Today is National left handers day-
Only Southpaws are pitching tonight,
I suspect its all part of a sinister plot,
a coup against all that is right.

Eating with Lefties is always a risk
when Lefties your starboard assay.
but seated to port they're a jolly good sort-
if you get them to offer to pay.

sit and listen to the quiet
it's outside the christmas norm
because now, when all is silent
it's the calm before the storm

the kids are upstairs sleeping
you're resting, sitting with a drink
in a few hours ...storms a brewing
it'll push you to the brink

the kids are up and yelling
paper wrapping all around
until the house is empty
no more rest today is found

the kids are outside playing
hockey games out on the drive
you just look around and wonder
if the day you will survive

next, arrive the in-laws
re-gifting what you gave last year
and good old uncle charlie
bee-lining for the beer

bad jokes and boring stories
arguements about the past
snide comments and back handers
how long will this all last

you sneak outside for a quick drink
grab a smoke on the back porch
if it wasn't your house they were in
the whole **** thing you'd torch

phony smiles and airy kisses
and the folks are on their way
the storm is almost over
for another Christmas Day

the kids are in and up in bed
there is silence once again
the calm once more before the storm
tomorrow, your folks come at ten!!!!

Where, oh where has this money been?
It's been up to London to buy me a woman.
When you'd had your pleasure, what else did you there?
Took in a live show, some sights to enjoy.
When you had seen, what did you then?
Went home to the wife, a yarn to spin.
Did you not waste such hard-earned cash?
I need the excitement, the seedy thrill.

Where, oh where has this money been?
Changed hands in a back street for needle and syringe.
What was then done to inject some feeling?
A little ******, just to keep me going.
But what about AIDS and ***?
It's one of those things that won't happen to me.
How do you finance such expensive tastes?
Sell stuff to kids at the going rate.

Where, oh where has this money been?
It bought me a meal and a little something to drink.
How did you earn this financial gain?
Begged it off some geezer down the Embankment.
Why are you out here sleeping so rough?
It's a long tale of women, gambling and drink.
What of these others with whom you share this door?
Just poor bleeding kids with no ******* jobs.

Where, oh where has this money been?
It bought me a contract with a few back handers.
And who did you bribe for their deceit?
Oh, it wasn't bribery, just a little commercial grease.
What will you build to make your mark?
Another block of flats, fully air-conditioned.
On what in the past is your empire built?
Prostitution, gambling, and a few tons of drugs.

A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog,
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den, racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach

A car, and a windowpane, that have both seen too much,
ragged advertisements fluttering in the wind,
advertising a movie coming out yesterday,
A burger shop ad that had already long closed,
and deals long gone.
The downtown urban forest, turned into a junkyard
full of scraps of rusted silver and infected bronze.

A bystander who can do nothing but laugh
as a boy's nose gets crushed in,
a ****** lip,
A swollen, purple eye
A boy of 18
who is still waiting for her somewhere
to see her colored smile
and eyes of glass
bitter and emotionless, glazed over with sterling silver,
who has a family, siblings,
who is now turned into nothing but a ragged playtoy for the sick, sick entertainment of others

A broken air conditioner that can do nothing but clack clack clack over and over again, metal blades spinning vainly for nothing,
while a broken family is screaming in the other room,
and a child is crying, hands to his face, covering his eyes
as a father hits his wife, knocks her against the sharp, tiled kitchen counter,
and the screaming intensifies, accompied by the hurtful insults that are thrown at each other-by the father and the teen.
and still the air conditioner goes on and on
oblivious to nothing.

A world that is so breathtaking and cruel at the same time
where little, insignificant families are torn apart without a second thought,
where the 'strong' prey on the 'weak'
Where the most beautiful sprawling cities turn into rejected second handers just because of a rumor
And,
A mother who listens to soft classical Mozart
Reclined against the soft, worn pillow from ages, ages ago
full of tears and stiches  
slender fingers easily flicking through a catalog, searching for the most effective medicine, eyes flickering in worry
while a father is hunched over
in the cold den because
he doesn't want to risk spreading his sickness to anyone else
racked with coughs and pains, trembling fingers trying to hold on to the metallic foil of medicine.
Working hard to support his family because the economy is going down again
And a child, barely 4
playing with stuffed animals on the couch
a victim of Tay Sach,
dead at 6.

