Gunboats ahoy there’s pirates about
Speeding from Somali’s shore,
A fast flimsy boat and some black skinny men
With grenade launchers, cannon and more.
They’re coming to capture the tankers
They’re coming to capture the crew
They’re coming to take you hostage
Because fat cats will pay cash for you.

It’s happening more every day now
Ships are held to ransom for gold,
This contagion is out of hand now
The Somalian pirates are becoming so bold.
Hard men in the west prepare crackdowns
Gunboats sail for the Gulf as we speak,
With instructions to shoot to **** now
And make eradication of pirates complete!

But you ask, why is this happening?
Why does a man, a pirate become?
What instigates this crazy morphosis
From fisherman to pirate with gun?
Somalia has no Government to speak of,
It collapsed and went long ago.
No law or army in place here,
Life is dangerous, chaotic and low.

Some fat cats made use of the vacuum
They ditched toxic waste in the sea
They irradiated the coastline region
Making this a poisoned place to be.
The coast folk were dying in thousands
Sick mothers lost babies and kids
Black illness spread madly in villages
Then blind panic and pain hit the skids.

Some fat cats made use of the vacuum
They trawled the coastline clean
Somalia’s fishermen were destitute
The catch went from vast to lean.
The villagers were starving and hopeless
And what was pain became death.
The leaders appealed for salvation
But those with the means, had turned deaf.

Who would take this problem on now?
Who would make these ******* pay?
Most turned around and shunned them,
The world had turned and looked away.
So hit transgressors where they’re vulnerable.
Strike in sea lanes where it’s free.
Hit them near the Horn of Africa.
Attack with blades of piracy.

Hooray for the small man’s justice.
Hooray for his skinny, black shanks,
Please God help their quest for deliverance
For the West has arrived with their tanks.

Now I ask you, in all fairness
To stand back and view the scene,
Where the richest and most powerful
are doing something that's obscene
For not only are they poisoning
The most vulnerable race on earth
But compounding it with genocide,
And I add, for what it's worth,

The West, in righteous arrogance,
are crushing poorest fellow man
In his struggle for survival
Against their mammoth, global hand.


Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
25 April 2009

In the night it had been so dark he had been unable to see across the room. The uncurtained window was a thought, a remembrance. He had to feel his way across the room from the warm bed, and across the wooden floor his feet felt one of the two small rugs he knew were there. Finding the windowsill he looked out into sheer darkness, but then a glimmer of light flashed far away across the valley, and yes there was just the faintest trace of dawn, and it was so still. He opened the window and could hear a faint breath of wind moving the trees surrounding this estate house, a house empty but for him. Somewhere quiet, unpopulated by this pulsing, vibrant, unreal community he had joined the previous afternoon.

There was an owl distant, and he immediately thought of the poem Owl written just a few hundred yards away by a poet who had once lived on the estate. He imagined her writing it in a half hour captured from being a mother of small children, and of being a gardener and wife. Maybe she had her worktable in her bedroom, a small space wholly hers where she could form her thoughts into these jewels of words.

Owl

Last night at the joint of dawn,
an owl’s call opened the darkness

miles away, more than a world beyond this room
and immediately I was in the woods again,

poised, seeing my eyes seen,
hearing my listening heard
under a huge tree improvised by fear

dead brush falling then a star
straight through to God
founded and fixed the wood

then out, until it touched the town’s lights,
an owl elsewhere swelled and questioned
twice, like you light lean and strike
two matches in the wind.


He returned to bed and as he lay down to gather a little sleep before the early morning light summoned him to his desk, he thought about ‘the joint of dawn’. Only a poet could have found that word ‘joint’, the exactness and rightness of it. It gave him a sudden and prolonged moment of joy. That’s what the creative mind sought, the right word, a word that summoned up not just images – he knew exactly what the joint of dawn was as an image – but also a very particular emotional and experiential state, for him a whole history of early mornings sitting quietly with a cup of tea between his hands, looking out; or sometimes being out, in winter before dawn, walking to his studio, the old walk through the industrial estate, over the river, into that vast silent building, up the three flights of stairs by feel and long practice – the metal rims on each stair step a guard against a long fall – then to his room, and before turning on the light at his drawing board he would stand by the long windows whose sills held his shells and stones, a vase of flowers, a small collection of old (and blue) bottles, a framed photograph of his children, he would stand and see the joint of dawn begin as a crack in the sky and then open like a lid on a box, a box that held a faint morning light, a pre sun, a grey glimmering.

As he lay awake, but with eyes closed, he thought of a conversation they had had recently, he and the woman he loved, the woman who warmed his heart and whose image in so many different forms floated continually in his consciousness. The feel of her under his body pulling herself to the compass points of his passion, and in such a moment when time had become suspended, had found this release, this overflowingness that gave him now, alone in this dark bedroom, a joy he could barely contain, that it could be so and to which his own body now expressed in its own vivid and physical way.

This conversation – he sought to remember the circumstances. Maybe it was over the telephone. Many of their conversations had to be so. They lived apart, and even when they lived together for short periods they were not truly together. There was often the intervention of work, of present children, of heads full of lists of things to do.  This conversation was about a short story he had written and sent to her to read – she had supplied the title, curiously, and he had accepted it, the title, as a challenge. She said ‘I’m often unsettled by your stories, by not knowing what is ‘real’ and what is invented. I find it difficult to read what you write as fiction because I’m aware that some of what you write is based on memory, people you have known perhaps, and I have not’. He could tell from the examples she gave (that were really questions) that there was, perhaps, a particular unease when it came to women he had portrayed. He felt a little sad and uncomfortable that his answers did not seem to help, and he thought quietly for some time after about this problem. Of course, authors did this, they trawled their memories, and often and usually ‘characters’ (he had read) were composites. The character in question, a poet in her sixties called Sally, was one such, a composite. He had invented her he thought, but to her, his questioner, his loved one, she had assumed a reality. It was those intimate details he had supplied, those small things that (he felt) drew a fictional character to a reader. Had he known a Sally? How intimately had he known a Sally? Was this the sort of woman he would like to know, perhaps even fantasied about knowing? A woman who handled words well, poetically, that was plain, but unmarked by her age, though had large feet and moved without grace.

