Old world new

** old world new **
New time marks old time world
Implies a change in attitude
We are re-inventing the isms
Fatalism to such words I apply
A cynicism bred from other times
When the changes have been rung
As bell pullers in a belfry
Not seeing outward effect of noise
How bell tolling makes people move
So it seems with the clamour makers
They state the world is being
The way they state it will be
When in fact the world is as
The world ever has been
Their declarations so empty
Of fire or brimstone or relevance
Old world still outlasts new
New world shine soon rubs off
To reveal old world solid and true
As always was and always will.

Princess Commuter

+-+ Princess Commuter +-+
Haughty angle of your jaw
Dismissive tightness of your lips
Head turned away to stare
At anything or anywhere just not here
Gazes fall from you wounded deep
By sharp animosity of your profile
Hair pulled back arrogantly tight
Clothing coldly professional
You are not interested in
The other travellers sitting around
A prisoner of circumstances
Serving out your time in solitary
Such a constant to the smiles
Neat and fresh politeness shared
By the other travellers journeying
United in this trip
Welcoming of conversation and interaction
While you in lonely majesty sit.

This morning light

* This Morning Light *
Soft falls the morning light
Curling around the trees
Brushing across freshly turned earth
Aroma of the earth rising
A crisp freshness to the air
All is shadows or blades of golden light
Breaking through the foliage rich
Of the trees which have not shed
The loads they grew through Spring
And heavy coats and gloves mark
Commuters waiting for the train
And the constant tap tap tapping
Of hard winter heels mark another arrival
Awaiting the stalled inconvenient lateness of the train
Our breath as smoke plumes rises
And we think of warmer things
Beds left empty
Or hot cups of coffee to be tightly grasped
Tropical islands and Tuscan summer holidays
Electric four bar heaters
Or the heated wash of a hot winter soup
Progressing onward in a world globed
By hemisphere of startling gas fire blue
And kept so much alive
By the kissing beauty of sensual golden light.

What was once

** What was once **
Your youth beckons
As shiny things attract a black crow
What was you still hold
Not realising what is in your possession
Till having lost what it is
You see another with what you once possessed
And must teach yourself contentment
Reach a satisfactory truce with yourself
Of what you now possess
And what the future as yet unlived
Shall offer up for your endurance
Always glancing enviously at lithe light limbed youth.

Wintered blue

* wintered blue *

I cannot see further than endless Winter blue
Sky a glaze perfectly frosted
Lost in thoughts medieval
Of good and bad the desperate and the evil
Venetian merchants having travelled
All the tall tales unravelled
With exception of duplicity of men's souls
And how ignorance and fear build anew
New tales taller still of blue skies distant
As all Grace Kelly princesses
Impervious to our charms or madness.

Ravings fraught

** ravings fraught **
Thoughts and currents swirl
This flow of inner monologue
Waiting for an announcement
A comprehensible statement
Not this garbled gibberish
This public transport language mangling
Instead a clearness and cleverness to thought
Rather than ravings fraught
A reluctance to provide escape
An inability to cope
With the tides which rise and fall
Nature's fickleness and fate's damnation
All the rationalisations and broken excuses
The flaws deeper than the strengths
So stressed and tense and useless
Every thought collision of flimsy hope into granite reality
No escape and no winding back
To far condemned and lost down this single track
In molasses boiling swimming
Scalding and drowning in same instant
Such is life with thoughts tangled
Jagged banged and jangled shards
Razor crystals from material of self slicing
Diced and slashed bleed ideas
Unintelligible and forced to die
These maimed deluded thoughts of I.

Pieces of rainbows

** pieces of rainbows **
There are these shattered rainbows on the floor
Broken from all the boys I knew before
Formed across the blur of tears
When every single one made real my fears
And now you are standing there
A scent of love caught in your hair
Standing on shards of rainbows you cannot see
If you could you may realise how difficult this is for me
Opening up again to the fear of falling down
Even as your smile lifts my heart up from the ground
The Sun has risen and fallen far too many times
The wisdom I have been taught is wisdom of dimes

A single silver coin and this fortune told
But how I wish to again reach out and hold
Feel love's warm promise on your lips
Lay myself against sweet line of your hips
There is no great exclamation I will gasp
Only a strong sense perhaps this might last
Your kisses dull the flames writhing within
Hands a cool salve upon my bruised and tender skin
I cannot go without another throw of hope
Though if this should fail unsure how I will cope
You will never know of this fight I have inside
All hope and passion into depression too easily slide
And yet you are here standing on the shattered rays
Of all those rainbows which once held up my days
I feel as if I am falling through the stratosphere
Hoping you will be beneath to catch me and draw me near

No more excuses as I escape the shadows of
All the boys before who left me in this fog
This escape is final as I am reaching for your arms
This is love eternal succumbing to your charms
And if I am wrong and all world fails apart
You end up tearing another strip across my heart
I will know more rainbows will crash upon the floor
And in those shards plentiful I will be unable to ignore
I loved and felt such beauty and I know one day I will meet
Another who is my equal and will clear the broken rainbows at my feet
And I am wondering if that one could be you
For there is no fraud to this loving which you do
I am hoping my rainbows will stay off the floor
We in love's embrace will find the door
To respect and charity and love of who we are

And I am falling hard as a shooting star
Knowing you will catch me before I fall to far
A romantic singing love into your ear
Unable to believe I once did ever fear
Thinking you might never come and find me lying here
Surrounded by these broken rainbows of my tears
Needing your presence to wipe this slate clean
As into promise of your smile and kisses I in love do lean.

Judgement make

++ judgement make ++
Angle slope and length of nose
How bones beneath press up
The shade and gleam of your skin
Distance eyes set apart
And the gleam within
How easy lips look set to smile
What you wear and is your style
Heaviness or lightness of limb
Height considered in accordance with your width
Tapered lines from foot to ankle and calf
How straight you stand
Condition of your teeth
Placement and design of ears
The expressions which on visage play
All you do and everything you say
How you treat those all around
And your opinions on things profound
All these items many in judgment take
To see what is of interest in your face
Then begins imaginations wanderings
How you might coo some loving words
The sense of heat escape from your curves
Sensitivity and sensuality of your skin
How tactile you may be if let in
Perhaps a thought might turn
To expressions formed as passion burns
The joy and rapture in which participate
All these things in chance encounter
Flicker flitter dance through thoughts
Poetry of emotions stirred
First feelings of affectation nurture
No saying how great or slight these may grow to be
As I look at cut of your hair
How it falls and how you care
And wonder to its perfumed scent
How well beats your heart
And if your heart is true
Or by some cruelty of life forever bent.

