I am alive by luck at this point.
I wonder if the gun that will eventually take me has been made.
Whose trigger will bury me.
How many bullets, like a flock of sparrows, will come carry my life to its final bed.
Today, I am alive but there is no law to thank.
If not me, then someone else.
Born into a game of chance we never asked for. Traded diplomas for obituaries. Traded graduation speeches for eulogies. Traded futures for an early grave. Forced to cash in their chips. We don’t want to play anymore.
And this too is eulogy. And this too is prayer. And this too can resurrect the coffin wood back to a tree. Can sing back alive whatever parts of you died with them. Whatever leapt in your throat at yet another headline.
Mourning until you, too, are a thing to mourn.
But we will no longer be martyrs.
We are the rude awakening to politicians who pawned out our safety, who bartered our lives for bribes.
You say “gun reform is not the answer” but all I can see is a bullet rattling like a pinball in an innocent student’s jaw.
You smell like gun smoke and
I can see the AR15 you're holding behind your back and
I guess it's easy to crack jokes about dodging bullets when you're the one firing them.
Give teachers books not bullets:
Kafka isn’t kevlar.
Bronte isn’t bulletproof.
And how sick is it that we must add school shootings to your list of proud american traditions.
Throwing opinions like punches.
How many more have to die before you decide your ego isn’t as important as you think it is?
And I, too, am buried alive
My soggy grave parting its greedy lips.
To you, my bones, when ground into gunpowder and mixed into water, taste like champagne.
My pulse, as thin as an obituary panting beneath sweaty palms, and sure
We are “just kids,”
But you are forgetting we are the next generation
And you autopsy your fists.
Call it reclamatory.
Lately, when asked “how are you?” I respond with a name no longer living.
And who knows if mine will be next

It was an AR15 that the kid used.
A gun that, in this free world, men can indulge and abuse.
A boy who saw him load his gun,
the gunman saw and simply said run,
A word that made the child flee for his life,
just before waves of bullets came upon the school,
The kid looked on and asked himself
why is life so cruel.

How many more people have to die,
before its ****** metal, not tears, that your children cry.
This free world, rife with argument by silly politicians
Men that make decisions, without experience of the repercussions.
This gunman was not a delinquent, he was a child.
Born of your failed systems, born of your sick traditions.
A boy who without second thought, took up his assault rifle
and headed into war with the children that learned ambition with him,
emotion and sudden movement that made them all feel just that little bit stifled.

This free world is one with a core of rights,
A doubled edged dagger,
a topic of discussion that makes the average fat man want to fight.
‘Over my cold dead body’ he said.
LET ME HAVE MY GUN
Because whilst others use it for fun,
the protection I have outweighs the fact
that when a 19 year old comes to school,
all the other kids have to run.

It’s ridiculous, heck its thoroughly imbecilic,
How children have to be careful of the education system,
not because of a
nationwide test
but a,
nationwide threat
of grown men,
looking to prove their ego,
men that can’t go against the party line
that fail to realise that life is more important
than the next donation
than the dollar sign.

You want protection? That’s completely fine.
Just don’t use the bodies of your children
as meat shields and pretend everything’s fine.
Don’t say you’ll do something as if something will change
because nothing will change unless it does.
This free world is not filled with love but truly its filled with hate,
A bloodlust so dense, even children’s blood cannot sate it’s thirst.
Until it's more than just a child hurt, but a country with a bullet wound
Caused by people, who love guns so much but blame it on the loons.
Your pain, I cannot prove.

January Colours

In the winter garden
of the Villa del Parma
by the artist’s studio
green grass turns vert de terre
and the stone walls
a wet mouse’s back
grounding neutral – but calm,
soothing like calamine
in today’s mizzle,
a permanent dimpsey,
fine drenching drizzle,
almost invisible, yet
saturating skylights
with evidence of rain.

February Colours

In the kitchen’s borrowed light,
dear Grace makes bread  
on the mahogany table,
her palma gray dress
bringing the outside in.

Whilst next door, inside
Vanessa’s garden room
the French windows
firmly shut out this
season’s bitter weather.

There, in the stone jar
beside her desk,
branches of heather;
Erica for winter’s retreat,
Calluna for spring’s expectation.

Tea awaits in Duncan’s domain.
Set amongst the books and murals,
Spode’s best bone china  
turning a porcelain pink
as the hearth’s fire burns bright..

Today
in this house
a very Bloomsbury tone,
a truly Charleston Gray.

March Colours

Not quite daffodil
Not yet spring
Lancaster Yellow
Was Nancy’s shade

For the drawing room
Walls of Kelmarsh Hall
And its high plastered ceiling
Of blue ground blue.

Playing cat’s paw
Like the monkey she was
Two drab husbands paid
For the gardens she made,
For haphazard luxuriance.

Society decorator, partner
In paper and paint,
She’d walk the grounds
Of her Palladian gem
Conjuring for the catalogue
Such ingenious labels:

Brassica and Cooking Apple
Green to be seen
In gardens and orchards
Grown to be greens.

April Colours

It would be churlish
to expect, a folly to believe,
that green leaves would  
cover the trees just yet.

But blossom will:
clusters of flowers,
Damson white,
Cherry red,
Middleton pink,

And at the fields’ edge
Primroses dayroom yellow,
a convalescent colour
healing the hedgerows
of winter’s afflictions.

Clouds storm Salisbury Plain,
and as a skimming stone
on water, touch, rise, touch
and fall behind horizon’s rim.
Where it goes - no one knows.

Far (far) from the Madding Crowd
Hardy’s concordant cove at Lulworth
blue by the cold sea, clear in the crystal air,
still taut with spring.

May Colours

A spring day
In Suffield Green,
The sky is cook’s blue,
The clouds pointing white.

In this village near Norwich
Lives Marcel Manouna
Thawbed and babouched
With lemurs and llamas,
Leopards and duck,
And more . . .

This small menagerie
Is Marcel’s only luxury
A curious curiosity
In a Norfolk village
Near to Norwich.

