicking her constant image.  My phone rings and I frown.
My forgiving wife is calling. With guilt and regret, my fingers
Tighten around the glass. I say: “Honey, I’ll be home soon.”
And, like others, leave the signifying gloom.


Touched by the sharp morning light
Half-empty glasses, abandoned halls,
Breaking out from the hasty coition of the night
Love radiates, caresses, falls.
When ubiquitous lovers combine it highlights briefly
How lonely it leaves those who grasp at love weakly.

In London-
a hollowed out city-
the fog
is returning-creeping
back-

A poisonous invisible/white
sheet
salivating over
supine cars, insinuating
its baptismal
seed
into open mouths-
sinking into gutters
emerging undigested
from empty drains.

it crawls around the Shard
clutches
each ancient bridge
yellowing
in its pilgrimage  

it has returned-
IT
The Thing-
ghastly
in its plans.

A resurrection
that requires no death!

As cold as another age, wracked with solitude,
A slow start to another beginning,
Unreliable cloud coats the sky
And the sea repetitiously roars in,
Cuffing cliffs,
Pounding rocks
With calamitous roars
Playing endless riffs across the sand.

We walked together down the beach
Troubled by the surf
Chewing on cigarette stubs, sullied by the wind
New ghosts in the half-light
Bearing years like backpacks.

Grown old in the gathering twilight
We chattered together, our footsteps picking
Wounds.  Barbed words
Like greetings, cheerfulness like an accusation.
******* a shared and interesting memory,
We cuddled together in the scouring wind
Enjoying each other’s casual warmth.

It was a time for reflection,
When love is a scab on evolving friendship,
Heartlessness the price of redemption.
The contrived book of your beauty,
The gilded ceramic of expertly rendered features
The undulating film of your gestures, coded and decoded
Through time.

Beauty is finite, crumbling to fleshless reminiscence
Fixed to canvas and celluloid
With tireless labour. In the end, signifying another thing-
Of little interest.
An artist’s casual thought, a director’s cut.
They barely remember your name,
Your laughter and wildness gone, missed by the
Senile artist’s transitory brush,
Clotted with hundred-year-old varnish.

A small house by the sea
Surrounded by flowerbeds sparkling with summer colour
Self-absorbed children, with whom we exchanged affection
And parted from, holidaying in Bangkok
With lovers of all sorts.
As the sea rolled towards us
And evening gave way to night.

Dull pattering through agonised woods

fumbling winds, serrating storms

animals vanishing into the undergrowth

scurrying beneath the ground

birds huddling under leaves.

The river breaks its bank

water spreading out like *****

villages swamped with infestation.

The storm batters and bruises,

bellowing through the night like a troubled god.

Intense and distant, the sun
Slid imperceptibly upward through the yellowing sky
As the ships powered across the water
Oars cutting into the waves.
Like a crumbling sentinel, on the cragged promontory
The temple observed the sea. Within
Sat Poseidon, golden trident in hand, his
Features frozen into gleaming marble. Around
Him, murmuring incantations, marched
His priests.
Time has dismantled it all, except
For the pillars that poke upward, jagged
Snapped-off fingers of stone clothed
In moist, inch-thick moss. The ships
Have long disappeared. The crews dead.
Beneath the waves the turbulent god
Waits, his muscular invisible arms
Shaking the ground, as he roars out
His discontent. Reduced to bedtime stories,
Beautiful Technicolor films, the old gods
Drift hopelessly through the memory
Desperately trying to be noticed again.

Silently, shadowed by night,
Its eyes shining like tears,
It pads through the desolated undergrowth
Listening for sounds in the grass
The tripping of feet, the scampering
Crunch of paws. Lithely stepping
Through the trees, a mile further on
The fox sniffs the air. The stubbled moon
Flings down its steel-like shafts
Of thin even light, stabbing through
The gloom.

