Cleanliness and ******

The ship was old once it had been a big ship now it was small
it had been overtaking by time, its shower system had sea water
which was nice enough to cool off when it was hot.
After having a shower, you needed a bucket of fresh water to rinse
the salt away if not you would scratch all night have irritated skin
For month we did not have a proper wash when our ship docked in
Bremerhaven for repairs and we got fresh water found I had
an extra pair of socks I didn’t know about
it was wonderful having a hot shower I stayed under it til someone
complained I was using all the warm water, even today the sense
of cleanliness makes me shudder with delight.

Whatever I had done in my youth the night before it helped
to have a shower and wash the sin away the smell of “life buoy.”
the only soap we knew about, made the difference the ******
loved it they knew you were clean ******

The Peace Process
I don’t know where I'm going with this
but there is peace in Colombia, the Marxist rebels lost
and their **** women soldiers in green fatigue and
weapons in arms will hand it all in for fashion  magazines
Hair- dressing salons and babies in arms.
For women, a change from war to peace is easy to make
it will be worse for men who feel inferior without guns.
If Texas as an example had been a gun free zone you would
have ended up with tall queens as cowhands,
or what do I know left their oil wells and gone to Montana

So why did the Marxist lose, ******* I think more economical
beneficial, cash in hands better than a Marxist  bible on the roof
28 years of peace the political parties in Colombia will have
no consensus as the blamed is car mechanics or ranchers
Everything is possible from the first female president in Colombia
or and openly gay governor in Texas.
Festive dresses and bulls with flowers on horns will be marching
down the Avenue in Houston.

When Robots ruled And “The Guardian” went into liquidation
It will be a strange quiet world when robots take over
there will be no middle-class the ranting of the eggheads
in the Guardian will cease their utterings will be quaint.
At the time when robots were perfected a pill emerged on
the market  made women and men infertile until they
wanted to start a family, alas, it was irreversible and it only
Takes a generation. The poor was working for the robots
picking up trash such as screws, the streets were empty
and cars were obsolete.
Some robots that had received too much learning wrote
Books to each other – as they did now- and had literary
reviews, but since each book sounded like another down
to the ****** “,” it fell out of vogue, so much academia
and no one to buy their books. At the same time as it was
discovered by the human workers that when a friendly
robot accepted a glass of beer it made a summersault, froze
and became a piece of junk leaking oil.
The fight back began the robots had not been programmed
To tolerate Alcohol, the Achilles heel, and the workers were
Jubilant waved flags
No longer should robots- any robots with mechanical learning
whether university or not- to rule over them.

words in my mouth

Democracy
is like poetry
only nice
when it flatters us  


French culture
is about the female believing
she is beautiful


Perfume
even the expensive one
is not about cleanliness

the Louvre
had everything
except a proper loo

Small hotel in Paris
hot water for shower
only on Saturdays

Palestine
The blank screen is watching me
to say something about flower and the landscape
I refuse to oblige.
My thoughts today go to the suffering Palestinians,
Who had their country to pieces by a horde from Europa
claiming it was their land as promised by a Jewish scribe.
They were pushed away from their land and cities
and mercilessly sent to exile, the survivors were given
a piece of land by the invaders, who called it the West -Bank,
There is no county by that name.
There is Palestine, the people there although outgunned
resist the invaders it is a David and Goliath fight
and we know the stone thrower won.
It took some time for good people to see the catastrophe that
befell the people of Palestine, but the world is
catching up, and no longer listen to the what a fake
state's propaganda says.
I'm old and will not live long enough to see it, but
I know Palestine will be free.

The voice of Norway
It was there
At the border
A gray mass of stones
Between two countries
One country
Wanted to give it away
As a good will gesture
But the people
Those who didn't know
The mountain existed
Said NO
We will not give away
A pebble
Of our nation
There was waving flags
The authority relented
Took the offer back
The people had spoken
With a narrow-minded
Nationalistic fervour

Kathmandu
a quaint, romantic name,
had wanted to go there now it is a dream.
Nepal, this small mountain country
often used a golf ball between big countries
for purely selfish reasons.
Thousands of people killed and classical
palaces are reduced dust covering
mountain tops
as a fog of sadness  
Cry my lovely I can only offer you friendship.
But for the tourists who evacuated on
Himalayas’ sacred top.
Filling valleys with empty cans of beef
and toilet paper flapping in the wind,
I have little empathy
rich tourists that had to bestride and befoul
a holy mountain.