He loved to write letters to her, his loved one. He wanted, this morning, to write to her, but he didn’t want his letter to be another list of ‘I did this, then this, and I saw this, and this made me think of this poem (and here it is), or this picture, and I heard this music (and there attempt a description). He was selfish really. He didn’t want the letter skimmed through and discarded. He has written, he loves me, he is thinking about me so he writes knowing I like letters, but that’s it, and his letter, because they come so frequently, is just another mark on the drawing that will be the day; it carries little permanence with it. And sadly, he will occasionally (although he is improving) allow these little intimacies to fall into words, and that I find difficult, embarrassing. I suppose I want letters anyone could read, that I could leave about on the kitchen table.

So, just occasionally he would place himself in a story, and this is what he began to prepare as he lay in bed and the dawn lit this bare room, so minimally furnished, in this quiet and beautiful place where a ten-minute walk would bring him to the bank one of Tarka’s rivers, where from the kitchen window, looking north, he could see the Moor and even one of its signifying and majestic Tors.'

City
almost  done now,
the fun somehow has left these streets,
but weary feet are tramping home, sick to death and weary to the bone.

Rtoseberry avenue
postcode EC1 and then
it's gone.

Clerkenwell green,
scene of many unpleasantries leaves me and on to St John's street and
more city feet.

Old street not paved with gold except for the elite and more weary feet tramping on.  

It's the end of another day and the city always had its way with the few and the lucky ones escaped by bus,
not us,
we went hobo on the city street, tramps and dodgy people, feet so sore and where if when we look to see the Shoreditch box park know we are not far or free of Hackney and the night falls dark across me.

I do
I do
Said twice, but in my heart I knew it wasn't so.

I go because I must've been and seen it all before and though I know it's rotten to the core it draws me like a magnet and I am being trawled by some megaline or dragnet.

The streets beat me down and the pirates in this ***** town have stolen me away,
just another bedtime story written underneath the evening stars and just another ending of the day.

Autumn's eve, tinting leaves, the breeze creates a gentle hiss,
     A sun shining bright, wooded air
     that bites,
     Would meet to kiss, rebirthing night.
A hunter trawled through forest sprawled,
it flowed and rose before him,
     With him came prose he must
     prepose the winter snows that awaited,
     The winter snows, would end his hunt,
     and so off he set with a subtle grunt,
     To complete his latest autumn hunt,
     a stunt raught with err.

A fortnight prior, the hunter slept in a spire, a vision came as he did tire,
     A shimmering gold figure, whose shape
     bent and flickered,
     With haunting words it smiled and
     snickered;
     "On a jaunt to forest haunts, not an
     arrow shall be nocked--
           --lest all effort be for naught."
The hunter gave the lot no thought,
     An archer, he is, a prophet, he is not,
     And so was his steed set off on a trot--
           "--Lest all effort be for naught."

A hare was eyed, time now nigh, prey and predator had arrived,
     Hunter prepping a bow draw, as hare
     gingerly awed and gnawed,
     As hare gnawed, a warning walked, out
     to the hunter's mind,
     Reminding him, to his chagrin--
"Not an arrow shall be nocked," inside his mind it ticked and tocked,
     Words flicking like hands on clocks, the
     ticking clock, he cleared with knocks,
     And so he returned to his stalk, but once
     an arrow then did nock--
           --Alas, all effort was for naught.

The ground caved in, his head spins, as his punishment begins,
     Take from the forest, and the forest
     takes back,
     Our hunter grasped, as he fell to black,
     his dream was no dream, but real life,
     He strifed over omens, regret that stung
     like a knife,
     But descent had already begun, with
     darkness endlessly growing rife.
He had spent his whole life gloating,
     now he felt as though he's floating,
     floating deep to an abyss,--
     Nay, not safety, nay, much darker, nay,
     unnatural-- nay, remiss.

Body meets tension, and blood meets a flood,
     A splash, and a crash, as the hunter fell
     with a thud,
     He had berthed on a river, clothing and
     blood curdled with mud.
Awoken from slumber, skull pounding like thunder, his mind felt asunder,
     Rolling over a flower, he climbed
     from the river,
     Perverse cold forcing a shiver, as he
     looked to the sky, and began to quiver,
Onyx above, with a moon shining three, scouting around, he shan't find many a tree,
     Or any sign that from this hell, he'll be
     freed--
            --Lest he notice the shimmer,
              approaching with speed.

The shimmer approached, the hunter recognized he,
     The shape from the vision, that whom
     warned thee,
"I see that my warning, thou did not heed, now thou must travel, if thou wished to leave,"
     The words strengthened the thunder
     inside the head of our hunter,
     But then he spoke, with an intrigue of
     wonder,
"Where must I go, with my head pounding like thunder, and self so asunder?"
     The shimmer glared, its gilded eyes
     flared, freezing the hunter like snares,
"Voyage to the Druid, speak to thee, ask for relief, and thou shall be free, but when the deal has ended, have not a spare thought--
            --Lest all effort be for naught."