The stream flows around the dying plants
Breaking the bank. The River Vole slides down
Into the labouring water, older than the
Landscape it bites through, and it pounces
Grabbing the voles neck in its maw,
Ripping the flesh apart. The cat throws
It into the air, catching it again,
Its teeth rending off flesh. It pads back into the dark.

Nose delving into the air , the fox sniffs blood.
It turns towards the water
Breaking the bank, turns towards
Its slow sibilant sound, muzzle aloft
As if drawn upward by slithers of string,
The playful moon moving smoothly with the clouds.
The cat is shaken by its presence.
The grouse gabble in their fear.

The fox pounces, caught in the air
Floating as if in a snapshot
Held there by silvery light,
It lands with untroubled finesse
As the cat screams.
The stream blanches, the moon seems smug,
The night closes as the fox eats.

He intimately coaxed the bomb like a lascivious lover
Passionate for death-
Carefully balancing out the ingredients,
Fixing the charge,
His soft-palmed hands caressing each part,
Beneath his unsettling gaze.

In paradise he’d spend his eternity-
Having killed his way towards god.

The crowds gathered in the boulevard
Arm in arm, laughing, relaxed.
He drove past them noting their joy-
Loathing their happiness,
An offence against his desire for death.
Turning his car sharply around
He slowly drove past them again.

In that brief moment, the wind
Gently rocking, his thumb pressed down.

The bomb blew, shredding the air,
Grinding his grinning soul into dust.
The blast ripped screams from each chest:
A world suddenly full of unbearable pain,
Blood crawling along the pavement,
Limbs in the gutter, leaking tears.

His road to heaven cost a hundred lives-
Cracked bodies, fragmented souls-
The squalid suffering of children.
Rivers of milk and honey
Thickened with blood.

To prevent men’s gaze, confirming her religious
Conviction, she wore a veil-black as ink, dark as coal-
No man could henceforth lust after her
Driven wild by the sight of her skin. Jump her.
Strip her. **** her! She drifted forever like
A ghost, an object, a hollow shell.

Only her husband saw her beauty.
And after him, another.
The institution of marriage demanded
Cloaks of invisibility, walls of ubiquity, anonymous
Submersion into gender.

When the sea rolled in
I knew we were ******!
It came in like an express
Snorting, snarling, inconsiderate
Blowing everyone away.
I survived. Clinging to a tree.
I watched my friends
Wallow away in sea-water.

What now, the loss of limbs in a distant conflagration?
The seeping brains amongst poppy fields?
The myriad nature of violent death, outside of journalistic imagination
A grind of experience on which the lost youth builds.
What now? Within the shredding blasts euphoria
The élan of a soldier, in memoria

Downing drinks in the Stag and Hare
After a tour, ordinary actions reek of tedium
There is, in the conviviality, no rush of adrenalin there
Fermenting trouble establishes a happy medium.
Quarrelling with a man who wears a business suit
Is displaced adventure, smashing his face in is a hoot.

What now? A mate, a favoured friend, dies in the dirt
When whistling a tune, recalling the holiday in Spain, the family,
A shot coursing through his unbuttoned shirt
Deflating his lung, another shattering his knee
When he died, his platoon died too,
Metaphorically; the snipers aim was true.

Bottled up in Basra, aimlessly wandering in Helmand
A shrill event on News at Ten between politics and football,
Another death, another iconic face, the catasphropic end
Of a youthful  life.  What now? The swift end to a morning stroll
Amongst watching villagers in dry breathless mountains
Empty streams and florescent fountains.

In the terracotta dirt my soul leaked away
My final return was like a funeral celebration,
I said nothing anymore. I had nothing left to say.
I’d given my youth to a sniping cynical nation.
What now? It was over for me in a grasping world-
A gooey puddle spread beneath me as my soul evacuated.

