Tuesday, May 31, 2011

The why for grief

** the why for grief **
My thoughts have descended
In reflection up ended
Any humour or goodwill in my soul
I have allowed the media
Those naysayers and glum tiding bringers
To infect kernal of my whole
Heard of deaths ignoble
Of the valiant and selfless
Deep inside myself felt a sorrow
For those I have never met
Who before a wall of water
Were swept away and not saved
The sky captures my mood
Dark and grey and unstable
A swirling of murky elements
Despair upon the wind
All good from world is sucked
All which might noble be questioned
When a soldier turns on soldier
An ally slays a friend in arms
Makes you wonder who can be trusted
What is the meaning of this all
If the good can die fighting
At hands of friend not foe
In a war we forget about and no longer care for
Until another courageous soldier dies
In manner strange and perplexing
Then we turn and give attention
Through only for a moment brief
Before the news is washed away
And ever more distant is our grief.

Uncivil engineering

** uncivil engineering **
Digging from the boundaries
Lifting self above battlements
Mining beneath emplacements
An engineer gone to war
Turning knowledge of civil works
To how to kill or to protect
Laying concrete for artillery
Bridges to promote attacks
The civil engineer has turn marital
A most terrible beast
In fighting so matter a fact
Calculates the angles between success and failure
Manage logistics to point of perfection
Then unleashes the pent up energy
Of six months planning and will
Over to the men the mission turned
To the men who must bleed or die
If this victory is to be earned
And if defeat arrives
In truckloads of dead and maimed
To the drawing boards return
The maps in scale intricate
To models and plans and flags
To organise the next grand push
Next magnificent effort of mind and will
To thwart the enemy or defeat them
The civil engineer sets his goal
Blocking out mechanised murder
Hell of plans which have failed
The dead comrades who he sent
To their deaths without earning victory
No wonder he dreams of
Days when the guns have fallen silent
And to bridges and roads and dams
He can turn mind and stylus
For betterment of all men work
In peacetime prosperity design.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Awareness and Unawareness

** Awareness or unawareness **
To note your surrounding
And of all changes be sensitive
Or relax and enjoy
Become part of the whole
Submerge your identity
In the world all around
Move to its rhythms
Unaware that you do so
Part not individual
Unaware not aware
Yet noting each change
As pond around you ripples
Rather than watching frogs
Or ill directed rocks
To alert you to fact
Something has changed
A carnivore is here
A top level evolutionary predator
Ready to take you and snare you
Ready to chase you and eat you.

Percy's Odyssey

** percy's odyssey
Wake time and death time
Realising is monsters of old time
Slow thoughts result in your slaughter
Olympus and Hades
Been to the Forgotten Isles
Even bought the t-shirt
Seen Cyclops and Aphroditie
The ultimate uber-hottie
Flown with pegasuii
Walked by River Styx
Half blood or full blood
No diluting facts of
Heroes will be heroes
For what they will stand for
And villains always are villains
For their scruples uncalled for
No principle need bending
So much as the ones contending
With final goal to achieve
Some people are worth saving
And evil worth braving
For friends or family
No greater rewards
Than own life to forge
Be self set free.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Deeper beauty

** deeper beauty **
Track the lines appearing
Time's stencil on your face
The different planes revealed
On your visage I would trace
These changes Time has wrought
How you think you look less
Than the beauty you were before
More accepting of this face
Into which you have grown
Yet still believing grown less beautiful
As on Time's river borne
These lines you would dismiss
Give character and depth
Can see the times you laughed
When and how you loved with regret
Your face gives indication
Of fire in your heart
The loving of which you are capable
A deeper truer beauty rising
Not a birthday present unopened
Whose value you cannot judge
Nor a shiny car which will never be the same
Once taken out and driven
Your face speaks of years ahead
Dependable firm and passion deep
Which will fill every meandering curve
Of this time of existence we call life
And with so much of you brimming
Almost over full with life
Is it any wonder you look well worthy of kissing
Of admiration and desire
Of sending Greek ships sailing
In pursuit of you to Troy
And when the Spring flowers have faded
Ink of love letters disappeared
You will inevitably be more lovely
Than this day I first saw you here.

On life

*** on life ***
What thoughts are these
Self pity masquerades as majesty of spirit
Sprouting self-important martyrdom
As an excuse for all failings
All days become worthlessly disposable
As if there were so many more
Rather than a finite thread
Whose length you can foresee
Whether great or extreme brevity
This brash ignorance of mortality
Even ancient greeks professed to know more
We advanced in so many ways fail
To acknowledge this temporal insecurity
How the lives we lead are prior marked
A journey from birth to death
No extensions able
No diversions or detours
When journey's ticket fully used
The life we lived expired.

This farce

** this farce **
Taking to world with a mallet and a spike
Hammering at everything I don't like
Some days it seems the list exceeds
The realms of fact and of dreams

Listing on a paper sheet a life long
Every right and the many wrongs
Dictating to the scribbing ones
All these things for which world must atone

Death and disease and war
The great mistakes and small
All the slights delivered sharp
By this world to my heart

Waiting in the cold for a train that never comes
Cold dark fear in the slums
An invitation for a dance permanently postponed
The simple fact you never phoned

All these woes listed down for good
As botulism in finest food
The toxic poison of this world's events
To my heart stripped bare offends

Car accidents of lives in collision
The senseless mirth and cutting derision
All the things this world could have been
Instead trapped in this tragic farce obscene.

* To fusing *

** to fusing **
I still think the slow burn
Muscles to butter feeling
Lips tingling at sensations thought
Of those moments before
Moments of travelling to you
Knowing destination shall be
In your embrace
Pressed against your body
Our kiss a fusing moment
A three minute dialogue
Of desire and trust
A confirmation this trip
Was always in best interests
Where both of us concerned
And everytime the same
The anticipation in mind
Stirring of the mind sensual
This pure addictive rush
In embrace made mutual.