Small things Remembered

The shop at the corner
Of my childhood
Has stopped selling Danish pastry
Nor has it Coco macrons,
Milk and cheese
The rooms are bare
On its counter cutting cheeses in smaller portion
An old fashion weight
Used when selling butter
Dusty windows
Forgotten, no one says: remember where
We bought our milk?
The bell that rang when opening it door
Will not chime anymore
Perhaps someone will buy it and make it
Into a wine-bar, it is the trend now
They are trying to make us into posh alcoholics,
And I have a sudden hunger for Danish pastry.

Morning chat

He died from Dengue, she said.
Who? A doctor on the TV
So a doctor on the TV died of dengue
No!
The doctor who studied dengue
Said no one had died from it
Unless they had an underlying sickness
So the doctor didn't die then
Oh, *******
Pass me the marmalade.

A woman of substance

I'm sceptical of the Dutch
One of them stole my beloved
He was a painter
Made her beautiful on canvas
And she fell in love
I wrote a poem on a torn
Piece of paper-
And I’m not a Lutheran-
Nailed it on her door
The usual stuff of the aching heart
The painter got arthritis
In his hands  
Could not hold a paint brush
She sent him to nursing home
And now she smiles at me

Useless Money

I often get petitioning letters so many people trying
to find a place to live and only receive a bitter refusal
and see their children die of thirst and hunger.
I wish to help them, but no money in the world is
enough to stop this flood of humanity seeking a haven
flotsam, the wreck of the unfortunate and we can do
nothing but look another way.

Overwhelmed by the misery I can do little about, but
the woman from Myanmar who won a medal for her
tenacity, choose not to speak. The friendly Buddhists
are killing Muslims in their midst, they have become
refugees; the woman from Myanmar is voiceless.
She, the upper-class daughter of a Burmese general
Who aristocratic behaviour impressed us deeply,
But I ask why she is staying silent now.

Cakes & Ale

I woke up in a bakery they do start early, the aroma of bread
is wonderful, they were also making cakes whipping creams.
Napoleon cakes and Danish pastry, black forest gateau and other
pastries I have as a child looking through the windows of bakery
shops admired. Too much, I walked outside and lit a ***, inhaled
deeply and the tobacco soothed my mind, giving me a feeling of
fullness. It was only then I remembered I have diabetes, a heart
problem and have not smoked for 15 years. Has it been worth it
this forgoing of the good thing in life; I’m not sure, it may extend
my life for a few more years of pain and misery, will I die regretting
the cakes I didn’t eat and the **** I didn’t smoke?

Eggs.
Eggs have an equality about them, I know worked on a farm
collected them put them on a tray, each one had thirty eggs
they all had the same size, but some eggs had shells slightly
darker than others boiled they tasted the same.
There is a possibility that someone once said brown eggs
where somehow inferior, one had a better chance find two
yolks in a white shelled egg, we ended up with two prices
for eggs, the white ones for breakfast, the brown ones for
omelette. When I was an officer in the merchant navy I bought
brown eggs mostly because they were cheaper.
This has come to an end eggs are now mixed there is no choice,
but in the end they all taste the same.

Cakes & Ale

I woke up in a bakery they do start early, the aroma of bread
is wonderful, they were also making cakes, whipping creams.
Napoleon cakes and Danish pastry, black forest gateau and other
pastries I have as a child looking through the windows of a bakery
shops admired. Too much, I walked outside and lit a ***, inhaled
deeply and the tobacco soothed my mind, giving me a feeling of
fullness. It was only then I remembered I have diabetes, a heart
problem and have not smoked for 15 years. Has it been worth it
this forgoing of the good thing in life; I’m not sure, it may extend
my life for a few more years of pain and misery, will I die regretting
the cakes I didn’t eat and the **** I didn’t smoke?

