buried in his body like a swollen prayer the pain chugged within his heart,
& tearing lungs and guts apart
& gasping for broken air
& dying in filtered solitude, the scare
was a ticket for paradise &
a ticket past hell

Afraid of the rifle fire, he had

Crouched all day in the dirt,

A dull fellow at the best of times.

Ricocheting bullets bolted to the air

Surfing the wind, screaming

Abuse like ill-disciplined relatives

Arriving for an impromptu visit.

One shattered his head-there it was,

There were its remnants-

Greasy insubstantial grey matter that

Contained his soul.  

An end to drinks in the pub

The love of his wife

The smiles of his children

Holidays in Benidorm with the In-Laws

Paella by the swimming pool.

One bullet, not even new, put an end to a contented life.

I had held myself as a greater man,
A soldier aloof from the whims of life.
The only things I cared for were the gladius in my hand
The screams of my enemies
As their blood dripped from my blade
And they lay clawing at my feet.

I went ******* with the boys
Played with them games of dice
Laughed at their jokes.
It was all lip service.
I did not care for their ways,
The ways of lesser men.
I was a soldier whose only lust was for blood.
I was better.

The new recruits came
With their beardless faces.
They huddled together for comfort,
Some cried to their mothers
Others prayed.
Those simpering wrecks were of no interest
Except for one
Erasmos.
With the stature of a god
The confidence of a titan
He stood amongst his peers
As a man stands amongst children.

It was not long until we sparred.
As good soldiers there was no need for words.
We both knew what was obvious
What was as certain as life and death
We were brothers in arms
Of the same breed
We were as one.

The fight came.
Outnumbered ten to one
We fought
Until blood soaked our faces
Our enemies and our own
Until crimson flooded our eyes
Our noses
Our mouths.

Before night fell we were the only two left
Alone in a field full of ravenous beasts
Of coprses waiting for the crows
Left to rot in some far flung land.
Their gaping snouts salivated
Waiting for the chance to sink their blades into our flesh.
A new emotion filled my veins.
I was no longer fighting for myself
To satisfy my lust for death
But for my kin standing next to me
The god made flesh

It was as we stood back to back
As I felt him stand firm against Fortuna’s whims
That I knew I was finally what I claimed to be
For Erasmos
My love
Has made me a greater man.

And if this is love, then why?
I mean it’s a silly feeling after all.
Full of highs and lows.
Full of unreasonable resentments
Uncontrollable longing.
If this is love, fine
But it leaves room for little else
Even for air.
Even for thoughts.
Are you sure it is love?
Have you felt it too?
It overwhelms and I
Am no longer ‘me’,
I no longer seek ambitious goals
Dwell on the everyday-
If this is love, it leaves me free!

As they grew older they grew further away
Withholding their love
Remote, with apparently little to say
No words, no tears, no kind of stuff
Falling from their distant lives
Living with new thoughts, lovers, wives.
A troupe of sons, gambling with time!

Alexander was a rotten son of a brilliant father
Misled by a mother’s lies
Into an oedipal outrage. Spurred to violence, rather
Then be a man he became a legend, pursued by biting flies.
Betrayal often leads to success,
The betrayer a psychological mess.

The love of a child evaporates
Evident in the lives of kings
The urge for power saturates
Ignores duty, gratitude, those kind of things.
But hell! So what?
We once, objects of their beaming infant smiles, received such a lot.

OK, Richard the First left his father to die alone,
John ripped the money from the dead man’s purse,
They then fought each other for the throne
Making a family feud undeniably worse.
Throughout history, the mothers taking new ambitious lovers
Caused greater angst amongst whole generations of brothers.

Families are rarely friends: brother fights brother
Sister quarrels with sister, battling incessantly,
Despising each carefully chosen lover
Examining each other critically.
The success of one initiates gloom,
A show of brilliance, a thunderous rain-wrenched boom.
  
Compared to great and legendary figures
Our problems are played out beneath a dimmer light
We drown our thoughts with liquor
Squabble like screeching bats in the night
No grabbing of swords, fastening of armour, beribboned horses
Our mundane arguments have tiny causes.

