It chills my heart; it pains my mind
To learn that one young soul
Has perished in that short sea stretch
From fear to freedom.

“Keep them out” is the hate-filled cry.
“Send them back across the sea,
Or to some equally unsafe nation.”
And, in the meantime, one young soul

Has perished.  He who wanted nothing
But to live a life free from fear.
Who can say?  Perhaps the fates have given him
A better rest than had been promised.

I am so weary of the constant repetition
By the shallow and disreputable folk
Who claim to be our leaders,
Yet unremittingly by tactless talk
Betray the very principles
With which they sought to gain
Our credulous support,
And treat with reprehensible disdain
And superficial jargon
And empty-headed vows
Those principles that leaders of a bygone age
Did fervently espouse.
Where are they now?
Where have they gone?
Please reappear! Come back!
Those rare folk that we could depend upon.

I can sympathize with pain but not with pleasure.
There are those who prefer suffering to sympathy;
Who would exchange solace for sensuality.
It is not my wish to offer them a choice

I seek to bring you comfort;
To bring you to a resting place.
But will I bring solace to myself?
Will I find a refuge?

And if not me, then who?
And if not here, then where?
And if not now, then when?
This is no recipe for scant solace.

This is a mystery that has  me baffled ,
The answer's one I simply cannot see:
If I would be like someone else,
Who would be like me?

I have neither time nor patience
for anyone who lacks the strength of character
to admit blame when they know they are wrong.

Personally I would always
confess my faults immediately,
if I had any!

She played on the strings of my heart.
Was it a melody?
Did it harmonise?
Was it sensual or sensuous?
Who can say; but at the end of the day
It was naught but a vast discord.

A poem is a form of expression
which patterns a thought
to naked emotion,
and then clothes it with words.

My five syllables
Are followed by seven more.
Is this a haiku?

The heat of my emotions
Cools the coarseness of my words.

You may be unable to control
what is happening
in the world outside yourself,
but you can always control
your response
to what is happening.

And usually
that is good enough.

The older I get
the greater I’m astonished
at how young I am

It’s an acid test
If life hands me a lemon
I must **** it up


Trust integrity.
Failure to do what is right
is the greater wrong.


Don’t hide your feelings.
Yelling is much less painful
than biting your tongue


Present facts fairly.
Refrain from embellishment.
The truth should suffice.

Today is to enjoy
Don't think about tomorrow,
Better live in joy
Than die in sorrow

I cannot believe
in my own mortality.
Am I a vampire?


Being close to you,
no matter how far away,
I’m closer to me.


Once I’d learned to crawl
I yearned to reach to the sky
and prove I could fly

There are different levels of love
as there are different layers of onion,
and the trick is to peel the layers
whilst retaining the essence.

Be it of love
or onions.

I thought I needed your love
and hoped you needed mine.
I was delusional.
Greater by far to acknowledge desire,
and not to confuse wants with needs.

We all need strokes
but they come from within
and what is best to avoid
is the confusion
of the trigger for the bullet.

In a fast-food establishment
I sat before my plastic tray
of great hamburger,
crisp French fries
and quite delicious chocolate shake.

When all at once
I did espy
A pudding man, with pudding wife
and their two doughy children
stuffing their pudding faces.

Obesity, the modern scourge.
How did we encourage it,
I asked myself,
before the advent
of the fast-food chains?

Before the coming
of McDonald's and the KFC
how did we suffer
anorexia, bulimia, and diaphragm activity,
and so much mortal, morbid, disability?

And just to make sure
that we didn’t miss out
on these delicious fattening goodies,
they introduced the internet
and asked us to accept all cookies.

The love we share may have deep roots;
the branches of the love we share
may exceed the length of those roots;
my arms may stretch out and enfold you
as the branches of a tree
may embrace whatever they hold captive.

We may stand together as tall
as the depth of the roots of our love.
But the roots of our love may extend
beyond the length of its branches.

There are no grains
of golden sand
to be seen
upon this black and burning beach
where we once spent our honeymoon.
In Ostia.

The brutal sun,
so uncompassionate,
that desiccates our skin
and burns the unshod feet
that venture on that dirt-black sand
in Ostia.

Why should one choose
to indurate the body
in such an unappealing
coastal strip that serves
as beach to Romans who betake themselves
to Ostia.

Particularly since
It’ll cost ya.

At my age, friends become fewer,
and those that remain
are all the more venerated.

It is becoming harder and harder
to recall that time
when older people were revered.

As time passes, so do the elderly,
and the contemporaries
that are with us, slowly diminish.

There comes a time in life
when we become uncomfortably aware
that we are outliving our friends.

I feel I want to say please bide awhile,
do not desert me at a time
when there are so few of you left.

