he had the wherewithal and the madness
held West to the wall
exploded ultimate bomb of sadness
laughed at country's fall
there was cough, there was splutter
in the corridors of democracy
there was slight embarrassed stutter
as they crumbled 'fore monocracy
as they waved white flag in flutter
wrung their hands before the violence
as they washed the ash down gutter.
as they kept their pledge of silence

"so, you think i'm gone?", He said,
"you think i've disappeared?",
"you think i don't know 'bout your dead
the ill that saturn's speared?"

"ere since time and space were born
since man distinguished night from morn
did i ever say i'm here?
did i myself appear?"

"yes, i spoke from burning briar,
from midst of darkest cloud,
i declared from tongues of fire
before a frightened crowd."

"i've spoken to the pure of heart,
appeared to men 'n women of vision,
but did they ever see me part
from creation as in scission?"

"child, my child, i hide in all,
and always will be so,
all worlds i wear as a shawl
in order that you may know

that deep within, in void of ego,
where gloom and pain their arms upthrow,
where a man dissolves his name,
lays down the chase to world acclaim

realises honour's utmost futility
in the place o' deepest humility
there i am and always will be,
in the nothingness, I am me."

i didn't find G-d in study houses
when i went for him to search
nor on the lecterns of pulpit rabbis
nor neath arches of the church

i found him not amongst the folds
of priests' robes and their cassocks,
nor in design of braid and gold
of curtains and the hassocks

i didn't hear him in the cries
of prayers, no, nor their sighs
nor in the swirling of the dervish
or the mass or jumah service

but when i lifted the old man's bags,
helped a beggar in dirt and rags,
gave bread 'n shelter to the drifter,
then i heard His voice, a whisper.

beard, ashen grey, swept by the winds
of years and centuries, aeons gone by,
misunderstood, forever chagrined
by the earth and the men and the sea and the sky

on staff he leans, weighed down by sins
of the heart and the mind and the hand and the hip
wild hair and locks bellowed by winds,
white shredded sails on wreck'd mast of ship

he'd put down his scythe, his sickle and reaper
bought a break as death's doorkeeper
but the hubris of world dictator
bade him grasp the detonator

soon swarms of poppies blood-red
scarlet and pink as tired sunset
angry as the blood of maidens
blushing as illicit bedspread

scattered as myriad bloodshot eyes,
of mothers mourning as child dies,
as gore spurting in the skies
as brothers shot amid war-cries

ploughed the fields with hearts that bled
plagued burnt hills as barrows of dead
mutilated, youth-abated,
limbs of lives amputated

the squeal of babe, the cry of lamb,
crushed as raspberries in a jam
mulched the fields in pants o' breath
****** by masters of their death

for death now trampled underfoot
the innocent boys, girls and babies
turned their skin to gunpowder soot
ravaged their limbs with famine 'n tabes

ash and hail, desolation,
earth reeling from stagnation
sent death pleading for abation
from the lord of creation

but 'twas nowhere to be seen
not in the heavens with his queen
nor in the throne-room overseeing
for he is forever the elusive being

now hiding from celestial choir
now living in eternal fire
now head burning in funeral pyre
at one with souls as they transpire

as the madness and the envy
mad desire, lust and frenzy,
continue, continue, unabated
till all consumes, as is fated.

broken, bent, o'er his staff,
bent over countries in bloodbath,
o'er the bodies rent in half,
o'er waste of human wrath

over the greed that never ends
never pays dividends
devours 'n divides family 'n friends,
itself consumes, in the end.

there once was a cow that gave cash
from its udder - came out in a hash,
said farmer, "that's strange
she don't give no change
but i'll add that to the rest o' me stash!"

no-one knows
i'm stuck in here
where no-one goes
'n no-one can hear

i've got no strength left to struggle
to dicker, bicker or to wrangle
soon a sound like geese-a-gaggle
as the rope squeezes the vagal

and then, release from veils 'n parable,
release from meanings allegorical,
from pretence, lies 'n deception,
from politic's priests of misdirection.

and then all bliss?
or a snap and a hiss
of ten thousand voices
all of my choices

haunting chasing
watching me racing
for in hell there's no escape
from black devil in hooded cape