Constant rain, no more bird song,
Constant wind, no more flowers,
Autumn bears down like a war lord.

They walk and stare and walk and stare
Like I am some alien, not meant to be there.
I ask for help, they smile and nod
And then they simply walk off.
Is it me I ask? Is it me?
Should this place me free
Of one so clearly of another breed?
No, surely not.
That can’t be right.

I ask again, I beg, I plead.
Yet one by one they ignore me
As if I were a rotten seed
Planted by a foreign hand.
It is me. It is me.
They want this place free
Of one so clearly of another breed.
Funny that.

I leave.
I return.
With warmth and smiles I am greeted.
Refinement it may lack
Without a doubt that’s a fact.
But at least it has its humanity intact.

Dressed in black, dark eyes amused
She strolls into a room
With the specialised tread
Of a femme fatale,
Tossing her streaming hair in arrogant joy.
Her perfect body
Contains the calm and unexpected force
Of the sea, shifting in a moment between

Reason and fury.
She graces the men with sure-footed Arabic,
Stark, sibilant, passionate words
Laughing like a poem.
A Moroccan beauty,
Guedra dancing in the sun,
From the desert coloured mosque of Casablanca
Punctured by the worship Of 70,000 songs,
To the unremitting souks of Marrakesh,
Her complexity
Emboldened by the courage
Of poets.

She has a silence in her intellect
Such as few have,
Unusual evidence of a soul
In a world of franchises,
Her past imaginings deeper and wider
Than that of her peers,
Dancing to fast Gharnati rhythms,
Beneath imagined Andulusian sunsets
And glowing skies.
An effervescent scintillating gasp of fervent
Desert air, beating across her limbs
Moving gently towards silence.

Recollections by the window

darkness at the door,

a spent cigarette,

a dried up memory bank-

a laptop lying purposefully in the grass.



in between the moment is the event



The wood is riven by foxes

whimpering with cloven paws

the newly accommodated ******

rakes up a new home

the water vole scurries into the infested water



in between the moment is the event


reproduced in the computer

action and moment have ceased,

action and intent no longer connected

time and thought perpetually adjusted



hollow rain signifies emptiness

a blank screen eternity.

Black crows,
smothered jackdaws,
obsessing on religion-
******* on ancient ideas,
drowning in gloomy words.
God made the world to be lived in
not to escape from-

By Garpal stream the young men came
Decades before the flood
On Garpal field they started the game
Quenching the grass with blood.
Down by the hill, near the copse, they lie,
The first to score was the first to die.

Every year the young men came
Where the roses and dandelions bud
Eager to play the game
Decades before the flood.
Beyond the hedge these young men lie,
The last to score was the last to die.

It rained before Advent, it rained after Lent
The rain fell on pasture and town,
The interminable water did not relent
But poured remorselessly down
By the end of the year, under the thundering light,
The world was a place of night.

A sodden land bereft of men
Garpal field was covered with weeds
As the women waited for the sun again
Spreading a blanket of seeds.
They waited as glorious golden rays
Fell during everlasting unending days.

The sprouting seeds grew tall and thin
Turning slowly into beautiful men
In a country filled to the brim
With cattle, wheat and fruit again.
Beyond Garpal stream where the rushes grew
The youths strolled over the grey diaphanous dew.

By Garpal stream the young men came,
Decades before the flood,
On Garpal field they started the game
Quenching the grass with blood.
Down by the hill, near the copse, they lie,
The first to score was the first to die.

Mutual embrace severed
Out of politeness, leg
Removed from leg we pulled
Apart desiring separation
In the afterglow.


An affair just begun
Is like a morning
After a night of rain, the
Sun sliding through gaps in the
Ceremonious cloud,
Serene, reassuring and secretive.


It was not yet love,
Just *******.
A curious investigation
Of a stranger, hardly known,
Of unspecified views, who
Has not yet freely spoken.