Fascism's lack of Sanity

They are called Odin's soldiers
And dress partly alike,
Leather jackets
Short cropped hair
And with an angry, righteous
Expression in white, round faces.
They claim to protect women
But they are just fascist who hates
People not like them.
For people from Syria or elsewhere
Who fled for their life
And often saw their loved ones drown,
Only came to the frozen north
As a last resort.
What people of Scandinavia need is
Intermarriage
To save them from dying drunk in
the snow.

The Chef

As the Bourdain said a cook is nobody
he has no power no one cares what he has to say
some of them are gifted with a natural talent for food and its ingredient
and flashes of inspiration can fire the spark that is godlike.
I knew of a restaurant which was always full at lunch and dinner,
Where the chef? I asked a waiter. Oh, he is somewhere in the back.
Back of the food place an open door, the chef stood to smoke
a cigarette. I looked at me sourly, but when I expressed
interest and when an order came in of a bacon omelette
he made it with the flourish of a craftsman.
The manager of the establishment said the chef had worked here for
Six years but he- the chef- was impossible to work with.
The chef suddenly quit and drove a taxi. Less stress that way.
The restaurant faltered until the penny dropped, a chef is a star
In the firmament of catering without a flawed genius in the kitchen, it is better
to run a pizza parlour

Doctor or Dentist

An enormous raindrop fell under an umbrella and nearly
drowned the occupant under it. A dentist came opened her mouth
and being ethical pulled out the wrong teeth.
Another man came said he was a doctor and told the dentist
to stop, the dentist said I too am a doctor, and rotten teeth
are sorry for the health, even a pill pusher like you ought to know;
The dentist was rude because he was fed up not being called a doctor.
it came to blows. Meanwhile, an ambulance came
picked up the nearly drowned lady and stopped the fight between
the two medical professionals, the skirmish made the dentist
happy because the ambulance had said; you doctors should not
fight in public.

A slum outside Paris

A cardboard city thrives a place where no one has
to pay the rent and electricity are purloined.
is it impossible for middle -class folk to understand
but the Roma thrive despite living by a city dump
where you dump your trash wash your hand and are
happy to live in a block of flats and house the rules.
Now they want to get rid of this illegal city that cost
nothing to run and need not tramlines. But they are
not like us do not share our values, no they are not
like us the do not deplete the world's resources and
when the last car has stopped the Gypsies will as they
always have done crossing the landscape with their children
women and dogs carried pulled donkeys on ancient carts.
And the man with a wristwatch and finery will offer
them riches for a lift to better times.

Olive and Orange
From the years of 650 and onwards Andalusia
Was a tolerant Arabic province, which even tolerated
the Jewish tradesmen pushing their handcarts on
cobble stones and the Christians with their infernal
bells ringing on Sunday mornings.
The three religions lived side my side in relative
harmony, one can say the following 300 years
Andalusia and part of Algarve was an oasis of peace.
The Arab architecture is still there and in music
one can still hear the Arabic influence not to forget
the poetry inspired in beautiful gardens with running
water and cooling shade, where love was made and
in Yasmin scented afternoons.

Nothing lasts forever the Christian horde came with
their swords -the ISIS of the time- heads rolled in the sand
Andalusia became a Catholic nation, yet the echo of more
a contemplative time lingers on.
This story was told to me by the oldest olive tree in the world
that lives in a valley of orange trees.

Love Sonnet
This afternoon at the local grocer I had bought a bottle of beer
and a tin of tuna fish and I meet the daughter of the woman
I had been in love with, I had never seen her before and said
halloo like she knew me and she was as lovely as her mother
was. Her mother came and I said something flattering, they both
smiled knowingly, you can't fool a woman about love. I'm sure
her mother had told her daughter of my trips to the post office
where she worked t the time. And they have been laughing, not of
derision, but by my inability to express my love openly.