What is this discomfort that I feel
when I outlive a friend?
Surely the guilt should belong to the one leaving me?

If you ask me
what it is I search for,
I will be obliged to
answer: “The truth”.

If you should then ask me,
“What is the truth?”
I will be obliged to
answer “I have not yet found it.”

How will I know
when I have found it?
Will it be
self-evident?

I will discard
everything that is not the truth,
and what remains,
however unlikely,
will be the truth.

Or possibly
it will not be
the truth.

He was my only son.
I held him in my arms,
I dandled him on my knees,
I taught him all those things
his mother had ignored.

And there were gaps
of which I grew aware.
All that I wished for my son
was poured into my love for him,
And I was alive to failure
to provide much that was required.

But through the years of gain and loss,
of triumph and disaster both
unexpected and quite unexplained,
my pride grew seamlessly
as I always did my best
and was repaid in myriad ways.

And there has now evolved
a subtle but yet distinctive
alteration in our relationship:
a clearly visible but well-defined
role-reversal as he reveals
embarrassing concern for my well-being.

Apparently, I have now become
The child of my son.

Creation was an engineered design
and, if we are to believe the Scriptures,
planning preceded execution.
Since when there’s been no ceased attempt
to improve the initial configuration.

Biodiversity, extinction, reproduction,
new designs, new genesis, new formulation,
but who is the new engineer?
And what ulterior motive
stimulates the new creation?

The dinosaurs (and they were not the first!)
preceded the birds and the bees.
Nature needed no stimulation
beyond mankind’s ****** desire
To encourage or restrain procreation.

And now we have seemingly learned
by trial – but more by error –
how simple it is to fashion anew
an environmental disaster
with the portent of universal dissipation.

We have the statesmen and politicians
to thank for our lemming-like rush
to oblivion.  The next metamorphosis
may be the last – at least in human terms
without transubstantiation.

In linguistics
and in politics,
it’s a really small step
from creation to cremation.

Eternal peace I sought, in eternal solitude.
Yet eternity is timeless and it is endless.
When we talk of killing time
We are suggesting an end of eternal life.
But we are in it; we are of it;
We cannot end it; it is part of each moment.
It will, by definition, continue evermore.
What a comforting thought.

If only it were possible
To hold a mirror to my mind
And try to ascertain
If the image it portrays
Is true or a distortion.

What does the mirror show
When I move away?
How can I be sure that my
Reflection moves away with me?
If not, then the next viewer
Will see my face
And not their own.
How terrifying!

. . . in our search for immortality
we must not forget
that
all flesh is grass.
It’s better to die
having made the journey
than to stifle
one’s advancement
in the embrace
of adventure unfulfilled.

I choose to stay at home.

Wherever I go,
I'm still there.

So why bother?

So, I make mistakes!
But I’m happy to do so.
If you learn from them.

Each time I re-read
Something I wrote long ago
I’m closer to me

To be possessed of
The wisdom of youth and the
Vigour of old age.

Seek if you would find
But seek not too intently
That way madness lies

The loving tree that we plant in each other
is the blooming tree
we carry in our hearts.

And the branches can reach out
when we are long gone.

What I really deplore and deprecate in our society
is growing evidence of the spread of iconoclasm.
It is not enough apparently to seek to improve
our own condition.  We are made happiest
by our ability to destroy the reputation of others.

Personally, I will never seek to promote my happiness
by denying other people theirs.
So don’t tell me I should be satisfied with my lot.
Don’t preach to the converted.

Where did it come from?  Where will it go?
I pose the questions, I listen for the answers,
and hear nothing but sibilance
in my defective auditory sense.
But answers there are . . . I know.

Nature has always given the response
That echoed in the nightfall of my soul.
It began in those excursions as a child
and gathered pace in wartime’s exodus,
‘midst shattering of peace and of belief.

‘Twas ever thus, to walk upon the Sussex Downs,
The Surrey Hills, the Essex flats,
To feel the wind upon my cheeks
The song of birdcalls in the air,
And life so full of radiance and joy.

‘Twas ever thus, the yearly trips
To Devon’s headlands and to Cornish beaches.
The voyages across the seas,
the sojourns in yet more distant lands.
Exultation with exheredation.

Decades of travelling, seeking the answers,
so much of the time forgetting the questions;
journeying hither and yon, tracing the clouds
following their dreams, and mine, on shimmering shores,
discovering the sweetness of life grown sour.

And through it all I have known love, excessively,
and never cautiously enough.  A spendthrift
wasting all the wealth of praise and acclamation
in luxuriant homage to his own dissipation,
sleeping with salvation and waking in confusion.

And now, the twilight of a life grown weary
in a constant yet inconstant search for answers,
at last gives way to calamitous acceptance
of the eternal verity.  Ex nihilo is nonsense;
we have no option but to embrace ex materia.