And so the hunter travelled endless night,
     Bulbous purple pods glowing on the
     ground, providing light,
     As giggles from around echoed, causing
     fright.
Our archer saw faeries, goblins and elves, hiding in the shadows, deep they'd delve,
     Child's fairytales, nay, did not match
     the whelm,
     He felt as if in his own mind he'd lost
     the helm,
     In the so unknown, yet familiar realm.
At last up ahead he saw a light, the shine of a lantern, a beacon in the night,

Ahead lie a hut, a small abode, he set for the door and trekked the road,
     He made it to the home, hoping for
     luck,
     He grabbed the doorknocker, adorned
     with a buck, and rapped three times,--
--"My door you've struck, and summoned me, state your name, or propose a plea."
     A frazzled voice from the other side, so
     quickly, the hunter knew he had little
     time,
     His thoughts, a clogged drain, but finally
     became fluid,--
            --"I, the hunter, wish to speak to the
              Druid!"

Inside the shack, the two had talked, after the knocked door was locked,
     The hunter had the holder chalked, the
     Druid she was, and so he hawked,
     Asking, pleading, and begging for help,
     until she finally talked,
"I can read your future, boy, I'll call upon my Tarot, but in exchange, when comes the First of Snows, you must not lie low."
     The hunter was perplexed, reluctantly
     he agreed not to cower,
     The Druid then laid out all three,--
            --The Fool, Eight Swords, The Tower.

"Before I explain the Tarot to you, I must ask a question too,"
     The Druid spoke with wretched ardor,
     But as she hissed, our hunter had to
     listen harder,
"Do you know, the shimmering glow? It's the one who shares your fate,
     But beware its trap, within a snap,--
            --You could both open the gate."

The Tarots meant only one thing each, Naive, Hopeless, Doomed,
     Shocked by landing on The Tower
     locked the hunter into gloom,
     Then the Druid had one last warning,
     a mourning that froze the room,
"You will find that Tower, boy, and you must hold our deal,
     Resort to zeal, and turn your heel,--
            --And The Tower will be your tomb."

The hunter tripped and left the Druid, rushing back on trail,
     His spirit felt as though a fawn, frail,
     and his path like a train, on rails,
     But he knew as the wind did gale, and
     freezing rain began to hail,--
            --Traveling the veil, he mustn't fail.
Then he sauntered off to wander, not a stretch away, he sensed a haunter,
     He saw a damsel, through rain's silky
     curtain,
     Looming, deep within the black, a
     vermin frame which flowed as glass,--
            --To persist, to leave, that which
              he must pass.

A serpent, it slithered, our hunter shivered,
     A feminine side revealed, as it got closer,
     a familiar poseur,
     Our hunter had to steel,
     But as the ghastly creature neared,
     his composure wept with yield.
Half-snake, half-woman, it spoke soft and slow,
     "You're brave to show, you're weak here,
     useless I'd say-- the Tarot told, I heard, I
     know!"
     As it spoke, its tail flickered, eyes alight
     with rosette glimmer,--
            --Our hunter knew, he'd met a
              trickster.

This snake, it claimed it was part of the hunter,
     Part of the hunter, surely a blunder, he
     was no viper,
     But the snake became hyper, its voice
     high like the shrill of a piper,
"I know you and you know me, but your feeble mind, it cannot see!
     I would say to look within, but you're
     powerless, you couldn't even begin!"
     The snake had spoke with a giggle and a
     grin, and quickly turned sour,--
            --"My name is not snake, please, call
              me Flower!"

Flower ended up a consort, nary a slithering foe to thwart,
     They'd walk and they'd chatter,
     The soothing rain's patter, appended by
     small creatures scatter,
     But before long, Flower had stopped,
     with something the matter,
"A mirage, I've sensed, do you feel it, the air ever so dense?"
     The thought forced the hunter to tense,
     he felt the air, ever so dense indeed,
     But Flower he could read, her face
     screamed with plead,

"The Tower, it's here. The one from the Tarot,"
     Flower spoke slow, speech reaching a
     crawl,
     "I can bring the Tower, it will use all of
     my power,
     But you must keep your deal, you
     mustn't cower!
     Within you will always be a friendly
     little Flower,"
Her tail flicked, she smiled, "Close your eyes, archer," and so our hunter did,
     Alas, when he opened his lids, his only
     ally was rid,--
           --A Flower replaced, by a tower.

He took a moment to reflect, upon the roads that he had trekked,
     The warm river, the safest he'd felt,
     before he was shook by a jolting, cold
     shiver,
     The druid, the scholar of fate, the
     friendly mystery from whom he hid,
     Yet Flower, the extension of him, a
     snake he'd judged and wished he'd
     forbid,
All assistance lost, warmth had turned to frost, as he looked to the tower, he did fraught, but he must begin,--
            --Lest all effort be for naught.

He entered the spire, and his soul felt dire,
     As he seeked up to see stairs seemingly
     spun by a spider,
     The climb felt wholly bleak, but he
     summited the peak,
To the top suite he'd sneak, and look in with a peek,
     To see a familiar physique, shimmering
     and sleek,
     As he scouted the room, lost in ornate
     mystique,
     His legs felt swiftly weak, a lavish floor
     creaked,--
            --And this piqued the figure,
              who began to speak.
    
"Thou hast found the Tower, the Druid, and the Flower. Yet the taste, it still seems sour?
     Worry not my hunter, ye need not scour,
     your hunt has reached its final hour."
     As peril did flow, our hunter did know,
     and reached for his sidearm,
     His trusted bow.
"Sheathe thy fury, and do not worry, just enjoy my show,
     Set down thy bow, and peer the window,
     But surely, thou already knows--
             --Thou hast reached the First of
              Snows."