Perhaps a sister to

*+* perhaps a sister to *+*
Sweet charity of your heart
Modesty of expression
In humility you bathe
Shakespeare would find in you
A counterpoint to his shrew
Perhaps a sister to Desdemona
A father's daughter fine
Perhaps a wife as fine as best wine
Never knowing over-indulgence
Reining in flights of fancy
A part of your world and it a part of you
Feel every injustice and crime
As if these affronts marked your own skin
Supporter of needy causes plentiful
Sure of God and heaven's aims
Never a truer heart could be
Or more pure a sight could see
Never seeing the evil in another
In every person seek love and understanding
Expecting all to seek the same
And when the unrighteous spoil and taint
Dislocate your vision of this dream
You feel a sadness greater for them
Than any misery inflicted upon yourself
As they are friends who have stumbled
Tripped along the way secure
Found the darkness overwhelming
Through which you walk with lantern high
Bringing light as you walk by
Seeking no more from your world
Than another breath another day
So you may experience more along the way
And if some illness or misfortune strikes you down
Your brow is not crowded with a frown
For you know all is as it should be
In this perfect world you see
The diseased and dying need your help
The cold and hungry never your thought
Everyone in the wide broad world
A project to be remade whole
Return a smile onto their lips
Help them up when world slips
And yet most likely as is humanity's way
You find yourself alone and unwanted
For we all would like such perfection of vision for ourselves
But not to have such in our own actions
To be unable with such clarity to be
Completely selfless and without need
To be without ignorance or any greed
Seems a contradiction to form we would aspire
And your constant presence perfect
Reminds us of our failings many
The wavering from your straight course
The lies so fragile when confronted by your truth
And so out of spite we reject
The charity and goodness you set
Our jealousy and envy flows as anger
Maybe even murder nurtured in our hearts
For the fact you can act truly
In a world where we are knaves
And to our own desires cowards.

Bring to life

** bring to life **
I am trying to shake out
The things of which I care about
The endeavours which I can do
To bring some life to me
Add an allure of interest
Which would make you interested in me
Is no deceit to simply state
A boring person deserves a boring fate
To rise up better and be of value
You must seek activities to value
Make of your time a precious resource
You must mete out with care
Else you find there is no time
To do all things of interest you dare
Yet if you allow yourself to drift
Find no interest or care of your own
Desire no one and nothing
Then self condemned to solitude
A wastrel of time precious held
Shall die as you had lived
Neither noticed nor remembered
Holding no interests in this world
The world never found an interest in you.

Crnch

* crnch *
I reach for you with my mind
Snap you as a penny in a press
The shatterig of your self
A breaking of spirit and sinew
Left jellyfish weak and gasping
An out of water aquarian
Broken on wheel of thought
Falling as all meteors do
Into a soot and ash destruction.

stripped back

** stripped back **
These eyes are filling
And cruelty stalks
Empty caverns of the heart
Ventricles of joy and love
Stripped back to raw rough surface
An anger unacceptable
A sense of loss irreplaceable
Hanging waiting for a sign
Hoping executioner is in today
Can pull the lever and end the story
Before the complete misery arrives
No escape on any level
Tried your best to not need
Any other time or place
For this one is a misery
And if hope should bloom
Would drain remaining strength
Kill me surely as
A knife plunged deep and twisted
Into my empty heart.

Same junkyard

** same junkyard **
Long lines of thought
Meander wend and wind there way
From me to same destination
By short exploration or long
These circlious paths take
From dreams to ideas to hopes
All end in same junkyard
Of this battered broken heart
The springs are broken bolts are sheared
There cannot be more to find
The blackened remains of whatever was
Taste of ashes in the wind
Perpetual storm clouds black and threatening
No better days will ever rise
This depression and desolation
Marked on face as carved into heart
The simple pleasures once sought
As dust on lips are found
No life giving love flows
Parched and dry constriction continues
Unable to speak death claims
The last shreds of what I am
Upon the wind the greasy ribbons of smoke are me.

Buy in

*++ Buy in ++*
Pinholes release sparks
Flames escape the grate
Timeless feelings overwhelm
The best of here is sunlight
Best inside the mirth light
Laughter light freeing
Knots constant drawing tight
Falling from the platforms
Knock aside by chance and action
Left to lie here bleeding
Promethesus knew such hurt
The slowly always dying
Rejected and flawed and knowing
Who you are curtails
Dreams of who you would be blind you
Seeking another person to buy into
The illusion of your self.

Death and dearth

** death and dearth **
Take this song
Sing it to the heights
Highest points of hope
Cleared here dredged remains
Power of the silence
Death of dreams
Dearth of love
Turn back to humanity
Face a wall of despair
Plug ears with wax
Stop mouth with canvas
Vacuum wrap your plastic soul
There is nothing but an emptiness
This whole an infinite blackest hole.

Racist unsound

** racist unsound **
These traviatas and bamboo al fresco
Signs of multicultural mix unable to be stopped
Your definition of what makes you ethically sound
Has progressed so far from your xenophobic forebearers
You now would be considered flawed
A target for their retribution
The music which you listen
The food you dare to eat
Names you place upon your children
Would all make you target for retribution
Your attitudes you find godly
Be heathen practices to their minds
Your alienation from the mainstream
Your living outside the law
All indications of your failure
To be someone they would respect
Your neglect of all these things
The idolatory to them you practise
Be a sign of weakness and failure
Be a sign you are different
Make you a target for the hate
You think you alone possess
Inspired by the long long dead
Who would despise one as you.

Words

_--- Words ---_
You know the words you seek to say
the gentle psalms wish to pray
How the morning finds you awake
And night deep is when you sleep
All additions to your accumulated worth
Escaping from a voodoo curse
Voodoo of the workplace and money
Neither of which makes honey
Honey sweet and rich from bees labour derived
Perhaps a lesson from buzzing insect on how to be alive
Completely diligent in your task be
And know exactly of what type of bee
Worker soldier drone or queen
The role you do is your mean
The balance of all extremes
Place between life and dreams
It happens whether you see or not
Must play the role you have got
A fierce determinism exists
Do you live to live or just subsist
So it is the words you know
Words of stay or words to go
Words of joy or woe or love
Words of praise on mortal form or god above
All these words aligned and dressed
So knowing all no need be stressed.

Someone wrote

***+- Someone wrote -+***
Someone wrote and someone read
Probably French philosopher long dead
Those early thinkers had it easy
Just repeat the thoughts of Greece
Socrates and Aristotle and other Athenians
Who advantaged our ways of thinking
Plundered across the gap of ages
To provide wisdom for fresh pages
Which we could consume and think
In coffee shops where trendy revolutionaries drink
In remembrance of those tomb robbing frogs
We name our children after shoes
The Sally Ann or Jane or George
No god names at the blacksmith forge
No fire and brimstone in what we write
The bill of rights a prejudicial slight
Against the cult of women rising up
Who made the dinner on which you sup
Valkyries or harpies depending on the view
Who stick to fanaticism like best glue
Poster soldiers for the revolution yet to come
The Greeks did not calculate them in their sum
Of how our world is and philosophies capture
So little surprise in French women little rapture
With their words on how to live and die
Enough to make a plagiaristic philosopher cry
Which brings us back to the words written
By a philosopher who by a rabid dog bitten
Words of madness with sanest outcome
On how to live and to depression not succumb
But seems those words now escape me
So of pillaged Greek or French thief we are free.