Radio

* RADIO *
Listening to music on the radio
Not ipod insularity
Sharing free with thousands of others
Beating to time on the steering wheel
Fast or slow to music beat
An escape from traffic jammed street
Another echo of a gentler long ago
See people mouthing words of the song
Finding beat and rhythm as drive along
This is the beauty and the splendour
Soundtrack of our lives never-ending

This music on the radio we don't choose
Dial across stations to find something loose
Something we can enjoy in this mood
An expression of our today mood
Dylan woefully banging on
GaGa re-interpreting Bowie's songbook
A little splash of Pop
A dash of Country Rock
Taylor Swift and her mid western Romeos
Some garage band lotharios
Singing loud over raucous guitar and drums
The music changes through the years
Feeling brought by music never does

Sharing the soundlist on my radio
As music rises to a crescendo
Advertising break shatters the serenity
Cut short with drastic brevity
As across the radio bands go searching
For a radio station not merchandising
Try and find another song
Keep me moving loud and strong
Outside my car stench of exhausts
Cacophony of engines and impatient
Inside my cab nearing nirvana
As Kurt Cobain sends a shiver
Talking the talk of young man's angst
Anthems for a generation
Lived too closely the music frank
All those other forgotten musicians we should thank
And of course Mr Marconi as well
For designing radio so swell
So as we are driving
Before we are even arriving
Share the music of this journey
With all others on this station.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Heft up

** Heft up :) **
Heft up your smile
Catch on joy hooks
Unleash eyes mischief
Hint there of tricks
Speak of the good times
Bask in conversation's warmth
Believe all the best things
Of those whom you meet
Place darkness in distance
Sway far from cynicism
This day is your day
From first minute and always
Song enshrine in your heart
A great way to start
From sour lemons make lemonade
From disaster springs opportunity
Every event has an exit
From there choose wisely
Choose joy not woe
And when sadness take you
Look into happiness past
From pilot light of heart
Where memories brighter stored
Roll out sweet remembrance
Heft up your smile
Catch on joys hooks
And sally forth optimistic again.

Communications between two

* communications between two *
Miscommunication and befuddlement
The muddlement of two
Where communicatiuon none
Years of not learning
Each others hints and nuances
Or ignoring all because
Would contradict your view
Lost and not exploring
Only half gaining what is said
And they only expressing half
Because the other it seems
Should know what they have not heard
Fire brimstone and trouble
In communications pumice
Unleashed from matrimonial muddle
Grit your teeth and wait
A good sleep clean the slate
And tomorrow start miscommunicating again.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Modern conversation

* Modern Conversation *
Tangled floss of modern life
SMS and text and Tweet
Communications electronic sweep
Every nugget of gossip
Every piece of information
Caught between your teeth
Released unleashed to satisfy
Exhibitionist in us all
The voyeuristic who call
The nosy and over interested
In deeds which do not concern them
In lives usually shut from view
And we click and type and press
Our thoughts out onto the Net
Vivacious pleasure to strangers give
As well as glimpses of how we live
What we think and who we love or hate
The things we do to our itches sate
How we perceive around us deep
Or if our thoughts in fog of sleep
The bright the poor the wit and fool
All have access to electronic tools
Able to converse with a wider world
Than ever could before and be heard
Though we care not for mumblings distant
Want to hear from those
Whose hearts are closer to our own
Who we would love and respect
Or at least receive from them
A shot of firm rich breasts.

Lost

** lost **
To lose one's way
Inside your own head
To fail to navigate
Beyond your own thoughts
Become becalmed
In sea of doubt
Unable to find way out
Scurvy of heart afflicts you
Sleeplessness a complication
Erratic thoughts without validation
Future appears bleak and uncertain
All joy behind a blackout curtain
Does not shine out for you
Thoughts of merriment erode
A drought of pleasantness
More and more inside turn
Outer world has no connection
Inner world a maze of shifting walls
Pits so deep form an abyss
No signposts out you can see
Commonsense has lost its grip
Upon the production of your thoughts
Lost your way inside your thoughts
The only way out is in yourself
Somewhere somewhere in your head.

Premonition

***Premonition***
Lost dogs and cats
Fleeing from the thunder
Find themselves picked up
Premonitions of disaster
Which made them flee
Gain ground when not collected
A single pin prick ends
Their fortnight of captivity.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Disrupted day

* disrupted day +
The mornings you sometimes find
Unjustly are disrupted
What should be becomes
A day most unexpected
Where you were suppose to be
Not the place you see
The morning turned on its head
Orderliness of day is dead
Afternoon can not be retrieved
Ripples of the failure to this point
Shall forward march until the end
Best you can hope is to reach your bed
Lay down and grab a sleep
Restart anew the daily schedule
Have breakfast when you should
Commute to where you expect to
Begin your tasks in allotted order
Rather than on this chaos border
With everything front to back to side
And trying with all your might
Not into total despair and confusion to slide.

Powerless *

-- powerless --
These heavy shoes outweighed
By heart heavier than
All the world and cosmos complete
For they do not hold back my sleep
Powerless to hold back your truth
Unable to resolve this failure
The things I cannot do haunt
I feel to fall and complete destruction
Upon me now would be wrought
My eyes and ears with battle ring
The silver city in corruption smeared
All I seek falls undone
I topple and fall
The limits reached collapse
Tomorrow has no treasure sought
I tell myself I al aways fought
No more now need I do
Merely yield to world's attacks
Forever drift and collapse
Into nothing from which I was formed
Into nothing once more transformed.

A man not

*+- a man not -+*
Another day another week
For good morrow bright this present seek
Doing what must be done this day
To set course to prosperity in my way
Weather has been unduly foul
The clouds of doubts assail
The dreams of tomorrow fade
In a rerun of yesterday I continue
A knight with broken helm and cracked shield
A donkey riding windmill jouster
A man not made enough or done enough
Of which I could be proud
I am still who I was
And tomorrow ever be
The potential glimpsed is submerged
In who I am and this is me.

For Charlemange

**** for Charlemagne ****
Oh Charlemange what became
Of Holy Christian Kings
Upon whom we could rely
The Holy Empire to define
With sword and shield stand strong
Against a world of chaos and wrong
Now we elect our ruling fools
Through if we choose them
How much more the fools are we
Who listen without a critical ear
Select the one who sprouts
The bilge and flattery we wish to hear
Says our nation is great and can greater be
All the services they can deliver
Taxation renounce and remove
So with less give us more
Seems we are in commonsense poor
Not to understand this basic conundrum
You cannot share what you do not have
When the election is complete
The promises given they must neglect
Oh for Charlemagne and wisdom bright
To lead us from dark democratic night
To reset all counters back to zero
Be revealed as a modern age hero
Do the things which must be done
Once more bring brightness of the Sun.