The routine had long ago been fixed,
Inconsequential phrases over coffee,
Denying breakfast, smiles
Without intent. Holding hands
At the door, a kiss,
And then the regretful goodbye.
A voice remembered as a sigh
A movement as pleasure,
No other memory but the callow scent
Of brief uncertain intimacy.

At night, smothered in darkness, it hunts
Its eyes burning like stars
Slinking through the air, searching
Soundlessly for prey.
“She is such a softee.” Esther sighs
Scooping its favourite food into a bowl.
“My baby. My furry little baby.”
Its claws sink into the wren, ripping
It apart in a cold deliberate frenzy.
Sodden bloodied feathers, slithers of skin
Like red glints in a killer’s darkening eye.
She takes the cat into her arms,
Cradling it and smothering it with kisses.
It purrs, dreaming carnivorous dreams of its owner’s dry flesh.

Sharp tormented leaves

Preoccupied with brief

Concerns, fighting against the decay

Spreading through its parts and those

Of its neighbours. Whether to stay

Or go? To cling to life or fall quietly, shuffling

Through the air, before time, startled by the wind?

The leaf’s existential angst is clearer

Than the slow pondering on life’s brevity

Of the tree, dying incrementally before

An equally slow rebirth. The tree

Endures through several lifetimes,

Twisting in agony.

The leaf meanwhile experiences,

After the clawing ferocity of casual storms,

Bubbling health, plump and green,

Before eviserating death. Is it therefore

Better to grow tall and long lived,

Enduring weather and creeping pests

Or live for only a year,

Agonised, to die in gorgeous coloured bliss?

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.

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.

A cold wind blew
when the light went.
An accumulation of warmth
came from copse and hill,
cheap spawned and self created,
as the night renewed.
He walked home, careless of his stumbling steps,
and softly threw his bags to the
floor, demons on the hearth-rug,
coiling snakes and insects everywhere.

It was all behind him now.
A sullen fist of half-remembered regret,
the weather-laden wood carrying his dreams
in each silver flaked leaf.

A half-remembered face, an
age destroyed beauty.
It was time to go now!
Time to go!


The frost enthralled clouds interlocked
when time slowed,
leaving half dead leaves languishing or intermittently
crashing to the ground.
Few left or returned,
combating time.


A half-remembered life
spun from seconds.
Sad voices in half-remembered intervals.

Dive bombers, black wings spread,
satanic angels: Two crows attacked another
broken on the long grass,
consumed by grappling weeds,
unable to fly and imprisoned within
the soft melding soil as if caught
nesting; I watched from afar; a spectator at an accident
unwilling to intervene.
Darting beak, defending itself with desperate
protests: they swooped again and again-
stukas in the old war, squarking demonically
wings flapping like black pistons geared up for death-
again and again they drilled into the world of men
boring down until
in the fading light, head bowed,
the damaged crow surrendered
and vomitted out its last stored-up breath,
shining ebony slashed, in a flurry
of dangling flesh, its life hacked away-blood
dripping from its bill-
hacked away in the cold air,
its brothers, like brothers everywhere,
gorging on its flesh.

By then, I had had enough,
I refused to watch anymore. The bird
a meal for its own kind,
soon just scattered feathers
repositioning the light.
Its darkness, once a threat,
with its suggestion of forboding
now merely signalling innocence,
the victim of misrepresentation.
I left a scene that did not truly
embrace reflection, an unusual
carnival of life and death in a city
that rejected both.

Crushed leaves in an old book

Squandered memories;

In the dark, an old woman speaks

Softly

Through cracking teeth

Of an ancient fast disappearing love

Looking for the light.


‘As my future is invisible

I live in the past,

Scrounging memories

From fading dreams.’


Her words gently rustle.

Reconstructing the past

A straddling child

Mimics her toothless sounds.


‘I remember ***

I remember caresses

I remember coition’.


The rambling hours end in a sigh

The quiet voice in a whisper.

Time is a walk away.