A better

**+ a better +**
Broaden mind extend my sight
See as well by day as thoughts by night
In my passion lull my fiercest beasts to rest
Be the perfect host and most welcomed guest
Rise above the minor slights and hurts
For savage attacks offer forgiving words
All is not what this world ever was
What was misplaced and found can still be lost
Certainty is based on the most fragile conceits
That tomorrow we will still proudly have heartbeat
Such hubris by fate can be unwound
Our hopes to see another orbit round
Sun of ancestors and those still to follow
mortality makes our promises hollow
Yet intend to live as best as one can
Show the best not the worse in a man.

In seuss-ness salute

** in Seuss-ness salute **
The actions do reverberate
Calculations do snerberate
In the lancey dooing dogwoggling
Of most important transpugdellian officinations
Bridge the broader gloaming
In which our spirits feuq roaming
Take transvuted leanings mudderial
Of pompous partridge twisted pews
So we can form a cacophony
Of the literal minded politicking pigeons
Chest blown out and expanded to receive
Blessing of a flutejidirian society
In this the most belaggatory state of Now.

Latest generation

** latest generation **
Short abrupt and curt
Impolite in company
Obstinate in perspective
In movement oafish
Culinary matters hoglike
This accident of genes
Twisted society attitudes
Together fuse to form
The modern nihilist
Short term thinker
Long liver drinker
Aggressive brain wired
For pleasured satisfaction
Impatient thug of action
Selfish centred ego
Themselves alone important
Latest generation destined
Undo all work of the one before.

Promise

*** promise ***

These slow dreams nurtured
Through Winter dark snow and ice
The excuses and procrastination weigh heavy
A lack of steady will power levy
So vacillation and in- determination
Are an age of wasted time
Yet these slow dreams nurtured
Mustard small seed deep planted
Sends forth tendrils and grows upward
Optimism and opportunity proclaim
A door opens and move on through
To fresh vistas often glimpsed
Horizons in dreams envisaged
As what was nurtured flowers
As all those distant tomorrows become today.

Teenage query

** teenage query
Hearing all the loud fury
Of the angst in teenage query
As to why the world is as it is
And every adult fails the quiz
To explain how history reached this moment
Sliced to ribbons by teenage comment
What did we do to make this world better
How could we settle unfettered
By concerns or woe as we know
Our lives will in this world flow
With all the problems accumulated
Yet still life we unburdened celebrated
What empty heroes are we
Feet of lead and cast hollow
Why should these greater forms follow
The flawed and tired beings we have become
No more endeavouring to world overcome
We have instead to succumbed to world
Fallen at this hurdle
As we know they shall in time also fall
For now they know it all
For now their energy may bring some change
And their change will also bring some pain
But always we in discovered wisdom found
This as been the way since world did first turn around.

Often found in hill and dale
Between the rain sleet and hail
Are the fairies soft and grey
Gentle water slyphs at their play
Sparkled edges diamantied bright
They catch each beam of splashed light
As dancing moths at twilight
And these fairies wild possess
The sharpness of being real
With fey spirits adequate
To extinguish any mortal roar
Able to undo any lock or door
Calm any animal of tooth or claw
These sprites in mischiefs hunt delight
To bring unusual calamity
Upon the head of pompous red faced barristers
Upwardly mobile young professionals
Or young ladies who believe
Their looks beguile more than they could
Are turned in moments to dry wood
A stump left in a clearing
Or withered rose or honeysuckle
From whom no more endearments flow
So if you see the sparking
The unreal reality of fairy shimmering
Do not seek out to embrace that light
For it shines for their delight alone
And woe be the mortal fool
Who thinks he is worthy of it too.

Our system

**+ our system +**
The easing teasing wondering blundering
Taste of fire and of doubt
Politicking satirising plagiarising cunning
Of the opportunity mongers running
Leaders by poll or feedback
Have a spine of consultative committees
So it is in depths of parliament
Democracy become an excuse for ineffectualism
A grinding ever downward of intellectualism
Till we gain the equality of stupidity
Defend the liberty to be a mindless idiot
Fraternity of fools on a sinking ship
A nation a people a culture
Run aground and plunging
Effortlessly through all values or value
Respectful of nothing or anyone
A carnival of knaves lead by short sighted jesters
For whom all noise and chaos is progress
And introspection and consideration a failure of process.

Awash to touch

** awash to touch **
In slumber thoughts flickers
Images make heartbeat quicker
The thought of lavishing attention fine
Onto a breast on which to dine
Or seek out ribs with hands warm and sharing
Send rippling feeling with four shades of daring
Lift nectar to lips as ambrosia rises
Your sweet sigh of joy keen ear prizes
The teasing and flirting
Laughing and mirthing
Brought us to this sweet abyss
On trapeze we are swinging
Over the drop
Heat now is rising neither would stop
Nip on the neck glide of the hand
Smoothing skin as warm sand
Sensual merriment invent
Touching tasting seeing hearing scent
So alive in moments pleasure
We stretch out these minutes leisure
Sprawled against for hours on end
Grown closer trusting as a friend
Spiralling delirious joy ever higher
Growing hotter from this melding fire
Who would have ever thought
Body and nerves could grow so taut
Rubbing on the fulcrum of another
Unsure of body can survive further
Then a kiss so sure and strong
The dam is burst release your song
And hours minutes moments spark
All together in this moment mark
On memory a point of ecstasy
As explosive release in each other see
Gasping fall again to mortal ground
Clasp each other firmly as Earth orbits round
Into eyes we gaze in fervent sated hope
You felt the same and with future we can cope.

The good we may bring

** the good we may bring **
Stop all your moralising
The political philosophising
My plane leaves next week
No need for rushing
War we are fighting
They have been fighting
Since Homer was a lad
And Ajax was in shortie pyjamas
This place knows war better than peace
The native-born live and die never at ease
Gods here are angry and senselessly brutal
About warfare vicious and tribal there is nothing subtle
For all the good we may bring
We are foreigners here bringing a foreign thing
Democracy and rule of equals never survives
When the objective is getting out alive.

