To feel the wind
In a public place
Is to see the world
With a human face
To catch the smile
Of a newborn child
Redeems the death
Of a life lived mild
Ingratitude
They made you with the maker’s leave
A whisper on the breeze
Led on by the shapes of hills
Summer passed to winter frills
Morning strikes with rain and thunder
Accusing you of blunder
All the gardens yours to tend
Crying out for some small mend
But now the ghosts have fallen silent
Even your instincts are compliant
Never have we had it so good
To know any better we never would
Fantasy and Anarchy
There was a man of colour-blind sight
Who tried to do what is right
But jailing drug dealers
Gangs and murderous stealers
Is a crime for someone who’s white
Streets Of Home
An after-image lingers
On the streets of home
The frozen music fading
The archways leading home
Dying flecks float yonder
On the streets of home
The glinting river lading
The rays of sunset home
A wind-chill on your fingers
On the streets of home
The warm and bitter heating
Greets the traveller home
Familiar from distance fonder
Shrunken streets of home
The eyes of age retreating
Paints the scene of home
Some Fake News – Garden Gnome Pandemic
A new pandemic has been discovered involving people who own garden gnomes. Most of the afflicted are elderly, and so far no children have died, but the government has warned that we are all at risk. Most of the deaths involve co-morbidities such as heart-attacks, cancer and being struck by a motor vehicle, but it should be stressed that the main cause of these deaths is the owning of a garden gnome. Additionally, there have been cases of deaths where no other morbidity has been found proving how lethal this epidemic can be.
The death rate has been climbing sharply as more deaths are investigated and garden gnomes found. At first it was thought that the death rate could be as high as 100% since every dead person who had owned a garden gnome turned out to be quite dead. It was later discovered that there are living people who own garden gnomes. This selfish action which endangers us all is fully deserving of mob violence and the police have been adapted into a militia to help deal with it.
Since this is a “novel” pandemic, garden gnomes being previously unknown in human history, there has been confusion over statistics, cause and effect, and other scientific issues. It is important therefore to only heed and share government approved information and denounce all attempts to get at the truth with dissent, evidence gathering and experiment as “conspiracy theory”.
The government has announced that since it is not clear exactly how garden gnomes kill it has taken the step of shutting down all activity and enforcing a policy of solitary confinement. Many citizens have delighted in the news. “I can finally do all the things I’ve always wanted to do but never had time”, said one mother of three, “stare at the ceiling, make stick figures out of old newspapers, etc”. The government also announced it will cover the pay of all workers, as well as refunding any missing underpants. When not asked where the money will come from the Minister for Economic Affairs didn’t reply “China has loads of money. We’ll just borrow it from them. It’s fine”.
Atonal
Did you try to find your place
In a faceless menagerie
A child locked inside a park
Where no one knows how to play
Tried to read from all the books
In a language you don’t understand
And tried to flee from every look
Foreign custom in native land
Went round every corner
And found there’s nothing there
Just a variant of the former
And another vacant stare
Cain
Abel was accepted, Cain was not
Cain was wroth, doors of sinful rot
His brother he slew
A curse sevenfold renews
Blood marks the reward he never got
The Soul
If man’s soul is fed by God’s spirit
And no rational rations can fill it
What proof be needed
Before love be seeded
Christ’s blood the seal for the soul’s writ
Why Are Our Streets Empty?
To learn to live you must learn to die
The ancients warned us, memento mori
But on the white walls of this enclosure
The grime of neglect, the mould of exposure
So we value the fact of life, not the living
Turn away from death, and from each other
Bury our faces from the taking and giving
Birth the abortion, divorce the lover
Yet in this land of the English and the Irish
Life’s meaning is in every tree, every hedgerow
That between the earth and the trembling sky
Is the patient place, each soul may lie
I have written this after for some time being frustrated that we have shut down the economy, an action that will cause many more deaths and much more suffering than the corona virus, despite the fact that there is no evidence that it will make any difference nor that this new disease is any more dangerous than many previously existing viruses. But this poem is about how our bureaucratic modern societies forget that it is useless to be alive if you cannot live. Life is a gift you can chuck in the attic to collect dust or you can choose to make something of it. And they may find a cure for corona, but they’ll never find a cure for the fatal condition called life.
Dark Windows
Bright rays tell me, something watches
Gray shadows tell me, something lingers
Cold breezes tell me, something moves
Light morning communicates, something awakens
Black clouds tell me, something comes
Familiar rain tells me, something leaves
Pattering shelter tells me, something follows
Clattering thunder communicates, something sleeps
When the sparrow ignores me on the bench
And weeds tangle wild behind my back
The ray that wrenches out from clouds
Promises the presence my senses lack
