The Eagle

Fair flowers
Among the rocks
Flora of sorrow
Butterfly winged
In the breeze.
On a tree
A crow throats
A warning.
An eagle soars
In its claws
A white rabbit.
It sees
Fair petals
Flying
In the breeze

Garments

Opened the wardroom’s door, suits and jackets worn
so long looked like sad copies of me.
Gave all my clothes to the salvation army, which gave
them to people not unlike me.
Too much textile is a heavy burden one becomes and
snug in old suits losing interest in adventures.
I bought a pair of jeans and a matching jacket, walked out
at dawn’s first light, began looking for a horse, failing that
a mule to transport me when I traverse the landscape
of imagining, I’m a cowboy lassoing dreams.

Furtive meeting

We sat in the park a packet of ****
a bottle of wine, on the back of a napkin
I wrote her a poem about love.

While struggling to find the right word
I hardly knew her, she fell asleep,
wine of good quality can be strong.

I counted my cigarettes had five left
saw the tempting light of a night bar
left her sleeping, went and had a drink.

Coming back, she had left my poem
written on the clean side of a napkin
was on the ground torn to shreds.

Antique village

Houses around me are emptying the old, reaching the age of dying.
A timeworn man went missing on Monday, was found miles away,
the local constabulary drove him back home.
He had tried to flee, didn’t to where he had no money.
Behind closed doors in dark rooms, he tries to stave off the fated.
Sunlight unbearable reminds him of the sunrises he will not see.
When a car stops outside his house, he trembles in fear, is a hearse
coming for him?
Voices of children are like the scorn of his elderliness, he longs for peace
but fears death’s endless cruelty.

Posted by the blog Friends of Palestine

The day of reckoning

A bird with an enormous wingspan darkened the sky
it was a night of horror in the Middle East.
A new country born in sin and filched land arose
blood ran in ancient, narrow cobblestoned roads.
The people fled over a broken bridge, now live far
from the homeland, the dream of returning is alive.
Young men living in squalor are attracted to Islamists
the grim head cutting people, who know no mercy
know they will win one day, and more blood will flow
Into sand and time.
When everything is forgotten, walls erased, the losers
will flock back to Europa, whence they came.

The Unbiassed Media

Bombs rain on Gaza, the youth throw stones, the Israeli soldiers killed
or maim stone throwers, a dance of death.
What do the leading media say? Not very much,
the Gazans must be partly blamed; the victims are guilty
of the strength of being Palestinians defending their right.
In Hebron, the settlers are razing houses, killing goats and setting fire
to olive trees and daily is the death of those who get in their way.
The media might have a byline about it, that’s all.
If Israel is criticized, it unashamedly invokes the sacred Holocaust
and calls us antisemitic
Should a Jew speak up, he/her is called a self-hater
and be banned from entering the stolen land of Israel forever.

When I’m eighty-five

Once upon a time, when I was sixty-five
my hair turned grey, bought hair dye.
Blue rinsed looked like a stern teacher
of the type of women doing good work
among the poor.
She said she loved me, remembered
a song “when I’m sixty-five.”
We are old, take our love for granted
she calls me darling I call her sweetheart.
I will sing you a song when I’m eighty-five
full of cakes and ale.
I bet someone will say, who was the Beetles?