Foreign bound

** Foreign Bound **
Marching away with a song in your heart
Those so distant made warmer by parting
Unsure if your ever coming back
Your smile lingers ever uncertainty
Nobody showed you how to deal with such civility
Everyone beset with the same damn curiosity
How does it feel to be going to war
Are your nervous has training made you sore
Their eyes want to thank you
And handshakes are a trifle too long
Somethings not right there is something wrong
Are they already practising reaction to your name
As it is read by head of armed forces
A brief retelling of who and what for
Another casualty in a distant strange war
You know why we are fighting
Only need to see
The bombed out schools empty
The fanaticism which resides
Deep in the soul of your enemies eyes
With slouch hat and rifle sent on your way
Still feel their eyes boring inside you
Seeking the truth if they could exchange with you
Would they dare go or would they surrender
To safer instincts far from the slaughter
Far from the bullets and unexploded mines
Far from a country which can't picture mine
There something they all wish they could say
But even the Christians no longer pray
Their eyes and their bodies want to envelope you
Hold you back from what you must do
Safe in their lives ever suburban
Safe in front of televisions
Day ahead mapped out certain
Not having to worry about a device
Hurriedly buried somewhere you might tread
Not having to fear of not coming back
Always been the way since Greeks went to war
Persians and Romans and Brits and Russians before
Facing their fears on land inhospitable
A people tough and proud and never being feeble
March away with a song in your heart
Hoping the hope this is only the start
Of a journey to relate in your dotage
To children who marvel at your courage
And you feel the same then as you do now
Wondering if you will be strong enough
To do what you must
March through Persian sunsets with taste of the dust
In your mouth and deep down your throat
The dry dust of fear with which you must cope
Every moment you are living and dying
Aiming to come back whole and alive
Prove to these people you could survive
Those people who shake your hand and needlessly linger
As your heading outward bound.

Climate alarm

** climate alarm **
The sharp sticks are stabbing
Relentlessly attention grabbing
You have slumbered long enough
Time to rise and do your stuff
Meet the world at least halfway
Prioritise your chores and earn your pay
Does not matter what day or hour
Your time is now to flower
Environment in which you live is dying
Rivers ceasing to flow and lakes drying
Weather events chaotic growing
Through all of life climate change is flowing
Future wars will have current causes
No escape in legal clauses
Change is nigh and you must fight
Else world fall to an incurable blight.

The flying corporate

** the flying corporate **
Bainmarie on the long full bench
Corporate breakfast far from home
Almost warm and almost nourishing
Fills an empty spot with stone
All these trips and nought to show
More flyer miles you cannot use
Taxi drivers navigationally challenged
Drunks in restaurants full of abuse
A comfortable bed in a different city
No time for tourism of places pretty
Corporate hotdesking on sad side of city
Empty bed awaits end of corporate day
This is the good life they say
The high flying corporate life
Never home with growing children
Unable to sleep with frustrated wife
Hoping you can get to holiday break
Before a heart attack or nervous shakes
Overcome the tailored facade
Make all glimpse tired charade
Of the man self unmade
Running down as springs grow loose
Achieving little and leaves no proof
Of ever having been here at all
An easily replaceable erasable corporate pawn
Who shall be when down completely worn
Given a token of their esteem
Sent to live those postponed dreams.

Pocket for dreams

** Pocket for Dreams **
Talking dreams on a breakfast table
Folding into a pocket of my mind
As stumble out into the cold
Sleep a fog around my head
Saying sad farewell to a warm bed
Train can't be seen down the tracks
Platform is tundra bleak
Another monday morning start
To another working week
Jostle for a standing place on rocking train
All the seats already full again
Commuters around me have faces set
No charity and many regrets
Don't get out of line
On a monday there is no time
Stench of alcohol on someone's breath
Bags larger than a camping set
No space little air and no joy
Train stops and let's more in
Imagination can only get so far
When holding onto a safety bar
Eventually journey is done
Break out of carriage into a place devoid of sun
Clouds heavy mask the sky
Rain lashing hides tears of frustration cry
A meeting in five minutes
Work lapping over edge of desk
Phone message light is blinking
Whatever was I thinking
As I left my bed this morning
Another Monday to endure
No saintly rest for innocent or pure
The whips are out and drums beat
Every corporate soul to the oars
Moving colossus of a business
In a direction hopefully forward
Lunch is bites stolen at desk
Keyboard earns a scattering of crumbs
Everywhere around there is stress
No order only business process mess
Keep swimming across the divide
Only got to make it till five
Eventually after herculean toils
The clock announces all time spent
Workload on desk looks unchanged
Return journey again with strangers
On a train likely to be delayed
Has been that kind of day
Dinner will be overcooked
Television will promptly die
Have read all shelves of books
Iron will best shirt fry
Eventually surrender to this day
Give up on another Monday
Turn your weary head to bed
Set alarm for morning you dread
Close your eyes and try and escape
Dreams Hitchcockian reflect your fate
Until you wake from them
Unable to tell where day start and dream end
Breakfast table your moment of relief
Before day's claws are at your seat
Pull out again from mind's pocket
The dreams you sketch to form
An escape from Mondays perpetual
A relief from corporations asexual
Knowing even as you do plan
You are living life in everything you do
So the keenest sight to dreams must apply
To make up for these many days and years
In servitude to other needs
You with heavy heart allow to die.

Becoming me

++* Becoming Me *++
These eyes of mine have seen the glories
Tasted ambrosia rich and sweet
Smelt rich autumn in changing forests
Seen Sun's eclipse and Moon's stolen crescents
Looked upon the desolate ruins of Troy
Stood within bloodied gullies of Gallipoli
Walked upon the graves of kings and poets
Sang in cathedrals and frozen in Persian mountains
Been blessed in the greatest golden temples
Travelled upon an elephant a plane by dugout canoe
From Kathmandu to ports and harbours
High hills low lees and places inbetween
Experienced snow cold and desert heat
Burnt hands and feet by Sun and frost
Travelled far and sometimes lost
Talked and listened to men of every skin
Seen markets primitive raw and fresh
Others vast barns of food processed
Drunk and stumbled in taverns distant
Conversations with other strangers far from home
Lived and breathed air of great cities
Strolled through villages rich in simplicity
All this grandness and humbleness
Taken as heart's expected wandering
To view the views others take for granted
And to return home outer visage little changed
Yet deep inside these travelled places claim
A corner of my multi-faceted heart
A diamond formed from journeys diverse
For all I can ever be
Is all the places I have ever been
What I have heard tasted or scented
All the cultures peoples and things I have seen
All the experiences I have ever lived
And all the many which I shall
Between first breath and final rest.

Not heard

** not heard **
I can think of no one
To whom these letters send
Don't mean those examples of mail
I mean the letters I type
Which when combined form the words
To elucidate the thoughts I hold tight
No one to say they are fair or foul
No one to whom passion express
Or escape with me a while
No one close and no one far
No dear I find at my thoughts
To whom I could entrust
These pieces from myself I shear
Lay in stark black skeletal rows
A poet decrying absence
Of an audience listening
Trying to work a craft to art
Under a gray sky and heavy heart.