Pressure cooker

++ Pressure Cooker. ++
There is a pressure cooker I know to well
The pot is my head
A thousand responsibilities swirl
And there is doubts enough to feed
All the world and have some left over
The days are moving on
The hours tick and even doing
All the things I endeavour to do
Seems to little seems to few
Of all I have to do is done
And so the pressure builds inside
Must stay healthy and bear this weight
Complete professionalism in all I do
Or else it seems I might just break
As illness and employment doubts
The things I cannot fix myself
Become a burden beyond gravity
Atlas needs broader shoulders
And I need an escape
Ans so the pressure builds inside
And I dare not yield to tragic fate.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Why the folk tales

* why the folk tales *
I recall the folk tales
So often begun the same
A child becomes a young adult
To much of a strain on family wealth
Sent upon their way
A knotted sheet or bag all they have
Perhaps a lump of cheese and bread
Enough to get them to where there going
Then what happens next be upon their head
Must find employment or gain charity
For at home there is neither
Parents having provided to this point
Cut the ties binding
Send youth out to self be finding
Little wonder so many failed
Into worlds obscene were drawn
Rank poverty and vulgarity
Matchgirl turning tricks
Wood cutter's son a lout
No jobs to be found this month
Must do what one must
Or one shall do without
And so the general populance
Devoured folk tales optimistic
The poor farmer's daughter
Caught the prince's eye
Her eyes of blue of sky
Hair cornstalk yellow
Body firm fit nubile and virginal
Toned up from eight days walk to capital
And shortage of meals consumed
The prince smells of breakfast sausage
Golden coach indicates no more miles to walk
Such luxury and indolence easy turns a young girl's head
Before she knows what is what
She is wed and straight to bed
Prince claims his sovereign right
So it is for wayward girls
Though so few princes to go around
Fortunately princes often also sought
More than one filly at a time to bed
And the role of mistress paid one's way
For meals and a roof over your head
For the young lads full of vigour
Must wrestle their own tigers
Seek apprenticeships against the mob
Show some muscle for a labouring job
Do whatever must be done
Or else shall need to do without
So when a boy by merit rose
From cabin boy to ship's master
Or labourer to respected builder
Their stories were retold
Those who took on old established world
And overcame to achieve respectability
A respectability of three meals daily
Others to labour for you
A roof above family's head
And a duck down bed
Pleasures devalued in our modern place
But highly valued by those
Who the folk tales of old did grace.

Learn

** learn **
Twelve months seems so long
And yet shortly after beginning concludes
And for nearly all things
To acquire skills demands trail and learning
The acquisition of which take time
To enable you to reflect
To travel down course projected
A distance sufficient to understand
How things already done
Must be undone and performed anew
Else all we did from this point forward
Shall be restricted and trapped
By failings engineered in design
A destiny of failure only overcome
By spending time in learning and doing
In experience accruing
And yet if we began something now
And focused for to gain that skill
In twelve months where might we be
What learnings will we have acquired
Which we can use to be the basis
Of other learning so inspired
And so we must not cease to live
Instead expand to do
Find knowledge and learning in each day
Capture in our souls the scholar's drive
To know and to understand
To spend our Time not allow it to escape.

We are?

** We are! **
The mind is apt to wander
Perchance to consider and wonder
On this realm of reality
On the way our perceptions see
If we see and understand as others do
Or is this music just for us
Vision seen ourselves alone
Rubbing consciousness against others
Falling lost weekends of pleasure
Ever really existed or merely ghosts
Of neural receptors defrauded
By some greater consciousness
Outside ourselves and beyond
All those organised religions cannot be wrong
The faiths of millions not easily put aside
As we consider who we are and what
Can we even agree on where
Before we define our appearance
Do we reflect and appear as our thoughts
Would have us protrayed
Projected to all a depiction
Of our inner health and outer visage
For if each thought completes the loop
Providing recognition of reality
Which thoughts demand
And if we fall so far to hit
A solid object to break our physicality
The last gasp desperate elicted
Is the mind confirming that
We no longer have existence.

Black hole

** Black Hole **
Can't find this soul
Seems broken and leaked
An essence of soul remains
Bath tub stain of grime
Has as much value
Heart mislead flounders
Inside empty bell chambers
Valves flow blood in and out
Become a pump nothing more
All special significance erased
Loving thoughts in brain
Been decanted and replaced
By mundane every days
Empty thoughts of romance shed
and so head is dead
Soul annulled and a void
Heart a cold mechanical artefact
Brain recants all hopes and dreams
Black hole of existence found
Private torture chamber for one
Where all joy and light enters
And none within is ever found.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

A graceful lady

** a graceful lady **
The slender lines and curves attract
Draw the wandering eye
And how the dome is shaped
And pinnacle atop
Makes you think could cup this shape
In palm enclose those sweet slopes
Each dimension in elegance
Foretells the next and reinforces previous
Clean unadorned lines supreme
Glow of warmth from within
The vestibules give cheery welcome
To wander about within
This Victorian structure where first sat
Australian parliament upon federation
Lace work of iron and frescos modern
A symbol of a former colony's resolve
To be stronger better standing alone
Leaving shadow and grasp of dominion law.

Floss in head

***** floss in head *****
Gather all this floss from my head
Fuzziness of thoughts
The cut off strings of conversation
Bouts of imagination dead
All the clutter and refuse
Of a mind being overbusy
Creating problems for itself
Trying to change the realities
Which neither God nor man may alter
Immutable laws I would challenge
Of the gene or atom or gravity
To know the human heart inscrutable
But my mind is mired deep
Brown sucking mud draws me down
Upon my head there is no crown
On visage worn instead a frown
As all my thoughts are floss tangled
Millstream foam light and intangible
Froth and bubbles to be blown aside
If ever gales of life arrive
Then beneath this floss I shall find
How finely tuned is my mind
Until then these thoughts grind
Though this floss gathered to my head
I suspect this brain needs proper rest
Another sleep deep in bed
To remove this floss I dread.