I'm telling this because when I came from hospital in December
after collapsing and had been given a pacemaker and the onset of
the shingles I was in despair both physically and mentally and
I said if I had died I would have no knowledge about this tristesse
My wife cried and I promised not to speak thus again and I would
not met the daughter of the woman I loved

The Aunt of Lisbon

Those nebulous
Short, squat spiders
Living on
Grief
And hatred of men
They cannot have
They live
In the darkest corners
Of Lisbon
Trying to catch
A man
Their slobbering lust
Give them away
Poisonous pens
Stabbing
Futile in air
Dark is the mind
Of the spider

Sartorial elegance

He always wore a yellow silk scarf around his neck
The type actors wear when in blazer having a drink on the terrace
Of a posh hotel, he bought his scarf at a second-hand store
In Cheshire, nevertheless, it was made to fit him
Oddly enough the rest of his apparel was purchased in a Chine's
This gave him an air of seedy elegance that normally comes with
Those who suffer no self- awareness

He was poor and lived on bread and marge, when not invited
To high-born party by people who thought he was an aristocrat
Sometimes I came too because as he said he was writing a novel,
And that made me interested in people with literary ambitions,
There are so few of them hidden in lofts and not spoken of-
His dead was sudden a rope and a beam,
he was missed by the locals
I have not had a proper dinner for a long time,
But I wear his yellows silk scarf for a book unwritten.

Of Mice and Men  
The mice in Belgium do not eat fine chocolate
They scoff at imported Swiss cheese
And have only contempt for a left- over bacon burgers,
they feast on plans of roads and buildings
I blame EU for this the mice have bureaucratic  
And go through stacks of programs especially those
About repairing tunnels and roads  

Bureaucrats of any hue are working overtime
Try keeping up this losing battle against mice
So many cars choking up the roads Islamists
Have to go to Paris when blowing up people.
The British demand for special concessions will  
not last long the mice will see to that.

Career versus Motherhood

We live in a strange world when someone decides
our priorities that benefit the mysterious THEM, but
not what we want but told to aspire for.

In Europe the population is shrinking because
women of the middle classes want a career and that
is fine only when they realise they have been putting
off the child- bearing too long it is often late they must seek
medical help or adopt from an exotic African state.

We have got our priority wrong and we have been
conned, motherhood is more important than being
a vice president of a financial company.
Alas, the world is not like that being a housewife is
not what she get a great pension for- she should- not
risking living in poverty when old.
Housewife a title to be proud of because she carries
our common future in her womb.

Myanmar

Half a million people thrown out of their country
the silence of our guilt is the weight of shadows
when we unforgiven do nothing to help the people.
To defend them with UN troops, or for that matter
give NATO, a none political role, to stop this inequity.
Myanmar is so far from Europe and the Rohingya
people so primitive and they have no famous writers.
We know nothing of their music, the weight of our
silence is darker than the night.

The Voyage

The big seagull sat on the bow of my rowing boat
                                   on my way to Argentina and Rosita,
which I never met she had married guitar player-
had unfriendly eyes ready to peck my eyes out.                  
                                   I regretted my heroism.
I wanted to go to Argentina because of its pampas
Beautiful horses and also to be famous for the voyage
                                  I was picked up by a merchant ship
it was actually going the wrong way docked in Antwerp
                                  Free beer for the, would be the hero.
I got a job on an old steamer bound for Argentina.
                                
                                 Buenos Aires,
A City with so many beautiful women it took a long
before I got my stead looking for the tree of wisdom.
                                 I found it burning in the night
the Gauchos were feeling cold and set fire to the tree.
                                 What matters is the journey which is a fine sentence to cover for absolute failure.

The simple life

It is cold;
sea spray paint the ship white,
light green
is the Nordic water,
a mighty cocktail
of clinking ice cubes.
I scratch a happy face
on the thick glass of
the porthole.
We will dock in a town
that have warm rooms
people sit around a fire  
give a **** about sailor’s
miserable life.
Seascape paintings hangs
on gilded walls;
look at that sea,
so verdant,
delicate brush strokes;
the artist died at a mad house.

Disheartened  
The Dutch tourists have left
and last year’s cherries
hang unpicked as do almond nuts
that are also full of worms,
and who says the grass isn’t sweet?
The sun is a yellow ring
on a blind sky,
disillusioned.
As a 30 watt bulb in a room
with faded wallpaper,
at a rundown hotel
which calls itself Bellevue;
last stop before sleeping rough.
Nothing is more abject
then an out of season tourist town,
worried shopkeepers and tarts
even the flowers are grey;
except for a couple of retired seagulls,
birds have flown to Africa
and will not return
before the rain stops falling.