So, on this
Blossoming
Spring day
Marcel’s blue grey
Parrot James
Perched on a gate
Squawks the refrain

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springþ þe wde nu,
Sing cuccu!

June

Thrownware
earth red
thrown off the ****
the Japanese way.
Inside hand does the work,
keeps it alive.
Outside hand holds the clay
and critically tweaks.
Touch, press, hold, release
Scooting, patting, spin!
Centering: the act
precedes all others
on the potter’s wheel.
Centering: the day
the sun climbs highest
in our hemisphere.
And then affix the glaze
in colours of summer:
Stone blue
Cabbage white
Print-room yellow
Saxon green
Rectory red
And fire!

July Colours

I see you
by the dix blue
asters in the Grey Walk
via the Pear Pond,
a circuit of surprises
past the Witches House,
the Radicchio View,
to the beautifully manicured
Orangery lawns, then the
East and West Rills of
Gertrude’s Great Plat.

And under that pea green hat
you wear, my mistress dear,
though your face may be April
there’s July in your eyes of such grace.

I see you wander at will
down the cinder rose path
‘neath the drawing-room blue sky.

August Colours

Out on the wet sand
Mark and Sarah
take their morning stroll.
He, barefoot in a blazer,
She, linen-light in a wide-brimmed straw,
Together they survey
their (very) elegant home,
Colonial British,
Classic traditional,
a retreat in Olive County, Florida:
white sandy beaches,
playful porpoises,
gentle manatees.

It’s an everfine August day
humid and hot
in the hurricane season.
But later they’ll picnic on
Brinjal Baigan Bharta
in the Chinese Blue sea-view
dining room fashioned
by doyen designer
Leta Austin Foster
who ‘loves to bring the ocean inside.
I adore the colour blue,’ she says,
‘though gray is my favourite.’

September

A perfect day
at the Castle of Mey
beckons.
Watching the rising sun
disperse the morning mists,
the Duchess sits
by the window
in the Breakfast Room.
Green leaves have yet to give way
to autumn colours but the air
is seasonably cool, September fresh.

William is fishing the Warriner’s Pool,
curling casts with a Highlander fly.
She waits; dressed in Power Blue
silk, Citron tights,
a shawl of India Yellow
draped over her shoulders.
But there he is, crossing the home beat,
Lucy, her pale hound at his heels,
a dead salmon in his bag.

October Colours

At Berrington
blue, clear skies,
chill mornings
before the first frosts
and the apples ripe for picking
(place a cupped hand under the fruit
and gently ‘clunch’).

Henry Holland’s hall -
just ‘the perfect place to live’.
From the Picture Gallery
redolent in portraits
and naval scenes,
the view looks beyond
Capability’s parkland
to Brecon’s Beacons.

At the fourteen-acre pool
trees, cane and reed
mirror in the still water
where Common Kingfishers,
blue green with fowler pink feet
vie with Grey Herons,
funereal grey,
to ruffle this autumn scene.

November Colours

In pigeon light
this damp day
settles itself
into lamp-room grey.

The trees intone
farewell farewell:
An autumnal valedictory
to reluctant leaves.

Yet a few remain
bold coloured

Porphry Pink
Fox Red
Fowler
Sudbury Yellow

hanging by a thread
they turn in the stillest air.

Then fall
Then fall

December Colours*

Green smoke* from damp leaves
float from gardens’ bonfires,
rise in the silver Blackened sky.

Close by the tall railings,
fast to lichened walls
we walk cold winter streets

to the warm world of home, where
shadows thrown by the parlour fire
dance on the wainscot, flicker from the hearth.

Hanging from our welcome door
see how incarnadine the berries are
on this hollyed wreath of polished leaves.

No thoughts were thrown around,
let alone conscious decisions bound
in clear evidence and concrete fence-post facts.

She was awake before the frost settled,
and my how her eyes showed the time:
Lengthy red lines pretending to be hands that chimed.

The parkland grasses awaited the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning masquerade.

-

Only her body was thrown around,
alone across a car bonnet
in a clear honest, beautiful smudge of fashion and blood.

She would never awake the same again,
and how the nurses soothed her pain
with modern miracle, clear liquid rain, medicine.

The parkland grasses still await the
speckled dappled, sunlight shade,
to warm its back in the morning death march masquerade.

Rugby, Warwickshire
16/10/2015

Unholy streets of G-d, liquid tobacco,
gentle froth and steam
from the coffee estuary, split beneath the clock tower
on the idle hour; more pigeons than people,
more buildigs than choices
on this small-town, charity shop parade.

The women are still beautiful, still unattainable,
still on the brink of a breakdown
in the most confident dress.
Street-pastors carry the drunks home,
the street-cleaners appear by the afterparty,
clear out the old bottles
before the commuter picks up cigarettes
from the newsagents that never rests.

Tattoo parlours, barber shops,
Christmas on the radio come Hallowe'en-
this is the town that crazy built:
war-time poetry, jet propulsion,
chief inventor of sport,
of mild alcohol addiciton.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
hundreds of places to hide away;
a foreign face in a sea of family and friends.
Landlocked, gridlocked,
centrally located but left out on a limb;
this town clings to the tracks,
it's avenues of escape
the only margin to keep the residents
out of mind and in their place.

But this is where I grew up,
always more car-park than parkland,
my first steps on Campbell Street,
on Armstrong Close,
first time I broke the law on Bridget Street,
on Selborne Road.
I'd push my bike all around this town,
no stopping off for a smoke,
for to get my fix-
I'd push on and on past graveyards and open bars
without a second gance.

Now, it's all shooters and soul-singers
and happenstance;
chicken wings on a late-night binge,
a box of wine, a night of sin,
wake up in shame,
life's a guessing game
and guess what, you'll never win.

Chewing gum, patches,
vapour that scratches the back of my throat,
nicotine in my blood,
you know, I'm trying my best to get clean.
Blister packs of vitamins, bowls of fruit,
buying coconut water over the counter-
green tea by the rising moon,
incense sticks and vegetables in the garden,
yet by the time night rolls on by
the locus of my eyes, they darken;
I'll be back on the beer,
I'll be smoking a carton.