When the sun cracked
the planets exploded
each merely shrapnel in a second-
or like the gas giants
puttering into kaleidoscopic spirals
and waving a
symphonic farewell to the universe
grasping the furtive tails
of comets.

mercury shrank into a cindered ball
venus ejected its poisonous atmosphere
like a dying woman her most expensive dresses
mars spun off into the velvety expanse of dark-
but it didn't matter.
only the earth wavered, holding on
to its dignity. Its oceans spilled out,
mottled soup shooting from a bowl,
and its internal fires groaned like arthritic
knees.

In the huge expanse of space
no one noticed,
no one cared.

Incandescent, the mystic sign burrowed into
Their untarnished consciousness
Depositing meaning where before,
In related specie, there’d been none. Ok,
At first it didn’t seem such a big thing but
Later, much later, it was.

Creating an object d’art is one thing
For a man wearing animal skins but an entire
Nation is another matter. It took time.
That said, going back seems like just another way
Of going forward.

Out of the encroaching sands crept a single idea
Made out of many others. A pyramid rose out of smaller
But more elegant definitions of power. The greater the power
The vaster the ****** pyramid became,
Enclosing space with a giant flat footstep. Khufu
Lay within, disintegrating slowly,
Convinced of his godlike nature-while minor royalty
Found cheaper ways of preserving body and soul.
Sand covered the Sphinx for two thousand years
Alexander’s body disappeared, Caesar, a manipulative bald
Headed coot ended up under a memorial stone,
Equally godlike and dead.  

Cleopatra may not have been hot after all
But having powerful lovers and dying gracefully
Did wonders for her profile. Long dead,
An icon of femininity and ****** allure, she lives
Forever in a world that desires both.
Quin **** Huangdi surrounded himself with lifelike soldiers
In a bid to recreate reality, as if
Death could be touched by an illusion. Surrounded
By a mercury lake, buttressed by an unmoving army
His bones are as empty in their fashion
As the peasants he ruled over. Can’t cheat it, or
Beat it. Can’t ignore it either.

The personality continues through
Memory aids. A huge gravestone serves as well-
As Khufu discovered. Deeds recorded in
Verse works, but in both methods
The myth becomes greater and the real person,
The one who cried at funerals, failed during ***,
Gets forgotten. Might just as well
Do nothing. It takes less energy, leading
To less disappointment.

The desire to extend privileges into death
Where nothing exists
Is the fantasy of the spoilt for whom life
Must be eternal. An Australian aborigine who
Rallied his people in overdue rebellion against
The European hordes bringing sheep and planting grass
Was killed, stuffed and displayed in an exhibition.
Khufu had himself stuffed and displayed. All famous people
Are stuffed in time and displayed like curios
Dying again and again throughout eternity.

Dressed in black,
What can you lack
in a monochrome world?
Your eyes weep glass
As your lovers pass
What you remember you dread
Inside your throbbing head!

In the deep, uncertain night the strangers met,
Unseeing, unknowing, unthinking-dulled brain and senses,
Through the porous shadows and tangled foliage they crept
Stumbling over fallen trees and broken-down fences
Their hatred binding them, root to root,
In the mediating light of the silvered moon;
Rotten barks covered in fungi, dried twigs cracking underfoot;
Reaching the village outskirts they emitted a painless moan
And stumbled on. Slow breezes drifted over their flesh, sun-driven
Investigative fingers inspecting their souls, medicating pain.
Memory restored, childhood relived, time rendered fission,
Their fears gliding away in the quietly-falling rain.

Striving through the bluster of life, together or apart,
We return to where in life we made an imperfectly remembered start.

I know you haven’t heard from me
For a millennium, but here I am
Still around, still observing, still involved.
I am ancient of course but no older than before
When you knew me as a warrior-striding
Over flaming mountains and trembling seas.
Do you remember?
Do you remember how I inspired you from
The clouds? My voice like thunder,
My voice carrying lightening from a darkening
Sky? ……………………Well, anyway, good to see
You all once again.
I actually haven’t been myself recently.
My legs have troubled me. My eyes
Have been plaguing me. I cannot see the earth
Clearly anymore.  In my wizened vision
It resembles a roughly-used marble,
I am after all, now and forever, the ancient of days.

