Stay Awhile

Here, sweet,
Sweet vision,
With me,
Will you remain awhile?

Here, beautiful,
Beautiful dream,
Alongside me,
You shall always be cherished.

Here, wondrous,
Wondrous image,
Resides your home,
Your very belonging.

Here, marvellous,
Marvellous vision,
Can you remain,
Awhile?

Spheres and Circles

Topsy-turvy we stumble
Spinning as we go
Stretching out
But grasping naught

Helter-skelter we cascade
Our quarry just out of reach
Forever hunting
Never catching

Haphazardly, madly, running
Knowing not what we seek
Chasing a vague desire
For something better

One Millennia Too Far

With these millennia of inactivity
Must we linger
Or must we make do?

These millennia of anxiety
Full of hurt and wretchedness
Must we plead forgiveness?

Waiting millennia of ingratitude
For that ephemeral moment
Of feeling

These millennia of putrefaction
Must they remain
What must we expect?

Must we linger
Or must we make do?
Fearing these millennia of trepidation

Stolen Treats

This is not the time to be despondent
Simply make do and subsist
This strange episode is transitory
This rainy summer

Eschew depression my friend
Annihilate your desire
The sunshine is ephemeral
This rainy summer

Here we all long linger
Here all are wrong
As speech defames our sight
Joy is a solitary misdemeanour

This rainy summer
Make melodious song
So existence is renormalised
So our psyche is everything

Assembled on dirt
It could well dissolve
This temporary microcosm
This rainy summer

Foremost

Shoot high
We are told
For the stars
Distant galaxies
Forbidden heights

And you may
Rise just a little
Above your assigned cesspit

The Wasteland

This perverted wasteland
Full of buzzing flies
This perverted wasteland
Singing incessant lies

It used to be a wonderland
Full of butterflies
It used to be wonderful
Until the call of the dying

A wonderland
Should be astounding
Be surprising
Be marvellous
Now this wonderland
Is toxic
Is replete with misery
Revels in the despicable
And festers in corruption

It could be a wonderland again
If ever the toxic verbiage decayed
It could be miraculous again
This derelict wonderland

This perverted wasteland
Full of buzzing flies
This perverted wasteland
Singing incessant lies

Lexicon of Detritus

A tirade
A conflict, a quarrel
Spewing forth
From you
Signifying what?
Aught

Some declamation
Some recitation
Noble phrases
Sounding trite
And from your mouth
Sickening

The flow of you argument
Is a bubbling meander

The stream of your inanities
Mask your manipulations

A tirade
A conflict, a quarrel
Designating nothing
More than continued
Servitude

On the Verge

A couple of crows are scurrying on the grass verge
Fighting, squabbling
Grabbing what they can
Noisily quarrelling

The blind cars shoot passed
Defying the speed limit
Eyes forward
Following narrow tramlines within feet of the battle

What was it once?
That muddy block of fur
A fox, a cat, something more exotic?
That mauled slab of meat barely recognisable now

The car's passengers are dozing
Or squabbling about nothing
Anyway not noticing
The blind fight for survival

A white flash of fur
Is pecked at by one crow
It must have been a badger
Roadkill

Footsteps Outside

It was a dark room
Where she sat
The clutter of ages
Scattered all around

In the hallway
Footsteps, faint footsteps
Getting louder
Clattering down the wooden floor

She tried to think
Arrange her mind
Will they walk on passed?
Please, walk on passed

Were those the footsteps
Of the owner of that voice?
Was it that lady
Or that man?

The lonesomeness
The sorrow
A brief remembrance
Of almost forgotten joys

Was her work not good enough?
Had she slacked?
So tired as she was
Had her sadness caused offence?

The footsteps stopped
Right outside her door
She's waiting for that voice
The sudden silence threatening

Vision Through Mist

Clouded with longing
if only

A sight, hand on, an intimate moment, watching, new blue jeans, the naturalness, a slender t-shirt, wishing, the hand lingers, accustomed, familiar

And then, as instinctive, together
Watching, they're stopping, waiting, so prosaic

Clouded with sorrows
looking on

A memory, a bus stop, waiting; they meet, surprised, laughing, a pushchair, patched jeans, they're chatting, vibrant, a white jumper; watching, wishing, always wishing

And then, arrivals, congestion
I give way, let them through, regretful

Clouded with tears
if only... if only

Midnight

Something, anything
The dark void waiting, waiting
Longing in the night

Vision in White and Blue

The eyes, the blue, the smile
The skin, the hair
Those socks, prim, upright
Spectacularly beautiful; the blue, the pink

The breath, the ripples, the heart pounding
The arm, protective, the nibbling kisses
That short sleeved shirt; white
Spectacularly beautiful; the almost transparent, the so light brown