Stavanger Communist Party

The local communist party of my youth was a fun place
they had frequent parties with music and dance and
illegal ***** in the bushes, in the dark unpainted years
after the war when entertainment was tambourine and
bible thumping. My uncle spoke at meetings he painted
a picture of utopia for the workers a short working week
and jobs for the wheelchair bound, like other members he
lived in a naïve cocoon that had little to do with real life.

As the country shook off the grimness of the gloomy years
there was work for all, and the party shrank in a short
time disappeared; there were so many places to dance.
I can still hear my uncle's voice talks of “the dictatorship
of the masses”  equal pay for all; we are getting nearer
but there are those who try to take it away from us.

Vaginal Sonnet

    I can't remember what we had for lunch but I do remember
     my pre -birth the safety in a warm liquefied world were
     No one could hurt me and I could sleep undisturbed forever.
    Then I remember slithering down a canal and sharp light hurts
    my eyes and I wanted to go back
    As a baby when women held me in their laps I tried to crawl
    between their legs and into ****** this caused embarrassment
    and false giggles. As I got older I also noticed the ****** was
    place for great pleasure for women.

    

    I specialized in ******* for me it was not a marvellous
    As I was seeking a way to get back to the ****** in a world
    I found baffling, but the women subjected to my *******
    didn’t understand that part.

Human Maggots  

If ******* *****
From millions of seafarers
Over hundred years
Think if this floating loneliness
Had met up and formed
An Island
And up from its depth sprung
The unborn like larvae
Whose only contact
With mothers were what
The ******
Was dreaming of at the time
Not Atlantis re- emerging
But an island born out of tedium
And tired desire
Not on a chart
To find its existence
So be careful when dreaming.

Lemon tree very pretty
it was a summer night many years ago
woke, thought I heard the whimpering
of a baby, thought it was a dream,
Woke up again my wife was not there
by my side but in the garden where she
had made a hole under a lemon tree
She put what looked like a shoebox in
the hole filled it in and placed stones
on top of her buried secret. Next day she
didn't get up stayed in bed for days and
I looked after her but said nothing.
When she got up she looked slimmer
and took up jogging to stay slim.
The lemon tree grew too I got a man to
chop it down but left its root, she got
upset loved this tree and when unseen
wept. I used to long for her to tell me her
secret, but not now with the tree gone
I do not care to know.

Ancient wars and potatoes

It is the biggest potato farm in the world,
a giant field of tubers as far as eyes can see;
new potatoes boiled with a pat of butter; delicious, no need to slam in a lamb.  
Once a battlefield thousands of Russians and
Germans soldiers bled to death here the soil grew fertile,
absorbed all flesh only bones and uniform buttons left.
The soldiers didn’t die in vain, saved from old age debilities, Alzheimer,
renal diseases, hip replacement and triple bypass.
I found a rusty gun, a German Luger pistol it fell to pieces in my hand,
bullets inside still intact, owned by
an officer telling his men to die like Prussian heroes.  
Long furrows of edible tubers, made into fries, full of fat,
grandchildren of dead soldiers are obese and only fight virtual games.

It is warmer

In Paris
They talk about
The weather
Eat frugally
Hamburgers made of
Indian cows
Turnips from Sweden
Potatoes
From Holland
Gobbledegook
And sign on
The dotted line.

The flotsam
From the deep of unconscious float up pieces of memories,
like torn pictures of a past, I can’t recall.
I see a child standing on a chair seeing his image in the window.
A man, in the street below looks, up smiles.
A war plane flies right through the house and disappear
Old dreams and forgotten memories have no beginning, no e;
they can’t be expanded and made coherent.
A mighty surge of fear passes through me, an unremembered
memory absorbed into my nascent brain before I was born?
The unborn but is silence it can’t be articulated into words.
I listen to an ancient hum to understand a future that has
no conscience of the coming.

