Sand buried, parched skull
exposed by excavation;
jaw gaping in silent
death's head yawn.

Is eternal sleep so
excruciatingly boring?
Or do you instead
scream across the centuries:
"Leave me be!"

Impotent rage as trowel
scrapes upon bone!
The memory desecrated
in the cause of science.

Hanging motionless
in warm, tropic seas,
sun glints on fin as
diamonds dance.

Ungainly giant,
head without body,
balancing existence,
suspending belief.

I know nothing of your world.
I live in perpetual darkness
beneath the strata of a million years.

Sometimes I sense others
as they slowly pass me by,
but I care not for their presence.

In the eyes of their blinkered science
I am merely a blind, white creature
swimming towards extinction.

Bleak and windswept, my errant ramblings led me to some time-forgotten vale wherein a desolate mansion stood; its mullioned windows pale against the ebbing day, yet from within illumin’d, as by dancing fiends at play.  Fram’d by gaunt trees, stone pinnacles leaned awry, and, through o’ergrown gardens that flanked a ****-strewn pathway to its rotting door, a sleet-cold wind keened for lost souls in torment ‘cross the desolate and cloud-wracked moor.
With dying Phoebus now a blood-red smear upon the western hills, I so resolved to shelter here out of the coming chill.  Foreboding dragged my every step and cawing rooks mocked overhead as if to say: "Go, stranger, for you'll find no welcome here!"  Along the gravelled path I trod and beat the door with blackthorn rod; it opened slowly - in I walked with beating heart and ne'er a thought for all the world I'd left behind, as rain and sleet and howling wind blew shut the door with crack of doom, and left me peering through the gloom.
Around a table there they sat 'midst putrid food and cobwebbed vats of mouldering wine; their bony mouths gaped vacant as they grinned and laughed through time.  I swayed and swooned as in a trance, my own existence thrown by chance into that hellish company, who revelled, foul, Decay’d Gentry!  And then a fearful thunderclap's reverberations brought me back to sanity, I screamed and fled to where the hillsides cried and bled; with staring eye and hair turn’d white, I ran into the raving night.

Whisper a soft prayer as you pass, friend,
for there is a spirit here.
The days and nights relentlessly come and go,
as do the endless seasons.

Men rise and fall, each in their turn,
like the withered grasses,
sheltered for a brief span by my lichened walls,
sleeping in my shadow-ridden depths.

For old am I,
so very old.

The northern winds blow ceaselessly
over my cold, weathering stones,
for the hearth-fires of the Cruithne
are long since turned to ash.

Bleak is the day,
cold clouds drift miserably
over sodden fields
where hawthorn hedgerows
weep for summer’s passing.

No sun now to warm the soul,
no longer cheer within
the tumbled cot
where ragged sheep stand
and shelter behind old walls.

Collie sniffs damp air,
his  breath steams and curls
as we secure the gate and make
our long, sleet-ridden
way homeward.

Tonight we shall sit by the fire,
he and I, dreaming
of snow white lambs,
cornflower skies and
warm, sunlit meadows.

Meantime there’s crackling to chew
and whiskey tots to keep away the chill,
for we both know
the Green Man sleeps,
and Winter is upon us.

Under a cataclysmic sky
they sheltered from a wind so hot
it burned green leaves to ashes
as they watched in fascinated horror.

They’d not seen anyone else for days
and, having found each other,
had become inseparable companions
lost in a world turned awry.

Behind a crumbling wall they sought refuge
in what once had been a garden,
its solitary tree bearing what they knew
to be the last of mankind’s fruit.

Starving, he plucked it from the twisted branch
and clumsily made her an offering of love.
She smiled sadly at his youthfulness,
but took it nonetheless, biting to the heart.

“You never did tell me your name” she whispered.
“Adam” sighed the boy, “What’s yours?”
“Eve” she replied, brushing away a tear
as acid rain fell on them like venom.

I heard them as I walked through cobbled streets
made damp by a late December squall.
Sheltered by stained red-brick walls,
shunned by shoppers, and deliberately ignored
by those of a certain wealth who deem any individual
to be of an inferior race, they played old airs
upon makeshift, much-travelled instruments.

A battered top-hat stuck with peacock's feathers,
a pinstriped waistcoat that had seen better days,
a gold watch-chain hung with lucky charms
beneath his paisley cravat, gnarled hands caress
a knee-held drum as he beats out a timeless rhythm
that echoes around the thronging streets
like a half-forgotten memory.

Clad in stained and crumpled jeans,
weather-beaten face half-hidden by the
downturned brim of a leather drover's hat;
the singer barely looks up at his transient audience;
his faded combat-jacket buttoned tight against the rain
as his leaking boots dance an unconscious jig
across wet flagstones.

Beside him a dented steel-guitarist sits on an upturned milk crate,
his grey dreadlocks cascade back from his side-shaved head;
his tattoos flicker like feedback from his unsafe amp,
barely connected by dubious wiring to a ***** car-battery,
as "Old Bold Captain Preedy" is re-released into a sputtering sound-system with all the reverence of the 23rd Psalm.