Looking up

** Looking Up **
In clouds across the sky
Channels cut deep
Furrows burrowed
And clouds gathered and piled
Into heaps like autumn leaves
This is the sky-sea planes cross
Beyond which lies the Sun
Celestial orb magnificent
Blessing us with warmth and light
Kindly benefactor of our world
Sitting in the Goldilocks zone
Where it is neither too hot nor cold
As we orbit this fusion heating star
Now I am a earth bound being
No wings to avail myself for flight
No way to break gravity's might
So beneath the sky I sit
And often wonder to myself
If I could pilot a craft
Through the channels in clouds
Across the furrows
And around the heaps of clouds
Gathered together like autumn leaves.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Wish to unknow

** wish to unknow **
These distant dreams cannot touch
The senses dull do not disrupt
This egg of pain grown inside
This bitter sac of bitterness I hide
The Earth trembles beneath gravity's thrall
I note not as disturbance rocks
My own pain deep inside I hold
A pricking sparking constant
Makes me know I am alive
Despite the impulse to unravel
To lock the shutters and pull down the blinds
To ignore all the ignorant world
And submit to gloom and dark of mind
For so it is as I reflect
On this hand Life so harshly dealt
An innocent with no evil ways
A lifelong affliction upon her set
A curse that cannot be seen
Yet will impact everything she does
Her freedom becomes curtailed
Her every action to herself becomes a threat
Those things for granted she previously did
Now carry greater risk
The brain by a malady beset
At any moment waves may twist
A seizure take her away
A loss of place and time
Such a danger to unexpected stasis take
When world hurries on its rough way
And whatever actions you were performing
Carry on without your conscious intervention
There is medicine and therapy
Warning signs and training to take
To allow you to carry on
In a world made partially safe
All the time there is the knowing
Nothing is as it was before
This knowledge of this threat you carry
To all you join you must relate
And from there deal with how they treat you
Knowing what you would wish to forget.

This metric heart

** this metric heart **
Set forth in imperial measurements
The tidings of love
Bring to bear empericial evidence
Of what love gained and what lost
Consider in constant measurement
That what cannot be measured
Does not formally exist
And then take callipers to your love
A set of atomic scales
To measure gravitational differences
In the love you bear
Have you surfeit or loss
Love flowing in or draining away
Do the journals of love kept
Those bound tomes in columns deep
Of love credit in and love debit out
Balance successfully so you have
An income of love sufficient
For you to comfortably live your life
And if it does appear in measuring
You are taking more than receiving
How long till capital sum is depleted
No longer earning love's interest
Instead you are left scrambling
For a scrap of love or two
Descend into desperation
And desperate measures take
Turn life of seeking love inside out
Of love and life a hell make
At which point love bankrupt declared
Time then to start again
Begin by loving yourself
Practice parsimony in your loving
Yet neither a miser or spendthrift be
In how your love you spread
And if this you can do with a joyous heart
Then the bad times of loss of love
Shall become memories of past
And in its place a new you found
Unburdened by search for love
With love's capital ample for your needs
And by all measures known
Between blue sky and deepest sea
You will be loved and loving in return
Have found love equal to your needs.

Start of all Tomorrows

**- Start of all Tomorrows -**
Erase my sins with lavendar
Perfume on your throat
The burn of your kisses hitting
Every wrong I did of note
Expiry date is today
For every bad habit I possess
I lose my sense of madness
Crazy is put away
When it comes to dealing with other humans
You make me my very best

Erase my wrong-doings
Through carnality of your touch
Breath my soul back to life
Dim the squeal of my strife
This trap in which I am held
Bend the bars of prison
Let me unfurl spirit's wings
Today is start of all Tomorrows
Binding warmth inside our embrace
Strength of tides in this love
Unexpected and totally requited
Absolution was never going to be found
In any other form in any other way.


Tuesday, May 17, 2011

* Remember the Sputnik *

* Remember the Sputnik *
Half remembered canine cosmonauts
Frozen in the vacuum circling the Sun
Left over from a Cold War space race
No one ever truly won
A beeping sputnik achieved orbit first
And West set foot on Moon first
Then the whole event slipped sideways
The missile Moon base was never built
The New Bold Frontier in the sky
Those six shooter nuclear platforms
Were never lifted up and away
Instead challenge was for communications
Mobile phones and television transmissions
The geosynchronous orbits of a set of beeping clocks
Declaring from their stationery orbits
We know where we stand
In any place we now know our spot
Latitude and longitude conquered
As reliably as Harris's old clocks

However trips to Mars are on standby
Even if knowledge is densely accrued
Allows scientists and engineers to still argue
Over the countless meaningless hypotheticals
Of getting folks from here to there
Heated discussions which do not matter
Until someone accepts the challenge
Takes the reins of adventure
Sets across the Oregon trail in the stars
But the space shuttles are grounded
NASA's budget sliced thinner
Than a salami in a blackhole blender
Seems we have all decided
The Moon was far enough
Troubles here are plenty for our needs
And yet if we do not seek to move forward
Escape hamster cage of our planet
How long till we strip it bare
How long till our wants and needs consume us
And we are left forever wondering
What could have been our destiny
If we had dared to go out there.

In the corners

**+ in the corners +**
I would tell you stories
Leap to your defence
Work for the luxuries
Tend to who we are
In the corners of my being
Shine with summer light
Mere reflection of the glow
See radiating out from you

Every moment for us acting
Deploying strength in forward action
Courageous in all things
This is what I would do
Never turn my back
Keep my shoulders warm
Safe land place for your heart
If by this world is torn
And even in the corners of my being
Shine with summer light
Mere reflection of the glow
See radiating out from you

Let your lips with my lips
Form duet of love
Building on respect
Touchstones of trusted intimacy
Risk all and not
As explore our souls and skins
Accepting who we were
Celebrating what we have got
Anticipating joys of tomorrow
And if in your presence or not
Our love will illuminate me
Even in the corners of my being
Those oft forgotten dull spots
Burn with summer light
Mere reflection of the love
I experience radiating from you.

