There is regret for the gradual entrapment and brainwashing of the human spirit, via lives of quiet servitude.
There is shame, the recognition of
potential diminished and unrealised, trained and drained for consumerism which is sold as the illusion of happiness ..filling our spaces with needless clutter, shrinking the borders of
individual thought...that last bastion of freedom and the well spring of change.
We are profiled, labelled and categorized, predictable and easily manipulated by systems that govern.

I feel this when the wind blows from certain quarters.
and when the curtain is briefly lifted, and we can look out toward the deep mysteries of space,
I recall the "Earthrise" photograph from the Apollo 8 mission and, still, after all these years find it profoundly moving..." Beautiful" is a far too lesser word to describe it.
It truly is a breath- stealing image...and it's our home.
And what have we done with it?
We over- populate, fly our flags, bang our drums, peddle our religions, burn our forests, pollute our seas eradicate species with impunity,...how, on Earth are we evolving?
We have such possibility yet have traded it all in for a business model with drivers of profit and greed.
and where are the indigenous peoples? ..the, recognized wiser custodians of the planet?
Subsumed or displaced,..turfed off their lands( that also happen to be rich in mineral deposits or ripe for development) largely unmentioned and forgotten.....and yet i cannot help thinking that these are the apex of our species with regards to their understanding of the value of our habitat....their insights far more sustainable and rooted than the bilious reach of our ****** little empires.
What could they have taught us if only we cared to listen....to really listen....
We have lost our sense of wonder, of symbiosis, of reverence...we take our place for granted..not as something extraordinary to be treasured

What is our collective aim?
And is there a " collective"...After all, a communal philosophy that proffers an alternative could prove difficult to subdue, far better the divide and conquer strategy that panders to the subtle edges of an avarice, that becomes our modern way.
While we bury our head in the sands of social media baying for loves and likes, we are drip-fed endless propaganda and advertising..
Outside our window there is a green unpleasant land sprayed with herbicide, insecticide, devoid of natural diversity by the sweep of our constant chemicals..
Where now , the fresh air ?

The curtain falls and I’m back in my day job, paying over the odds , but grateful of income...enough to get by..i have sorted the bills and might treat myself to a couple of t- shirts i have seen in the sale- (less than half price- you cant beat a good bargain) ….Will have a few beers while watching the game and cheer on my team...there is a chance of silverware this season....
I am suitably anaesthetized and gently returned to my conformity.
It seems easier this way....


This isn’t the search for some utopian cloud- kingdom, more of a quest for a balance of sorts.
I do not consider myself hard done by...I am more fortunate than many and will always place laughter above tears
But I am of an island race encircled by powerful waters....as they appear to protect, then so do they threaten...

I have no manifesto,...I am the product of my age...and I sleepwalk through this gift of life , but as i sleep so too i sometimes dream
dream of a pathway through and out beyond the high rise, over the weather- won tides, that leads to somewhere different, somewhere we have never been...

Fast
too long in aspic,
antipathy for wind-chill
kills the arable concern..

Have
Listened to
the shipping-forecast-
victuals of an Island-race-
recur their little mysteries
from keeping.

Been
pacing off
the Malin Head in
fossil-fueled embarrassment,
deciphering a sense of self

and deepening.

Snap back
in the orange 70s
classic catch of
school- wall monkeys,
Kodak kids invincible
With everything to play for

Me, big- head and stick limbed
you, a bowl-cut- cuddle- incarnate

They say cheeky
wasn't half of it,

  But, naughty?...

..They knew nothing...

Then
This was us, as
Thick as fir- trees
scab- kneed muckers
of the womble- burrow
pockets full of “borrowed”
biscuits,

mischief
to be made....

Was told
they wheeled
your bed toward
the window for
your passing- that
evening when the
circled closed an
end on your beginning.
Now, we shall have no more
of all this talk of getting older

Return to something beautiful
to cure the fear of flying.

You
are somewhere close
yet dislocated, sheltered
in your centered peace
adrift beside all certainty.

We
turn as apron-ed satellites
in matinee of gentle speak,
our mundane, London-Saturday
the soundscape to your stasis.

Surrendered
to this bastion  of valiant
machinery. Your pillars
in this paradise of waiting.

Those cranes have earned

their sack of seed

They pulled these pencil turrets

through a sturgeon curd of feckless wet

to leave them where they lay.



Because of this

i sit indifferent, satchelled

in an unmade bed,

a simple- headed almanac

of beige and sable rhetoric.



My heritage;

an Eton mess

of trampled roman candles

left, by careless midnight masses

that come scratching at my door.

Lost leaves ago, before
the bark- clad savage
ruled with iron lung,
when  laurels of
a one- room den, grew
sleek with wet- lid plunder
my sauntering in tousles of
a quick and crease-less happiness
percieved the gifted wish of secret birds.

birds that combed the milking beech
in lemon centred madrigals
to cove their Egypt orison
from dragon banks of slippered fern
Who threw their mooted sermons on
a shivering uncertainty that bubbled
through my vernal rut of optimistic blood


Such useless pleasure, I was told
That I was not a Father's son
yet bore his term an absolute.
As all my nimble colours ran, I
wore his pungent bitterness
Became the thing that he preferred

Before the dungeon keys had turned
basket weaving weeks of youth

I took the gifted wish
of secret birds.