Alfred and the addiction

Alfred the pianist is my father who denies fatherhood
had stopped smoking, he had a golden cigarette holder
which he gave me I also noticed he hands trembled
this because he had stopped drinking. Usually,  had a glass
of wine at noon; for a fortnight Alfred avoided me if
he saw me on the street he walked another way, this naturally
made me feel hurt, my father avoiding me.
He came and asked for his cigarette holder, needed it like a prop,
so he was an actor now I sarcastically said to myself.
He had successfully stopped smoking he could leave it alone
as he was no longer addicted, to prove it lit up a cigarette; he smoked five
while we sat in the park and there was a whiff of port wine in the air.

A mountainous town

Lalitpur is a charming town among high mountains
the air is pure; no need to take a shower every day.
I was going there but, in Rome, I lost my passport
had to drive home to get a new one, which took
time and losing money.
Nepal is a small country often used as a tennis ball
by bigger countries in the region, for conflicts
killing thousands and condensing palaces to dust
covering mountains into a clock of sadness
Cry my lovely, I can only offer my understanding
when tourists evacuate on your sacred top
filling valleys with empty tunny tins, condoms and
the toilet papers flapping in the wind.
For tourists falling off cliffs, I only offer contempt
tourists that bestride and befoul a holy mountain.

The cobwebs of dreams

It was a clear day…Too clear I thought. Mother sat in the kitchen,
sunlight made her white hair into a halo. I asked how old she was,
ninety-two she said; knew I was trapped in a dream she didn't
live that long.
By the slow river I saw furniture drifted, my brother said it was
people who lived downstream but bought furniture upstream
and to save on the transport dumped the stuff in the river and
relatives picked it up further down.
Sometimes a table or a chair got lost a risk they were willing to take.
I knew this too was a dream.
Walked along a soft road in a forest, but something was wrong
there was a strange red light emitting from trees; I was trapped
inside a painting by a mad Russian artist; luckily I had a flick knife.
I think it is morning, perhaps not, sometimes the line between
and the subconscious emerges, maybe yesterday is today.

Sea and people
An island came up from under the sea
And soon it became green and pleasant
Fit for dairy production, and cats that
Took care of the rat plague.

Man, and animals in idyllic harmony but
For the rats and attacking seas-birds.

Roaring sea appropriated the island
Occupied and flooded the land,
Simply retracted and made the island into a reef.
Endlessness of peace but dangerous for shipping.

The Meat Industry    
  Artificial meat is genuine meat.
    I look forward till it is fully developed
    And we can stop killing animals
    I worked as a boy at an abattoir my
    the job was to stir blood from slit throat into a bucket
    so it didn't coagulate the blood was later used
   to make dumplings, which I refused to eat.
  We will, however, have to reduce the cattle stock
  and the farting cows in Holland will be no more.
  There is something deeply immoral the way we
   use animals for food they are living being capable
   of thoughts – if primitive- and feel pain and pleasure
   artificial made meat will set us free from our tendency
   to the mass slaughter of the innocent

At a Private Clinic
I went to see the eye doctor -can't spell it- some tests
I had to do it used to be free at Faro hospital
They are farming out work to clinics if you
Can pay but if you are poor farm worker you are ******
And they give a white cane
The doctor also wanted to have cataracts done but
That I could do for free in Faro for now
Health service should be for all whether you a rich or
Poor, but no it is a business now
And the doctors’ female or not look the same tanned
Faces pristine I suspect the use the same self- tanning
Lotion- do it is to look healthy and fooling no one
The woman in the reception tried to make me by a medical
Insurance, she had lips like a giant ****** but sharp teeth
Not a good idea to try anything funny.
250 euros I paid for being looked at in the eyes and to
Think Portugal had revolution equality for the masses.
I think I will go to Spain have family there they will
Take me until they see I'm a grumpy old man who has
Been faithful to the idea of socialism and will not
Shut up about it.
C'EST la vie.

