I swam the sea
Manmade fish with rubber fins and glass eyes
It wasn’t difficult to breath
Quite the contrary
I witnessed wonders of man & mother
Bejewelled sealife amongst statues of stone
Sunken artistry, seaplanes and Poseidon
A lady of rock, the Ocean Atlas
Holding up the sky from beneath the waves.
The Bahama Mama casting a gentle eye over her domain
Tomorrow maybe more.

I don’t know what to tell you my son
The fire has started and it’s a hot one
The past is about to be undone
We once wanted to learn from it
Now we’re erasing the song they sung
You may have to ask yourself why
And if you can’t understand
Then ask a man who was hung

The storm will pass
Just like the last one
But what will it leave behind?

You can’t change the color of your skin
The way it was worn once was a sin
It’s up to you to decide where history will begin
You had nothing to do with it
You’re innocent but the gallows bell is heard again
Their anger is a tormented man’s cry
And if we can’t understand
Ask if marble eyes have a soul within

The storm will pass
Just like the next one
But what new world will we find?

statue angels and stone cold kings.
mine their hearts and steal their rings.
turn them into crowns for nobles unbound,
sitting with Arthur at a table so round.

ancient martyrs and modern heroes.
tales of rebellion and battles they go.
fighting horned demons and winged serpents,
with blood on their hands they feel the repentance.

they drink their *** and consume the alcohol,
waiting and watching for the hammer to fall.
yet no news came of the hellish flame,
that was said to burn them all.

The Monetary Moai
Standing on the shore
Making sure you worship them
Making sure they get more.

More of your offerings
More of your respect
Even if the have to take you
And hang you by the neck.

The Moai are important
With their grant-faced stare.
You may or may not like them
But they don’t have to care.

They are the gods to you,
And you the fools that revere them.
You put them on their pedestals;
Stop others from coming near them.

You, the ones who refuse
To question them and their power
Have made them the gods they are
Right up until their final hour.

It they ever revert to the truth
As just strange hunks of stone
Maybe then you will leave them
Ignored, disintegrating and alone.

But as long as these monoliths
Represent something good to you
There is nothing that the rest of us
Can, by resisting them, can ever do.

We can talk and chant and rant
And tell you that you are all fools
But it was your hands that put them up
Your effort, superstitions and tools.

For a moment,
Looking upward,
I suspected they had fallen from the sky.

Taking a long breathe, standing firm with determination, I observed every single detail.
Some of them were much better off than the rest of us-
They were no longer bound to any physical bond or any emotional ones for that matter..

From afar,
a herd of hesitating horns hysterically hushed a crescendo of errors,
cruelly cutting away and turning across a zig-zag dance that could be heard for miles.  

The moon,
brightly busy making the night sky frisky and fine,
Survived the still sound.
Gently glowing with an emptiness,
that endowed complete isolation to all wondering eyes.

The rest of us meekly posed, waiting for a quick promised death.
It was our time-it was our right.

Holding my form I became a statue.  
Delicately frozen in a formal gesture of forever farewells.

Love, ***, jump; repeat

***. jump, give birth to statues

excavate cities.

I will always think fondly
Of the park bench
Near the sad man’s statue
Whose beard of stone
Was sloppily painted
By a bunch of overenthusiastic pigeons

That silly park bench
Where we first kissed
And had our first public argument
About nothing at all
And at the same time
About everything we thought we had

At first our memories
Turned the grass greener
And the skies bluer
And sometimes it seemed
That sad man smiled
Though it might have been an malevolent grin

But soon it became tainted
A symbol of fleeting love
Of passion’s mortality
Its habit of swiftly disappearing
Like cagey, distrustful pigeons
And illusions fuelled by sentimentality

Now I understand the sad man
And consider his faith to be cruel
To want and crave and hope
Yet to be sentenced
His life writ in stone
Near an empty, broken bench

They swarm around their polyglot guide
trying to catch her savoured words
to match her stories with their myths
and the histories of Old England.

Here painted living statues pose
frozen til some money's paid
like mercenary seaside slot machines.

No place for the camera shy
no space for passers-by
no peace for older eyes
who seek their place in winter's light.

Hundreds of orders behind but never
never
never
Never quite
out of business. I cut my finger often
but my carvings are cut, always
must be.
I owe the people wooden hearts
to call their own.
And I owe myself a living,
living with clocks and statues and cabinets
for some purpose
known by God.