The Street Cleaner
He is not a lucky man, but he is happy but one day he won on a lottery ticket,
not a not a big sum of money but enough to by wheelbarrow got permission
from the local council to keep the town's streets clean.  Happy, telling himself
he was self- employed and could sleep till nine in the morn  if he wanted to.
A busy bee a busy bee he was till he collided with Mercedes was taken to court
and his wheelbarrow was confiscated to pay for the damage. He had a bike and
got a local garage to put a two- wheel contraption to fasten to his bike, the town
got rid of its trash again until an officious policeman asked him if he had a licence
for this he didn't and it was confiscated. Now he had a jute sack slung on his proud
shoulders and a walking stick with a nail attached, a weapon a police officer said
  he was carrying a weapon in public and he was prosecuted.  He didn't show up
to the hearing and when the law came around, he hung from a rafter sometimes
even serious optimists give up and with no cleaner the town sank into misery,
plagued by vermin the population fled, a town given into paper napkins pizza boxes
and burger wrappers and the poor who had nowhere to go. And if this reflects
the life of a typical inner city of our English speaking world it is purely incidental.

Fidel Castro, the secular Pontiff
The day began with sadness Fidel Castro is dead despite the USA's bilious behaviour
And ill attempt to **** him, he was able to create a health system second to none
And also made the country with the highest literacy on that part of the world which
will stand the people well in the coming storm
He had many flaws democracy as we understand it was not on the list, mind the way
it is practised in the west is not impressive
I towering political giant his place in history is assured on a page of its own and not
lumped together with King    & Queens and other useless historical figure
We expect the lying Cuban mafia will try to enter, bring their I-Phones
and cheap day loans, one hope when they find life will tear them apart that they will
not forsake the socialist revolution and what Cuba was before Fidel Castro and can
so easily a place for gambling and prostitution  again

End of democracy

I think we are witnessing a historic shift
the page has turned and our ideas about
democracy is regarded with suspicion
because it is in inclusive and give too much
freedom to the individual. This idea that
a person could have his own faith instead
of a faith that included all and those who
cannot conform must die.

This philosophy flies in the face of us who
has fought for this goal, only to find this is
not what the people want and you cannot
fight the future. For me this will a bleak time
murderous and peaceful, but it will not last
the conservative forces will not prevail.

Once a Seafarer
I was thinking of my life as a seafarer endless
voyaging like a gipsy of the seas.
It was the best of times because I was young
but was also the worst of times being without
a woman for months on end.
I was a lousy ****** really didn't blend in
Preferred reading in my cabin and got a higher
education without trying or knowing it, yes
I'm grateful to so many writers they gave my life
a meaning on the ocean of colossal ennui.
I came alive when the ship docked, and I could go
ashore, cold lone star beer in Houston and
dance with a cowgirl or a midnight swim with
a woman in Honduras.

As I got older little could assuage my boredom
the drink became both friend and enemy, washed up
on the shore of Portugal, here I got up  drank a cold
beer built my house on solid earth and dreams.

The Social Media
In the basement kitchen cold cement floor no hot water
a towel hung on a nail, wash you face a corner each and your hands
to dry, after a loo visit it also gave us tuberculosis
bad skin, and rashes. But we were lucky there was no social
media, kind ladies to do good, take a picture of misery and feel like they
as they had done something helpful pressing coins into our hands.
****** people their finery was an offence to those who had nothing
like giving a Bible to one who cannot read; the hope is that they got
head lice because we could not give them the *****.
A war was over for us it was just the beginning of a deliberate rise to
self -respect the Social Media was not interested in this the butterflies
of self- aggrandisement

Globalism

The winter after war was not jubilant
the snow was slushy like the beginning of spring.
A poor street, houses had not been painted
not much food and the ice was reluctant to let
go of its deadly grip.
I saw it along a wall of flaking cement
a small solitary, yellow flower the colour so bright
it blinded me it was like I had a moment of clarity
I understood and saw it all.
In the windows of old houses’ on sills
flower in pots in tins, humanities need for beauty.
I must not forget hasted home find a piece of paper and write it down.
But I didn’t get it down on paper my thoughts that were influenced
by beautiful minds.
So long ago now,
it was 1950 and people were friendly
we had suffered together and survived.
We are not the people of the world we are tribe, however modern,
it is our group's survival that counts.
Tribalism is much stronger than globalism it can never speak our language.