Here’s the thing. I’m getting bored both of
Your antics and your obsession
With me. Please, lighten up! I made the
Sun so you would smile, children to give you hope!
But, it didn’t work I fear.

I can abide your petty squabbles.
Truly I can. I can abide your desperate need
For war. It’s quite exciting really and once I played
My part. The agonised features of the dying
Appeal to my nasty side to be honest.
I have a very nasty side as you are well aware.
I like your skyscrapers, your irritating as flies planes,
Your huge cities, your good as well as your promiscuous
Women, your strange observances
Songs and poetry. It is all very jolly.  But,
And it’s a huge ‘but’ I must admit,
I have grown bored.
You no longer inspire me. I am no longer
Eager to view your funny ways
When I wake, and before I sleep. I’ve decided
Your little planet must go. Sorry, I’m like that.
I follow my whims. Tomorrow, at 10 I turn off the light
So, please, stop praying. It’s so depressing.
There will be no reprieve this time. Accept your fate!
You will not feel a thing!  So, let’s make our final goodbyes.
I have really enjoyed your company-
Au Revoir. Oh, please stop crying-
It was great fun after all for all of us. Remember,
Nothing lasts forever. Not even me!

The bridge collapsed after the storm
tumbling into the raging river-
I watched in tears, adding to the deluge.

I held her dying hand in the soft morning light
I studied the shrinking life in her eyes.  
The woman I loved would not last out the night
Her groaning breath now fierce sighs.

The weakening flame in the quiet breeze
Matches her dying
Her beautiful face like a fallen goddess in a marble frieze,
Riven with crying.

Her beauty had aged, not gone,
Her white hair falling down like thin ribbons of snow;
Her eyes that once shone
Filled now with a frosty glow.

Soul and body fade away
The mind is a strip of celluloid,
With diminishing returns. Nothing will stay,
But pass infinitely into a void.  

In the end, all that lingers is love
Like a stable beacon through time,
No matter how complete, never enough,
In life, verse, prose and rhyme.

It’s not usual to feast on snap-dragons in the cold months
Or run naked through un-sketched woods reeking of incense
And gloom, ridiculing the battered men on crudely carved crosses-
Dribble running from their loose-lipped mouths tumbling into rivers.
The soul, recently discoloured, doesn’t stay long in such corrosive
Environments where time runs furiously along a thin elastic band
Springing backwards then stretched to eternity.
It isn’t usual to feast on snap-dragons in the cold months
Keeping warm before the incumbent gates of hell
Afraid to sweep the snow away from the garden and live.
To sweep away the snow, now turning brown, and gild
With shafts of gold the fallen lily.

When it is my time to die
Will I be frightened
Will I weep, struggling to hold onto the light
Will I pointlessly wonder why
I must embrace the end
My breathe coming slowly, my sight

Searching through darkness?
Will I hold onto
My loved ones, hoping to stay
As I expel in a volatile mess
What in life I have been through
Passing on my way?

As life disappears
And emptiness beckons uncontrollably
Will I know to let go
Embrace my fears
Leave with unruffled dignity
Fall calmly into that of which no one can know?

How absurd to stand
On moving land,
To touch the sky
As planets roll by

To drink the rain
Knowing from where it came,
To eat fruit and corn grown
From dead flesh and bone.

To enjoy the heat of the sun,
A vast nuclear bomb,
To breath the air
That burning diesel put there!

