We were given a lovely world
but we trampled it and mashed it
beat it up and trashed it,
nobody else to blame
we did it to ourselves
and it's such a ****** shame,
we can't walk away,
we can't say I quit
we made this awful mess
now we have to live in it

An old violin
Is seasoned with tears
Hundreds of years
Of playing out loud
Pleasing the crowd
Have soaked right on in
Something strange
In the range
Of an old Violin
It's a reality
They form personality
Their own unique sound
Which can only be found
On that set of strings
And the music gets wings
Beauty and death
Laughter and sin
Are the notes that you play
On an old violin

A leap into darkness

Where dragons may reside

A step into the infinite

Is for you to decide

Float free on the air

Before you crash and burn

Chaff on the winds of fortune

Embers falling to the rocks below

Washed by cruel waves

Ashes returned to earth

Grey and trodden underfoot

The crunch of cold dead hopes

On weary shoes

But fortune favours those

Who dare to test their newly feathered wings

The bird of freedom only sings

For ones that risk a fall, to reach a greater height

Only those who take a chance in flight

Will ever know if they were right!

Leaden angry sky, why wear a sombre suit
dyed lantern grey to match the ocean’s roar
a shredded howling wind completes the set
it stings and sings a siren song outside my door,
be off, be off with you I say
go find a better attitude and temper
I do not like the mood you bring today

Autumn nights
smoky dusk possess us
brings on a certain melancholy feeling
there is a quality of ending
in this falling light unbending

Romeo
you were the East
but there was no sun
for you and Juliet
a drip of light
new sprung
from a talented quill
then darkness
stolen moments
briefly given
then taken
puppets
in the mind of your
creator

I want to burn the page

Use my pen to fuel the ash of memory

Let my words take flight and lift your weary heart

Set the world alight in syllables of flame

To bring you written beauty in my name

Feed the hunger raw within

Satisfy the ache inside the skin

But that is where my rhymes begin

I cannot give what I desire

And write to set your soul on fire

Something deep inside of me

Demands a certain symmetry!

The definition of a maniac
someone who shares
the same locked wardrobe of dark thoughts
that you do
but they found the key
tried them on for size
and wear them to dance in the streets

Early morning

In the cool calm of a Sunday

Before the world has got its boots on


Flat and calm with possibility

Grey water

For a sleepless wanderer


Listening

To the roar of silence

Both deafening and beautiful

Rich or poor,
gay, straight, bi
black, white, brown
we are all going to die,
death is a person we cannot elude
from the day we arrive
we are already *******
by the man with the cowl
a non-partisan dude

Water on my mind
Sometimes murky sometimes clear
A pool of thought fish

The grave
a quiet place of tumbled stone
which covers cold and ancient bone
which once was warm as you or I
and in our turn we too will die
fragile life to fragile dust
we live as every creature must
fixed in time of certain span
and then return whence we began

Take the trail,

footsteps in the mist of a thousand misheard voices

follow the singing memories as they fade around each corner

time has left you on this journey through the mountains of your life

you go ahead, rest for a bit

enjoy the breeze and the pretty yellow childhood flowers

for you the walking is done

When the wind blows chill

Withering fruit on the vine

It takes the music

From a poets soul

Snuffs out the lighted candle

Silencing notes that only you can hear

Rhymes in your head dry and cracked like forgotten paint

In an alley leading nowhere

The skull beneath the skin

The emptiness within

The meaning

Is gone

But the frost lives on

Winters song

You hope will bring

New hope of spring

Green shoots that bind

And heal within your fragile poets mind

We will not walk again
eat or drink or laugh,
love or **** or sleep or cry
it is the end
when we say goodbye,
all that we were
or could have been is gone
only memory carries on

Up before the birds,
before the sheep
and the barking farm dogs have had a chance to rise,
before the sun in a waking sky has washed her face
there is me, and the rabbits of course,
there are always nibbling rabbits
they pay me no heed as I ignore them,
cobwebby air that smells of wet stone walls and hazelenuts
a damp little mourning for summer
still with us, but only just
she is fading, her breath grown stale
what was once a fine full featured woman of elegant proportions
is not the girl she was and somewhat over-ripe,
shriveled hag or blousy old ****, who knows,
september will see to that
he could be kind and let her keep her looks for a bit,
a single singing sheep, baas contralto through the fence
followed by her sisters, one of whom is definitely flat,
which stirs the dogs,
then birds, and a raven’s mocking call from the trees
coughing tractors vape their owners into life
and the radio clicks,
because apparently the old ***** won’t start!
a jostling theatre crowd of noise and neighbours
Mrs O’Malley from the farm up the road
is out for her power walk with Dan,
she waves at the gate
Dan wags his tail and eyes my biscuit,
tough luck Dan, she is watching,
I have not come to the world
the world has come to me
all along the valley they are waking now
a glorious cacophany
the Cavershiveen volcano rumbles into being
except for him indoors, he’s still snoring like a bull
in a minute I will take him tea and biscuits
wake him gently from his beige accountant dreams
whatever they are?
and we can start the day together
except of course mine started long ago
with only the silent sky and the hills for company
he will never know that I embraced the dawn
and sipped my coffee with the old gods
Lugh and Dagda and Brigid
I have been their respectful guest
ancient Irish faces he will never know
unless I choose to tell him so

Walk then,
touch the silent acres,
dew pond wet
with shining grass unbroken,
a day still new,
wrapped in promise newly woken,
bare feet make the morning

A stew

That just about describes our human zoo

We are all mixed up and bubbling in the ***

Don't much matter if you like it or not

No never minds, what if's or what ever

Everyone eats if we all swim together

So bring up your bowl, eat as much as you wish

A lot of different vegetables will make a better dish!