Seawater salty

* seawater salty *
Seawater salty washes
Brine bitter reconnects
Times electric past
In gloom of cigarettes
A pallor grey in air
Tainted breathing didn't care
Such adult pursuits pursued
A sense of deja vu
In the heat of another
Dispell the lonely squalor
The often late night vigils
Nursing a flat drink
Longer than would think
Stretching evening hours
Until surprised by deepest night
Unattended the cold would bite
Leave us gasping grasping
At any illusionary hope
Wondering if a passing samaritan
Might recognise in our recklessness
The deep well of loneliness
Needing to be sealed
So bright this water of life
As brine bitter reconnects
To the sea water salty.

Memory prompts

** memory prompts **
Often colour or scent will conjure
A place or occasion of yesteryear
The shade of green on a dress
Orange bold of your coat when we met first
Diesel fumes take me back to childhood
Watching laden milk tankers turn for the factory
Up the sloping road beyond the railway
Silver triggers reminder of high fashion creations
The clothes of tomorrow modelled by Barbarella
Or royal purple of roman senator togas
Dyed by Phonecians from sea shells
A piece of history stuck in niche of memory
Squeal of wiper blades recalls the interminable days
Dark and cold of Northern Winters
Though where we lived it rarely snowed
So all was mud and slush and dampness
Clothes claustrophobic inside
Proved inadequate against cold outside
Winter gnawed constantly at you
A hundred thousand tiny edged teeth
Sapping at your strength and life and smile
Leaving you drained weary and belligerent
Christmas cheer put on hold
When a traffic jam encountered
Or all the world just moved too bloody slow
And season's saccharine television
Made me homicidal with forced bonhomie
Warmth of your breath recalls
Passion urgent kisses deep
A sudden understanding of companionship
Coming home to what I always sought
In colour and scent of your lips was caught
Such fleeting pieces of Life's entirety
Forged together unreservedly
In colour scents touch taste and sound
World made complete and forever locked
In depths of memory perpetually found.

Monday, May 16, 2011

A tired mind

*** A tired mind ***
Would close my eyes to sleep
Except my day is just beginning
All the things I encountered
The sleeplessness and late nights
Make me easy prey to doubt
The uncomplicated becomes complicated
Simple things complex
Who I am is eroded
So flat and squashed
Ill-borne forward as a wavering comet
A meteorite shower dissipating
As hits Earth atmosphere absorbing
This life has me at its mercy
No escape I can see
Death despair dishonour
The terrible three D's
A tired mind quits too easily
Accepts sad fate too readily
Will not stand and fight
Instead to limbo purgatory falls
Is not cut of rigid cloth
Light and flimsy before any threat
Melts as morning mist before the Sun
This tired jaded weary clumsy mind
These slumber seeking thoughts of mine.

All at sea

* all at sea *
There is this tormenting sensation
Nuclear core melting through me
Of what is happening
And I still hang in denial
Of this world I would not have chosen
Abruptly feeling powerless
A flood of negativity sweeps through me
In examining what is this life
The sense of loss grows worse
So few eggs in which placed
All the aspirations of tomorrow
Expected outcomes have failed
My own certainty called into doubt
I would reach forward and say
There are better days ahead
But floodmarks on the wall
Where bad tidings rose to before
Fill me with an expectant dread
For I see those levels in future
Shall be dwarfed by what follows
Sunny face of hope
Need clash with rocky face of reality
All that could be is arriving
All that was is changing
And already I feel lost
Before the largest waves have reached me.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Returning colour

* returning colour *
I am looking at the building here
Minor square blocked monoliths
Modern descendants of Stonehenge
Eight to ten stories high
Grey buildings under a troubled grey sky
Even the bright glass reflecting clouds
Soft refIections become a flat glare of grey
As if in middle of turbulent Atlantic storm
Far from colour of trees and earth
As wind whips rain sideways
Down city canyoned streets
Wonder why we have not demanded
Warm colours bright on building sides
Not angry sullen granite greys
Instead sunset orange bright
Or columns of red and yellow
Perhaps dip whole building in green
Or wash concrete with sky blue
Just return colour to our world
So when Winter sets its tones
We can reject its chilling ways
Stare at the walls of buildings sunny
And know better seasons are always on the way.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Fish

*+ Fish +*
The halibut is a fish
The perch is a fish
The salmon is a fish
The yabby is a freshwater crustacean

The trout is a fish
The Murray cod is a fish
The blue grenadier is a fish
The lobster is a salt water crustacean

The hake is a fish
The sardine is a fish
The tuna is a fish
An octopus is a ceantapod

The shark is a fish
The barracuda is a fish
The blue dory is a fish
And I am human with all that entails

The fish has a dorsal fin
The fish has gills
The fish has scales
I have a heart as easy to bruise as a ripe plum

The world is cold
The world is intemperate
The world is tropical
And full of fish.

Confronted.

Confronted.

Oh how this heart falls
When confronted with reality
I had not thought to reply
To these fears till asked
And now in speaking them out loud
More calamitious than appeared before
There are no solutions
Only hope of most desperate kind
A desperation of rainbows and pots of gold
Rather than happy plagued with never afters
The doors are closing and Time escaping
Ill placed I feel the anxiety of all promise dissipate
Of hope marginalised to nothingness
When talking with a friend
On troubles unattended too.

Squeal

** Squeal **
Squeal so loudly
The world is unfair
Took my house
Gave me this nose
Set upon since birth
I declare I fight no more
I lay down my arms
Shout surrender and retreat
Into fortress basement of self pity
And looking out through arrow slit
See world neither cares or worries
My pitiful self indulgent protest
Marked truly by none
Is not even worthy of comment
By those near and dearest
Because world spins on
We must be fed and children grow
Palaces collapse and great men die
You can decide to live and do
Or stop and crawl away unrewarded
By those things you might achieve
Friendships you may build
Leave that town
Ignore your family strangling
Find the happiness you desire
And if inadequately it pays
For you to live your life
As you had intended to live
Make a choice of what to do
Find a new role in another place
Accept your life will not be so
Just choose and act and be
Ignore the depths malignant
Of your self pity indignant.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

+ Like paddling ducks +

+ Like paddling ducks +
These trampling feet
These expectations wild
They see how we achieve
And think it must be simple
Mark not the hours spent dull
Perpetual need to charge forward
Unrelenting pressure constant building
To pay the bills and address the costs
Of home and daughter and son
We are neither rich nor poor
Our comfortable existence dependant
On uncomfortable hours expended
In the performance of toil for others
When we would prefer to exhaust our hours precious
In devotions to ourselves
To preserving and enjoying our own mental health
Storing memories joyous as if were summer nuts
For any time of scarcity ahead.

