Shadows come and then,
as the day goes on the shadows shorten and they're gone.
At midday when the shadows play alone,when the sun is high it is then I wonder where and why the shadows left me high and dry but later as the light burns low,
I know the shadows lengthen as the life in me begins to shorten and then,
at the turning of the night in men when each and everything comes 'back to black'
I stack each blessing one by one upon lost shadows, and like me those faded photographs are gone,
each memory of a snapshot day relived in shadows,come what may or what may come, each shadow has its moment in the sun and each sun will pass across the sky and I will wonder where and why
as my life shortens.

In a creche,behind the mesh in Zanzibar or Bangladesh,kids are reigned in,chained up,emptied of the loving cup that childhood gives,
who lives like this so they can miss the fun of being young?
who sticks the chiv in,trims the day,who works them for so little pay?

Look in your high street shops at hopscotch clothes from hopscotch kids in hopscotch homes, on the skids and before you buy,before you try on one more suit born from some child's unlived youth,the truth is out there in the things you buy,'cry freedom'in your cheap t-shirts and cut price flowing patterned skirts,but
the truth remains and stains your heart as sure as if you were a part of sweatshops sweating out the lives of tiny tots and will high street shops, always be the outlets for this insanity?
I'm sure the answer will arrive
eventually.

We say, 'God save the Queen', but only 'cause we've seen what God can do.
God likes to smite,
here and there and anywhere a bit of smiting's to be done,God is the one, and I'm quite sure that he has fun.
I came back to the fold but God knows I only did it coz I is getting old, and still get the hots for a spot of larceny,
and so it goes that God smites me.
He'll smite you too just wait and see, with specials on a Saturday buy two smites and get one smite free.

A goldfish by the name of Sam
swum and swum and then he swam
and then he ran out of the sea,
learnt to walk like you and me.
Then he got into bad ways and as we know bad ways don't pay.
The day Sam turned into a man,he no longer swum,no longer swam
he learnt to run and how he ran,
but now he wishes that he could swim or swum or swam and
ain't that just the way of man.

Another poet wrote a poem today,
and it was riveting.
Each word, an intricately carved figure into an ornate pattern.
Every syllable, singing the beloved song I never thought I'd hear again.

My soul transcribed onto paper.
I could feel my heart taking flight with each rhyme,
soaring by the end of the poem.

Of course, myself being a fellow poet,
these thoughts remained in their place of origin, though unwillingly.
How could I, a fellow poet, succumb to his talent?

Did he recognize that glimmer in my eyes,
the sparkle of childlike admiration?

Or, upon looking into my eyes, could he see fire,
the burning heat of my jealousy?

I loathed him; how was it that he was so moved with talent,
and I, a piteous poet who failed to move so much as a single soul?

He took to poetry as a bird takes to the sky,
so beautiful as to leave my stomach in knots
and my head reeling.

The strangest sensation came over me,
when I read the other poet's work.
A sensation of simultaneous beauty and disgust,
a deep longing and loving, intertwined with
the greatest disdain.

I handed back the paper,
conflicted by my own inner turmoil.
These darkest of feelings remained where they first lie,
never to be known by another poet.