And I will fear no evil, for thy existence and style, they comfort me,
and thy music is always with me.

Awkwardly leaning forward, sloping over damp, brown earth,
stands a young boy’s chiselled memory.
Above rooks caw incessantly in budding branches,
yet little ever grows beneath the great yew’s venerable shadow.

Here beside cold, forgotten, lichened stones,
thin pale weeds strain for scarce obtainable light.
Small insects forage through fallen leaf litter
whilst passing squirrels move swiftly on, sniffing decay.

Lettering barely legible, a long-dead stonemason’s art
serves only now as brief refuge for tiny red mites;
and yet for those with eyes to see a tragic tale is here,
a tale two hundred years in the telling.

“Hic Iacet Poor Benjamin,
who did Fall into some Awful Vat
within his Father’s Manufactory,
whereby he Perished,
Scalded like a Cat.
No more the Trees of Youth he’ll Climb,
for Ten Short Years was all his Time.”

Awkwardly leaning forward, sloping over damp, brown earth,
stands a young boy’s chiselled memory.
Above rooks caw incessantly in budding branches,
yet little ever grows beneath the great yew’s venerable shadow.

Small hail rattles petulantly
against leaded attic windows.
Below, in untended gardens,
a child's broken swing creaks
where unkempt brambles
scratch at cold night winds.

In the abandoned nursery,
where faded draft-blown drapes
brush toy-strewn floorboards,
a dappled, paint-blistered rocking-horse
sways faintly on a fleeting, moonlit stage.

Where innocence long since died,
a legless bear leers at a blind rag doll.
A jammed spinning-top lies rusting
upon a hopelessly scattered jigsaw.
A ***** Harlequin slumps in depression,
his wanton Columbine gone forever.

From the torn, once gaudy, pages
of a faded, open book,
mocking rhymes echo
insanely down the years.

Crockery elopes with cutlery,
a suicidal mouse runs out of time,
Humpty mimics Lucifer . . .
and a little boy laughs to see such fun
as Old King Cole
steals your adult soul.

Upon a  far and distant world
where silicon's the key,
a great metallic turtle swam
through seas of mercury.

His eyes were red as copper,
and his mind was sharp as zinc;
he dined off silver fishes
and he sometimes paused to think.

"Supposing there's a world someplace
where carbon is the king?
Where seas are made of water,
and where fleshy turtles swim?"

Little Eliza she cries in her cradle,
Benjamin crawls on the rug by the hearth;
Hannah stirs soup with an old pewter ladle,
Jane’s picking blackberries down by the garth.

Mary and Lizzie attend to their baking,
Billy’s a carter out learning his trade;
wee Tommy follows - a man in the making -
gathering horse-dung with bucket and *****.

Widowed at forty with eight children living,
Mary, their mother, cleans houses by day;
money is short and the work unforgiving,
asking for strength, on a Sunday she’ll pray.

Thomas, her husband, was killed at the sawmill,
working long hours to put shoes on their feet;
times they were hard, nothing ever came easy,
but sweet was the love shared in old Sugar Street.

Deserted by the fleeting glacier
that once bore him here,
a boulder stands eroding
above a windswept valley.

Tibetan ventriloquists pose
beneath a silken awning,
whilst poor forgotten Mithras
looks on in bewilderment.

An author relentlessly writes
his soporific life’s work,
fingers smudged with
yesterday’s dead beetle ink.

Peasants fish for eels
beside a feotid canal,
as an Inca death mask grins
through flaking lapis lazuli lips.

An asthmatic mongrel twitches
and dreams of happier days,
lungs rustling like
some ghostly crinoline.

And further on an Abbott gives
his holy-roller blessing
to men in chain-mail,
four-wheel-drive caparisoned for war.

At six o’clock your day begins
You pray forgiveness for your sins
Your gruel and your clothes are thin
At the workhouse

Pick oakum ‘til your fingers bleed
It matters not your age nor creed
The overseer will tend your needs
At the workhouse

At noon you take your daily bread
A little meat or cheese instead
You eat in silence bow your head
At the workhouse

And when the working day is o’er
Your body aches your hands are sore
Your bed’s a pallet on the floor
At the workhouse

And pauper when your day is past
There’ll be no coffin gilt with brass
You’ll lie in sackcloth ‘neath the grass
At the workhouse

Radiating twilight, and are the deer awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows come a-gliding through the break;
Wolf and fox and boar are here, glowing through the may,
So far away in Chernobyl about the break of day.

Evacuated city sleeps abandoned now and still,
Stunted trees and weeds grow rife, the air is dank and chill;
Contaminated apples wouldn’t tempt old Eve to play,
So far away in Chernobyl about the break of day.

Classrooms lie with open books, and shops with open doors,
The soccer stadium’s overgrown, the fairground Ferris snores;
Vines climb up apartment blocks, old washing hangs and sways,
So far away in Chernobyl about the break of day.

