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Stanley Wilkin Dec 2016
1

He leant down
Quietly carving his name into the sand;
The pursuing waves,
Repeatedly rippling forward, with
The force of a motorized modern army
Gunning down civilians,
Dragged it clean.  

Flies loquaciously buzzed around his head,
As, crushing down seaweed,
He carved his name again.

2.

The roots dug deep, pushing against
The soil. The particles spread apart
With sexless ardour. The man,
Of a tolerant disposition, wrenched
The roots free with drenched hands.
Nothing lasted forever.

3.

The yellow and green of the sunrise
Turned swiftly into unpretentious browns
The light changing shape as the
Morning matured and the sun
Rose further in the sky. Pumped up
Clouds rolled sinuously along, combining and separating
Like fantastic amoeba.


4.

And so it continued
Under the burning sun; more spiteful from year to year.
The man said nothing
As he climbed into the salt water,
Gulls circumnavigating above his head,
With nothing to say or remember
Except the lines in the sand.
Stanley Wilkin Dec 2016
As cold as another age, wracked with solitude,
A slow start to another beginning,
Unreliable cloud coats the sky
And the sea repetitiously roars in,
Cuffing cliffs,
Pounding rocks
With calamitous roars
Playing endless riffs across the sand.

We walked together down the beach
Troubled by the surf
Chewing on cigarette stubs, sullied by the wind
New ghosts in the half-light
Bearing years like backpacks.

Grown old in the gathering twilight
We chattered together, our footsteps picking
Wounds.  Barbed words
Like greetings, cheerfulness like an accusation.
******* a shared and interesting memory,
We cuddled together in the scouring wind
Enjoying each other’s casual warmth.

It was a time for reflection,
When love is a scab on evolving friendship,
Heartlessness the price of redemption.
The contrived book of your beauty,
The gilded ceramic of expertly rendered features
The undulating film of your gestures, coded and decoded
Through time.

Beauty is finite, crumbling to fleshless reminiscence
Fixed to canvas and celluloid
With tireless labour. In the end, signifying another thing-
Of little interest.
An artist’s casual thought, a director’s cut.
They barely remember your name,
Your laughter and wildness gone, missed by the
Senile artist’s transitory brush,
Clotted with hundred-year-old varnish.

A small house by the sea
Surrounded by flowerbeds sparkling with summer colour
Self-absorbed children, with whom we exchanged affection
And parted from, holidaying in Bangkok
With lovers of all sorts.
As the sea rolled towards us
And evening gave way to night.
Stanley Wilkin Nov 2016
He intimately coaxed the bomb like a lascivious lover
Passionate for death-
Carefully balancing out the ingredients,
Fixing the charge,
His soft-palmed hands caressing each part,
Beneath his unsettling gaze.

In paradise he’d spend his eternity-
Having killed his way towards god.

The crowds gathered in the boulevard
Arm in arm, laughing, relaxed.
He drove past them noting their joy-
Loathing their happiness,
An offence against his desire for death.
Turning his car sharply around
He slowly drove past them again.

In that brief moment, the wind
Gently rocking, his thumb pressed down.

The bomb blew, shredding the air,
Grinding his grinning soul into dust.
The blast ripped screams from each chest:
A world suddenly full of unbearable pain,
Blood crawling along the pavement,
Limbs in the gutter, leaking tears.

His road to heaven cost a hundred lives-
Cracked bodies, fragmented souls-
The squalid suffering of children.
Rivers of milk and honey
Thickened with blood.
Stanley Wilkin Nov 2016
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.*

W.B.Yeats




In a time such as this, in darkening days
        Without screeching witches
Frightened banshees, buggered old men
Searching for solace, eyes streaming with icicle-lust-
Gangrene facebook: torn-up, shredded twitter

The cries of the disconnected,
Wailing!
Wailing!

In a time like this, in darkening days,
The disconnections come in waves!

Searching for reason amongst the unreasoning,
Hunting for sanity within the insane,
Identifying the dead from amongst the living.

Wailing!
Wailing!

Email excreting venom
Internet exfoliating lies-politicians wrapped
                         In deceit-
A cold time of it, a wretched time of it.

Only within our hearts does hope lie.
                      Only there
Away from conflict and disorder
                             Away
From the capricious cacophony of biased debate.

Wailing!
Wailing!
Stanley Wilkin Nov 2016
When the sea rolled in
I knew we were ******!
It came in like an express
Snorting, snarling, inconsiderate
Blowing everyone away.
I survived. Clinging to a tree.
I watched my friends
Wallow away in sea-water.
Stanley Wilkin Nov 2016
It was the day the toilet broke,
the day the bank was robbed
when my wife walked out,
suitcase in hand. Her head
blown off on the pavement
in the gunfire between bank robbers
and police. It was that kind of day.
That evening I had the toilet repaired.
Stanley Wilkin Oct 2016
Perched on the wall, the Raven scrutinised the fields that stretched for miles
Studying the crows as they gathered together by the clump of berry bushes
Its gimlet eyes concentrated, waiting to strike.
Searching for weaknesses amongst its minions, a black-shirt, a minor deity made for death,
Skull’s head, ****, the demon of the dull cloud-dark skies.
An omen heralding star-snuffed, moon-ruined night.
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