Time Volume: 1
I’m eating up the hours
one by one.
Blink.
Click.
Blink.
another screen,
more non-words
Blink.
Click.
Just letters.
Click
9000 more words
blink
and more time.
Click.
To be forgotten.


Learning to forget
The melting *** cast a boy and I ran outside,
A slime soaked goblin, a monster from the pit
Lobbing clods of mud at a harmonic sky
Whirring with dragonflies and lolloping bees.

Sun and rain prepared a day on a different earth
Where there was life in the monkey puzzles,
And scuttling battle grounds that
hid hundred-handers beneath concrete slabs.  
Gravel churned up tiny black dragons,
rotten logs, fortresses of tiny fiends.

I had a sword in my hand, I was noble.
Defender of the realm, scourge until tea,
The hero of worlds
everyone else couldn’t see.


Time volume 2**
Excalibur was stuck fast
When the new branches fell
Click.
the tips of my fingers are beginning to rot.
Blink.
Click.
If only I could
blink
stop the second
click
See the world behind glass.
blink
and dance out of time.
Click.
This snow globe,
Is not the Antarctic.


Artificiality in Imagination
Turning my back on time and space with
Bottled brains, ***** mist, powdered thought
I chiselled into old pathways.
I carved a silk road through synapse and nerve
to return to my monsters.

I saw a sickness of colouration
A lynx effect for the sky
tearing punkish streaks into the atmosphere
that were quickly blinked away.
Sunspots, cloudbursts, tussocks, grass,
Paper squares, green, red, purple, pink, blue,
pungent smoke, bugs, ripples, shivers,
polka dots and blank spots.
A storm-cloudy stomach.

The perspective of a head plastered to the soil again
saw thing for what they were,
a tiny amazon thought lost to rationality.
My heart thumped for a fear and joy
in a way forgotten by time.


Time Volume 3
Why is it called wasted when it is time well spent?
Click.
my god, my eyes hurt.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.
Click.
What would I give for a pretty girl sat under a tree.  
Click.
search * (pretty girl sat under tree)
Click.
She’s hot.
Click.
So is she.
Click.
… could always.
Click.
don’t be stupid.
Click.
Just 9000 more words.


Fantasy for a Counterpoint
I questioned what’s real when she blinked at me
and stopped existing  when she closed her eyes.
No one taught us to write in blood,
Tattoo our names into each other’s skin,
Leaving claw marks for the world not to see.

Whatever you drew was Van Gough
Whatever you said was Keats,
Whatever bruise you left was Tyson’s.

The outer layers of or skin are dead,
It’s funny whatever you touch on a person,
Is already dead.

Just before our love got lost
I noticed a thread break away from the braid
Around your head,
a small incongruity,
That made your hair a mess.

Love became what it was when you said you were
‘as constant as the northern star’,
And I replied, ‘yes - always in the dark’.


Time Volume 4
This is progress for my sake,
Just in time.
Blink.
Time is money.
Click
Time flies.
Blink
A stich in time
Click
This is a paradigm of nothing time.
Click
I’ve got so much time.
Click
And so little time to waste.
Blink
I’m a long time dead.


Hope for a handful of dust
Eventually I will while away these lonely hours.

What black rocks stir while we sleep?
What prayers rumble still, among old stones?
Do they speak the eternal city and glow civilised blue -
Or burn timeless black?

Does the probing ivy find us out
And the blunt head of a worm investigate
our most intimate parts?

Or does a spectre rise from the soil
To live under children’s beds?

When is the point that death
Becomes something breath-taking -
And the brook, my brown blood,
The dead leaves my skin,

Is it fantasy
to put something
where nothing should be?

The soft earth will **** me in
And give my brittle bones
To worms and crows
What stirs beneath the stones,
may always be worms and crows

Why does the right hand get all the good jobs,
like greeting visiting dignitaries
(such a pleasure) ,
or blowing farewell kisses to the one you love
(such sweet sorrow) ,
or playing the melody while the left
has to oompah along in the bass?
Right-handers get the best adjectives too.
I mean, we’d all like to be
adroit (as the French have it) .
So why do we poor southpaws have to be
gauche or, while we’re about it, gawky?
Tactless, without grace, ungainly, awkward,
physically and socially inept, that’s us.
And Latin’s no better.
We’d like to be dextrous too.
What makes us
sinister? Was Dracula
left-handed, or something?