This is the town that crazy built,
even the flowers by the roadside wilt,
cement factory, hum-drum poverty,
post-code belonging to Coventry,
kept out of the war
by a matter of minutes,
kept from the future
by corporate interest.

Hospital lights, supermarket glow,
I can't remember the last time
I wasn't loaded with chemicals
every time I get home,
every time I sign out
and put my head on the pillow,
I see familiar streets, familiar signs,
the job centre, the floodlights,
the 12% lager, the twist of lime.
I struggle with rhyme,
I struggle most days to get out of the house,
but at night, I know, that sea of doubt
is a river of light, to ruin my liver,
to spike my fever, to calm me down.

There's hundreds of places to get drunk in this town,
and this world it don't spin,
it just throws me around.

A day of love, a day of hearts:
Valentine's Day, twenty eighteen.
The day started out like any other
But ended in a horrific scene.

Students in Parkland, Florida,
Shared their valentines today.
A former student entered the school
To celebrate in a different way.

An AR-15 assault-style rifle
Was that student's valentine.
Killing and hurting students and teachers
Was his version of "Please be mine."

All it takes is a single person
To drag a special day through the mud.
Roses and hearts with Cupid's arrow
Lie on the ground, splattered with blood.

Are we failing our people here?
When shootings occur, we ask for prayers
Instead of taking appropriate measures.
What a sad state of affairs!

Most of us enjoy our day;
Our lives return to normal tomorrow.
Valentine's Day for people in Parkland
Forever will be suffused with sorrow.

-by Bob B (2-14-18)

the 19th SCHOOL shooting in the USA in 48 days

the gun lobby is lying low
the president
     surprise
avoids a straight comment

17 school children dead
because in the land of the free
any psychopath can buy
a semiautomatic without problems
and vent his frustrations and fears
in a shooting spree

home schooling is on the rise
for better or worse

what do you call a president
who is unwilling
    or unable
    to protect
the health and security
of his people?

LOSER!!!

If you survive,
Go tell the world.
Not that you survived,
but of what happened.
Bring awareness to those,
Who were left in the darkness.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
9-11,
Parkland shooting,
Only naming a few.
For those whose voices are forever quieted,
Speak with the weight of their legacy on your shoulders.
But don't carry the load alone,
There are others who feel the same,
With tear-stained faces, their burden is heavier than yours,
So shoulder the pain together,
And survive.

There is a bullet in a box of crayons with really strange names like Parkland Perrywinkle, Sandy Hook Sanguine, and Great Mills Green in a place where children play Russian Roulette with their school supplies when they reach in to grab one and they’ve been learning about probability this week Forrest Gump will tell them you never know if you’re going to finish the lesson or turn into a statistic my sister likes to create mosaics by putting a hairdryer to crayons melting cascades of wax down a blank page sometimes she reaches in and it’s the one lead crayon at the top of the page and it’s only one color that seeps down into the crevices of the cafeteria’s tile floor that proceeds to wash away the Proud Honor Roll Parent stickers washes away the Proud Honor Roll Parent stickers I see another child reach into the box and I write another word problem I write another word problem: “Zoey reaches into a box of crayons. What is the likelihood she will not get to hang her drawing up on her kitchen refrigerator? What is the likelihood her funeral photo will hang there instead?” Draw students’ attention to the key word “likelihood.” Tell students This word shows that the question is asking whether or not you will live to tell your parents how your day at school was. and I wonder when school desks will take the shape of caskets in a place where both screams of laughter and screams of terror
are permitted

A thin white dust of snow littered the concrete path like an overspill of Styrofoam *****. Summer had her hands buried deep into the lining of her coat pockets and her chin pressed tightly within her pashmina scarf. It was the first bite of wind she’d felt in a while. She had been holed up with her friends for several days and the concept of loneliness was already foreign to her, much in the same way as privacy. She could feel the cheap red wine rust in her veins as her body told her “too much” and in truth she was ready for the crackle of vinyl and the promise of fresh sheets and a shower. The week had been fun, she guessed, she’d certainly felt closer to her friends than ever before, even though they all went back for as far as it was worth remembering.  ‘She guessed’. She’d been guessing for a while now, living in absences with everything held at an emotionless distance – whether or not this was deliberate she could not decide.
It wasn’t a particularly long walk back to her house, enough to take the bus - but she guessed she wanted the walk. The cold air made her eyes glassy and occasionally she had to blink furiously to catch the water forming along her lids. The din of distant inner city traffic consumed the airwaves around her but the path that lay ahead of her was surrounded by parkland, and within eyeshot there was a lazy brook where children would often be seen playing, though they’d be at school at this time of day. She guessed. She wasn’t quite sure of the time, but she knew it was the 15th of February. She couldn’t always be sure of what year it was though, her head was often stuck back in the 1960’s, before she was even born.
Summer could feel the claustrophobia of youthfulness shedding from her every angle and with every insipid step she took, the world took on a more familiar feeling and she took her first real breath of air for days. From out of nowhere she felt overwhelmed at the breathless ease of the faint snowfall and the slate grey of the sky. The clench in her stomach – Summer often found herself weeping for no real reason, and she could never quite work out whether she would be weeping for beauty, or for sorrow…she guessed that there was some compromise between the two. All she knew is that she was very sorry when she reached her front door that her walk was over and that she must again disappear into the walls.
The heating had been off for almost an entire week now and Summer could hear the house groan into action as the radiators cracked back into life, and she felt much the same. The kettle jittered on the spot as the water steamed and bubbled welcomingly and soon the kitchen was greeted with the smell of tea. Summer retreated to her room upstairs. A wide room with white walls meant that it was often brighter than the world outside and it often appeared to unadjusted eyes to have a ghostly glow about it. Summer thumbed through her proud collection of second-hand LP records until she settled on listening through Pink Moon for what was now an uncountable time. “Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way”. She let out an exhausted but contented smile and fell onto her bed. The sheets were cold from privation of use but the coolness on her cheek was welcome and she closed her eyes and imagined she was still outside on an effortless walk, with the sounds of Nick Drake overpowering that of the exhausts of one thousand cars.
After several moments of another world, she reluctantly sat back up and began to take off her clothes to get a little bit more comfortable. It felt good to get out of her clothes, she’d only meant to stay for one night so she had not been able to change her clothes for days and she’d appreciated the idea of clean underwear in a way she never considered worth noticing before. She unclasped her bra and felt it fall clumsily to the floor and just sat there for a moment, bare-breasted in the pearl white of the chilly room. She couldn’t help but feel like an illustration, of pastels or watercolours. Her mind was still a convoluted collage of the past few day’s events – the haze of alcohol and **** still occupied a small corner of her being, despite the cleansing walk and the wonderful clunk of a familiar guitar bouncing across her walls. Her ******* were hard from the cold so she threw on an extra large male t-shirt that fell to just below her upper thigh.
She slid off her skirt and underwear, which fell limp at her pale thin ankles. Looking at her thighs, she could still make out the small thumb-sized bruises scattered across them from the distant and removed *** she’d had at some point last week. At least she guessed, it could have happened back in the 60’s for all she knew. It felt as if the past week was not real, a familiar feeling. She was almost certain that man who had shared her bed did not really exist and her bruises contested her own existence. At least that’s how it felt.
She turned over the vinyl and remembering her tea, slid between the covers and warmed her hands against the steaming ceramic. The tea was perhaps the most wonderful and delicious thing she had ever tasted and she felt it nourish her metaphysically. In a way beyond words, she felt herself heal with the rush of warm past her lips and the sweetness on her tongue. The room was slowly warming as she skimmed her legs back and forth against the mattress in complete comfort. Once the last of her tea had been drunk, she let the empty mug rest on the bedside counter and almost immediately fell into a dreamless sleep.