This last war

* this last was *
The rapid chatter of machine guns
Sharp piercing crack of sniper's rifle
Whirring shrill call of shrapnel flying
The Western Front audible
Is in no sense or fact adorable
On no day or in any season
Is there a meaning or a reason
Worthy for these bodies stacked
To excuse the last or next attack
And all here exist in mud drowning
Or mud dried hard as rock
Fine farmland ploughed by shovel or shell
Into an unproductive unforgiving soldiers hell
We always sleep less than we should
Gas mask eternally close at hand
In case evil we think of our fellow man
Is proven true in blinding choking fog
Recall those who we have already seen
Eyes dead and lungs obscene
Such a wheezing those blind comrades release
Each breath they take makes a fit man shudder
But for grace of God you could be another
How would it be to return home like that
You would wish a well aimed shell
Or a sniper's bullet through helmeted head
Before such a perpetually dying fate
We came to fight and have learnt this modern war
Is as capricious and as unfair
As any war there ever was before
We rarely see our foe and only feel his threat
Through raining shells or scything bullets
Mechanised and manufactured in all we do
The homeland factories on either side
Lend brilliance and efficiency
To getting the munitions to the front
Ensure they are in constant supply
So we dug in eight feet deep
Can be slaughtered and can die
Matters not which side a soldier sits
Reaper reaps this generation grown
Seems all the men in all the world
Born from 1875 to 1900 beneath this Flander's earth
Shall be ploughed by mechanized manufactured might
The new age this is
A final war to teach men peace
A lesson taught on scarred and battered earth
To rhythm of machine guns
And sharp crack of sniper's rifle.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Fish nor fowl

* fish nor fowl *
Neither fish nor fowl
To describe something not quite right
In its essence seemingly alien
To how we would expect normality
And at times I feel so
Neither mineral or plant
Everything I am totals up
To everything it seems I ain't

Neither fish nor fowl
A strange thing on your plate
Moulded here by life and fate
Conjured from the mind
Never certain if I am
The one to whom others relate
Or if I am that anaemic other glimpsed
In a plate of glass out late

Neither fish nor fowl
His frown more furrowed than my own would appear
And less hair remaining frosted white
Awkward in stance and growing round
This city has grown and changed
And still so sure he knows this town
This once was knight upon a donkey
Another reincarnation of Don Quixote

Neither fish nor fowl
His opinions tend to nonsense
No set course or line or verse
Life's currents tear at his course
Occasionally rogue waves of Fate
Bring this other to his failing knees
And yet I know is not me
Not me that neither fish nor fowl would be
Is that other I do not know
Sometimes glimpsed by others
As through my life serene I go.

The Other

** The Other **
Did you ever encounter your self
Some other person so irritating
In beliefs and actions and habits
So alike as your own to be
More than triflingly annoying
A complete toxic pill of irritability
In this other you
Against self harshly grinding
Tectonic plates building pressure
Alike in material as one flow over and other under
Bringing forth such catastrophe
When first you met yourself
Saw as if another brother
This essence of who you are
Staring over and did dismiss
For in your narrative as in Greek
There can be only one hero
With all your strengths and flaws
To see such hubris flaunted
As if fate had no place or chance
Could lead you to complete dismay
And heroes never can be that way
Must shrug shoulders and hold
The world and sky apart
Allow all mortals to look upon you
Wonder blossoming in their hearts
At this single story triumphant
Of you uniquely constructed
Little wonder in such a meeting
We disdain to hold firm a greeting
Instead depart as swiftly as allowed
For this other self proclaims itself to proud.

Of the once was magic and fire

*Of the once was magic and fire*
Young troubled bumbling love
Is there any more desirable type
Having not yet learned your own faults
Or defined what most perfectly you seek
Just full of yearning needing requiting
And found another near the same
Not recognising the signals
An inexperienced driver of romance
Stumbling from one clumsy moment to the next
And discovering magic and fire
(These same sparks Prometheus brought to Earth)
Against this other body
Lips which sear your dreams
Seems no limit to your wantings
No finite boundaries to your feelings
All world is in league
To every peak of joy and every trough of despair
Adolescently fumbling for a Holy Grail
And all life will be spent
Trying to recapture this feeling
And the more you learn as you seek
Into distance recedes who you were
The person who could find it is gone
So you can only watch as
Another generation bumbles onward
Not realising ephemeral treasures
Traded in exchange for knowledge
Of the value and substance of what was sold.

Before a lit panel

* before a lit panel *
Lay the heartbeats tangible
Against the embraces intangible
This strangeness of the net
This world within a world
Another layer of sensation
Virtually laid across your mind
Stirring emotions and loyalties
Though no physical exchange occurred
The greatest loves of all
Or most foolish always do occur
Between our own thoughts fleeting
In majestic palace of the mind
Our very own Canada for deciding
How the heart will pine
Sitting before a lit panel
A screen to other people before the same
In moment equal as we exchange
The thoughts around us wrapped
Release tension of the day
Over a coffee and a chat
With this no longer stranger
Twelve thousand miles and three time zones distant
From our own expiring day.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Heart unrestful lie