Mangy balding dog of a night
poor and patchy thing
of wretched countenance
scratching,
chasing dreams around the basket,
you made my head an insect
one of your hopping fleas,
a buzzing nameless fly
which skims the conscious pond
but fearful of the darkness never dives too deep,
a restless twitching larvae, counting pointless sheep

Everyone brought flowers
oh so many pretty flowers
to grieve with me through the hours
and to take the pain away
roses and daffodils in every shade and colour
because they wanted to say something, but they didn’t know what to say!

Imagine a world
where we just said I quit
you started the war
so you finish it

Secrets never aired,
have painfully awoken,
although we dance on questions
hitherto unspoken,
the trust that once we shared,
is vandalised and broken,

Your head is the shed

Where the memories live

It's not right

That this thief in the night

Slowly takes you

And un-makes you

Until there is just

The rust

Dusty marks on the shelf

That once contained

Your sense of self!

Clinging spider webs
settle on the frosted tomb
of a loving heart

Is the planet a nation?

You tell me

How many raindrops get lost in a sea

A nation is anything you want it to be!

I was born with a Woolworth’s spoon in my mouth
not for me a silver stem and bowl
because my mother was a practical kind of soul
she fed us and she clothed us,
and she never forgot to love us,
then she taught us we were just as good
as the cutlery above us

Why do we do it?

we who pluck the air

for spare and fleeting words

which do not come

although we call them

to our waiting arms

they do not play the servant

but we call them master

as we seek to turn them to our certain will

they twist us in return

riding on the freedom of their sweated backs

to have them cast us falling

to the pit below

we taste the bitterest wine

of dark despair which fills the foggy air

they will not let us sleep

and keep us trapped and tied

to do their restless bidding in our heads

although we know full well

how words are fickle fleeting things

we cannot help but wait and long for further flight

beneath the shadowed freedom of their ceaseless beating wings

To let our wildest thoughts take flight

On gentle feathered wings of night

To break the bonds of earth and find

We leave our human chains behind

To soar and dip and skim the oceans roar

Released from all we were before

To feel the light and taste the air

Is not a gift that we can share

Still shackled to the ground it seems

We must content ourselves with dreams

Leaving birds to own the sky

While we look up and long to fly

Wrap me in Autumn
warm among the leaves
wind up my colours
take down my flag of living
see it fade to memory
wave it no more
shroud me with October light
think of me as a year
that is slowly dying

Poem potatoes,
I cannot dig them out
or present them at table
for the admiration of my greedy fellows,
the soil of me is raw just now
word tubers withered and sour
wrinkled old men faces survey me
with their squinted many sprouted eyes
and defy me to do better,
or produce a mealy crop of no particular flavour
a bitter harvest,
best to leave things fallow then
rest my growing ground
and see what fills the bucket next time round

The lark awakened,
she took to the sky
between the pylons
singing sweetly,
her notes were clear,
fluid and beautiful
her tune unchanged,
since the world was young
she finished her song,
and flew off to find breakfast
unaware that nobody heard
after all,
she was just a small brown bird

Winter's burning sun
fell into the dark water
I could not catch it

How many dreams,
how many wild and uncompleted schemes,
how many words
and the infant ghosts of poems I will never write
do I leave on my pillow at the end of every night

Hail the vortex
that twisted swirling mass
drawing all to the centre
******* life from what surrounds it
to feed its hungry, needy, greedy, maw,
unstoppable and untamed,
malign, malignant,
universal force of destruction
or shall we call him Mr President

We live in crochet

complicated webs interweaving with each other

beautiful and endlessly complex, drop one stitch and it all unravels

stop picking holes in it

we don't have the pattern to do another one!

The world took a break

Traffic stilled, just the dark rope of empty roads stretching for miles

Birds sang in the trees

No planes flew

People didn't rest

They sat in their houses and  didn't sleep, no matter how calm the world outside the window

We worried and wished and waited for it all to be over

For the planet to wake up

So that we could go to bed

Change in my pocket jingles
I wonder how many ears
in previous years
have also heard the music
of these little clanking bells
who could ever tell
but the feeling lingers
as I move them through my fingers

Sunrise

Flaming birth of day

Flamingo colours

Boiling sky

And newly minted dawn

To pierce the night

With crimson rain

Of burning stars and heaven flame

Wages for the buzzing bee who works for hours and hours

among the drifting summer scent of honeysuckle flowers

Poetry is not spaghetti
you cannot herd, strings of complicated words
and hurl them at the page, one by one
to see if they stick, when the poem is done

Your blue eyes
saw only sunflowers
painted smoky shades of living truth
frail petals fallen from your artists hand
lay upon the canvas
when sanity became a foreign land
what we failed to understand
you had a lust for life
it's true
we never saw it eating you

Do the stars look down and gently sigh
From their lofty home do they wonder why,
as we scurry around on our little blue ball
concerned about things that don't matter at all.
Do they weep when they see us again and again
smashing our world and the bits that remain.
The continuing heavens roll on and on
they were there before, and after we've gone
they will still exist to shed their light
with a fire that warms the eternal night.
Human kind is the blink of an eye
To those who look down and wonder why!

Where on earth did you come from
what on earth have you seen
so many things have happened
since you were young and green
flowing seas have washed you
smooth on a foreign shore
what places did you visit
when will you see some more