The light had lingered into night, soil stifled by ivory plight,
     As the hunter twisted back, he heard a
     composed crack,
     The figure had snapped, and the walls,
     collapsed,
     Then they were out in the sleet, the
     frigid air a silky sheet,
The indigo sky danced like a marionette
of winter,
     A violet aurora, sliced through like a
     splinter,
     Iris flowers in the wind, shuddering
     with a shiver.

"Thou art getting what thou desired, dear hunter,
     Or doth thou wish to wait and wither?"
     The voice of the shimmer, it spoke with
     a chill,
     As if the snow had forced it to a shrill,
     The hunter felt a thrill, as in a glance,
     the shimmer's intentions would spill
     from its stance,
"Thou knew this would come, I know thou hast great skill,
     Alas, thou art a hunter, now come
     for the k*ll."

The hunter drew his bow, and an arrow he nocked,
     He could feel his heart ticking, counting
     down like a clock,
     The shimmer turned pink and purple,
     with eyes black, like a portal.
"I never craved to hurt thou, yet thou broke thy own law,"
     The shimmer had said, but yet it stood
     still in awe,
     The hunter thought he was ready, he
     locked on, then draw,--
          --Then he felt a pain, a thrash, and
            his heart began to thaw.

He looked down and saw crimson, a **** let loose velvet ribbon,
     He fell back to the snow, and as he
     gazed skyward,
     Up stepped a purple glow, to look at the
     hunter below,
Their eyes met, and at last, true nature would show,
     The hunter's woe, he'd finally know,--
          --Was the furthest thing from a foe.

Behind the figure a gateway, a gateway of silver,
     Then the figure turned grey, his
     shimmering grew dimmer,
     Defeat still boiled in the heart of the
     hunter,
     It was met with ease, and the two
     would melt and simmer,
"Our bond is obvious, certainly, dear hunter, just as our dreams melt in snow,--
           --My heart ignites, infernally."

It was then the hunter noticed the arrow,
     His shot had hit, but the shimmer shook
     it off, unevenly harrowed,
     Then the hunter's vision narrowed,
     and he realized his last arrow, he'd split,
"I didn't want thy death, or mine along with it,"
     It spoke as if for two, and open the gate
     flew,
     "We're connected, me and you, I need
     not be blunt,
     I loathe to see the river dry, alas, there's
     an end to every flow,
     But blood in the snow, under a
     violet glow,--
          --Befit to end our hunt."

We never knew it

If you called
the phone was ringing
on a line that led nowhere

The pain didn't shake itself
to frothing fury

We merely spilled
an accidental ant
infestation

Could be ordered
by dripping maple syrup
out of pocket

Certificate On Demand
<>< <>< <><
Well they are also being trawled
Trolled, rolled, and hashed
Backwards into oblivion

Forwards we march to the void
With no uniform but the one
you made us pay for

With every ability but the one to accept
a bit of discipline
A lashing of the tongue
A rolling of the eyes

These we claim as ekstatic
empyrean
and lofty

Base and
belonging

We have never had much of a chance
or survived

Making time is the one operation that
computers are incapable of doing accurately

The slow movements of tektonik
A bit of spatial dejazz
Combines slyruping away at our self-gnawing
ganymede
Diana
sysysus

There are Bacchantic poems
Earth is playing slower
and heavier with us

Then then there them
We decided deicide was old
hats and new sweaters
path-dependencies
Llavanderias and futbol
gols for 2016

never score again
if winning tastes like the defeat
of all desire
than massage me back into a fashion

I need a sauna
and 3 bathing attendants

The stars need less light from us
and more humble pie

The pour poor por que por que no?

Lived the life of an artist
long before I became one.
Pressed to guitar strings
until my fingers were numb
to all exposed skin
that was not my own.

Listened to one thousand sad songs
over and over
until the pointless chords
clamoured over one another,
psalms of living
fall on deaf ears.

Trawled archives of *******.
Lauded aristocrats of cheap whiskey nights
and black coffee mornings.
Garnished my days with addictions carried
by better men
in love with real women.

Grew thin, moved about the apartment
in the graveyard hours
tacking songs to the walls.
In the absence of chains and ***
I fixed myself with neon lights
and cigarettes.

Spilt paint over undeserving paper
beneath the halogen bulb
to colour radio silences
of past friendships,
mountains I should let recede
like a ship in the night.

Stood alone in crowds
to witness the onset of a moment,
openings and closings of mouths and doors;
each one to allow another person in.
I go home alone
and sleep with my thoughts.

my life is a rollercoaster
point blank period
I always know what fearlessness is
I always understand the rush of belief
but sometimes I want everything to stop
to exist in a pocket of time, to do whatever I like
not be pushed and pulled
hauled and trawled
stalled and enthralled
if I had a penny for every scream
I would be able to relish in greed
I am so envious, what would it be like not to live like this
but this is me and I am incomplete without the rollercoaster
so I guess I have to enjoy my sh*t

The comments of the ocean
Blend nicely with the brush
Of tipper topper dinky dinghies
That paddle all a hush

Ships sailing on the summer current
Keels are black and leery
With barnacles and treasures trawled at sea
They nose ahead worn and weary

I sigh a little on the plinth of my palm
Propped nicely 'gainst the ivory table
And clink ****** cups, you know
Those little things that make you remember

Shame? Not me. When I watch the birds
They hover without shame
Boasting of the clouds they've visited
And castles up high they are welcome to

Take, take, take the spring breeze that simmers in
I couldn't feel the grace of disgust
I couldn't, I'm too happy
With salt ground tea and seemly company.