Keeping cold at bay

*** Keeping cold at bay ***
How cold are our days
Gloves we need to warm hands
Made numb and almost painful
By Winter's bite and claw
Or perhaps another way
Do not leave your bed
Find another body warm
Dally there instead
Wait till after noon
Before your bed exit
Refreshed and rejoiced
Warmed by skin and touch
Lifted to some Summer realm
Where Winter's touch is not found
A place of kisses long and dear
Of passions raw and fierce
This land you call your bed
With this person molten hot
Who keeps the cold at bay.

Underneath

** underneath **
Get underneath your eyelids
As I watch you dozing
Reach in and join dreams
Those enigmatic thoughts flickering
In your state of rest
I want to join with them
Travel north south east or west
Wherever those dream thoughts may journey
Wherever you escape to
Behind your eyelids closed
Slumbering or napping
As train carries us on
To the place we are going
A place of work and toil
A place I suspect far divorced
From your sleeping world of dreams.

Thai fire balloons

** Thai fire balloons **
Those paper fire balloons
Lifting off at night from Thai beaches
Drifting lazily on own heated air
Rising gradually upward and out to sea
Until inevitably they must plunge
Fall into the salt waters beneath
Some times I see my days
As being as those paper balloons are
Temporary in form and briefly beautiful
In the act of living consuming self
Being worn down and burnt out
By this act of being
Hoping to keep drifting beautifully
Unchallenged by harsh realities
It is night and dark
Beneath lurks an unforgiving sea
And yet around me so distracting
The lonely total beauty of others I see
Alone we crowd the night air
Together a great beauty to behold
Yet never any of us knowing
When our flames will run
As inevitably they must
And into sea drop and expire.

to the sky

* to the sky *
City air is clear after long weekend
Winter air is still and city looks lean
Buildings high aspire to sky reach
Unlikely to happen as then atmosphere breach
Cause gases fertile to rush out
Let stuff of stars to rush in
Invite meteors to strike our home
Fragile blue speck of dirt
In universe terms so viewed
An unexciting planet spinning round
A reasonably non-descript star
So it is this Winter's day
I ask ambitious architects do not get their way
To build ever higher taller and further
Till building tip and our protective sky
Merge in place where they meet
Then another inch put on and we die.

An archer's life

**-_ An archer's life _- **
Draw out the bow
An archers life for me
Following flight of the arrow
Through good and woe
Dependant on King's penny
For these places I go
The death and death dealing done
The eclipse of moon or sun
All magics sundry come undone
Before the King's harsh rule
And by flight of the arrow
Going straight and narrow
To mark all who are waiting
For the dawning battle and quaking
Archer feels no fear
Strums the string tight
Gazes forward with clear sight
To point at which arrow will strike
Not dipping to the ground
Instead will lodge in man and beast
Cruel barb of arrow rip
Into armour and into flesh or gristle
Cares not who's body strikes
Poet adulterer or shop keeper
Priest saint or gambler
Arrow see not cares not
You are merely objects in a path
Between bow string and somewhere else
Unless you prevent completion of path
Become the transition point into which all energy is released.

A Glum

** + A Glum + **
Daylight filters through my thoughts
Lumpy porridge coloured masses
Cancers of clarity
Heavy loathsome doubts
Polluted toxins I embrace
The daylight brushes all
Yet cannot bring an effervescence
A fairy imagery of imagination
Create a distance from my mundane ordinariness
I lump along don't flow
Have grace of a brick exiting
A room by a closed and locked window
Tied down and nailed down and hog tied
By my own lack of motivation
Falling as a dead cat might
When thrown from a worker's shovel
Into a deep depressing roadside ditch
Such a burial would at least be novel
Rather than this slow death
As I succumb each day and hour
To tiny gnawing teeth of Time
The deterioration of body decaying.

To full stop

** to full stop **
Those questions decomposing
An acceptance of death
As full stop of life
How should we lead life
Take benefits joyous
From effort and sweat expended
Even angels must work their wings to fly
Why should we expect life easy
If Life good habits neglect
Would make easier time spent
In living must find activity
To make the dying worthwhile
To set death as full stop to story full
Rather than notes inconsequential.

Melbourne

** Melbourne **
In Melbourne fair city anchored around by the bay
The breweries still stand yet no sign of the horses and dray
Transport by car bus train or even rattling tram
Commuters in morning and evening do cram
Has fine sandy beaches on which populance quite keen
The people are frugal nice and quite clean
The main river the Yarra has a grubby validity
Its colour arises due to silt rolling sedimentary
Some streets are board thoroughfares wide
More than a hint of the 1890s remains
Buildings of stone built when gold was our king
Now Melbourne tends to do a bit of everything
A gallery national just for the State
A sporting ground our most sacred place
Wiry and cunning and clever and quick
Every niche filling these Melbournians slick
Their fashion is cosmopolitan and music is live
The winters are chill yet not too hard to survive
The summers can be hot and dry as a bushfire
Melbournians turn to the sea when mercury soars higher
Not overly generous or overcome with greed
All they require is all that they need
A book store or four and a barista to provide
The elixir of coffee on which Melbournians survive.

Before

** before **
These days looking out
Trying to catch tide past
All about the debris
Of those I met before
All about the lost and fallen
The unable to be contained
Memories seep across the landscape
Obscuring what is now here
And if truthful clarity returns
I see a disfigured landscape
Though those younger than myself
Never viewed any other scene.

Cafe sojourn

** cafe sojourn **
Holding hands over a coffee
Exchanging looks of need and longing
Trying to find places we once knew
The deeper truth in me and you
Are we seekers of simple satiety
A few moments drinking pleasure's lotus
Plucking petals precious of time
Moments memory shall never lose
Or is there some deeper intent
A call to arms or call to soul
To bond and meld beautiful
Dance a dance of loving sweat
Do the movements without regret
Light a fire deep inside
Incinerate past mistakes
As in moment collision make
Supernova intensity of life
Which sees through all we have done and lived
To those times selfless and more devote
As we find ourselves
And let those truer selves back out.

Beach heart

** beach heart **
Drawing lines in the sand with stick
Piece of driftwood this man's artist tool
No paint palette or chunk of rock
Just damp sand at the tidal border
Sketching wavy lines approximating
The girl in my memory once was knowing
Flowing lines from stick's tip
Rendering in strokes thin and quick
Seems to be better that way
Recalling her in abstract strokes
A dash there for an eyebrow
Shell placed so she can see
Dressed in simple summer dress flowing
As if caught by this sea breeze
And she lies there completed
These lines I fill with memories to complete
Always has been the way of almost artists
Representations taken from the heart
Appear to others to be lines unshapely
Yet knowing in your heart these lines
So beautiful would make heart stop.