The monster that is always near lies mumbling in its sleep,
Cracking, shedding toxic dust as Geiger counters bleep;
Post-apocalyptic scene, atomic age Pompeii,
So far away in Chernobyl about the break of day.

She walked through pastures green
beneath an oppressive sky,
warm July drizzle drifting down
over web-strewn hedgerows,
bejewelling her coat
and forming tiny pearls
on her long, black lashes.

Lost in reverie, she ambled
slowly down hill towards
a reed-edged stream
where, she recalled,
small birds chased midges
when the hot sun shone;
but not today, when humidity
stifled their flight,
keeping them close by men's houses
in search of scraps
and small, errant insects.

Absently, she noticed the long grasses
clinging wetly to her legs,
and as dim thoughts lumbered
through her bovine brain,
wondered if she and her sisters
would be taken away for milking
before the downpour broke.

A vagabond faints
in a wayside gutter,
a ring of scarlet patches
showing through unclean skin.

A great lord spews red froth
across a bed of linen,
as his lady watches helplessly
through a veil of tears.

A skylark sings high above
a half-ploughed field
where Piers lies choking
in the fresh cut furrows.

A harlequin sprawls
grotesquely swollen,
cap and bells twisted
in a masque of death.

“They believe everything they read,
but they don’t understand a word of it”

Yeah, right . . .

“They say the world was created in six days,
but they never worked a day in their lives”

That’s so true . . .

“They say the world is the centre of everything,
but they’re at the centre of their personal universes”

So I’m told . . .

“They say a lot of things,
but they’re so busy talking that they don’t ever listen”

Guess so . . .

“I’m telling you, Lucifer,
we should’ve stuck with the giant lizards”

….. and with that God sadly
put down the phone.

Behind locked doors the Gamblers dare
to cast our fates without a care.
The white, the black, they pull our strings
and use us as a child’s playthings.

Upon the tables of the gods
with wagers cast at any odds,
they stand us all in serried rows
and knock us down like dominoes

As thunder rolls and blind men feast,
the Red Horse rides out in the east
Who’ll win the game, who’ll take the bet?
The wheel is turning faster yet!

Started back last summer with
a piece of bad news.
Why us?  Why now? What have we done
to deserve this?  But no-one is to blame.
And  you try and make the best of things.
You say "Nah, that can't be right!
They must've got it wrong!"
But they haven't.  
They most certainly have not.
For these are the end days.

And so from then on you try to
carry on as normal, whatever 'normal' is,
praying for some kind of miracle,
hoping against hope that one will be granted.
You smile like an idiot at strangers,
trying to be friendly, looking for support,
but looking plain weird,
your emotions in a whirl
and your feelings jumbled.
For these are the end days.

You go down the pub, have a beer,
play cards, laugh if you can,
but it's always there,
a shadow hanging over you
like the ace of spades,
poised to slice you in two.
You try and joke on social media,
post a little music, just to keep sane,
but your heart's not really in it.
For these are the end days.

How long do we have?  No-one knows.
And if they do, they don't answer directly.
You make your own daily forecast
in this new and strangely sad world.
Sunny skies one day, cloudy the next.
You have to stay strong whatever happens,
yet you fear the inevitable worst.
We are grateful we have good friends
to help us through.
For these are the end days.

As I was out a-riding over pleasant hills of green,
beneath a sky of cornflower blue where larks sang all serene,
I heard a distant hoof beat drumming loudly ‘cross the land,
and I saw a horseman riding with a bow strung in his hand.

Upon a steed as white as snow he galloped like the wind,
and carried awful knowledge of how oft mankind has sinned.
Upon his head he wore a crown that dazzled like the sun,
and he aimed a headless arrow for to conquer and have done.

Behind him came another on a horse of fiery red;
a mighty sword he wielded as along his way he sped.
I shouted “Where is it you ride, and what’s that great blade for?”
He laughed and answered, “Always, friend, I take the road to War!”

And as I watched him vanish in the blue horizon’s haze,
a black horse trotted by me with its rider’s eyes ablaze.
He carried rusted iron scales that never more would weigh,
and he named the price of famine that Humanity must pay.

The day grew bleak as winter and the green hills turned to grey.
As birds fell dying from the sky, I turned and rode away.
My own horse snorted madly, and his steaming breath did writhe,
as I spurred his pale flanks onward, and again I swung my scythe.

Shrivelled blossom falls
from dark green hedgerows
shaken by a foreign wind.
Dust flurries whirl and eddy,
dancing, spinning along
bone-dry lanes that lead to nowhere.

Across a beige, hay-scattered paddock
wide-eyed horses shake their heads,
and skitter from fence to fence.
In the distance a young girl
shouts unintelligibly to an unseen friend,
light livid on her white t-shirt.

“Hot day,” comments a passing old man,
“Enough blue up there
to tailor the Royal Navy.”
Under his arm a folded newspaper
screams silent headlines of drought
in some foreign land.

And within me a long-dormant memory awakes,
for this is not how things should be.
I hear innocent warnings sing
down the empty, echoing centuries;
“For Summer is i-cumen in,
and Winter is a-gone . . .”