Curled up, bright yellow petals glinting like glistering metals
Trees that rise and bow, silent now
Cars rushing into the dark, crushing a slow-moving lark,
Cats curled up before a fire ignoring the nearby church choir
Singing melodious paeans to god before a stature soaked in blood.
A rising bright silver moon floating across the sky too soon
Howling dog and wolf scampering across each shadowed roof
In that, the foulest night of the year pumped-up with fear,
With sepulchral screams hammering the brain, the sane and insane
Shackled to the earth before, not after, death.

1.
The darkness fled before me
While I stayed in the light
The black covering both land and sea
Destroying sight.
Basking in the heat, burning in the sun
We toasted the darkness, once it had gone.

God had said, wringing out his curls, ‘let there be light’,
Clearly, the dark came first.
But god floundered at night
And darkness he thunderingly accursed.
It was sent temporarily away
While god fashioned ‘Day’.

Yet, the dark was firstborn
The preferred planned child
And visually undernourished and presciently worn
Was the expected, the ideal, not the reviled;
Day was only a change of mind
God, the twister, making us see when we are blind.



2.
It was of an infinite hue, purple not black
Deepening towards the centre, consuming everything
A materialisation of Lacan’s Lack
Without substance, pleasure or pain.
It delved in and out in senseless monotony
Heightening sensation here, there performing a lobotomy.

At times, it reflected me and then it reflected you
Assembling features, and reassembling,
But never with every ****** nuance true
It shuffled several, naturally dissembling,
Unable to be fixed. It pretended to be human,
But like you and me, it shuffled like a golem.

Flying away it came back with equal velocity
Opening its imagined maw
Emitting as it approached tongues of electricity
Through time it tore.
Past and future congealed into a putty-like mass
Dying with the light, it disappeared up my ***

Deceit lies there, among the roses,
blooming in the weeds;
slugs sidle up the leaves
where the dormouse breeds;
and nothing gently lives here
where the sparrow haunts-
within the shadows that voles fear-
the breeze that whispering taunts.

The sunrise burns the sky
A carefully coloured explosion
Blooded light flooding the low Kent fields that lie
Before Maidstone, excreting soundless motion:
Yellow carnation shards sway
With this violent advent of day.

In Hucking Estate diaphanous bluebells nestle
Beneath the groping canopy
Of Ash. Oak; the encroaching stinging nettle
Shields the frequent woodland scree
Covering with a verdant flush
Brooks that through the stones invisibly rush.

Within the hour, the Gorgon-headed sun
Sweeps aside the cloud-
The red into blue and orange has run
And in Lower Fullingpits Wood the increasingly  loud
Shuffling of badger attacking vole, fox strangling rabbit,
All compounded into daily habit.

The Kent Downs rise and fall
Like resurrected earth-bound music from a time
When hill, wood and pool
Emerged from unfettered chalk and lime.
Before the Cantii hunted in ancient Wents Wood,
For deer and boar, spurred not by hunger but for the love of blood.

Above the sparrow-hawk attacks the sparrows
Claw enmeshed in feather,
Beak unravelling neck. The unalterable sorrows
Of nature and weather.
Cruelty never ceases, but just gets more efficient-
Kindness remains deficient.

The bridge collapsed after the storm
tumbling into the raging river-
I watched in tears, adding to the deluge.

Shadow crept into my life one dismal winter’s night
Perverting me with its touch.
They came from the shadows
Formless beings made of hatred,
Of greed.
Without a care they plucked me from my nest
My life
As if I were but a simple pebble from a beach
A memento for their wives.

I was not for their wives, however
But for those of a greater disposition.
Those of antiquated lineage
The founders of our way.
Those with jewels on their fingers,
Flowers in their hair
Perfume floating in the air.

Before long I was swept away
Into a new life of servitude,
One from which there was no escape,
No Sanctuary.
Shackles on my hands,
Lashes on my back
I did their bidding with a smile on my face
To distract me from my pain.

It was no use.
Months floated by
As if my life were but a dream.
The same routine.

Months became years
I was still theirs.
My face still belonged to the back of their hands,
My back to the clap of their whip,
My ribs to the force of their kicks.
No reprieve for a lowlife like me.