** heart unrestful lies **
I can't find the right exit
All doors open the wrong way
When I think peace is discovered
Does not last longer than a day
My heart would lie restful
If I could be sure
That life was not plotting
To again turn my expectations upside down
The illnesses unexpected
Undefined and severely unwell
Seems we rarely get the simple things
A tired child with a cold
Always new complications
New medical terminology to behold
A simple cold becomes pneumonia
Not one day but a week in hospital
Upon getting out
Three months till recovered again
Cold toes are not bad footwear
Or a weather change unexpected
Indicators of a condition affecting the veins
Seems blood does not flow perfectly
And toes are at outer extremities
If we start with cold and fever
And excitement in the air
For a simple cold will not stop us
From taking to the air
Abruptly neck grows stiff
And the fatigue sinks in
Viral meningitis is most likely
An infection of the brain
No common cold is this
You could die from this pain
And so air-trip postponed
And curtains are kept pulled down
For sensitivity to light
Is a side effect of this illness
Feeling rundown and a little tired
It is not malingering
For examination reveals
The body is creating
Misshapened red blood cells
Which clog up your spleen
Destroy the balance within
Leave you vulnerable to a compendium
Of other diseases and unspecific ills
All this examination leads
To another potential complication
Aortas have narrowed leading to your brain
Somehow become restrictive
Though they may have no effect
Always chance they might lead to
A stroke or embolism in your head
And then you get headaches
Harsh and hard and constant
Lasting months long
And abruptly suffer seizures
Though seizing is not your thing
And suddenly from bonny healthiness
Have become a chronic wreck
Seems there are no simple illnesses
And this morning was noted
A little boy has a sharp earache
Lymph nodes are hard and full
What fresh merriment Fate prepares
To ensure our life is never dull.

Bad housekeeping

* bad housekeeping +
This room this bed this furniture
My thoughts all in disarray
Domestically incompetent
I do not cook or windows clean
Every surface cluttered
Such disorganisation or worse
Everything I should love is lost
My heart has been misplaced
The feelings in their places
Have all been $oved around
Can no longer trust myself
To move without a sound
I trip and fall and blunder
Across landscape of my life
All is in disorder
Suffering mental strife
Maybe tomorrow will find me
More willing to tidy up
For now I live half heartedly
Surrounded by the used empty coffee cups
Of what I did or should have
All this confusing domestic clutter
The signs of my distress.

Only twine and rope

** only twine and rope **
Tied together with twine and old rope
This is whom I am
Not a king or prince
Simply a man
I would like to cure
Each disease you possess
Make miracles revealing
Divinity of our world
Be your saint to pray to
When the darkest darkness falls

I know is not your way
To seek a helping hand
But in accepting my assistance
You offer me your hand
There can be many reasons
Why we never met
The time was not right
In other places lived
Rush and crush of life
All those things to do
Still I regret each miss opportunity
The chances missed to meet you

Let me be your martyr
Crucify my soul
Let my death absolve
All the things which were wrong
Remoave the yoke from others
Spare them disease and pain
Scrouge my back with thorns
Crack my ankles loudly
Invest in your delight
Torture me through day and night
Just let them discover
Their pains and ills are no more.

Waiting at

** Waiting at **
I am waiting at the place
Where we always met
I am waiting in my imagination
Hoping you don't forget
The world we once engineered
The times we had fun
Seemed we really had connected
Do you find regrets that time is done

I am waiting at the place
Where we always met
Trying to bring forth your face
Those lips I thought I could not forget
The tomorrows after our final yesterday
Have been hard on me
Seems all the things I wanted
Flew away you see

I am waiting at the place
Where we always met
Even after our final goodbyes
It seemed a decent bet
Might get a chance to say
All the things left unsaid
Feed you crumpets and green tea
Talk you back into bed

I am waiting at the place
Where we always met
Not weeks but years have passed
Unrequited love still clings
I should abandon all hope of you
My lifebouy in this turbulent sea
Swim away and live my life
As jsut myself not as we

I am waiting at the place
Where we always met
Seems my heart still seeks
The times my memories won't forget
Your smile lies across my mind
A prayer and philosophy true
Of all the things known
I know I still love you.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

City on edge of day.

** city on edge of day **
Daybreak in a city
is an eerie place
As if the being was empty
All souls claimed by the night
You might see a taxi furtively
As a creeping inner urban rat
Running a red light at an empty intersection
For close to everyone in bed
There are some creatures nocturnal
Using these dawn hours of peace
Garbage men collecting the rubbish
Upon their clanging clanking steeds
The council workers washing down the streets
Making the city clean and neat
And as unfocused as a duck drunk on cider
The lost nightclubbing are wandering about
Too tired to fall asleep
Too poor to grab a taxi
They seek out places for a coffee
Where midway through conversation
They will fall asleep
Waiting for the first train or bus to run
To return them home to bed
In these dawn hours
I wonder who I am
Walking the streets alone
Observing others at their chores
Or just trying to stay awake
This city is a friend
In this dawn silence find its heart
Walk the streets unhurried by the crowds which shop
Need not fret about getting somewhere
To work and earn my pay
No boss pursues you
To city on edge of day
This time before full brightness
This time as night rolled back
This time is your time
To question yourself and find an answer right.

My wood soul

* my wood soul *
This wood soul I carry
Roughly hewn from a hardwood tree
Old and battered and stained
It is not light at all
And seems ancient beyond belief
Suffered grief ungladly
Rung with joyous tones
Now it is a lump unyielding
Reflective of life with which I am dealing
Has become an almost physical manifestation
Which I must lug about
Straining every sinew
To move this soul's unyielding weight
I am sure it does me damage
To have it with me always
Yet I am not allowed
To place it down and walk away
It is my only soul
From birth to death must carry
My light my weight my consciousness
All these things represents
This roughly hewn lump of wood
Both my present reflection and eventual fate.

More than a breeze

* More than a breeze *
How the wind rips your hair
Blonde tendrils all a flutter
Skirt swooping and leaping
As you fight it creeping
Over thighs to hip
Modesty must be preserved
When chose wardrobe this morning
Judged how much modesty you would offer
Now the wind seeks to reveal more
And you recall checking the weather
Wonder really why you bother
Is not rain or sunshine which offends
It is this ripping gripping stripping wind
An element with no sense of discretion
About which you needed warning
Relentless in assault and cunning in persuasion
Moves the fabric high and low
Hurls skirt left and right
Even as you tug down with all your might
Set steel smile upon your face
And walk hurriedly to work
Pursuing an appearance radiating decorum and grace.