A Middle-Aged Love Story  

Both were in their late forties when they met he had a good job
chief of something important in the world of oil exploration and
they fell in love holding hands and kissing so much they needed
treatment for sore lips.
He grew tall, and she swayed like a palm tree in a tropical breeze
this was love they both been married before and felt like the god
of amour's arrow had shot them again painless they thought.
She had grown children he had none when he was 52 the mortality
knocked on the door he wanted a son she could give him none.
There was young woman nearby and when his wife was visiting her
he fell on the threshold of her door into her arms, and she became
pregnant, a love story came to a screeching halt.
The woman he loved left, but he had a son with woman he didn't
care for, he found salvation in work she – the woman he loved-
lived with her mother in Cote de Azure stuck with an arrow stuck in her
a heart that no other man could remove.
Then a knock on her door, he stood there with his child of, she could not
resist and forgave him loved his child too and they both lived long and
when full of years were blessed with a beautiful death.

A New Beginning

Think of this, the world has become too hot heat waves
following heat surges.  People leaving their cars succumbing of
thirst waiting for the coolness of evening that will not come.  
The stench of dead humanity and animals are foul of decay.
On the highest building a man fine tinned food, eats and falls
asleep and wake up months later to a world where he is the only
survivor.  No lift he walks down the endlessness of stairs and is
met with a hush so loud he has to put his hands to his ears.  
He walks and walks the stink has gone, but he senses something
behind him it is a lone rat it is as confused as he is and together
with the rat on his shoulder, they begin the search to find a mate
to make the world inhabitable again.

The Inheritance
                          My ffather had a stammer
And lonely drinker
Sat under bridges
                           Those that span quiet canals
He drowned
Dog came home alone
Wimping  
                            Mother, tired took to bridges also
This pleased the dog
                            The canine came home alone
This was an inheritance I didn't want
But could not avoid I sit under bridges now
                             The dog's   too old
I walk home alone.

New Dawn

Darkness at the edges of my vision
Blurred as time erases contours of the past

The evoked is as sharp as a lone tree on a hill
The dark shadows at the foot of the mountain.

The loneliness of walking on a road where no one lives
Knowing you are the last one of your tribe

The memory has shed the execs burden of triviality
Distorted remains float out of reach to make sense.

A new morning is a mere comma in the vastness
In the end, life is a dream of no consequence.

Overcome by sorrow
  
   There is so much misery in the world the bees are dying out
   the bumblebee has disappeared, elephants are sot for their
   ivory, the rhino for their magic horns, fish is being farmed in big tanks
   when are we going to farm sardines?
   So many wars in the Middle East, Africa starves among plenty
  IDF shots small children for the hell of it.
I have no strength to read all of the tragedies, must prioritise
try to feed a starving dog or feel sorry for a mule,
I don't know what to do the suffering is overwhelming I cry
for the small child's death, I shake my head but soldier on there
must be a let up; but no, I can only try to make those nearest me to a bearable day.

The tree of ages

There had been a storm, not a squall making it difficult
to walk from the supermarket to your car leaving you
with tussled hair and breathless, no this was
the real thing and the holm oak crashed to the ground
roots and all blocking the road.

It was an old tree had lost weight, and bark slung around
it like a poorly fitted mechanic's overall, so it had to happen
it was what ensued after the fall, and it had to be moved
still alive they cut it in half and pushed it aside with
a fork lift truck no ceremony here no kind words, the tree
was blocking the traffic; not a word of regret, you see,
hadn't it been for the storm the tree was well enough to
stand by the entrance to the lane for 100 years to come.

Almost a killer

The window was open the puppy balancing
On the sill and fell it wasn’t a long fall buy it screamed
I cradled in my arms till it stopped whimpering
Through me an enormous fear I could **** it if I wanted to
I held my hands around its throat its fur soft and silky  
The puppy continued to sleep safely in my arms I was ten
And thought, no one should have that power, but it had surged
Through me, the compulsion to ****
My hands shook my body trembled violently today I could have
Become murderer. I told my brother he shook his head and asked
Why I had to make a drama out of everything
Later I worked on a farm and saw animals killed
But that was for a purpose feeding humanity and not for pleasure I know
Had I killed the puppy my life would have been an endless night.