I came to accept my life in time.
It was my fault.
The woods were never a place for my kind
The son of a prefect,
The pretty little boy with slaves of his own
Who belonged to him.
Their bodies
Their souls.

Only now do I realise there was no luck involved
In fate’s betrayal of her child
I deserve this
This life of servitude.

Dressed in black,
What can you lack
in a monochrome world?
Your eyes weep glass
As your lovers pass
What you remember you dread
Inside your throbbing head!

It was our final day together
During an awkward time, strolling purposely in the woods
Beyond town, sheltered by the interconnected canopy
Of colluding beech, joined in suppositious intimacy.
Pausing where serried rows of heavy-leafed fern gathered
Around a half-hidden stream,
And we stopped, lying down to make love.
In the cold fading light.
Fox and badger shuffled anxiously away, spooked by our jerky movements and unsteady moans.
We parted as the moon began blooming in the dark sky,
She returning to her husband, I to my wife.

I saw her again, I, an old man in a ***** coat fluttering in the wind,
Snatching at dying memories, remembering
A hundred other women in a hundred places,
Their features in lustful heat evaporating like water.
Seated on a park bench, a grandmother with a swollen leg
Bent over and senile, I, in a momentary, flashing epiphany, recognised her smile.
Her eyes, that once I loved, shrivelled by cataracts, she bellowed
At ghosts in the sunlight.
Identifying her long-dead husband in the gathering shadows.

Our frequent copulation had always been long and energetic
Enough to light up half the town, our laughter lighted
Up the rest. Walking through the fields or sitting in modest
Restaurants, our conversation roamed from favoured food to preferred, most stimulating books.  
Mutually absorbed, we happily exhausted our youth!

Fifty years later, dribbling through
Pavement traffic, a strange, erratic
Coalition of people, bikes and mobility scooters,
She ****** out a shrivelled arm towards me,
An exclamation mark on a memory of soft bleached skin
Dripping with love,
Vaguely recalling me as a shade from a more
Hopeful time.


I shrank away from that shambling, once beautiful, form,
Refusing and betraying her,
Our lives and bodies once gloriously entwined; her fate also mine.
I remained unalterably committed to her altered end,
Minds fading gently together.

Into the crimson surfeit
lust enters
a burst of borrowed intimacy
until the blanching rust
of familiarity
slows the soft flow of love.

into all lust enters
dying with the first light...............

Dull pattering through agonised woods
fumbling winds, serrating storms
animals vanishing into the undergrowth
scurrying beneath the ground
birds huddling under leaves.
The river breaks its bank
water spreading out like *****
villages swamped with infestation.
The storm batters and bruises,
bellowing through the night like a troubled god.

In London-
a hollowed out city-
the fog
is returning-creeping
back-

A poisonous invisible/white
sheet
salivating over
supine cars, insinuating
its baptismal
seed
into open mouths-
sinking into gutters
emerging undigested
from empty drains.

it crawls around the Shard
clutches
each ancient bridge
yellowing
in its pilgrimage  

it has returned-
IT
The Thing-
ghastly
in its plans.

A resurrection
that requires no death!

a slow walk through the cosmos
diving into a black hole-
god in the end just one big fat over-busy mole
digging through dark matter

and then god said let there be light
taking out his cigarette and inhaling

I feel I have to make my defence
Regarding those who over several millennium
Believe they can speak for me;
I do not need to name names, do I? You know
Exactly who I mean. What can I do?
I speak briefly to someone once and, before
I know it, we’re ***** buddies-they claim to
Know my inner-most thoughts,
My opinions on every subject from what
Clothes to wear to who to marry.

Do I not have more important things to think about?
The well-being of an entire universe to evaluate
On a daily basis?
How you treat one another is your concern-
Just keep me out of your bigotry and spite,
My name out of your books, my voice out
Of your heads. I am not who you claim me
To be; I am far better and, at certain times, far worse.
I am both nothing and everything!