Scenic view
Parkland Avenue
Parkland College
Parkland cop
Parkland High School,
Come into view
We'll sue the cop,
For being on top,
But more bloodshed,
Hohum.
Some more excitements?
Some more very serious up tightment!
Most of us are hardly bloodthirsty.

the dark ice cream man
floats up and down the empty streets
his truck weakly cranking out a warped sounding song
that leaves a trail of dogs objecting
the truck has the word pestilence painted on it
instead of ice cream
his dark form hunched over the steering wheel
his cheshire grin has aspects of his delirium
imprinted on its clean toothy shine
he only comes out at three am
and glides the cool pavement in search
of Delilah's phone number
she promised him that she would be his one true
and he meant to hold her to it
he would do anything to have her all to himself

Delilah walks barefoot along the train track
with one ear nailed acutely to the train whistle approaching
the other ear in her pocket
where she hums a **** version of
the battle hymn of the republic
all good girls love horses and shotgun weddings
she wants her shotgun wedding on the saddle
with the ice cream mans brother
who she thinks is just too nifty to be anything but heavenly
she always pictured him with angel wings
carrying a sword and riding a pale horse named death

there are echoes in the concrete parkland
the neatly trimmed grass glistens wetly in the darkness
a dew touched tree stands on a narrow hill
its leaves thrashed slowly by a whisper of wind
the sound of running feet
laughter
its an illusion
she is an illusion
i make matchstick men
watch them march in precision lines
i am a matchstick man
watch me scribble in precision lines

the ice cream man now sleeping
away the humid hot afternoon
stashed away in the back of his pestilence truck
while Delilah learns how to knit and make candles
that ice cream mans brother sells at flea markets
we all settle for what we think we want
and in the end we all get what we deserve
Delilah marries the brother and they live happily
while ice cream man spends his mid-life crisis as a
politician who leads a double life
making ice cream sandwichs out of his basement
and i am discovered 'neith the truck making
matchstick men out of twigs
from the tree of life

There's a passage in a story by John Buchan where a minor character explains how a good mystery story is created: take at least three random subjects or events and connect them together. Here goes.
 
A toothbrush
Covent Garden
Wildflowers*
 
Interesting to let the mind float free and subjects appear unbidden, thought Marcus. The moon had risen and out at sea its reflections caressed the swelling waves. Calm the night after such a day of being about.
 
Gregory had phoned him, early. Marcus had been lying in bed. Sylvia had just returned from the bathroom and had folded herself into his arms. Their collective feet had conversed amicably as early morning feet do. She was still tingling a little from the passion they had shared, stretching herself languorously like a cat coming into the warm after a cold night out.
 
'Marcus,' said Gregory, 'it's today.' And that was all. The line went dead, but that was all he needed to know.
 
He extricated himself from Sylvia who was intent either on sleep or further love-making. She was incorrigible, but so so desirable.
 
I'll just take a toothbrush he thought as he swiftly shaved. He picked a new pink one still in its packet and put it in his bag with the papers, a map, his camera . . .
 
He thought about Ripley as he steered the car onto the motorway. That character fascinated him and he wondered if its inventor Patricia Highsmith had ever known such a man; a nice good-looking man, but selfish and nasty. Marcus wondered if he was selfish and nasty. He reckoned he was.
 
When he reached Covent Garden, parking illegally in Jermine street, he wasted no time in walking directly to Turino's. There, amongst the tourists and the out of town shoppers was Greg.
 
'I have this little package for you. Don't open it until you reach Southwold. Park in front of the Lion Hotel. Do nothing until she appears, which she will do after her lunch with the doctor. Then follow her. We think she'll go to Ben's. If she does we want the pictures . . . and as explicit as possible. Leave the package.'
 
It's at least two and a half hours to this village on the Suffolk coast. Until Ipswich he scarcely regarded the early summer colours, the plaintive skies, fields stretching to woods, the occasional grandeur of parkland.
 
He stopped for coffee at a services and called Sylvia.
 
'Hi Sylvia it's me.'
'Where are you? I was hoping we'd spend the morning together.'
'Well Greg called . . . I'm on my way to the seaside.'
'Oh . . . no time for Sylvia today?'
'Not today'
'Tonight?'
'if all goes to plan'
' You journalists, you're all the same . .'
 