Upgrading

“So you want to be a hairdresser, I bellowed, I gave you
a splendid  education and that is how you repay me!”
“You can study to be a doctor or a lawyer or something
posh, but never a hairdresser.”
“I struggled in poverty to get some kind of education at
the Academy of catering and pursership- I never have
heard that word before- you have now, this to drag me
out of the slum of being working class, and you want
to be a hairdresser!”
She is my daughter a product of a reluctant relationship
Her mother was a  reserve nurse at a local hospital and
Was content with her status.
“ If you persist in wanting to be a hairdresser leave my
house I will not have you here inviting the poverty
I tried to get away from.”
I know where she works as a trainee hairdresser walk
past the salon, every day just to see how she is getting on,
but I won’t let her see how much I love her, this stubborn
girl taking after her father

The Chosen

Zionism is like Ayn Rand's philosophy about
the right of the powerful.
These days to avoid saying a Jew we say
they are Zionists.
Even if Israel practice a policy of power
There are still 7 million Jews there, a minority

Ex. Seafarer
As a former seafarer, I have been to most countries that
have a harbour, but I have not been to Nepal or Tibet and
I have never wished to meet the great Lama a man wearing
handmade boots. Once in Japan I went to the movie and
heard John Wayne speaking Japanese, I laughed out loud
and was politely asked to leave.
There was a time when I thought of settling in Costa Rica
but it didn’t work out a love story gone awry; no not so
it was too far from Europe and there was much more to see.
I lived in the industrial belt of North/west of England for
a time and never got used to the social life of pubs, where
it appeared to me people took pride of being   ignorant.
I live in Portugal now, we sometimes drive to the coast and
ogle the tourists who pay too much for everything.

Neptune's call

Hot is the Caribbean night
with added stars and the moon big as a Swiss cheese
on a velvety theatrical curtail.
I stood on deck leaning on its railing
dreaming of Jamaica as the ship slowly ploughed
white crested black water aside.
The ocean sang to me I listened intently and before
I knew it the sea had tried to drown me.
Had I fallen among sharks and see the fading lantern,
would anyone but Neptune have heard my screams?
I lit a cigarette, thought about my endless voyaging
from port to port jaded I was Neptune had read my thought.
This had to end before I got lost in hollowed eyed boredom
there is no place to pole-dance on as hip

A sudden poem


I have travelled long
Blessed by Gobi's new moon
Seen tall ship sail upside down
Yet, I found my way back home.

ANC and Joe Slovo  

ANC took on the white-run system and won, we hoped
for a new free country and apartheid free country.
The “Rainbow Nation sprung to life reconciliation, dancing
in the streets, which have become crime-ridden by now.
But the ANC cannot rule forever, and it is fossilised
And has of lately written history that leaves out many.
Indian and white people who helped to end apartheid
Are being pushed aside like it was only a black affair.
Do you remember Joe Slovo and fought for a free Africa
For forty years, ah, but, he was white and a Jew, he gave
All he had for the cause, but now slowly like many Indians
Are pushed into the background.
I think the leadership ANC have been corrupted it will sink
To the level of Zimbabwe, they broke their promise to help
Soweto, but it is still there, Joe Slovo is no more.

http://benafimpoetry.webs.com/apps/blog/show/43399111-the-moral-decline-of-norway

An African Queen
Senegal what do I know of that country
But I have sailed past her coast, alas, she
Is married to Dakar nothing I can do.
She spoke French the tall lady and sounded
***, my language seems like a bulldozer
Flattening a Palestinian home so I smiled and
Said little dismayed over my lack of speech
When it imperative to make injustice heard.

Tall she was walked like a gazelle she worked
At a place where she didn't had to be up
At seven in the morning and anyway she was
Not from Senegal, it was Senegal I loved
My ship doesn't sail her way, but I whisper her
Name Senegal, Senegal into the African breeze

An African Queen
Senegal what do I know of that country
But I have sailed past her coast, alas, she
Is married to Dakar nothing I can do.
She spoke French the tall lady and sounded
****, my language seems like a bulldozer
Flattening a Palestinian home so I smiled and
Said little dismayed over my lack of speech
When it imperative to make injustice heard.

Tall she was walked like a gazelle she worked
At a place where she didn't had to be up
At seven in the morning and anyway she was
Not from Senegal, it was Senegal I loved
My ship doesn't sail her way, but I whisper her
Name Senegal, Senegal into the African breeze