You can nevertheless be assured-
I do not lead your armies, support your murders,
Sanctify your suicides, bless your hatreds.
I do not inhabit your words,
Your statues, your art, nor am I the knowing
Voice in your head or the gnawing pain
In your heart. Own what is yours!




Originally, I was a small-time local deity,
Lord of the mountain, brooks and olives.
Benevolent, ***** and shy.
Nothing special! One god amongst many
In and out of pantheons, attached to this
Goddess or that. Sometimes I was el of the
Desert, sometimes the family god in
The corner or staring out of the tent flap-
Inauspicious and insignificant!

I was happy then. I had none of the obsessive
Responsibilities of a universal god. I seduced
The local women, fathered thousands of mixed-children-
Part deity/part human-received the flow of eager
Sacrifice; the few remaining aurochs,
Bulls, deer and first born. The smoke always revitalised me!
Children’s flesh was always particularly nourishing!
For such extensive insurance for my continued interest
I protected each group who so honoured me, destroying
Their enemies, as well as their friends.
(But, oh, not now! I’m expected now to exterminate entire neighbourhoods,
Nations and cultures! Now I’m expected to be the murderer,
The sole master of death!)

I was without ideas! I accepted everyone, loathe to judge!
****** peccadilloes I found interesting, fun.
Adultery I saw as an aspect of marriage,
Homosexuality, the absorbing antitheses of the endless
Production of new life, from its sterile cusp
Seeping forth new ideas and artistic burgeoning.
I created beauty, adoring it. I danced to
Lively music, sang to beautiful songs.

In Egypt a disgruntled warrior-priest arose, preaching violence,
Preaching conquest. I trembled in his angry presence,
Shaken by his bloodlust. An excitable poet sang of his adventures,
Turning a 100 followers into thousands. The poets used my name-
One fashioned in gentleness-to encourage war.
Then, from the confusions of statehood, prophets emerged
Spreading their misery through my authority,
Grinding my benevolence under soiled sandals,
Telling others what to do, as if the words were mine-
Engaging in genocide with pitiless intention.
They flail my soul with madness!

And so on and so on; numerous messengers
Shouting of sin and retribution,
My voice reverberating with their words,
As I stand in the shadows like a serial killer,
Frightened of lamplight. With nothing
More to do, conforming savants
Described rules for life, a non-existent heaven,
Transcribed my thoughts from their own experiences
Created another reality, ignoring their own.



I am now terrified of my name
(EL, YHWH, Allah) Terrified of what it represents-
Burdened by its acquisition
By the bombastic and cruel.
I, who was once a god, now
Am captive, a prisoner of recitation.
Where once I had priests to beckon, they
Now beckon me. Where once I pronounced on
Goodness, I am now too alarmed to speak.
Where once I was the object of sacrifice
I am now the sacrifice itself.

I loved you for a moment, then
that moment was gone-
where once was life again,
now there is none.

I should have held on
to the flicker of light
that briefly flared like winter sun
passionate and bright.

I should have held onto your hand
in case I strayed
but I couldn't then understand
the price to be paid.


I couldn't understand that love
is not necessarily scheduled to arrive,
not stapled to a plan, that kind of stuff,
not an adjunct to being alive.

I knew only not to renew,
something I casually dispensed with;
I know when something is through,
when remembered with grief-

I said goodbye to what might have been
to quiet walks, caresses and days in bed,
I said goodbye to a beautiful thing
half remembered, once alive, full of wonder, now dead.

In troubled light the old man sat
turning the pages of a darkened book
while on the grass lay his Summer hat
occasionally splashed by a strumming brook;
her lovely face was drawn there
in smooth, fluid lines
echoing her dark gleaming hair
the coal black hue of coal black mines;
his sighs were those of empty years
his sadness that of endless regret,
his wrinkled eyes were calloused tears
where death had already set.
The portrait complete he began another
of a memory, a distant love,
an enduring wish, a long departed lover
packed away with his clouded brain's crippled stuff.