© Joseph Sinclair, May 25 2022

I wish I could shake that feeling of loss.
I wish I could recapture that moment of bliss,
that joyous acceptance of rapture
of halcyon days, beatitude, delectation,
euphoria and serenity.

To bathe in a basin of bliss; to enter a state of bliss.
You don’t seek bliss, bliss happens.
My spirit-ear listens; my spirit-heart feels;
my blissful search suffers, My spirit-mind heals;
Peace and infinity.

I honor the foreboding that appears,
The hesitancy it heralds in the call,
The inadvertent buttress of the fears,
Reluctance to acknowledge the outfall.

And, all the while, the heav’nly choir gives voice,
The prayers devout as any that were heard
But yet recalcitrant insistence on pro-choice,
Determined to maintain faith undeterred.

Wherever we go, whatever we do,
there comes a time ultimately
when we must say goodbye.

We can gaze at the stars, be amazed at the sky,
be enthralled by the galaxies
that may be hidden from view.

But no matter how vast the universe seems
or the new constellations that are ever revealed,
the time surely comes when we must say goodbye.

Before taking our leave, breathing a sigh
as the time of departure draws hurriedly near,
we recognise sadly the last knell appears.

Not alone for ourselves; that has always been so,
but the old earth itself is preparing to go.
And now is the time we must say goodbye.

Don't tell me I've time
When we both know full well
It's time that has me!

INDEBTEDNESS

Because you did not hesitate to give
Your heart and soul wholeheartedly to me,
Because you helped to keep my dreams alive,
And were wherever you had need to be,

I shall remember everything you said
And everything you did on my behalf,
It will remain for me the fountainhead
And be my beating heart’s oscillograph.

And reaching back across the passing years
Of trials and sufferings and loss untold,
I’ll not forget how well you stilled my fears,
A willing prisoner to your stranglehold.

If words are inadequate,
enjoy the bliss of silence.

I finally got
what I had for so long sought.
And did not want it.

What a pity
there's no vaccine
for stupidity!

Neurotics talk to their analysts,
Sinners talk to their priests
Hypochondriacs visit their doctors
Writers write.

Vandalism should be unfulfilled.
What a fool may destroy in an instant
Ten wise men may need a lifetime to rebuild.

Though now far away
At the crossroad of your life
You draw ever near.

Thomas Carlyle said
the present is the living sum total
of the whole past.

Now, when I look back
over the history
that is the sum total
of my life,
there are aspects
that are hard to
fathom.

There are black holes
where one might expect
to encounter
a white hole’s event horizon,
while other events
have apparently failed
to intersect
my preferred boundaries.

Arithmetic’s never been my strength
and I suspect that
at one stage or another
I may have
put a decimal point in
the wrong place.

I was born wise
and have spent the better part of a century
trying to constrain
buffoonery.

I have lived in interesting times
I have endured many different climes
Much of my life has been bizarre
But now, calling me from afar,
I begin to hear those compelling chimes

Ill fares the land
Where statesmen do transgress;
Where sin soars out of hand
and honor does regress,
and we value honor
less and less.

For years I have suspected that I may be living
in a parallel universe.
This is a suspicion that has been reinforced
over the decades
by the continual depletion of my contemporaries.

And now I must ask myself:
if it is indeed true that I am on a different continuum
of space and time from all those others
who have formed a part of my existence,
then perhaps I am also responsible for its decline.

If, by the power of my thought,
by the essence of my existence, I am the progenitor
of the series of catastrophes, calamities, and cataclysms
that continually clapperclaw my world,
then perhaps I can also bring a sense of calm.

And if I do not choose to do so,
if I allow, by my own negligence,
that catalogue of crime to be unleashed
against a helpless world,
then am I not the culprit?

It is a chilling thought.

A mournful
Waterfall
Of sound
A gentle
Susurration.

A sad cascade
Reverberates
In timeless
Melody
And tuneless
Tempo.

Disturbs
My soul
And disconcerts
My spirit.

Words are not enough.
Those that are not meaningless
may simply lack importance
or else be capable of
myriad interpretations.

Let us set aside dissimulation
and deception by flattery.
Let’s put an end to empty words
or unctuous, or sanctimonious,
holier-than-thou, obsequious,
intended-to-deceive euphemisms.

Words that were the greatest boon
to civilization: that made it possible
for humans to engage in dialogue,
to see inside each other’s hearts,
to identify each other’s needs
and substantiate our own,
took on, eventually, another role.

Time it is to recognize
how words have now become a tool
for scoundrels to dissemble.
Time it is to liberate the human heart
from language that holds us in thrall.

Time it is to reconnect
with our humanity.