Dive bombers, black wings spread,
satanic angels: Two crows attacked another
broken on the long grass,
consumed by grappling weeds,
unable to fly and imprisoned within
the soft melding soil as if caught
nesting; I watched from afar; a spectator at an accident
unwilling to intervene.
Darting beak, defending itself with desperate
protests: they swooped again and again-
stukas in the old war, squarking demonically
wings flapping like black pistons geared up for death-
again and again they drilled into the world of men
boring down until
in the fading light, head bowed,
the damaged crow surrendered
and vomitted out its last stored-up breath,
shining ebony slashed, in a flurry
of dangling flesh, its life hacked away-blood
dripping from its bill-
hacked away in the cold air,
its brothers, like brothers everywhere,
gorging on its flesh.

By then, I had had enough,
I refused to watch anymore. The bird
a meal for its own kind,
soon just scattered feathers
repositioning the light.
Its darkness, once a threat,
with its suggestion of forboding
now merely signalling innocence,
the victim of misrepresentation.
I left a scene that did not truly
embrace reflection, an unusual
carnival of life and death in a city
that rejected both.

A cold wind blew
when the light went.
An accumulation of warmth
came from copse and hill,
cheap spawned and self created,
as the night renewed.
He walked home, careless of his stumbling steps,
and softly threw his bags to the
floor, demons on the hearth-rug,
coiling snakes and insects everywhere.

It was all behind him now.
A sullen fist of half-remembered regret,
the weather-laden wood carrying his dreams
in each silver flaked leaf.

A half-remembered face, an
age destroyed beauty.
It was time to go now!
Time to go!


The frost enthralled clouds interlocked
when time slowed,
leaving half dead leaves languishing or intermittently
crashing to the ground.
Few left or returned,
combating time.


A half-remembered life
spun from seconds.
Sad voices in half-remembered intervals.

How do we know of god?
By word, visible presence or internally-constructed belief?
Can we read a book and know
That these are a god's words
Or sense that an ambitious man
-great or malevolent-
Created them for temporary gain,
To impress others, or for power.
Is god a grandiose representation
Of either gender, and why should that be?

The myriad flowers scattered around,
wind-blown, gale tossed
are but our planet's codes
Tree and toad
are equal products of earth and time.

Why ask for another kind of being
in a world replete
with every grim and wonderful sort,
in another realm surrounded by
other winged and chubby divinities?
Why believe that old books,
written in time and place,
are products of gods?

Do gods really write so badly?

1.
The darkness fled before me
While I stayed in the light
The black covering both land and sea
Destroying sight.
Basking in the heat, burning in the sun
We toasted the darkness, once it had gone.

God had said, wringing out his curls, ‘let there be light’,
Clearly, the dark came first.
But god floundered at night
And darkness he thunderingly accursed.
It was sent temporarily away
While god fashioned ‘Day’.

Yet, the dark was firstborn
The preferred planned child
And visually undernourished and presciently worn
Was the expected, the ideal, not the reviled;
Day was only a change of mind
God, the twister, making us see when we are blind.



2.
It was of an infinite hue, purple not black
Deepening towards the centre, consuming everything
A materialisation of Lacan’s Lack
Without substance, pleasure or pain.
It delved in and out in senseless monotony
Heightening sensation here, there performing a lobotomy.

At times, it reflected me and then it reflected you
Assembling features, and reassembling,
But never with every ****** nuance true
It shuffled several, naturally dissembling,
Unable to be fixed. It pretended to be human,
But like you and me, it shuffled like a golem.

Flying away it came back with equal velocity
Opening its imagined maw
Emitting as it approached tongues of electricity
Through time it tore.
Past and future congealed into a putty-like mass
Dying with the light, it disappeared up my ***

In the quiet of the morning, heavy with mist, rabid with scents
a woman settled in the copse meditating amongst the fleeting mice
and secretive rabbits, the bee and butterfly. What was she thinking
of on such a humid day? Her features relaxed, a smile lingering
over her lips, eyes opening and shutting ritually,
the sun poking its frazzled head above the half-light, the grass
heavily hung with dew. This was our goddess, still alone, still alive,
a thousand years after her demise, battered by crosses and incantations,
holy water and an ever-present authoritarian god searching the land
for sacrifices. I watched for several hours.
In that time, that uneventful time, she grew older, flesh flaking away from her opaque bones,
the sun slicing through. Within hours,
her presence vanished, earthbound, seeking to emerge once more within the millennium
exhorting religion's timely death; with once again irrepressible love, life and joy
freely restored. As darkness fell
her shade morphed into a seed, sinking slowly into the soil.