This meld of fact and fantasy

** Meld of fact and fantasy **
Weaving of facts and objects of fantasy
Magna Carta for the rights of men
Appendix added by Jerkyl and Hyde
All of this Spring madness
Fake euphoric chemical gladness
Smiles spread wider than Pollock's palate
Sadness of the widows of war
Both sides feels the grief and woe
No one gains when war passes go
And the White Rabbit runs late
A drip drip of red fate
And the blue hand waves adieu
To the green hand exiting
In gun smoke banjos and saloon doors
The slap of leather on salt water
Sailors lost beneath the sea
In U-boat or submarine
All these pamphlets of dreams
Merchandise schemes of neuron disclosure
Which in waking cannot be held to you
These escapees of fact and fantasy
Where mushroom lift the sky
Reveal Atlas cowering at mortal power
And every cold war hour an eternity
Waiting for the bomb to drop
Or Khushchev to hurl the other shoe
And the Mad Hatter rushes by
So late late late for the dawn red day
The strings of all the passes and bribes
Exposed as the journalists imbibe
Rich draft of political hypocrisy
And the streets running purple
Blood of the royals and ideals perfect
Such beliefs and fatal fascinations
Of crowds and nations great
Lead to ends to horrible to contemplate
We take the Dormouse and kick him to death
Over a pit of spitting vipers
Or a nest of Wall Street securities
Set alight for heat
Only shows emptiness of monied promises
And the ghosts of facts and fantastical objects
Sink to where the dead men drift
And Nemo pilots the Nautilus
Beyond sea bed mining claims
These declarations of sovereign rights extend
Digging profit holes fantastical
Holes of environmental consciousness
Down which pretty Alice will always tumble.

From then to now

* from then to now *
Marching feet, marching feet
Through the South's precious heat
The death and destruction
Pillaging burning eruption
Of Sherman's army burning all
Despoiling and reducing all
Glory of the South to ashes
Atlanta erased to stumps
Always will rise again
Burnt this time by future friend
Soon all will be united
Fresh foes of Union find
Outside the borders of North and South
In blood spilled by properly unified
Defy the old order of Europe
Build and to homelands travel
Not as captor of history but victor
Across battlefields from where ancestors came
Mark them all with blood and fame
Turn back Continental blight of Fascism
Match and overwhelm Asiatic imperialism
A new world order by bloodshed gain
Still nothing of value earned without pain
In victory benevolence display
Preach your marketplace habits
Sway hearts with democracy
Export your culture and fast food processes
Populise the sweet and swift
Teach world how to idolise
The lion heart of the young
Your naivety optimism and sense of fun
As world rulers be the grasshoppers
Enjoying this Spring for all its worth
Blessed by forefathers and fortune
While rest of world ant role takes
Slave away for colder less shiny days
For so long you can hold them back
Defy the inequalities of life
Until another learns your deeds
Practises them better than you do
As they grow as once you did
Blessed with energy which seems so young
For a nation older than every other one
We take your throne and your un-worn crown.

Rodeo days

+** Rodeo days **+

Hey fall away cowboy
Yee-hahh-aaying cowgirls
Caught in the rodeo whirl
Each stip the firststop
Every show a new show
Dealing with ready and rough
Fellow actors animals
Untrained in lights or crowd
Reverting to instincts raw
At bulldust and sawdust paw
Hornd filed down for safety
Things can still turn nasty
The arena can be escaped
Yet never questioning fate
Broken bones and bruises fresh
From the duel unleashed
Cowboys hollering loud
Cowgirls holding proud
Madness and chaos reigns
Against technique of reins
In cowboy life lived raw
For cowgirl fresh and cowboy poor.

This total God

** this total God **
Religion I think of
As an organised bureaucracy
Which is being unfair on God
Who by making omnipresent
Omnipotent and omniscient and all knowing
Has no need for bureaucracy at all
Can be where-ever he or she decides
Though gender may not be God at all
God being all genders and all places
Of and in and outside and around
Us and the world and the universe
In such a case must be demanded
If we are God then how can we worship ourselves
Seems a little self-congratulatory
To make offering to ourselves
Which is where organised religion enters
Providing a proxy distant between ourselves
And the projections of God we would acknowledge
Though as all and everything are God
And God knows all sees all is all
God must comprehend this artifice
Of religion to keep ourselves
Which are God
A distant from God
Which is everything
By the impeding spacer of religion
To keep from God that is of God
Which is of God by God and for God
A cheer squad of clerics
Formed by God for God
Celebratory in their support of God
Indeed devoted to only offering support for God
A support God created
And an all knowing God must know
Is of God supporting himself
Which makes these word of God
Divine perspiration of thought
As much a prayer as a poem wrote
Which God all knowing could already quote.

Waiting for

** waiting for **
Godot, waiting for.
Train, waiting for.
True love, waiting for.
Contentment, waiting for
Fulfilment, waiting for.
Satisfaction, waiting for.
A good night's sleep, waiting for.
Morning newspaper, waiting for.
Coffee, waiting for.
Person in front of me, waiting for.
Doctor, waiting for.
Treatment, waiting for
New sheets on death bed, waiting for.
Priest's graveside eulogy, waiting for.
Lowering of coffin, waiting for.
Decomposition, waiting for.
And Life?
Life is waiting for you.

In dark

** in dark **+*+
Bottled stale it grows
Invaded with vines and disease
All this good inside ourselves
Heart desires not let out
Optimism and silver hope
Held inside the dark imprisoned
What was beautiful becomes twisted
Trying to seek out the light
Any sign of any recognition
To that place body turn
Seeking heat and warmth
Nurture of understanding
Little wonder such parched lives
Badly formed decisions make
Count the good they see
Ignore deep rooted bad
Into sadness perpetual and dark
A permanent frost upon the heart
Withered torn and broken
Forever more seems life has spoken.

Fingers to keys

* fingers to keys *
Think caress of keys
Instead transferred to thee
Olde English used in rhyme
If in wooing be no crime
To stroke upon your skin as
In merriment I skim across
Trace the magnetic lines and curves
Seek the smile hid inside
I know one would settle on your face
If in meeting skin my fingers lace
Entwine your feelings and desire
Captivate and send you higher
Swirling as an ember on the wind
Under alights and sets alight
All thoughts and coals within
A furnace of your life make
A leaping fire barely kept in hearth
Blazing most in hidden reaches of your heart
This these fingers tapping keys seek
To restore lion's heart and reject the meek
Set each emotion charging forward
Aside place moments awkward
Stripped bare and honest
These fingers typing spoke.