Just a word in your ear

The USA and Israel, here you have axes of evil,
Will take out Iran who has not occupied anyone
Or stolen someone’s land

The Failed Revolution


In my childhood's town, there was on top of a five-storey building
a neon sign “Jesus Saves,” I asked the mother what Jesus saves.
Souls, she said, without looking up, she was reading
the communist manifesto at the time, dreaming of the day
when workers would be the new upper class.
Mother tried to immigrate to the Soviet Union but was turned
down, she had no skills other to but sardines in a tin.
Mother made rice pudding that day, and I was allowed to
scrape the brown sticky residue in the ***.
A famous capitalist sits in jail somewhere in Siberia, but
is allowed to be in contact with the world via the internet
protesting his innocence; he was not stealing oil from his
own company. No, there is no revolution in Russia.

How long is long

We live in a society that
No longer believe in an afterlife
We, therefore, strive to live as long as possible
Even though, it might be detrimental
For our or others well- being.
What is the true age of man? I don't know but
I think when the memory is erased
When we become a burden, death is not an enemy.

******

I get irritable over emails about ******
the pill that is about extending the natural evolution  
from stud to an old workhorse.
Everything comes to an end and to make love with
the help of a pill is artificially pressing the body to go through
acts it can no longer do alone.
there is some unethical about it as it no longer gives pleasure
only proving the old horse can still gallop.

The Alternative

We lived on the third floor the loo was in the basement
I saw my aunt peeing in the sink while mother was out
It took days to figure out who she did it, I asked my sister
She wanted to know why so I told her, but females speak
Told my mother….trouble.
I often peed in the kitchen sink at night, what else could I do?
Ghosts on steps and landing fat rats having a bath in the bowl
I never told my mother if she came into the kitchen I pretended
brushing my teeth, I also masturbated into it but that was only
when I was sure to be alone.
My mother was strict with the hygienic routine we had a big towel
And since there were four of us we had a corner each.

The price to pay
There is a problem it might appear as a sideshow
Now that Europe is averting their eyes
Thinking of Brexit.
Prime minister Modi of India has the plan to turn India
Into a Hindu state, this sounds remarkable until
We realise it is fascist by nature, pure race and all that
Hatefulness that follows such thinking.
There 180 million Muslims in India.
Modii’s thinking is inviting civil war by two nations
With nuclear capability.

Parallel Lives  

Is there such thing as living two separate lives?
I lived in a vale called the “Valley of the cobblers” were everyone
wore wooden clogs, a dead giveaway if you have been out late,
I have many friends there know me by my first name.
Have a homestead rising  donkeys of the sturdy, strong type,
also sold miniature donkeys,  children especially liked them
I had a man who looked after the animals when I had to return to
city life, but as time passed I came to believe my real life was
in the valley, because I feel like an intruder when I walk amongst
modern man – it could be the clogs- people stare at me
think of me as an abstraction a painting once seen on the wall of a café.
Went on a bus to get back where my friends were, the bus drove and drove
and when it stopped I hadn't reached my destination.
Have to try again I miss my real life and want to come home.

The Precious
I picked up a stone it was green but not jade
Even I could see that.

Took it home rinsed it in the sink it was still
Green and did not pretend to be jade

Put the stone in the windowsill where sunlight
And winter shade gave it ordinariness.

Threw the stone away knew it was not jade
But it could have been ****** something

Raqqa

Three years its inhabitants lived in tyranny
of ISIS and its fanatical religion a hard place where
smoking cigarettes were punished with death.
To get rid of the occupier the USA air force carpet
bombed the city, and we do not know how
many civilians this caused, how many children?
We have no number, no estimate after all it was
for a good cause, the ISIS was eradicated as was
The town and when the survivors understand
the full the extent of the American bombing they
will have no reason to rejoice.

Exiting day

This has been a hell of a day, watched brides choosing
a dress for the wedding and women having surgery to fix
faces that didn’t need to be done, but many women
are never happy the way they are and that is a shame.
Later I watched grown men playing around with 4 wheels
jeeps through mud and other obstacles.
I have seen obese people so grotesquely fat they needed
an operation, for some reason, must of them were blacks.
                       and mostly poor the American diet doesn’t seem
                       to fit them I blame the food industry that makes people
eat all the wrong things. I will top the evening off
watch a funny program no point getting sad about
the human folly.