The mouth, the saliva, the other's mouth
The exchange, the lips
The spit; dripping down
Spectacularly beautiful; the red, the pink

The white, the hand, shy, the delicate nod
The revelation, the shiver
Sleek; strokes as satin
Spectacularly beautiful; the pure white, the pink

The rhythm, the fingers, the dance
The music, the twisted lip
Faster, relentless, the smile
Spectacularly beautiful; the blue, the pink

The Sound of Grey

They slash your pension,
cut your wages,
pass massive handouts to the rich.
The contemporary poet's response:
sit at home, cogitate,
meditate, reminisce, contemplate,
celebrate the good in life.
This poet is so thankful,
bowing, scraping,
so grateful to authority.

Voluntary redundancies they call it
as they devour your livelihood, sack you,
deprive you of the means to life.
The poet then provides a solitary prayer;
of an individual alone and weak;
his godless prayer, comforting and pathetic.
Instructing you to rot in your miserable abode
contemplating a greater,
non-existent, experience.
All along inviting you to personify your misery.

They cut your social services,
slash your benefits,
condemn millions to the scrap heap before their time.
Then the poet is so safely defiant, so lofty,
all within such contrite bounds.
The mildest of a demure that challenges nothing.
Hoping both torturer and victim will both find comfort,
such solace in those useless words.
No matter, says the poet,
sit at home, read these lines of doggerel,
all jarring, phony,
overflowing with comfortless rhymes.

Don't personify:
rebel, resist, protest, organise,
above all organise – organise.

River

Stirring high above
The transient flow; trickling down
Streaming, in the sun

A Royal Day Out

Today has been the highlight of the royal jubilee. So let us, for a moment, pause and consider some of today's activities. The actions that are supposed to prove how much superior those royals are to us common drones. How intellectually topnotch royals are and how rightfully they administer the herd.

First off there was a religious service. We, the commoners, the ordinary folk watched someone watching a church service. It's not even as if they are involved in performing the service, that presumably would be to intellectually demanding even for the royals, no it's watching someone suppressing another yawn, seeing if the boredom shows. To cope with these strenuous demands involves some special breeding. If you headed down to your local church and did something similar, say stood down one side admiring the congregation, then they, the congregation, would probably be very polite: but they'd think you were insane. But royals can achieve this exploit without appearing loopy.

After the service it was grubs up. It's a dinner and a very special meal at that. You see us common mortals cannot eat alone, not unsupervised at any rate, we need someone in charge to guide us. But royals, you know what they can do, they can perform this monumental task all on their own. They can pick up both the knife and the fork, unaided by courtiers, cut their fodder and shove it into their gobs all unaided. And no mess spilt all over the floor and landing on the cat. So on this jubilee day we are allowed a prize demonstration of their superiority we, the dregs, get to see a demonstration of eating. And all unaided by any safety net.

Two

Lovely smiles; so sweet
Angora sweaters; purple, white
Tender exchange

The Deceit of Grandeur

The festering corruption of deception
Seeps through every pore
Stinking, contaminating the regime
Stifling creativity, freedom, comradeship
Luxuriating in the surrounding poverty

The pestilence lives on us
Feeds on us
Devours us
It becomes satiated to a sicking blubber
Still demanding more
Ever demanding etiquette
Turning all it excretes upon infectious

The obsequious blabbers scurrying
Followers of the counterfeit magnificence
Gorging themselves
On yet more human flesh
On our very minds
Occasionally the vermin look upwards
All fawning, sycophantic, toadying
Towards the self serving avarice of formality

Black Rose

A single thorn
A single spindly stem
Thrusting upward
A single bud
Flowering, displaying its small delicate petals
A small act of defence, of beauty
A single black rose

Viewed across the barbed wire
Caught between the footpath and the motorway
Submerged within the unobtainable
Its brief desperate joy
The tantalising vision
Of a black rose

Battered bruised
In the sudden summer rain
It fades, bedraggled
Waiting to emerge again
All too briefly
Next year, perhaps
Possibly another black rose

The Estrangement

I need
To be needed.

Nevermore
Floating with you.

I want
To be wanted.

Dying
That's what all we seem good at.

Maple of Shame

Standing, once standing
On the corner
Tall, thrusting, proud
The new spring growth
Of vibrant purple leaves
Three fingers glinting in the sunshine

One day of violence
Savaged with a chainsaw
Branches falling
Living limbs crashing on the grass
Then crammed in the back of a car
And taken to the dump

All that remains
A solid trunk
Deformed
Splattered, mauled
With bright white scars
Where once there was forgivingness

Thirty years of growth
All lamentation