Anthem

++ *Anthem ++
To me the anthem always meant
Sore feet and a neck twinge
Standing at attention to a tune written
Before the digitalization of our economy
When horses were more likely than cars
The Wright Brothers were still dreaming
And blasting off to the Moon
was domain of Jules Verne and HG Wells
Now when anthem plays
I think of dust crusted soldiers
Fighting in those lands where Alexander once fought
Lands little changed in bleak outlook
Family and tribe interchangeable and immutable
The fields they crop and sow
Wild goats as lean as the people
Always been a struggle here
Developed a fragmented nation
Of tribal alliances and warlord rule
Never keen to acknowledge any law
Other than the law they call their own
As every invader from Alexander onward learnt
As empire fingers constantly burnt
By the challenge of taking the Land
Conquering the folk of Afghanistan
Who allowed you in and there greeting faded
More than one Empire discovered
Afghanistan was a step to far
The highest peak of ambition was arriving
To escape the land was mere surviving
And all the world noted your defeat
At home and abroad knocked from your seat
And confidence given to revolutionaries
Soon the empire will fall
For in Afghanistan the impetus of victory stalled
So now our men in khaki fight
Slouch hats discarded for hardier headwear
To assist the people who sought no help
Bring democracy where votes are bought
Little wonder as days and years past
We prepare to escape at last
Our ambitions grown smaller
As we realise this costly power
To change a world cannot be done
Without blood shed in Afghanistan.

Sea colour

**+ Sea colours +***
When the Sea is distant
And the ground is brick dry
I often take to staring upward
At the great expanse of sky
Imaging each fluff of cloud were a yacht
And I upon it sailing
Salt catching on my lips
As sweet spray whipped up by our progress
All the world unbound and free
A sailor sailing brightly and broadly
Across a sea within borders
Each ocean visited if had the notion
To see the different shades of colour
Of turquoise blue green and grey
Which in the waves these colours play
And settle to my heart's content
If colour reflection of vaulted sky above
Or derived from sea bed depths
Or perhaps some of this and that
Which makes the sea and sets its sheen
A hundred thousand shades
Of blue and grey and green.

Once was

** once was **
Chasing seahorses off the pier
Descending into anarchy
The currents and waves storm caught
All is turbulence in this sea
And I am a swimmer lost
Unable to bear to shore
A shore I have lost from sight
And hope grows small and poor
I once so knew my way
Stroke was strong and sure
I was a different person then
Braver and more trusting and pure
Life has tainted me and stained me
This parchment I become
From once was such a clean sheet
I wear upon myself everything I have done.

Cold

* cold *
This cold insinuates itself
Between collar and skin
Up cuff and over arm
Down your back
Sweeps up trouser leg
Slaps your face to bruise
With icy cold snap of hand
As this cold addresses
Cold freezes and trangresses
The defences of heat set
Getting underneath draws cold
Winter fingers down your skin
Makes you flinch at this touch
Cold as ice and set by wind
The huntmaster of this pack
To try and chill you to the bone
Leaves you shivering from cold
Has you in it frigid hold
This winter day of beauty raw
Heavy clouds so high and bold
Set their with intention to
Make you fully aware
Of the creeping sneaking chill cold air.

** Recline **

Xxx recline xxx
Let my busy brain rest a while
Recline thoughts in relaxation
Once more contemplate sweet sensation
Of lips warm closing space to lips
Soft kiss hard kiss full kiss
All those kisses ever known
All those kisses passed up and missed
Kisses in the restaurant
Such a show to see
Kisses before tourist spots
How the statues gaped
Kisses upon hills and dale
Never ever did they fail
To stir the mind from business
Abduct thoughts to another place
Where kisses were an entree
And you abruptly think same
See as your face does red flush
Is it blush or embarrassment
To know your thoughts are known
How deep they lie I cannot tell
How they would embolden
These lips to kiss those lips
Warm and red and lush and full
If we knew the tale true
Of relaxed minds of two
Escapees from busy crowded day
Finding some relaxed reclining
Lips together as if with glue
Such a better way to slay the day
Spend it reclining with you.

Right time lost

** right time lost **
No time is the right time
Never seems to matter
Always something else to do
Something else on the plate
Always rushing somewhere
Always running late
A few words snatched from ether
Garbled toneless hurried
As scurrying off without time
To explain or express
How depressing such exchanges are
A snarl of frustration echoes
In words cast to wind
Stolen from my ear by clatter
Of work or train or tram or gym
There is no time at all
A crime without boundaries
When foundry of communication
Place and time to relate
No longer exists for us mortals
Rushed and rushing by perpetual fate.

Roleplay

** roleplay **
How often change my heart
How empty find it now
The seam of love ripped out
Mechanically I continue
This role I have is not hard
Be civil when I would not
Earn money for the mortgage
Keep a roof atop our heads
Lock the doors at night
Let in the dog and turn off the lights
Sleep a while then rise and head to work
Arriving home again halfway through dinner
Head out to collect a child at tutoring or sport
A role I can focus on and perform
Only times the performance shakes
When nothing more found to do
When find self alone with you
And the words we trade are limp
No thoughts loving or passionate we think.

Company excuse

* company excuse *
All the thoroughfares are crowded
Heads down we bullocked our way to work
Heart and sentiments set aside
This is purely work we do
Human emotions and care
Need not be involved
No water share or principle
On avaricious let our hearts be set
Cruel as slave owners pass
More miserly than Marley
It is not what we would do
If we were to do as we would wish
It is the company policy
This alien set of values in our midst
Which decrees the way we must act
And yet a company is no more than
A gathering of people in common enterprise
And the things you do in your work
Reflect the person you allow yourself to be
There is no company without your actions
And when you act without heart
No excuse for you can be found in company policy
For the actions performed are yours alone.

A lie set

** a lie set **
Across the truths a lie set
A black line of grime and sweat
Leaves you waking in the night
Quaking at those invitations sweet
A mess of nerves and tempers
Rising falling tidal moods
Set outside the world's own pace
In this subterfuge find a darker place
How one lie's needs must multiply
To be knit and twinned with truth
An entire world fantastical create
To hide the lie upon your slate
Bury lie in woodpile of truths
Overlay with all manner of coverings
If truth it is said will win out
Is immutable truth lie's existence shall rise
Break all bonds and demand be free
This lie which across your truths you drew
This lie which coiled tight strangles you
A lie which outweighs all truth
For from where-ever point you start
The lie you have is at your heart.

Into conversation

** into conversation **
Look into the conversation
Words brushing past
Strangers in a strange place
Against the music seek to face
The other messages sent in stance
Or in eyes or in thoughts
We never get to read
Must make do with words flighty
Across this strangers space between
Where we are and where unforeseen
Future may place in loving tune
For all the fireworks of touch
Exploration of the rut
Our words in crossing the path
To future or to past
Our words find engrossing enough
To believe sincerity of our calling
As into conversation falling
Rhythms of a stranger beguiling
Giving hope for tomorrows fairer
Unless you prove as others before
To be of false gold and forged promises
In deed fail to hold true
To words we swap this night
All playing cards face up on the table
Seeking some special moments insight
Into where these words may lead us
To joy and love or love and grief.