Café in Loule
I'm sitting in a café in Loule, drink coffee and eat a sandwich with nothing on but butter, it is my attempt to slim. Into the café enter two old friends one has small grocers the other is a cobbler,
yes they still exist. They have a coffee and a wee dram, the grocer will keep open to ten, the cobbler keeps his shop open he care not to go home before his nagging wife has gone to bed.
Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is in house arrest, there has
been a military coup, although the army denies it is a takeover;
anyway, it doesn’t matter. Mugabe ninety-two years old has presided
over a total fiasco, the breadbasket of Africa has to import food for
the people oppressed people by his criminal misrule.
An autocrat’s regime has come to an end.

For reason not clear to me I think of Sweden who is run by a liberalistic- feminist philosophy that it has become a country can be understood when immigrants’ trespasses and we have the making of a divided a country that is no longer Sweden. When we hereafter talk of Scandinavia Sweden is not included, nor is the Norwegians who have given in to extreme capitalism.
well there is Suomi, but they are half Russians and Denmark who consist of nice Germans; so you see there is no Scandinavia.

Portugal survives she bends with the wind doesn’t break, from the café window I see the shoemaker by his lest smoking a cigarette.

Riches

Once, in the shallow river where sunlight makes the stone look
like gold nuggets, I threw into its water an engagement ring,
made of silver. I had paid plenty for it on my low earnings,
but compared with the river's gold it was junk.
Saw her kiss a man in a café where I could not afford to take her,
my misery was total my disgrace deep, how could I be so
deluded to think she would take my silver to his gold.
I threw mine into the river; amidst shiny stones, my ring looked trite
as a sliver of moonlight after ancient God's bacchanalia.
And forever I will be silent, not speak to her about this: a young man's
the heart is impossible romantic.
The river is now an asphalted road, deep down the precious stones and my silver engagement ring.

The Burial
Two days old she was attending
her mother's funeral
pictures were taken when
she sees them she will be proud and sad
she will be proud and sad
I did not attend my mother's
she died  a day before Christmas
hurriedly buried the diggers
wanted the day off
when I got the on a plane
it was too late I didn't leave
A small woman
Her bones must be tiny
Her skull big and empty
it has nothing to tell
So long ago
The woman I remember
has been reinvented
so many times
she was pygmy gave
me to a Swedish missionary  
who soaked me in bleach for
a week I'm so white need
no flashlight
I cannot remember the real one
But she is in here somewhere.

The huddled masses

They came here
from war and starvation
to seek
freedom from religion
and  ethnic
disharmony.
But some came
to sow
disharmony
turn time back
to the
time of war
******
and
no freedom of speech

Morning Walk.  

Seven in the morning I went on my walk wonderfully overcast
clouds were sable and a cooling wind blew perfect on a time
when it gets too hot in the day.
I stopped at times the old trees by the road looked dignified
leaves moved as saying hi.
Wished I could walk and walk to the bottom of the valley where
the stream is, but legs would not carry me so far, the acceptance
of old age come hard mind and body no longer sing in harmony.
It is so wonderful here in the empty lane dogs know my steps and
do not bark I’m surrounded by the natural beauty.

The merchant ship
The ship leaves Rotterdam
sail to the med, and through the Suez channel
into the red sea, the vessel arrives at an oil terminal
and all you see is pipelines storage tanks and sand,
then the ship goes back the same way.
The sea in its different mood can be lovely to look
at but after some time it gets boring.
Or a containership jam-packed with boxes that
load and unload I record time there is no time to go ashore
and explore. After a year of this tedium, you go home
and have seen nothing but oil tubes.

An old dream surfaces

Today I have watered my wife's garden; this can be
misconstrued, well she actually has a small garden
at the side of the house, we have cleaner who comes in
once a week and she does the watering, but she is on
holiday. I'm not keen on flowers they are so useless
I like to plant cabbage and potatoes something practical and
filling, if I only had a patch of land and a donkey I could
sell leek asparagus and tomatoes on the farmers market
and I will be a friend of many, as it is I sit and write
Not the best thing to do and win friends

Epigram
you can never be famous in your wife’s eyes
she has seen the pain hidden in your smile,
the bareness of your soul, she has seen your
discontent on days of yet another refusal.