But he wasn't. He was different. He didn't just write, he could investigate, uncover things, hack into mobile phones, get the compromising images.
 
Yes, she was going to Ben's . North, on the Norwich road. No hesitation. She drove fast. He had to have his wits about him. When she turned off the main road to the mill he carried on, then doubled back and two miles further on parked within sight of the building.
 
Her red car was there the courtyard. He decided on getting in from the garden so left the road for an adjoining field. Waist high in a profusion of grasses and wildflowers Marcus made his way painstakingly towards a collection of outbuildings, the indoor swimming pool, garages, an office.
 
The pictures were good. Both of them, together. The architect and the broker. Lovers, conspirators, thieves. They deserved everything coming to them.
 
He had entered the mill briefly. There were voices upstairs, a little laughter and then silence. He left the package on the kitchen table propped up against a vase.
 
They'd been following her movements for months after he'd taken his suspicions to Fred. Yes, he'd been so lucky. A wine bar conversation, an aggrieved employee, a few leaked documents and it all came together. And now this . . . the ****** stuff the paper loved.
 
He decided not to go back to Sylvia tonight but walk by the sea, let the gentle whoosh of water on the pebbled strand sooth his ruffled conscience. He had done his job. There would be other intrusions. Investigations, revelations. Mr Nice but nasty like The Talented Mr Ripley, he thought.

In that telepathy where the tincture of you flows across into me
and two minds are as one
and the linguistics could be any language they please
where we understand everything
amid the teasing of the tone
and where the home I have made
is the bed upon which we laid
there is a playing of games across the Ocean whose name I no longer recall.
but no matter of that, in my mind,in my flat you are here
with me.
telepathically speaking until still seeking connect
I elect to a meeting
a fleeting of faces
a mouthful of places come up for a rendezvous.

Do you know where the flowers grow tall by the hot dog seller next to the bandstand in the parkland up at Hampstead hill?
You do?
good
see you at three twenty
and I have got plenty to say.

Later in the day after hot dogs and soda I told her let's move on,the evening has brought on a chill
will you come home with me?
I waited to see what her reply might be,
'that could be good'
and I knew that it would
so we
tootled off scootily
and she tootled quite beautifully
and on this bed that we laid we made
another nightshade.

This is not a poem, but...

At least 10 people were killed as a result of a school shooting in Texas this morning. It's a tragedy, but one of the sort that seems to diminish in scope with each passing month. Ten people lost their lives in a fury of unimaginable pain and anguish, yet we seem to grow more immune by the hour. it's a mournful event over which we should weep, but it seems our hearts grow frosty and we hardly bat an eye. Because here's the thing--it's hardly news anymore. We are hardly surprised, hardly hurt, hardly affected. And this is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all.

4 victims were killed in a Tennessee Waffle House--surely now that I mention it, you recall the headlines. That was less than a month ago. The Parkland, Florida school shooting that left 17 dead was less than 2.5 months ago. The Sutherland Springs church shooting that left 26 dead was 6.5 months ago. The Las Vegas Massacre, which saw 58 people killed and over 800 injured, happened not even 8 months ago. The Pulse nightclub shooting that left 49 dead is not even 2 years old. The Charleston Church shooting, killing 9 and perpetrated by white supremacist Dylann Roof, isn't even 3 years old. The Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting that killed 12 was almost 6 years ago, and the Sandy Hook shooting, leaving 27 dead--20 of whom were elementary schoolers--happened only months later.  The Virginia Tech shooting that killed 32 was 11 years ago. Columbine, where 15 people died, will be 19 years old this coming Sunday.

We remember all the headlines, but little of the aftermath. There's too much pain and trauma involved to fully recall the mournful scenes that follow each shooting. And so we are forced to attempt to move on with our lives, thereby washing our hands of the stain of these ****** massacres. We call for reforms, then forget when our politicians move on.

Indeed, our greatest and most fearsome coping mechanism, put simply, has been to forget. We forget the anguish, the empty, hollow, now-caustic thoughts and prayers, the toothless promises of reform. We forget, and move on. On to the street, on to the next, safe in the knowledge that we tried.

...

It seems to me that the greatest and most lamentable tragedy of this entire conversation may not be the crime itself, but rather our reaction to it.

And so it was, then, that when I read this morning's headline about the Texas shooting, I was hardly surprised. My greatest shock was that I was not shocked. And that I was not shocked, and that you weren't either, I'll wager, might be a crime greater than all the others.

After all, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, no?

Until next time, then...

Our Lady visits places where no man has trod asunder
Places where the hand of time has kept them from the sun,
Places where the roiling earth hath ground to rend like thunder
Where history, as we know it now, had barely, then, begun.

With elegance she burrows forth, with elegance a seeking
Tended by her retinue of young, admirers’ lithe,
With elegance she sinuously writhes within containment,
To elegantly strive to shape her contour, uncontrived.

So femininely fabulous, admired by all and sundry
Her deadlines met assiduously, taken in her stride.
Secretly she smiles the smile of one who dwells thereunder
Who secretly entrances with her quiet performing pride.

Fare welled on her journey by adoring crowd and bunting,
Fare welled midst a sea of flags by rotund Prince and child
To coyly disappear from sight with retinue of admirers
To reappear with fanfare in a year, to drive men wild.

Sinuously spinning in her secret world beneath us,
Spinning and beguiling in uniquely female way,
Alice holds our promise in sweet dreams and aspirations
Our Subterranean Goddess…Our Lady of the Day.


Marshalg
Plant Co-ordinator
The Wellconnected Consortium
AUCKLAND.
27 January 2014

**Alice is our giant tunnel boring machine. She is currently 40 m beneath parkland and housing in Owairaka, Auckland. In 12 months she will emerge at Waterview to be spun around to burrow the return tunnel back to the point of origin. These tunnels will form the completing stages of the modern motorway system in Auckland. The system, which will be completed in 2017, will revolutionise the existing transport network and benefit the people of Auckland and New Zealand for decades to come.