Honour

They have used me and I have served.
How could I not?
They made me what I am.
A servant to their cause.

I’ve seen Queens crowned.
Threats of invasion from afar.
Overseen their communications.
Remained steadfast
As a good subject does.

I serve Queen and country.
I provide shelter for the ******
And light for her successors.
I trembled as planes flew above
And celebrated as they flew no more.

I’ve watched from afar, as the great playwright worked,
As theories and principles that would shape the world
Were committed to paper for forever more.
I’ve seen evil and good, hatred and love
Entangled in their eternal battle
From high above.

And as I waned, as I began to fall
Like all the Queen’s servants must do
Even those that had once stood so tall
Above it all, yet never apart
I can fade happy knowing this oak has honoured thy ******.
Goodbye London, my one true love.

How dark the end was without stars, without tears,
Surrounded by meditation
In a vast sea of unexpressed fears
A sharing of thoughts in an unavoidable situation.
We waited as the universe contracted
Our thoughts in extremis extracted.

In the end we did not pray
Or wonder about our continued existence
No one had anything wise to say
In the inevitable, unchanging sequence.
There was nothing we could do as the earth
Broke apart, but accept oncoming death

It crushed us in a second,
Rent limbs, leaving only dust,
The sun imploded
The planets went bust
And no memory remained of our history
Our passing unnoticed, unscrutinised sophistry.

Our philosophies, science, churches,and mosques un-constructed
In the flickering retreating waves of relative time,
All hot air. Our great ancestors un-created
Like this unwritten unpublished rhyme.
Our shared un-lived existence
Without precedence or consequence.

When someone dies their thoughts
Die with them,
Their bones absorb their words-
After a summer others cease to remember,
We fade and then are gone.


Each person is replaced:
Vast cities shrink becoming grass-beaten mounds,
Shining cultures wither,
Their intricate palaces shatter,
Temples decay under interminable suns,
Religions flounder, sacrificed to time.

Philosophies expire like sunlight
When night falls, wise words unravel,
Tortured by inconsequence,
Decay dripping from each syllable
Like uncollected wind-driven *******
Running down a lonely street.

In the alley the dog howls,
Amongst the discarded boxes the
Raven sings.

At night, smothered in darkness, it hunts
Its eyes burning like stars
Slinking through the air, searching
Soundlessly for prey.
“She is such a softee.” Esther sighs
Scooping its favourite food into a bowl.
“My baby. My furry little baby.”
Its claws sink into the wren, ripping
It apart in a cold deliberate frenzy.
Sodden bloodied feathers, slithers of skin
Like red glints in a killer’s darkening eye.
She takes the cat into her arms,
Cradling it and smothering it with kisses.
It purrs, dreaming carnivorous dreams of its owner’s dry flesh.

By Garpal stream the young men came
Decades before the flood
On Garpal field they started the game
Quenching the grass with blood.
Down by the hill, near the copse, they lie,
The first to score was the first to die.

Every year the young men came
Where the roses and dandelions bud
Eager to play the game
Decades before the flood.
Beyond the hedge these young men lie,
The last to score was the last to die.

It rained before Advent, it rained after Lent
The rain fell on pasture and town,
The interminable water did not relent
But poured remorselessly down
By the end of the year, under the thundering light,
The world was a place of night.

A sodden land bereft of men
Garpal field was covered with weeds
As the women waited for the sun again
Spreading a blanket of seeds.
They waited as glorious golden rays
Fell during everlasting unending days.