Timber
I was going to write something from my everyday
but got bored and changed my mind, instead, I switched
on the TV and I can now know how to build
a timber cabin in Alaska and *** Edam cheese is made
a knowledge that hitherto had not interested me.
I have lived in a house made of timber from a stranded schooner it was never painted and had the aroma of tar, soap suds, ship baked bread and dreams of home.
alas, the house was destroyed by a drunken British bomber- pilot who mistook the house for a tank but
there was a war and the Brits were our allies, no point
sue the liberators.
There was a screaming, arrogant lady called Judge Judy
who took great delight in insulting people who didn't
have much in the way of defending themselves.
TV, has the ability to bore me, every ****** news channel
copy one another, and the weather forecast is
a guessing game in a nice dress or suit, what the hell
I'm better off reading a book that is not too long

If it had been the bike repairman
or, the mechanic who never overcharge
when bringing my old Lada back to life,
I could have understood….
But A Free Mason!
I blame the classless society when a perfectly
honest factory girl falls in love with
likes of him…. and even worse goes and
get hitched to the man

The Nordic Dilemma

There was a time in the sixties and the seventies
when the idea of social justice was taken seriously even by
the elites, the shipping tycoons of the day,
who paid (more or less) the taxes like everybody else.
But times improved for everyone, oil was found and
people were quite prosperous and lived in a cocoon of
self-satisfaction, and when people from poorer nations
knocked on our doors, the found the same door
only half ajar, and the people why should we to share
our wealth with the poor; the transition from equality
To unfairness was complete. A nation that thought their
riches was based on hard work when it was based
on a commodity called oil needed to drive cars and keep
The wheels of capitalism are running. In the process
the Norwegian bought houses in Spain because it was
cheap to buy at a place where wages were low for
the workers while the bosses made fortunes selling
that, in the long run, turned out to be substandard and
Only the low-cost material was used. The Nordics felt
racial superior to the Spanish people and made their
own small society a waved their flags on Iberian soil,
and yet they feel they have not done anything wrong

Not Welcome
The sun is like a huge gas bottle exploding- it is an enormous bottle
- not a puny flask.
Strong as it is yet fragile it can shift, cool a little,
and the whole world will have Icelandic summers-
a sad affair- all year long and no hot springs like
the Icelanders, who are sons and daughters of Irish
monks who came here to Christianise the island
which at the time was sparsely populated and - like
Japanese apes- mostly lived in or around hot pools
Today, winter tried a comeback pathetic show like
seeing an old man trying to lift a bag of cement on
his shoulder and fail, grey dust, laughter, scorn
and admonished by a foreman 40 years his junior;
and still two years before he could retire,
icy wind, a splatter of rain but, the clouds could not
make a steel band, cracked, and the sun smiled.
To make it worse the tuned into a mild zephyr, but
winter tried- nothing wrong with failing- lost
it – the sun- will be stronger and show no mercy.

Short verse
They thought him asleep
Rose thorns’ cut his jugular vein
Beauty of crimson

Death before the NEW YEAR

For a week I heard music from his house, it went on day and night, but not loud enough to annoy anyone. Last time I saw him, he looked ravaged by
his drug addiction remembered him as a young man,
I knew he was gay which is a no; in our little village, we all turned a blind eye.  
His addiction had made him ugly I thought of the painting in the attic
in the book Dorian Grey, by Oscar Wilde, it was shortly
before the New Year, he was found dead in a filthy little hotel.
At fifty-two he was too young to die, but his last twenty years
had been a struggle against ******, or some other drug,
perhaps it was for the best. That sentence was disgustingly trite,
what the hell do I know?

The Aspiration

The rose by the wayside was picked by a man of self-standing, and it turned modestly blue, alas the day wore on and the man
threw the flower off ifs lapel and for the simple reason it was
not as innocent as picked this morning.

Someone green left wing saw the flowers and planted it in
his poet of natural fertilisers. The flower grew and bloomed
pink not being sure where to belong I had only seen one lie
that before and that was in the black forest.