Wednesday, 14th of February 2018, 7.00pm,
" breaking news, a mass-shooting happened today in Florida, American authorities are calling this the worst school shooting in U.S.A's history "
6 minutes and 20 seconds,
That's all it took,
17 confirmed dead,
15 injured,
Countless more lives ruined,
All in under 10 minutes,
No parent should ever have to hug their child,
So tight,
Just because it might be the last time they'll ever say goodbye,
No kid should ever have to be afraid of their school hallway,
Or be afraid of who's standing in the classroom doorway,
No kid should ever wonder if this day will be their last,
And no parent should ever have to bury their kid,
Six feet out of their reach,
So this is for Scott,
And for Alyssa,
For Martin,
And for Nicholas,
Not forgetting Aaron,
This goes to Chris,
And Luke,
For Cara,
And for Gina,
Joaquin and Alaina,
Meadow, Helena, and Alex,
Carmen and Peter,
You are all in our hearts,
Let's face it,
The Floridian community of Douglas,
Will never go back to " normal "
So, Washington? Trump?
Riddle us this?
When is this going to be added to your list of " proud American traditions "?
There are too many heavy hearts,
Too many dark days,
Too much chaos and confusion,
For this to be swept under the carpet again,
Just like the last time,
We aren't even a quarter of the way into 2018,
Yet there has been over 30 mass-shootings since the beginning of January,
So here's to the people who aren't accepting the truth,
Who are too " confused " to realize what's going on,
For the people who haven't woken up to the fact,
That there were unidentified bodies,
Sitting cold in that school for over 24-hours,
And do not tell me I am too young to know what I'm talking to you about,
I stand alongside Emma Gonzalez, and the hundreds of young people across the globe,
This isn't just for our lives,
This is for everyone's lives,
Since when did " don't shoot nice people " become such a controversial statement?
Since when did school safety become a debatable, two-sided matter?
So I will join my fellow marchers,
And yell loudly and unapologetically,
Until they hear our voices,
In the words of Emma Gonzalez,
Adults like it when we have strong test scores,
But not when we have strong opinions,
We are Marching For Our Lives,
And this is our legacy.

Turbulence

As he sat watching the shadows
flicker across the beige carpet
the morning air explored
the room, caressed his unsocked feet.
She appeared, briefly:
to walk to the window
to be reminded of the view.
Turning purposefully,
she sent him a wave of turbulence
out of the folds of her long
patterned-blue skirt.


Wild Swim

Evening,
but not yet dark in the Slad Valley.
Beyond the village they left the road,
and down, down a woodland way walked
into a gentle polyphony of birdsong
that is the evening chorus;
a more considered singing,
an equal music and exchange of song
far from the wild chorusing at dawn.

High above, the delicate traceries
of ash leaves;
at their feet, the chocolate-brown fall
of beech flowers.

His hand sheltered her fingers
lightly placed into his folded palm,
but ready to unslip: to observe, to touch
to wonder at the trackside vegetation.

Down, and further down into the valley,
the setting sun illuminating golden
corridors between the tall trees,
they came upon a presence of water
in the air and before the water seen;
a lake, a rhomboid reflection of sky
and still, sun-stricken pines.

Feeling his body wish the caress
of its earth-coloured water
he walked the lake’s line
gazing down into the opaque stillness
seeking to judge its depth.

He might swim; he would swim;
he would feel the water
kiss his body, his feet discover
a hidden floor of mud,
of stones, of vegetation.
Yes, he would lower his naked self
into that cool texture of fresh,
untroubled water.

He undressed before her,
placing his glasses into her care,
each garment into her arms.
Removing his sandals he stepped
into the water until its cloudy surface
covered his thighs, his ***.
He lowered his body and swam,
a few strokes at a time, stopping
then to test the depth,
for his feet to feel the tangled
floor of the underlake.

He turned,
and still in his depth walked back:
to see her standing bemused on the bank.
Out, and in the evening air, he stroked
his hands over naked flanks,
stomach, arms and ****,
brushing the wet away from his body
until a sense of being dry prevailed.

It had not been cold, he thought;
it had been gently invigorating.
A full freshness enveloped his body.
It would stay this passionate longing
he so often felt when alone in her presence,
and in the unconfining space
of the natural world she loved.
It remained with him until hours later
when, regaining the presence of his body
as it stretched itself in their generous bed,
he slept, dreaming of water’s kiss and touch.


Newark Park*

Turning into the drive
a lake of  buttercups
floated in the blue morning
on islands of grass green
between parkland trees
where peacocks called.

Entering the shallow house
barely two rooms wide
light flooded and warmed
the cold stone flags
of this hunting lodge
saved from ruin
by an itinerant American
who searching on a motorbike
for a manored home found his domain
high on the brink of a limestone
escarpment. With a view to die for,
most certainly to live for,
he was captured, captivated
and later confirmed
to all its Englishness,
its history, and despite
its cold, cold comforts.

Most certainly a man’s abode,
long-ago ladies but not wives
would gather for a grandstand view  
from behind its rooftop balustrades,
there to observe the hunting
in the forest far below
and then to entertain,
be entertained
far away from prying eyes
and wagging tongues.

A day of love, a day of hearts:
Valentine's Day, twenty eighteen.
The day started out like any other
But ended in a horrific scene.

Students in Parkland, Florida,
Shared their valentines today.
A former student entered the school
To celebrate in a different way.

An AR-15 assault-style rifle
Was that student's valentine.
Killing and hurting students and teachers
Was his version of "Please be mine."

All it takes is a single person
To drag a special day through the mud.
Roses and hearts with Cupid's arrow
Lie on the ground, splattered with blood.

Are we failing our people here?
When shootings occur, we ask for prayers
Instead of taking appropriate measures.
What a sad state of affairs!