Pain kissed pain with gentleness,
Via sullen kiss,
Entrenched,
Deep in surburbia,
Where all the world had pain,

Pain was burning diamond,
With graphite pen,
In hand,
She etched,
A line across his heart,
While trying not to breach it,

Love declared her heart of hearts,
Could never impeach it,
Crime was not against the state,
No true criminal intent,
Was felt,

She was love,
In sapphire dress,
He swore he never meant it,
Passion enriched,
In royalty,
These two,

Two supreme beings,
In fantasy of velvet dance,
Tripped around the floor,
In poet's choice,
Caressed in time,
While painting pictures,
Spreading rhyme and reason,

Pain all quelled,
Fear repelled,
Love trawled in,
Painted town all red,
Angels praised,
Sweet darling,
All pain is dead!


By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

It's that time of year
When the holiday comes around
And I've trawled every shop in town
For trousers that fit me,
And suddenly it hits me
As I'm waiting to board the plane
That all the stress, the going insane
To get away is the only reason
I need a holiday this season

So I'm sat at the gate,
Six hours early because I'd hate to be late,
Despite living fifteen minutes away
And I'm passing the time reading a book
But my wife is giving me that look
That says she's bored, won't be ignored,
She expects me to entertain her
And I'm going insane (again)

Roll forward past an eternity
Of clock watching,
Of people watching,
Of checking the departures board,
And finally we're boarding
And finding our neat little seats
Specially designed with pixies in mind,
With storage space for a mushroom
And no noticeable legroom that I can find

The stewardesses trundle their trolleys
With offerings of lukewarm tea,
Bitter strong coffee,
A small selection of dusty dainties
And days old sandwiches
(Credit card or cash, Sir?)
You expect me to pay more
For what used to be free?
No thanks, just the lukewarm tea

Lurching to a stop after a bumpy drop,
I whisper a prayer of thanks
To the gods of pilots and engineers,
Resist the urge to shout three cheers,
Just the scrummage in the aisle
And a fight for the overhead space
To retrieve the frilly lace
Handkerchief that somehow exceeded
The airlines stringent weight limits
For my hand luggage permits,
Incurring an additional fee as a penalty

The airport signs indicate the way
To an endless corridor of rotating
Carousels, a new kind of hell
Where strangers stand shoulder to shoulder,
Giving no quarter as they wait and wait
For the baggage handlers, who went on a break
The minute the plane arrived,
And until they've checked inside
Every likely looking bag
For cameras, iPhones and valuable swag
They'll keep us waiting and anticipating

This time we got lucky,
All the bags arrived, most of them survived
Intact, though one was so bashed
It looked like a giant had smashed
A heavy boot down, just to make us pay
For going away on holiday
A quick run past the customs men
With their sidearms and sideways glances
And we're free and clear in the outside air

We join a rank queue of sweaty fliers
At the rank queue of sweaty cab drivers
And wait our turn to learn our fate,
Which cab will we get to hate?
We've taken a second mortgage on our home,
Lived six months without a phone
Or electricity just to save enough cash
For this last mad dash,
A quick hop to the hotel,
A quick prayer that the linen won't smell,
And one final night of broken sleep
Before the going is complete
And we have officially "Arrived".

The carts rolled out of the warehouses
And trawled each single street,
Each drawn by a giant Clydesdale with
Those massive hooves and feet,
They creaked along, and they struck a gong
That excited furtive looks,
While the men that day, who rode the dray
Called out, ‘Bring out your books.’

They watched the shimmer of curtains as
The people peeked outside,
For many were loth to show themselves,
All they had left was pride,
The law brought in by the ****** left
Trapped all but the pastrycooks,
For they could retain their recipes
At the cry, ‘Bring out your books.’

They said they were saving forests from
The pulp mill on the bay,
There wouldn’t need to be paper with
The pads we have today,
And too many things were incorrect
Had been printed on a tree,
Were sitting on people’s shelves, defunct
In ideology.

The people set up resistance, they
Had loved their tattered tomes,
And many a shelf was burdened in
The meanest of their homes,
‘The government’s trying to dumb us down,’
Was the universal cry,
‘Go out and save the forests, but
If they’re already printed, why?’

The spread of ideas is dangerous
They could rot you to the core,
And too many things on liberty
Have been printed, long before,
Perhaps it would have been better if
The people couldn’t read,
Taking away the books at last
Might take away the need.

The drays that rumbled along each street
They had stacked the books up high,
But there was the odd revisionist
Who complained, and grumbled, ‘Why?’
A squad broke into each suspect house
Where the owner locked the door,
And tore the books from his fevered grasp
While screaming, ‘It’s the law!’

But mine, I hid in the garden shed
And buried the others deep,
They wouldn’t be getting their hands on them
The ones that I wished to keep,
There’s so many fake and useless things
That they’re legislating for,
But to take our books and our liberty
Would be like declaring war.

David Lewis Paget

A muggy dream walked to me
Yesterday night, all roads down
The equator
With the taste of salt and sweat
And the clocks of the world
Stopped for a moment,
I wrote without papers
Of all the things he ever said.

The drama of falling from a cliff
I did not know I was dreaming,
A careful section of love letters
Obscured under leather jackets
Flew with the body, down to the sea.
My red mail box had to wait
For the Orientalist’s stories,
It did wait.

I trawled his journals and poems
Like a desperate lover hunting-
For a vilified unpublished hero.
I didn’t want to be his Halloween-
Horror night or fallen oranges of the dusk,
I wanted to be the cigars he puffed
The rancheras he sung and the clipped
Clothes that hung on his backyard.

The clichéd sappy night fall,
Physical sensation and a tight lipped smile;
I had to write poetry, chew my nails
Chop my hair to fall normal again.
Why did they not teach in schools
To pause poems and eat popcorns
Why did they not tell me
To stop my wiggly sly will?