The plant was put up for sale as it had three colours by those
who had saved it and the longing for an upper-class life?
Expensive few could buy it but the man who had thrown it away
did and the flower was glad to be upper class,

Disembowelled
Mackerel sky blue and light blue strips
perhaps it was the zebra of the sea swimming away in haste
                                     I was gutting one
                                     No big deal
                                     I was learning to cook at the time
Inside the fish was a finger with a ring made of gold, but
I vomited, and the master- Cook took the ring.
                                     The school is now a catering academy
                                      Teaches the same as before
                                      But academy sounds more learned
                                      A cook is now a chef has got a diploma

Racism 1952

A man had been working on a flat garage roof
jumped into the yard, not a long jump but
landed badly and hurt his ankle.
He picked up a plank and used it to get out
and to the bus stop.
The bus driver wouldn't let him on because
of the plank, and he lost his balance and fell,
People stepped over him, this black drunk.
The pavement was cobble ******, so he walked
to the hospital using the road, where he was hit
by a car, an ambulance arrived, the man had hurt
his ankle, but it was not broken, a plaster cast,
they gave him a crutch so he could get home.
The driver of the car which hit him,
picked up the plank it was just the size needed
repairing his house.
We have come to a long way racism is no longer
so ugly but skulk in corners and the judicial system.

The Visit

Mother and I went to visit her uncle and his family
Who lived in the outskirt of the town, we took the bus
No five which took us to the posher part of the city.
Mother's uncle was a foreman at and small abattoir
His speciality was the killing of sheep
When he came home the whole family, they had two children
Ate dinner in the kitchen, mother and I sat in the living room
She was given a cup of coffee, and I got a glass of milk
The uncle came into the living room and spoke to my mother
He was tired he said, and I wondered how many sheep he had
Killed that day blood was dripping from his hands, but I thing
He gave mother some money when his wife was doing the dishes
We left, and I was feeling angry without knowing why, in the hall
I said have you got cats? No, we have not.
I can smell cat ***, I said.
Outside mother scolded me for being rude but smiled
I never saw mother's uncle again nor his snobbish wife or their
Children they never visited us we lived in the wrong part
Of our town

Once in a memory
The boy played by the small stream running near the hospital
where his mother was a patient and time hung heavy this
afternoon in late September.
The boy picked five elongated leaves from a bush on each one
he put a pebble wanted to see if any leaf/boat survived
the voyage to where the stream went underground.
One leaf made it and should come out where the seaport is.
Once the stream had run free and rapidly crossed the green
field where elderly horses grazed, after a life of pulling
heavy carts, the lady who owned the land let the horses
be free; she had spent her youth looking after her father
who had been a Danish general, keeping his boots shining?
Habits are difficult to erase sometimes, a horse was seen
trotting in the cobbled streets lost in the past.
The stream ran to the strand where men pulled the boats
up for repair and selling fresh fish, ***** and shrimps.
As for the horses, when they were so old their teeth, gone could
not eat, the last walk was the knacker’s yard; salami and glue.
The field is now a town square where farmers sell their products
and their wives sell thick woolen long jones.
There is a statue of a famous writer he looked patrician, but mostly
he suffers the indignity of seagull droppings.
The lady who protected horses was regarded as eccentric,
but she lives on in songs and tales.
The boy saw in a café two ladies he sensed he knew; little did
he knows they were, as time rolled on- one at the time, wives.
When the boy came home, his mother was out of hospital,
boiling potatoes and frying sliced turnips.

Consensus

Democracy! I'm dipping my toes into the shark infested
the water of politics and have noticed that a large section of the British
the public who after years of grooming turned against EU planned
by the upper echelon of the society who never liked
having their power reduced, no longer the lord of their moth-eaten
Empire. Naturally, they have to follow the law of democracy and
try to leave and at the same time keeping the goodies.
Democracy can only function in a country that practice free press,
but in Britain's case its own by the wealthy whose opinions ae
getting their stuff into the paper, and deploy editors that only
tow the view of one kind when pretending to be open and just
when killing news worthy of attention calling it fake news.
We live in an authoritarian society that uses democracy as the cream to hide the rotten fruit within.