Most of us enjoy our day;
Our lives return to normal tomorrow.
Valentine's Day for people in Parkland
Forever will be suffused with sorrow.
In memory of the victims of the 2/14/18 shooting

We are just back from an autumnal walk.
Gold, red, and yellow lead green by a nose
And the sharper neighbourhood edges are softened
With leaf piles that fill the dips and voids.

We are just in from a loop around the 'hood.
The unseasonable warmth has even coerced
Teenagers onto patches of parkland to play ball
While their digital assault rifles go unused.

We have returned from exposure to the environs.
A long summer of incremental house adjustments
Pauses for the interim, so neighbours can await
The soon-to-be revised ostentation index.

We are inside again at the end of an autumn day.
Dying rays of sunlight filter through windows and half-bare trees.
Free warmth leaves us to rely upon the furnace
And savour anonymity among the bricks, stucco and vinyl.

I remember the lights going off in the brains of young poets.
Deep in the dank streets of New York or Columbia college.

When the blues and twos would come and round up
The beatniks snapping to the howl of a homosexual mind.

When the generational attitudes of those too old to know,
Control the ****** acts of “violence”, or
The deepening scars of our philosophies.

When the urbanization of historical prowess leads to
Gentrified gypsies of the diamond deserts and endless skyways

When the great in the country isn’t good enough
For the red hats and spray tanned millionaires.

When the stocks of corporate dragons burn down
The attempts of upstart knights and online kingdoms.

When the politicians of old become the scapegoats
For the ironically gerontocratic few.

When the female few who dared couldn’t find their lost primaries
Or control the lifeblood leaking out of the Strait of Hormuz.  

When the powerful and powerless fought in-between
The dejected and all too often ignored.

When the powered halogen lights flooded prison yards of
Wrongly convicted and murderously in need of help.

When the San Francisco clubs lit up with muzzle flash
And the dancers lay weeping in their blood.

When the schools became places to duck and cover
Or learn to trip a friend when running from a gun.

When parkland high became a manufacturing ground
For casings, tears, and candlelight vigils.

When the American dream came combo packaged
And supersized with obesity and unemployment.

When the education of the youth became about
The profit margin in a spreadsheet full of debt.

When the sun sets in the smoke filled horizons
And sleepless rest settles on the western front.

They stopped killing us as slaves and started killing us as citizens
When citizens meant slaves but just to a different system
Because the system wanted to give us a taste
A whole new creation of black men and women who know the taste of bullets
Because bullets are the backbone of their existence
Piercing through their backs and their children's
Tell me you’re sorry but it has to be like this
200 years of slavery and we still live like this
I’m constantly asking myself when I die will I be anything more
Than a hashtag and a sweatshirt with my face on it?
Will I still be shackled to the blackness that’s been a magnet for ammunition?
A magnet for the hands that cuff me before I never made a bad decision?
A human designed for target practice?
Told to prove the way the world looks at me wrong
When the quality of my life has already been determined
When we’re arrested for crimes we didn’t commit and over packed into prisons
When the ghettos are already built so they can leave us to be deserted in
When my neighbor’s body is already laying in the street
When Trayvon’s already been dead for over six years
When Danye Jones is left hanging from a tree like from centuries ago
Told “Just don’t be Black”
Because being Black is a threat
You say you shoot to protect
But my people have been starved since the day we were stolen
Taught to work in the white man’s world but never to rise above him
Taught our culture is ugly unless it’s appropriated and copied
Upon this platform built on the backs of my ancestors hung like decorations
Do I know a single black body in America that isn’t scared?
Do I know a single black body in America that isn’t told by this country
Not to be Black
Because being Black is a threat
So you box us inside of a stereotype until we become colorless
Born into a cycle of fearing my life because you hate my skin
While white men are left free to Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Parkland,
Orlando, Charlottesville, Kentucky, Charleston
Told not to be Black
Because the white man is the threat
They dig Black into our brains enough and they hope we forget
That George Zimmerman was found not guilty
Tamir Rice was less than thirteen
That being Black in America is the slowest genocide in history
To not breathe because they’d rather see us die of suffocation
Gentrification because we can't taste freedom
Because freedom tastes like lead casings
Freedom means walking down the street but not being able to do it after evening
Or anytime if it means wearing a durag or hood or black skin
Freedom means beatings
And freedom means bleeding
Bleeding until five officers have gotten enough kicks at Rodney King
Until Martin Luther King's killer feels like the dream has died with him
Freedom is bleeding
And freedom is - - - breathing heavy because I’m running and they still claim to be “policing”
They still claim to be policing
I’m - running and they still claim to be policing
I’m - - - breathing, I’m running, I’m bleeding
… I’m bleeding

There’d been a factory here once,
Squat red brick structure
Suffused with too much noise and too little ventilation,
Built for the purpose of making typewriters,
Unwieldy, cacophonous clanking anachronisms
Whose time, like the town it occupied,
Had long since come and gone,
The only businesses on the sad little main drag
Being those shabby, tattered concerns
Which flower, improbable and cactus-like
At the intersection of the vagaries of memory
And the ascent of decay.

Nothing sits here now,
Simply an empty lot returning to Nature,
Although half-hearted attempts
To accelerate that process have not taken root,
As the soil, fouled by metal shavings, solvents,
And only God knows what else,
Has proved less than amenable
To anything save weedy shoots and scrubby boxwoods,
So it sits empty, impossible to build upon
(There is liability in every spike of crabgrass,
A potential lawsuit in every patch of clover)
And wholly impractical as parkland.
The firm which owned the site erected a fence
To keep whatever was in there in and everyone else out
(In their final addition of injury to insult,
The check they gave to the fencing company in payment
Bounced higher than a child’s rubber ball)
But a generation of winters and general inattention
Have left the chain-links a patchwork affair,
And though the “POSTED” signs remain
(Their original angry and officious red
Having faded to a benign maroon),
Enforcement of their edicts is spotty at best,
So we sit, unbothered and alone,
On an odd little mound at the back of the lot
As the dusk begins to take hold,
I, in an act of mad optimism, the peculiar positing
That there are good things yet to come,
Grab your hand, intertwining the fingers with mine.