Lover, I’m drunk in Chaucer
Sea and a monster, now I’m drowning.
Let us paint the house, draw the walls
And say sorry to malicious kids we made
Let us take photographs, hang them on
The walls and make trips back to our sacks
Let us drive the hills, sing songs
Shock the folks and live out of track.

With a fish bone as a hair piece

she trawled the beach for clues,

a shell, a seaweed skin

the sea spread out and she held

the entire ocean in her mouth

swirling it around her crumbling
teeth

like a fine wine, red and ripe for spitting

out into a plastic bucket

that a child holds in their clenched fist

a mind full of castles and building

and I wonder what we are building

busking outside the mall on even

days of the week

a handful of copper and occasional silver

she runs sand through her fingers

then water

what does she see in those tiny grains of

glass

what does she see in

us

My fathers love ended up in a box, in a large cold room.
Strange you might think,
That the confectionaries in this dissapointing wooden container
Would be a relic of love to a small boy.
But there it was...
In that large cold room, in that large cold house,
In that large cold school,
Was this box.
And in this box was all sorts of sweets, crisps and so on
And that was what I had of my father.
The box was mysteriously called a "tuck box".
There were other boxes like it, lining the outside of this large room.
But this one was mine.

Each box had a small lock, some had stickers.
Mine had a sticker, neatly aligned in the rear left corner.
The room rarely had any visitors and aside from the boxes, it had a solitary ping-pong table.
There were no batts or *****, just a green table with a net sitting awkwardly in the centre of the echoey room.
If it could speak it would say "What the **** am I doing here"
and I think thats how we all felt... all us boys.
I had no wish to play table tennis.

I did wish for my fathers love though.
Before term he would take me to the shops.
I would be able to buy whatever sweets I liked, but I felt bad, like it must be costing him a lot of money... all those sweets that is...
Not the boarding school or plane journey away from home.

So armed with these sweets packed away in my bag,
I would get on a plane and go to that cold place,
Where this box of treats would remind me that my father wasn't there.
I would rarely share or trade my sweets with other boys.
It felt somehow disloyal to my father.
Like i was trading away his love for some small favour.
But really these trophies were too precious for me to give away.

So years later, I think my fathers love may somehow still be in that box.
In that cold lonely room.
The box is now in my parents attic, full of photos and other memories.
The tie my 'friends' signed on the day I left that school, almost 9 years later.
But I wonder how to reclaim the love locked in that box.
Or reclaim the heart of the lonely, sad boy who only had those sweets to reassure him.
That his father still loved him... wanted him... that even though he was a plane ride away from home...
He still had a home...
Which was...
Where did he live?
Where was his home?
Because it felt like he lived in that cold school,
Filled with the shouts of angry men and wild boys...
While his home was somewhere he no longer lived...
It was somewhere he went to for "holidays"!
In that far away country
Which was safe, and warm but somehow
No longer... home.


And all these years later the gap between me and my father remains
Questions hang in the air like icicles
Ready to fall...
Where were you,
For all those years?
Why didn't you come and get me?
How did you think i would survive without your presence as I grew up, without your love, your advice, your guidance
The safety of being at home...

Let me tell you I managed
I packed my pain away in that box.
And I survived.
I endured the passing of the years,
the bullying, fear, neglect, shame and embarrassment
I didn't so much find a way through. I found a way out.
to a place the world couldn't hurt me.
A place within where i can say **** the world. **** this place and
******* all.
And in that place i felt relatively safe
It was tolerably intolerably

But now as a man.
As i approach my fiftieth year
I can count the cost of this 'safety'
A cost in joy, a cost in love, a cost in family, a cost in life!
Because the part of me hidden in that box isn't living.
It's existing.
And life has needed more from me than I've had to give.
I have needed the colours locked away safely in that box.
I've needed the range of emotion only they could afford
I've needed the courage in there
The joy, the willingness to meet life
And I've not had these things to hand.
They have been locked away... safe
But unused.
As the years toiled on
And life has ebbed away.
I have survived
But not really lived

So here i am at this threshhold of my life
No longer satisfied with the half life of limited pallette.

and I choose life
Choose Colour
Choose expression
Choose Presence
Choose love
Choose pain
Choose tears
Choose loss
l Choose heartbreak.
And i want to let this messy path carry me forward
To a place I do not recognise
And to a life where I can find an experience which
Feel warm enough, safe enough, fun enough, alive enough, where I feel loved enough, where I love enough to dare to dance enough with life to dare to belong enough to call that place
home.

And let me tell you brothers and sisters I wish you to meet me there With your colour, with your joy, your heartbreak, your life and the wisdom trawled from the depths of your despair .
(let us share what we're learned  in a place
where we can join hands and find union in each others souls.
find home in each other
find belonging in each others arms , in each others hearts.
lets rise together, lets heal together, lets **** together and lets love together, walk together, cry together, dance together, marry together , win lose and, die together
we can walk together towards the dawn of our next life  as we part this one full
full of Love of lifes experience, with laughter lines etched across our faces as we tell the stories of our ancestors to our children children.
lets us dance live love and die in glorious presence together with life.
let us be , let us learn , let us live lets live lets draw on the ******* walls and wear our pants on our heads. Let's call ******* on ******* just live our glourds bueauitful lives together in messy harmony.
lets belong together lets home together
lets world together lets joy together
lets  sit together in a puddle of our own tears
and call that place home
where we love our life enough to be broken by its despair
as our blood and tears mix together and we become the earth beneath us.
become the air around us
the fire in our hearts
the love in our bones.