Is it possible for a land to dream
Of Harakiri.
Gouts of screams and tears abound
Self-destruction is such a sweet sound
Particularly when told from afar
By those so clearly in the know.
But is that the truth, what we are told?
Does this land dream of a death all of its own?
Or perhaps tales of its expiry are greatly exaggerated
For profit and shock.
Could this be true, that they are lying to you?
Or does Peckham wish to fall on its sword?

Perhaps once, in the span of three days
Did this land wish to see itself burn,
To see itself consumed in the fires of greed,
Of hatred,
Of ignorance.
Tell me, is that all that this land has to offer?
Will it willingly trudge to such a dishonourable demise?
Or will it rise
And show those in the know
That in truth Peckham dreams of a fate more honourable than Harakiri.

Honour

They have used me and I have served.
How could I not?
They made me what I am.
A servant to their cause.

I’ve seen Queens crowned.
Threats of invasion from afar.
Overseen their communications.
Remained steadfast
As a good subject does.

I serve Queen and country.
I provide shelter for the ******
And light for her successors.
I trembled as planes flew above
And celebrated as they flew no more.

I’ve watched from afar, as the great playwright worked,
As theories and principles that would shape the world
Were committed to paper for forever more.
I’ve seen evil and good, hatred and love
Entangled in their eternal battle
From high above.

And as I waned, as I began to fall
Like all the Queen’s servants must do
Even those that had once stood so tall
Above it all, yet never apart
I can fade happy knowing this oak has honoured thy ******.
Goodbye London, my one true love.

How absurd to stand
On moving land,
To touch the sky
As planets roll by

To drink the rain
Knowing from where it came,
To eat fruit and corn grown
From dead flesh and bone.

To enjoy the heat of the sun,
A vast nuclear bomb,
To breath the air
That burning diesel put there!

How dark the end was without stars, without tears,
Surrounded by meditation
In a vast sea of unexpressed fears
A sharing of thoughts in an unavoidable situation.
We waited as the universe contracted
Our thoughts in extremis extracted.

In the end we did not pray
Or wonder about our continued existence
No one had anything wise to say
In the inevitable, unchanging sequence.
There was nothing we could do as the earth
Broke apart, but accept oncoming death

It crushed us in a second,
Rent limbs, leaving only dust,
The sun imploded
The planets went bust
And no memory remained of our history
Our passing unnoticed, unscrutinised sophistry.

Our philosophies, science, churches,and mosques un-constructed
In the flickering retreating waves of relative time,
All hot air. Our great ancestors un-created
Like this unwritten unpublished rhyme.
Our shared un-lived existence
Without precedence or consequence.

How slow the swan glides
down the darkening river
twisting its sleek, slithering neck
away from the sunshine-
saying nothing.
In the morning
only ducks drive through the water
only voles snake along the banks.

Long ginger muzzle
eyes burning
through the copse, fixed upon
the snuffling vole eating
grubs in the moonlight,fangs
like stunted darning needles
revealed in its widening jaw.
hunching in the grass
it crawled cautiously forward
and pounced
like a god on an acolyte
quenching blood-lust-
the fox ate again that night.

They attacked her in mid exploration
Cutting away her golden thoughts
As they cut away her flesh, destroying
A mind that they couldn’t destroy in
Debate, a sparkling old woman
Whose thoughts were spun from steel.

The screaming mob desecrated her tiny form
Dragging it into the dust, through the *******
And ****. Tearing off her clothes
The Parabalani exposed her to celestial winds crossing
The arora, rubbing
Spoilt Alexandrian soil into her unexplored ******.  
She did not die as a philosopher, calculating and
Learning, but, torn apart, the old woman
Screamed out for her father,
Terrified, in sacrificial pain so much worse
Than beheadings and crucifixion. Her modesty,
Kept for 60 years, mutilated by a 1000 killers in a single
Minute.

Her head bounced in the forum,
Her arms thrown to the 4 corners,
Her soul stamped into the gutter,
As the new religion cried out for tolerance.
In a morning thinking became forbidden
Books burnt, laughs ignored and fires built for heretics.