under bushels

*under bushels*

Lights under bushels
How many there concealed
Is as if our shadows scare us
Drive away our own strengths
Leave us a tree stripped of leaves
By withering storm perpetual.

an ending

** an ending **
Sprinkled splintered freckled glass
Biting into pores
Pin pricks deep on nerve endings sparking
A torture unavoidable
A madness in the soul's abyss incited
Melting people and cityscapes
Every sound carnival and tactile
Wind's claws tear at me
Sun's beams molten crash over me
Every glance or gaze an inquistition
Sure my heart is bared
My every thought illuminated
On my billboard naked face
This is an ending
Emotional and crucifying
Leading to totality of oblivion
Of who I am and ever was.

the unavoidable disease

** the unavoidable disease **
Illnesses chronologically arrive
The days of mumps or measles gone
The 24 hour cold and viruses
No more do they visit
At this age reached
They squat uninvited
Remain elusive to removal
Find space to occupy in lungs
Cause you to greet each day with a cough
Leave dull pains across body complete
Make limbs ache and joints creak
Lungs out of breath wheeze
Ricepaper thin wrinkled skin
Speckled with kidney purple dots
Heart a tired failing pump
Disintegration of body mortal
Time the unavoidable chronic disease.

calls for defence

* calls for defence *

Stalin called last night
Requested a defence
Said he didn't kill his opponents
Gulags existence are lies
And besides they deserved it

Jack the Ripper wrote in
Said he was a cleanskin
The murders done in his name
Those killings infamous
Done by another not he
And besides they deserved it

These killers wholesale or retail
Always without fail
Have a reason why
Someone else has to die
Divine inspiration or for the greater good
Strange how when good for all pursued
At exclusion of individual rights
Leads to a removal of rights for all
A sentence of death for others
Workings of the mind logical
Conclude in decisions homicidal
And always the reasoning
It was never it was another
The mechanisms of the State
Due to duty to be performed
And always always sinner or saint
Because they deserved it.

lead a brave life

* lead a brave life *
Your tears for what could have been
Must be leavened by what became
Days of reflection despairing
Should not set aside days of caring
No tree ever grows truly straight
Neither path direct takes Fate
Things for better may have fallen
Or worse may have come calling
Other lives in perfection seem
Symmetry of a glorious dream
Unless lived you cannot see
What is or ever shall be
Embrace moments precious close
Use experience for joy or woe
Be constant ever living grow
These tears you shed are real
Allow them to water your zeal
Fertilise and nourish life you crave
Let life not see you timid ever onward be brave.

Wrestle-ism

* Wrestle-ism *

Wrestle mania introduces
Man against philosophy
Which ism will he use
To address his need for a framework
A guide to understanding
His life and how it should be lived
Materialism and conspicuous consumption
Is a presently favoured form
Joy derived from gathering possessions
Or perhaps environmentalism
Rearrange the pecking order
Planet and animals give more import
Than the demands of insatiable humanity
Communism has been dismissed
While capitalism survives
Proven unreliable unregulated
The foxes tend to strip the chicken coop
Rationalism shows no compassionism
All these isms to philosophical keen
In our ignorance we do not see
The latest western philosophy on TV
Has captured the common ground
Concludes swiftly in four rounds
Beloved by politicians in elections
Used by parents and teachers in addressing children
All flair and action and choreographed moves
A sense of danger sanitised
Everyone is an actor
Whoever has the best soundbite wins
Wrestle-ism creates a constant din
No need for meaning to look deeper within
Live in peaceful acquiescence
Pick your team hope to win
And a large tv and a worthless vote
Facebook page to make you feel you are loved
Internalise the sense of powerless rage
Let it out when your team wins the league
Or a power blackout occurs
In the masses be another furious anonymous face
Alike to all the others in the crowd
Wrestle-ism on the streets
It isn't organized or pretty
It is the philosophy of our Western cities.

night offers

_night offers_

The night offers solace
A veil behind which to hide
Alcohol for your conscience
Fairground attractions to ride
All on fortune's waters cast
A bet on present future past
Every moment may be the last
Allow your head to spin
Dissolve all reason from actions
Press against sweat warm skin
Take blind kisses deep within
Beneath veil of night be lovers
Never let the daylight in.

everybody knows the gfc

$€£ everybody knows the gfc £€$

Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody knows the mortgagees lied
The rates were always set to spiral
Bond-holders were always going to fry
Keep on playing pass the parcel
Built on a web of rating lies
Bonuses will be taken
Cut of prime steak covered in flies

The buzz everyone was hearing
From Wall Street to the Fed Reserve
Everyone knows the deals were sticky
Black tar upon your hands
Even as you fail a bank or two
No ones knows what those instruments do
A day of reckoning is coming

The ninjas got no income
No jobs and no assets Nothing down everything borrowed
What's a broker meant to do
Got payments due on the Mercedes
Want the condo with the beachfront view
Everybody knows the loans are rotten
Old black joe's still picking cotton

That's how it goes
Everybody knows...

sacred house

* sacred house *
Dreams of yesterday still cling
Dreams of passions fire and desires whim
Kisses so scalding smoked every atom of you
Nights so long stumbled into dawn
Insatiable only briefly sated in bed
An eager industrious bee on your nectar fed
First bloom of passion without rest
Such flavour and beauty and zest
My morning arc and blue sky
My answer to every why
Afternoon delight and splendour
To Kubla Khan's dome send you
Evening's cloak conceal us
Our love a private sacred house.

to before

*** to before ***
Strip time from celebrity tears
Take us back to first innocence
Return to before
Before the drugs and stupidity
Grand standing culpability
Jailhouse sad snapshots
Late-night comedian cheap shots
To the talent freshly found
Before every utterance had to be profound
Before corporates opened their doors
Before the hanger-ons and whores
When the dream was another show
Not getting money for more blow
You appeared under headline of singer
Not twice divorced no longer a winner
As quickly as they build you up
Aim to bring you down
Need new headlines every day
Will publish what gossips say
To lowest common denominator pander
Every line a new form of slander
Tortured and misquoted
Your peaks outweighed by troughs
Until unsure who you are or were
Another talented moth
Lured then burnt by glow of fame.

cost

* Cost *

I used to think dreams were free
Of cost or obligation
How wrong could you be
Not to know the debt accrued
To do one thing cannot do two
Time is first payment due
Second is a certain point of view
A schelerosis of an open mind
In doing learn how world is set
Your innocence fades with much regret
The vision seen in darker hues
No beginning ever as fresh
As those you begin
When you don't know what to do
As every start after has taint of before
You are no longer intrepid explorer
Instead a jaded tourist
Revisiting the sites of previous trips
Wondering why they are not as good as you recall.