why i will march
on march 24
for the victims of
february 14

i will march
because i have been a student

i still am a student

i will march
because i have seen
people with guns
and what they can do

i will march
because my best friend
lives 18 minutes away
from parkland, florida

and my cousin
lives 30 minutes away
from great mills high school
in lexington, maryland

i will march
because
people prefer to protect
their weapons of mass destruction
over their own children

i will march
because i am sick
of thoughts and prayers

i am sick
of calls for action
without any move
to do anything

i will march
because many of our top politicians
still generously take contributions
from the NRA

i will march
because my president
would rather
protect the 2nd amendment

than let me live till graduation

i will march
because

any kid
out of the hundreds that have died

could have been me

it still could be me

and i am not just going to let that happen

Parkland, Fla. February 14, 2018

One more senseless mass homicide
   twas the sole arbitrary aim
as a former student nonchalantly
   sauntered empty hallways
   seconds preceding blame
brazenly intent to maximize total killed

   matter of factly telling police
   (his incomprehensible)
   (ill) logic he did explain
when cornered, he willingly,
   unflinchingly, reticently admitted guilt

Nikolas Cruz rocketed
   to instantaneous infamous fame
   pulling a fire alarm
   ("FAKE") emergency,

   then going leisurely ambling
   along his killing spree
total of seventeen slain (comprising 3 faculty
   and 14 students)
   mercilessly gunned down
   as if they were wild game

when handcuffed, an innocuous
   19 year old did readily admit
emptying one firearm after another
   at a fairly rapid clip

then at some predestined
   or spurious moment didst dip
and dive out amidst
   the chaotic madding crowd
   before reality flopped then did flip
as lower teeth nervously bit upper lip

made feeble getaway
   at a nearby eatery casually flirted
   with cashier and made no move to flit
upon his seizure as cornered prey

   subsequently large tract
   massively cordoned off
   strong arm of the law
slightly halting in speech
   detailed his gambit

deliberately staking
   a stance to maximize hit
and once again afflicted parents lit
up with rancor and rage pit

toughly battling sorrow
   which will not quit
til death doth
   those grieving family visit.

it was 63 when a man said i have a dream
there for that day peoplo walked away with in there head somthin is going to change
we all said were going to get  the man on the moon and loved a man that got them there
a man woke time for work in his wallet he he had a 20 that he would never spend
the pain to get dressed was unreal that no one else could feel
he went to the table to eat there was his son and daughter
little jon jon was what he called his son daddy can i go with  no son bet you can come to the airport to wave us goodbye so he ran to his room to get dressed so there they were so father  and mother waiting for it to land as they all held hands
they jumped it to choper as they were called
they flew to andrews promising to son and sis that they would be back
they landed in pink and blue the cheered for the wife as the husband had strife
many hands  just to many to count all reached for camolot
they jumped in the car  they dint have far he said a speech and once again hand were at reach

on the path many peoplo did line to see the man who said i know i can
the car did slow for the peoplo did flow
you cant say they dont love you here a women did  show
bam bam bam was the sound that was herd as peoplo fell to the dirt
they took off very fast for the man may not last
they arived at a place called parkland and they did no waist to get the man in blue and the women in pink and the dreded red that was added to pink and blue
peoplo wept as they saw the women and man oh oh oh so much red
the man was dead when a hour did pass oh why could he not last
the women in pink and again so much red it was a flash as the women put her children to bed as the man they loved was dead for camolot you will never see again
for the man who had a dream in 63 would never see the relalty but the hill he spoke of the man in blue would see and see and see for all the corwards did flee

River sparkles under scowling sky
Flowing curves
Serpentine sweepings
Amidst steel and concrete.

I lived in a ghetto box here.
Nothing is permanent.

Let’s go
in a boat
through secret underground streams
to that place
deep beneath parkland roots
of elm, ash and hazel
where wise old rocks
with lime green beards
sit still in wisdom.

Do they envy us movement?
Moss is slippy underfoot.
Nothing is permanent.

Let’s alchemise emotions of liquid
Peel off layers
Abandon those old world clothes in a pile
Slip
naked
into pure warm water

Soak
in a healing cave
of glowing amethyst
Until
Through a crack in the crystal
We enter a shaft of light
Magnificent and frightening
Then emerge
into pastel skies
Return to earth
Boisterous
Forever transformed by the fusion
Welcomed back
By a squelching piano
Made of our ancestors’ mud
To play
To sing
To be.

1.

I started in the shadow of one of God’s many houses,
fat plums on common ground offered themselves,
taut, bruise-purple skin still pristine
for maybe two, three more weeks

Walking on, a burst fig signaled
something
fresh green torn
scandalously showing fleshy insides
that should be kept private
for lovers, gourmands, gluttons

All the while, intermittently,
the straight line train drones by,
keeping Presbyterian hold
on passing passengers
who through unopened windows
cannot smell, hear or taste the divine

All the while the crickets sang of being

2.

All the while the crickets scored my steps
until ahead, nettle and dog rose conversations
conspired to thwart this man’s,
any man’s,
attempts to walk straight and true

A detour took me from the soft lost chaos of grasses
to tight lawns, hard front doors,
dark-ish satanic mills making wheat biscuits
and the ever sad chorus of a million tyres

Nearing home, a young rabbit’s boldness held
until too close, melted away

in the managed parkland
dragonfly truths called, m’ ducks
dragonfly truths called

Martha

Your kin still fly
uncaged and called

young November sky
                   scored countless

      For three high days they came
                                     great in massing
                       climbing, radiant
                       fire-milk lariats

           gaps in blaming
rain pursued.


When leaf-cull doors
                      low fruit to fall

                implores the motley
      parkland bronze



Your kin will fly
                     uncaged and called



Your legacy
lives on.

they are serving teas and cake in the hall with bunting.



my interest is the bull that lives on the parkland. there.



i slows if no one is behind to look .         or stop a while



he seems to like leaning over watching the traffic, while



i fall in love.                                                  it is a pretty face.



up the road the hotel is closed down.                             now.



sbm.