*** plants
I have no picked flowers in my home
If I see a beautiful flower by the wayside
I stop and admire it, perhaps touch it slightly.
In my house, are there many *** plants I water them regularly
Some thrive with much sunlight in the window sill
Others like the shady interior.
If you hand me bouquet of roses, I can't think of why,
You are handing me impending death.

A labour politician


  He is a short man with an evil nisse  mentality
his long-term views are that of a political opportunity
  of one who read a paper before it is printed.
What can you say about a man who has been married?
five times is it because he uses women as tools because
they disagree with his views or because the might say
something that might destroy hidden carefully
constructed by a person of the left crafted to be ambiguous
and no one would know he was intellectually dishonest
like calling the Jews Zionists, those I met were perfectly normal
and lamented they were prisoners of propaganda and misdeed
of the cultural connection that had hatred in its heart

Indoctrination


It is in fairy tales we learn about rich and poor,
the wealthy suitor always wins and gets the princesses hand
and the poor cobbler will always be mending shoes.
In the “glass slippers,” the poor girl fits the slippers and the prince
while the ugly sisters get a job in the Guardian Newspaper,
where they get paid for griping about men.
In Little Red Riding Hood the wolf is the working class trying to take
Power from the haves, but he becomes a cropper and drowns
in the well. So you see, the indoctrination starts early and when
we are adults find inequality normal

Winter landscape

The landscape was white like frozen waves
smoke from farm chimney went straight only dispersed
when meeting the upper sky.
Ah, this innocence of virginal snow cold as nun's cell.
The boy sat in the cow-shed warming his hands on the udder
of a cow, later, he walked on snow so pure it made crushing
the sound that broke the snow's ***** under his foot
But there were tracks after hares, birds, wolverines, and
the opportunistic fox.
Blood in snow, like a sheet on a wedding night the sacrificing of
the lamp sanctified by priest and church.
The fox had caught a mouse that built a tunnel under the snow
thinking it was snug and safe.
A crow sits on a tree watches the scene with irony in it black eyes,
afar  someone calls him in for breakfast

Security guard

I was broke, no work for me at the shipping office,
got a job guarding tractors; sat in a hut that was cold and had no heating
and bad light. Well, this job was better than sitting at home
lamenting my unemployment, but my god was it boring.
Sat on a tractor pretending I was a farmer ploughing a potato field,
and that was tedious too. The uniform they had given me
was too small for my frame looked like a walking scarecrow.
At midnight another guard came to take over and I asked him
how he could survive the tedium. Me, he said I go to sleep
I have full time work during the day.
Next day I got a phone from the shipping office it had been
difficult they said I had a reputation for not playing ball
and being argumentative; took the job handed in my uniform.

The vision

The horses, mares and colts that drank cold water
in the shallow river crossing the grassland
looked up a massive plane its wingspan
darkens the valley.
The horses gallop till they are tired and the plane has left
the horses, at ease, can graze again.
The far mountain is like a Canadian blue mountain song
is hazy and shivers like a broken vocal cord.
A lotus swarm of helicopters fill the sky and scared
horses are galloping, again and again, the sky darkens.
Then on the far mountain, a new sun appears it shines
bright for a while, then dies like a comet.
A storm blows, the grass withers and the river are dry.
Dead horses, but the blue mountain is a diamond

Thoughts on Saturday

I saw the Queen of England on TV it was her birthday and people
were out waving flags.  I dislike monarchy in any form
but the Queen looked splendid in a blue sky dress
and there were proud men in fantasy uniforms
riding on  beautiful horses; no one does
pageant better than the English.
But my heart was not in it, I still lament
the death of Bourdain it was like losing a brother
like me, he was a chef that broke out of the kitchen
and ventured the world.
I have written a poem about my brother's struggle
with depression but hesitate to publish it
as it might offend his children. Of course, I could
have avoided the absolute truth, but then I would have
done him a disservice. I'm still in Algarve, the removal van broke down it will take a few days to repair it not that I mind moving house,
at my age is difficult.
O well, I have to relax and take it as it comes.