Concussed

*+ Concussed +*
Head concussions in football
Professional daily destruction of thought
Turning the brain to jellied mousse
For a decent pay everyday
Those great moments of accomplishment
Golden days so fit and trim
Will all so readily and swiftly dim
Aching joints and problems skeletal
Override memories evaporating from
A battered intelligence device
Losing ability to know right and wrong
The controller of your body
Failing to diseases of the elderly
You cannot recall how to sentence say
Tremors and trembles and twitches
Possess your body once perfect
All this now you are told effect
Of living a life others desired
Now you so wish for theirs.

Thanking time

** thanking time **
Who should we thank for who we are
If any would wish that role
For our minds which calculate
The ability to form thought and joy
Our ability to transform from barbarism to intellect
Philistine to cultured gentle soul
To whom give credit or to whom give hate
For inability to converse
A shyness and lack of confidence
For setting us upon a course
To be completed in a hearse
For what or when we are
For the place where we grew up
For every atom which makes our being
For our many loves and hates
The many twists of fate
Sadness grief and woe and madness
The human hunger we must sate
Ill tempers and deep set angers we need placate
To whom do we present our Janus thanks
For how we see our bright broad world
Our misplaced hates and prejudices
The ill starred favourites we follow
Gods of our mind we adore
Transient fads in our snobby we abhor
Every word we use to bully and put down
From where or whom did they come
The love we give so precious
Our loyalty and honesty deep
All the kindnesses we show
To whom do we thank for this
A life without compare
A temporal lull of existence
In which we have chance to be
The very best kind of me.

Vulcan's wrath

++ Vulcan's wrath ++
These dark clouds lined with sulphur
Bitter aftertaste of hate
Find all love elsewhere left
Pompeii tears pumice streaked
All the boats sunk in Crete
Minoans made extinct
Rupturing the earth
Shattering mountains
All foundations of Earth cast down
Vulcan rises and smotes the Earth
To humanity brings death and disorder
Lava flows as rivers of water might
Scarring or burying all its touches
Such a Midas touch for destruction
Unleashed from deep within our Earth
We are ants upon an ant hill
Full of magma and poisonous gas
When the ground sighs and groans
When wisps of steam and soot escape
Are warning signs that beneath our feet
An malevolent god of fire wakes
And seeks a path to escape.

A question of climate

* a question of climate *
If we consider the world we live in
Is the only place we have got
By our actions are bad tenants
Upsetting a delicate equilibrium
The coal we burn gives off its plumes
Cars and industry release fumes
Infects and makes heavy the air
Bonds of smog choke our cities
Children cough and die
A pleurisy across the entire globe
Fevered chills of climate change
Sometimes unexpectedly cold
Other times raging hot
Lungs of planet are clogging up
Winds change their course
Or turn upon our lives in fury
Rivers to toxicity turn
Lakes dry up or unexpectedly flood
World an unbalanced patient is
Bringing natural disasters on our heads
Only natural in they are from our world
For is our action brings forth Nature's wrath
100 year floods occurring more frequently
Than actuarial tables would state
New records of weather extreme
Tragic episodes of fierce angry weather
Where once more temperate spirits played
We say is not us and what we do
Perhaps the natural world is in a mood
Perhaps the cow jumped over the moon
But I don't think so do you?

Do you?

** do you *
Nuclear power has had its hour
The Germans have declared
Other forms to generate electricity
These Germans believe shall be found
Next door the French sit
A country balanced on the atom
Steam turbines turn on energy found
Inside nuclear reactors spinning round
Fossil fuels must run out
A finite source for our infinite greed
The way we seek to mine those fuels
Dangerously reflect our desperation
Oil rigs drilling ever deeper down
Fracturing the earth beneath the ground
If some event or failure happens
Beyond our reach to remedy
Can only block the top and wander off
Hope no more oil shall seep out
Coal we still burn gives off its plumes
Infects and make heavy the air
Bonds of smog choke the cities
Children cough and die
A pluerisy across the entire globe
Fevered chills of climate change
Sometimes unexpectedly cold
Other times raging hot
Lungs of planet are clogging up
Winds change their course
Lakes dry up or unexpectedly flood
World an unbalanced patient is
Bringing natural disasters on our heads
Only natural in they are from our world
Yet we have stirred them up so much more
100 year floods occurring more regularly
Than the decades turn
Episodes of fierce angry weather
Where once more temperate spirits played
We say is not us and what we do
Perhaps the world is in a mood
Perhaps the cow jumped over the moon
But I don't think so do you?

Try me

*** Try me ***
Caught a too forward look
As if trying to place my face
Recover from memories attic
A name which is obscured
Place upon tip of your tongue
A name by which I am known

You stare and I see no light
No recognition glimmering in your sight
Perhaps I look a lot like him
This other person you once knew
Who has absconded from your life
Descended from your view

Did he have my nose
Or wear a winter coat on cold nights
Was he often prone to looking
Back at you and wondering
All the things he and I ponder
As we gaze back at you

Try me - please - and judge
If I or he is better
Set tasks in your memory
For me to achieve
As a hero of old I wait
To see if you see is great.

Idea intangible to understandable

* Idea intangible to understandable *
It does begin quite simply
A line of words tenuously engaged
To the inkling of an idea
From there the gloves are on
The brain must earn its keep
Perspiring to keep up
Fingers cross keys must dance
As attempt to reconcile
Each line with each thought
Build an order and structure
Promote the idea to full life
Frankensteinian monster creation
Chased by lightning of thought
And clumsy Igors of fingers
Stumbling as words are caught
Seeking to keep all taut
Preserve tension of a pond's surface
As elegantly throwing boulders in
For each line demands
A rhythm of forethought
To continue initial idea
Yet drive the reader forward
To a conclusion unforeseen
When first words laid down
As if to paint an unseen rose
In a pitch black room
I cannot see shade of its petals
Or even existence of its bloom
How an idea intangible
Must become by words understandable
Is it any wonder often found
Poetry becomes surreal and unsound
Tears at itself as a maddened beast
To release the beating heart within.

How to out cl-ass the bride

* how to out cl-ass the bride *
The Middletons have gained
The notoriety of society
Placed a daughter on the throne
Fed the other to the paparazzi
Oh Kate may one day be Queen
But it is Pippa who was seen
To outshine the bride on her wedding day
It was not something Pippa did say
Her clothes lines were simple and modest
She did not project a vastly revealing bodice
Instead all civic civility was undermined
By far much attention paid to her behind
What was a girl meant to do
If to a royal wedding she went
Her bum had to come to
So it is Pippa's facebook fans multiply
And for her clothing there is a great outcry
Yet one wonders how she will reflect
In later years ravaged by Time's neglect
As to how for all her intellect and class
The world's focus was devoted to her ass.

Frosty morn

** frosty morn **
Fingers aching and numb
Is this how broken straw feels
When frost first lands
As winter's first bite confirms
A long season this year
Till Spring arrives anew
Until then expect fingers ache
Before hard chill of morning.