MARÍA DE ESTRADA
            Freeze, *****! It’s your mistress bids you halt.
            Let’s see what trulls the latest nets have trawled.
            Not bad, sad slave. You’ll fit your new career:
            A teenage tartlet to refresh their tents.
            Don Alvarado keeps a natty ring
            Pranked up with goads, whose stingers top its face,
            To spur reluctant steeds through rocky rides.
            You’ll buckle underneath such battery.
            I hope your yelps won’t stir my husband’s sleep.
            María de Estrada, at your service, serf.
            I reign sole victrix of this manly camp,
            For I’m not fit to mince and kiss my hand,
            Like all those gingerbread girls back in Spain.
            No, Cuba was a rowdy, lax frontier
            Where I was raised to tussle with the boys,
            And now stand champion in these warlike ranks-
            For boundaries built up by prejudice
            Are not reformed by mediocrities.
            Once I have overmatched your Amazons,
            I’ll force those tomboy squaws to nurse my brats-
            If but a single, over-muscled pap
            Can fortify the husky chaps I’ll breed.

                Enter GARRIDO with baggage, and passes over the stage.

            Look to your maidhood, miss, or be dismayed.
[to Garrido]
           Hold, boy! You’ve got my bag of needments there.     Exit.

MALINALLI
            What gibberish! So much chin-music to me,
            But something of her drift I comprehend.
            I must assert my merit here. But how?
            My ***? A trump card every girl here holds.
            But what my prodigy at languages?
            I’ll trail their chieftain, and my gift of tongues
            Shall lift his veil unto this ****** world.                          *Exit.

He’d stared at the silver screen so long
He thought he was going blind,
For a fortnight after his wife had gone
He thought he would lose his mind.
She’d snatched her purse from the window ledge
And said that she’d not be late,
‘I’ll just call in to the grocery store,
Then call on my sister, Kate!’

An hour went by and he scratched his head
While watching the cricket score,
Then two, and three put the sun to bed,
He went and stood by the door,
The Moon rose up at eleven or so,
It shone on an empty street,
And Kate replied to his mobile call,
‘I’ve not seen Jane for a week!’

There wasn’t a lot he could say to that
For Kate would have played it straight,
She wouldn’t lie for her sister Jane,
She had enough on her plate.
A drunken husband, threatening her
Each time that he laid one on,
And Kate had whispered to Jane, ‘I wish,
He’d pack up his things, be gone!’

Sam went to report to the police next day,
One lost, or wandered or strayed,
(The cop had smirked to his mate out back,
‘Perhaps she went to get laid?’)
‘It’s not like her, she’s a homely type,
But something has gone amiss,
She left three bags at the grocery store
And she’s not done that, ‘til this.’

Once back at home on the Internet
He checked on her Facebook page,
Her smiling face looked back at him yet,
Making him more dismayed,
A man had posted a Timeline rant,
Had posted the previous day:
‘I love you Jane, and I’m deep in pain,
I’m coming to take you away.’

The face of the man was indistinct
Was hidden in deepest gloom,
He must have taken the photograph
At night, in a dim-lit room,
The name that he used was ‘Love-Will-Out’
But surely that couldn’t be,
For Jane, he thought, was a simple soul,
‘She wouldn’t be false to me!’

He caught a glimpse of her now and then
As he wandered, page to page,
She’d left a trail as she trawled back when
And he felt a gathering rage.
A ‘like’ on a friend she used to have,
A comment that made no sense,
‘I need a map’ was the one remark
That had kept him in suspense.

‘I don’t know where,’ she’d written up there,
Elsewhere, ‘or where I am.’
‘Somebody’s following close behind
But I keep looking for Sam.’
Snatches of words that made no sense
He would see as they flashed on by,
And through the runnels of Facebook tunnels
He’d see that same grim guy.

So still he stares at the silver screen
Though he thinks he’s going mad,
She seems to be there on the Facebook scene,
(In a way, that makes him glad).
But he’ll never rest ‘til she comes back home
To end that feeling of pain,
Whenever I ask if he’s coming out,
He says, ‘I’m following Jane!’

David Lewis Paget

You trawled through my history;
internet of images,
the smiling moments.
‘You seemed happy
[was it really that bad?]’
Oh yes I was.
Excruciatingly happy,
painstakingly happy,
rejectedly happy.
Smile! To cover the
loss, hurt, bewilderment.
Smile! To hold on, try,
we’re meant to be ok.
Smile! Cover that
loneliness, confusion,
that truly broken heart.

When you sight your frame,
You see blossoms and the holy grail,
The musing tamed,
Where the terms of beauty may exhale.

Its arduous to believe,
What fate has trawled you along,
Until you heave,
That"s when you prolong,

Prolong all the utterance made,
But then you say no to the notion,
It's hard to bare yourself afraid,
Though, little did you know that letting go would be your relegate and believing in the geniune and the beauty of your soma breaks the demotion.

A man sits still. Deep and long of ponder.
Epiphany!

Grasped.
A long, wispy feather.
Dipped in a pool of ink.
Its veiny hollow filled by liquid draw.

The plume's stalky rootlet.
Is set firm upon a foolscape.
Trawled heavy across the lay.
Spurs a silken slipstream of inelastic indigo.

Sharp. Esteemed.
Bent tipped quill.
Ink aflow.
Records forever.
His thoughts and dreams.
Fears and subtleties.

Words expressed in ink.
For all to see.
Words.
What do they really mean?

Words of a popular song.
Vague and drawl.
Words penned for the general view.
Mean absolutely nothing at all.

However
Words that dare to affect another.
The most intensely personal words ever tendered.
Words mined from the deepest canyons of thought.
Words not written of one another.
But words written of oneself.
These are the words most meaningful to me.

Words that define the mortal poet.
Words that form the evil poem.
Words that swirl subversively poetic.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'd rather know a passionate poem.
Than sing a popular song.