The sprouting seeds grew tall and thin
Turning slowly into beautiful men
In a country filled to the brim
With cattle, wheat and fruit again.
Beyond Garpal stream where the rushes grew
The youths strolled over the grey diaphanous dew.

By Garpal stream the young men came,
Decades before the flood,
On Garpal field they started the game
Quenching the grass with blood.
Down by the hill, near the copse, they lie,
The first to score was the first to die.

Before me the monster grew
In the stippled light
Dappled blue
It was an interesting sight.

A wondrous uncompromising
Dark hue
Its features had a disconcerting
Temporary feel. Nose and ears fixed by glue

And where his mouth should have
Been was a blue suede shoe,
And in place of eyes grave-
Stones inscribed with the names of no one I knew.

Still, he was very polite
For such a badly-hewn
Creature of the night.
Crafted as if from ancient stone,

He quietly broke my neck
With a pleasant-enough smile
And I heard it crack
Dying, deeply impressed by his style.

As cold as another age, wracked with solitude,
A slow start to another beginning,
Unreliable cloud coats the sky
And the sea repetitiously roars in,
Cuffing cliffs,
Pounding rocks
With calamitous roars
Playing endless riffs across the sand.

We walked together down the beach
Troubled by the surf
Chewing on cigarette stubs, sullied by the wind
New ghosts in the half-light
Bearing years like backpacks.

Grown old in the gathering twilight
We chattered together, our footsteps picking
Wounds.  Barbed words
Like greetings, cheerfulness like an accusation.
******* a shared and interesting memory,
We cuddled together in the scouring wind
Enjoying each other’s casual warmth.

It was a time for reflection,
When love is a scab on evolving friendship,
Heartlessness the price of redemption.
The contrived book of your beauty,
The gilded ceramic of expertly rendered features
The undulating film of your gestures, coded and decoded
Through time.

Beauty is finite, crumbling to fleshless reminiscence
Fixed to canvas and celluloid
With tireless labour. In the end, signifying another thing-
Of little interest.
An artist’s casual thought, a director’s cut.
They barely remember your name,
Your laughter and wildness gone, missed by the
Senile artist’s transitory brush,
Clotted with hundred-year-old varnish.

A small house by the sea
Surrounded by flowerbeds sparkling with summer colour
Self-absorbed children, with whom we exchanged affection
And parted from, holidaying in Bangkok
With lovers of all sorts.
As the sea rolled towards us
And evening gave way to night.

Black crows,
smothered jackdaws,
obsessing on religion-
******* on ancient ideas,
drowning in gloomy words.
God made the world to be lived in
not to escape from-

Is it possible for a land to dream
Of Harakiri.
Gouts of screams and tears abound
Self-destruction is such a sweet sound
Particularly when told from afar
By those so clearly in the know.
But is that the truth, what we are told?
Does this land dream of a death all of its own?
Or perhaps tales of its expiry are greatly exaggerated
For profit and shock.
Could this be true, that they are lying to you?
Or does Peckham wish to fall on its sword?

Perhaps once, in the span of three days
Did this land wish to see itself burn,
To see itself consumed in the fires of greed,
Of hatred,
Of ignorance.
Tell me, is that all that this land has to offer?
Will it willingly trudge to such a dishonourable demise?
Or will it rise
And show those in the know
That in truth Peckham dreams of a fate more honourable than Harakiri.

Curled up, bright yellow petals glinting like glistering metals
Trees that rise and bow, silent now
Cars rushing into the dark, crushing a slow-moving lark,
Cats curled up before a fire ignoring the nearby church choir
Singing melodious paeans to god before a stature soaked in blood.
A rising bright silver moon floating across the sky too soon
Howling dog and wolf scampering across each shadowed roof
In that, the foulest night of the year pumped-up with fear,
With sepulchral screams hammering the brain, the sane and insane
Shackled to the earth before, not after, death.