Even when we can hammer
or saw or paint or drive a *****
with either hand equally,
or cut the nails on both sets of fingers,
they only say we are ambi-
dextrous, which is a bit of a left-handed
compliment, treating the left
as if it were an honorary right,
as if it had no right
to be skilful
in its own right.

I suppose my left hand ought to be grateful
(in this respect) that I was not born
into a tradition where it is laid down
what each hand can do. It could have been
condemned to a lifetime
of bottom-wiping and not much else,
and becoming cack-
handed in more ways than one.

doors are locked and walls are concrete
the great machinery keeps churning out weapons
fighter planes and bombers precision strike indiscriminate
lead bullets and shrapnel children with adults
collateral unfortunate damage and striking accuracy
millions of dollars paid in taxes and back handers
lets go to war one last time set loose the nuclear deterrent
Press the button start over and this time listen to the peacemakers.

We always gonna have people that wants the upper hand on you.
The blackmailer or back stabbers trying to get ahead of you.

They tries to manipulate you in many ways.
Only accomplishing it.
When you give them the power too.

The upper handers.
Who really are the insecure fools of society?
Oh, they come in many degrees.
From the rich to the poor.
They live for excitements that's not theirs.
But yours.

And when their world comes crashing down.
Then they pretend they didn't create any type ruckus.
From the politicians to the mobsters.
We have seen it all.
Once entrapped, they wants to tell it all.

After they found that the upper hand isn't all about power.

For the left handers,
whose ink gets smudged every time they think to put thought on paper-
I don't have that problem but I've seen first hand the devastation.
This is for the stuttering stutterers,
whose ideas fall on deaf ears because it takes too long to speak the thoughts to those too impatient to hear the words behind the frustrated stuttering.
For sadly brokenhearted fools-we've all been there-
whose chest aches every second from when they wake til sleep finally knocks them cold from their pain.

This all is for you. The frustrated, the hopeless, the midnight make it down the stairs to annihilate an unexpecting bowl of cereal, the drink-to-supress-the-pain-ers... for all of us who may or may not understand what the hell the point is.

This is for you.

Across this world of wide expanse
Of peoples of all hue,
There dwell a breed who call the shots
At best, they're far and few.
Elitists in their chosen field
They lead through halls of wealth,
To wield the club of power
With a callousness and stealth.
Unencumbered by remorse,
Self consciousness or guilt,
They ply their craft implacably
With blades ******, to the hilt.
Nobody treads their path by day
Nor ventures near by night
For fear is the factor plied
Upon those few, who might?

Thuggery by virtue
Of it's purity and strength
Defeats the hand of righteousness
And it's limitation's length.
Influence through wealth and power,
Politics and might,
Ensures the threat of challenge
Is minimized, outright.
Ensures the chance of coup d'état
Is nipped, quite in the bud....
And any hint of a transgression
Indicates you're for the rub.
Control here is the absolute
And menace, the means,
Of town and State and Nationhood
Uncompromisingly...it seems!

Doctoring the syllabuses
Manipulating schools,
Ensuring that the emphasis points
To Strength.... to laugh at fools.
From idolizing sporting stars
Who break the rules at will,
To buying off the referee
To guarantee the ****.
The new Mercedes waiting
Just offstage, there in the wings
All dependent on that chosen
Presentation team that sings?
Back handers at container ports
Consignments sent astray
Narcotics for the Power brokers
Ensures they scoop the day!

Extrapolated to today
Where double standards rate,
Where settlers on the West bank
Of Judea earn the hate....
Of the dispossessed of Palestine
Who are hounded from their land
Whilst the Fat Cats in Washington
Offer Israel, their hand?
Yet, seemingly, duplicitous
That very same Decree
Siphons billions to Ukraine
To prevent mad Russia's hungry spree?
Forgive me the confusion here
For I am, but a man....
But is not this a juxtaposition
Here, Involving land???

Tomorrow's cold betrayal
In yesterday's hot win
Smacks of loss of bold cohesion
And fearful, dabbling in Sin.
Black is to White now
As White is now to Black
And the marginalization
Means there's no going back,
For the die is hard and solid caste
And the future is full clear
That the mania of mankind's
Final ****** demise is near...
That our values are shot to Hell
With the message on the wall
Hallelujah's gone, friend
And there aint no **** recall!

M@Foxglove, Taranaki NZ
3 March 2023