Psyche War
the fashionable slang
for gangsters recruiting dopes
to harass and torment the innocent man
that called them out and refused to keep quiet

Revolution
the embracing banner
of racists vigilantes and gangsters
fooling the people into covert harassment
of the law-abiding black man they want beaten down

Chess Game
the odious lie to arrest
the progress of a gifted and clever man
by wasters, scums, lowlife burglars and gangsters
extortionists who want protection money from a thriving blackman

Figuring Out
the con of gangsters to invade privacy
and measure the extent of their evil assaults and harassment's
also used in planning continuous assaults and future trends
weaponizing information to blackmail any dissenting follower  (wasn't it you that told us all that and did all that, you're in and you do as you're told, or else we'll reveal your part)

Triggers
some anodyne pantomime
by a gargle of blinded numb-skull servants and hooligans
to act meaningless skits trawled from fake news misconceptions
impacting nothing but showcasing how easily controlled they are

Neon
Narcissists, loonies, ideologues
pointless irrelevances sowing division and strife's
jealousy and envy among peoples and communities
belching lies, haft truths, misinformation and disinformation

Brain-washed Morons
all buying into the manipulation
unable to think for themselves or act independently
of the insidious group-think and sheep mentality herds
that puts them in chains NOT free them from chains

Psyche War
the fashionable slang
for gangsters recruiting dopes
to harass and torment the innocent man
that called them out and refused to keep quiet

Revolution
the embracing banner
of racists vigilantes and gangsters
fooling the people into covert harassment
of the law-abiding black man they want beaten down

Chess Game
the odious lie to arrest
the progress of a gifted and clever man
by wasters, scums, lowlife burglars and gangsters
extortionists who want protection money from a thriving blackman

Figuring Out
the con of gangsters to invade privacy
and measure the extent of their evil assaults and harassment's
also used in planning continuous assaults and future trends
weaponizing information to blackmail any dissenting follower  (wasn't it you that told us all that and did all that, you're in and you do as you're told, or else we'll reveal your part)  


Triggers
some anodyne pantomime
by a gargle of blinded numb-skull servants and hooligans
to act meaningless skits trawled from fake news misconceptions
impacting nothing but showcasing how easily controlled they are

Neon
Narcissists, loonies, ideologues
pointless irrelevances sowing division and strife's
jealousy and envy among peoples and communities
belching lies, haft truths, misinformation and disinformation

Brain-washed Morons
all buying into the manipulation
unable to think for themselves or act independently
of the insidious group-think and sheep mentality herds
that puts them in chains NOT free them from chains

But he is already dead
the living carcass of Cain
he died in weakened bones
when without strength or vigour
his and his trawled the hot equators
looting and plundering without hearts or shame

and then once more again
he died as the stolen and chained
grew in his harbours under his nose
to thrive and grow and buy his inheritance
and right in his face they made millions and more
to earn places in hallowed halls exempt to the likes of him

but cowards die a thousand times
for those from plantations are now Doctors
some Lawyers and Accountants or governing Offices
while our prodigals go caps in hand begging Welfare checks
stealing from neighbours as Taxi-drivers **** their little sisters
and boiling in red rages as the new black are the rich colours now

our living carcass died long ago
not in honour or grace but in riled envy
wearing yesterdays cloak of disgrace and shame
borrowing tomorrow mirages to find himself and relevance
dancing in woke shattered idioms with regressive forked tongues
the pathetic relics now indented thugs of the Peckham Revolution Party

The Unfulfilled, Departing

Quiet steps fade into a gentle abyss of dissolution,
Leaving a last look, a tender kiss
To linger among the phantoms of a coal black night.
They would never meet again.

Star crisp clarity, an eternal impassive curtain of life
Drawing across his theatre of sorrows,
Closing down a short incandescent episode
That pierced the daily dross.

Own breath taints the frigid air; moist, pointless exhalation.
Life left laden with loss.
Last warmth, last smile, last light touch burns within.
Within, a cramped circle of self-doubt.

A car door crashes against an all too natural silence.
He felt eyes and minds upon him;
The emotion hungry, trawled up disembodied dead
Crowding a cold lonely wood.

An old man will dreamwalk a bright stage with no audience,
Embrace a girl girded with gentle grace-
To fall back, crawl back upon
The cross of reality, nail driven to an orthopaedic chair.

I turn the towering  wave to quartz
I pin the painted.butterfly
And freeze the arching rainbow in
the dark-room of my Inner Eye

For not in meadows or the wood
nor strolling 'neath the breathing bower
It is in memory that I
distill the attar of the flower

The living lily wilts and dies
the evening fades and sunsets pass
and instants flutter from my grasp
as gold dust through an hour glass

And while the tuberose Is sweet
its scent is sweeter still, I find,
When wandering hidden byways in
the sunken gardens of my mind

Here through the prism of my dreams
My daylight visions crystallise.
Like relics trawled from turbid seas
now all is clearer to my eyes.

I am a blue-eyed daughter of the North and yet
the fire of Hephaestus burns in my chest.
My blood flows hot as Vesuvian lava

In my world the flowers have tongues
and smell of cinammon and myrrh
The trees sizzle with cicadas,
and the air glitters with Saharan sand,
like gold dust wafted over the sea
from an Oriental fairy tale.
On every horizon shimmers a pink mirage

I never understood those cool swans
who glide across life's waters without a ripple
or feather ruffled.
in a landscape of alabaster palaces and polished moons

I want to smash the waters into a million crystal drops,
dive in deep and yank the lilies from their roots
There is gold to be sifted
and there are pearls to be trawled
And I want to make ripples that blossom until the edge of time!