Deeper silence sustained

++ Deeper silence sustained ++
There is the silence of
An empty theatre in this house
Deserted and cavernous
Every word seems over-loud
When escapes your mouth
Each footstep rebounds in sound
Off wall or roof or door
We try and whisper yet still it seems
As if we are shouting in the dark
Stage whispers these seem to be
And what audience might hear
Within this house so silent
Can hear every floorboard squeak
Within this house so quiet
Listen to a somewhere dripping leak
We snuggle closer and merely emphasises
A darkness growing absolute
In dark universe we spin
Reaching out and holding tight
To only one within our reach
Our breathing is a hurricane
A howling dervish wind
Each movement beneath the sheets
A strip of thunder to our ears
Within this house so quiet
Seems whole world escaped
Everyone has gone to bed
All the cars are stopped
Television and radio terminated
Not a single noise intrudes
Makes us become so loud
Compared to heavy depth of silence
Clinging tightly to the ground
For there is silence of an empty theatre
Inside the innards of this house
Seeps out when we lie silently
As corpses beneath a shroud
Outside nothing moves
Within all sound magnified
The cooling tin roof shrieks
A burp of water through the pipes
Brushing branch against a window
Our breathing loud as shouting
Yours has grown soporifically rhythmic
As into sleep you have slipped
Leaving me here lying awake
Surrounded by densest darkest night
Every creak and sigh of house
Every sound assaults my ears
As I wait for something to move
The footstep which should not exist
An added breath to our chorus
Swimming in the ancient fears
Though I know all doors are locked
Windows latched and house secure
There is the silence of
An empty theatre in this house
Little wonder I expect at any moment
Some deep dark drama to break out.

The New Australia

* the New Australia *
These place-names are so Anglo-Saxon
As if before Cook and Banks
No one else was here to name
Land on which suburbs have grown
Dennis Ivanhoe Westgarth
Easy spelling for local demographic
Those who walked here for 40,000 years
Have no say or place
If they linger must feel as strangers
In this tamed white man's place
Open gullies and forests tamed
In their place urban neatness
Houses in regimented lines
Along black flat frozen river of a road
The sounds of bellbird and wattlebird
Drowned out by cars and trucks
White names white laws white sounds
What was is lost history.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

History of stones

* history of stones *
In pastures green they lie
Remnants of another age
Stone towers rebuilt as dry stone walls
To keep the idle sheep in place
Not to resist blows and warlike actions
Of Viking raiders rampant
These stones have seen so much
Carried forth by ice glaciers
Moraine dumped in these soft rolling downs
Lasted as forests were levelled for firewood
Lords farmers monks and shepherds
Lived their lives and died
And stones remain between the pastures
Atop each other piled
Marked by Time and marking time
More deeply than we shall know.

Escape on a busy train

*a escape on a busy train **
Words and sounds surround
Into private realms we fall
If written previous by a stranger
Now we claim text as our own
In our concentration deep
Exile world from our thoughts
Submerged in music or
Burrowing between words and plot
Consciousness captured and divorced
From this loud busy crowded world
Set aside in own cubicle
Formed by withdrawing perceptions physical
Allowing mind to manufacture
Where we are and why
The scene is set within
Irrelevant of scene without
In communion with the Gods
Of our very own memories and intellect.

Shorn of will

* shorn of will *
Hey Samson your locks are shorn
A metaphor for loss of strength
And obviously loss of will
For losing what motivates us forward
Having given up a treasure
To one who really doesn't love you
Perhaps it was carelessly shedding a veil too many
Opening self to intimacy
Before true intimacy existed
Before other person had reached same place
The station stop in a relationship
Where such things may be safely shared
Instead you come across as desperate for this intimacy
Perhaps thought of as over open
One who might spill all confidences
In a moment's insecurity
So without hair you shiver
Vulnerable and fully aware
How sharp those scissor blades are
Which flash silver in her grasp.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Earning the daily sum

* Earning the daily sum *
Daylight yellow finds me
Between two minds or three
As to how my workday might progress
Things I should do or say
Order of importance
Or personal actions to perform
This is my life for the living
And yet some earning first needs be done
Else my living be uncomfortable
Unsustained and no fun
No trust fund darling am I
No progeny with great expectations
Must scrape and bow and sweat
For money for my daily bread
And if only at bread life's expenses ended
Then this treadmill would run far slower
I have bills for water gas and electricity
A mortgage to repay
Three other mouths to feed
Rates and petrol and a list seemingly endless
And add to these those things I seek
To make my life better worth living
Perhaps a holiday somewhere nice
Take a few days or a week
These are why I turn my mind
To what must be done
Why I work and grind away
To earn my daily sum.

* unease in new world order *

* Unease in New World Order *
I hear the tanks are idle
Bombers sold for scrap
Swords into plough blades beaten
Guns melted down for playground furniture
A new world order perfect
Stability and total order
As long as you don't dissent
Against those police states we choose
To consider as our allies
Due to geo-political significance
Or fact they are sitting on
A billion gallons of oily oozing up
And if in our free countries
The division of wealth you object to
Consider banks making billions
Avoiding paying public taxes
While families without a bread winner
An abomination without equal
Seek to match upon the streets
Reject stratification of wealth and assets
Into those who have and shall gain more
Compared to those needy and growing ever more poor
Then be aware your complaints
Met with force without restraint
Media shall paint you as monsters
As a threat to law and order
All arms of law enforcement raised against you
As Robin Hood was an outlaw
You will need to be called a terrorist
To make a damn bit of difference.

how you are

* how you are *
Starshine reflected in
Precious light your eyes
Sweet perfect curve of Nature
Replicated in your smile
All the world and all the dreams
Portrayed repeated and carnal made
In the existence of you
Perhaps the thoughts I had as fire live
Crackling leaping heat giving
Set me forward on my course
And as a compass you are always true
In guiding voyage on which I'm set
The morning may find us far apart
Yet close in thoughts and heart.

Monday, May 2, 2011

After the mellowing

++ after the mellowing ++
The days of lightning and thunder
Of rocket fuel in veins
Invincibility and only partial need for brains
Those days are passed now
And having surprisingly survived
Come out the other side of first life alive
A second more sedate adventure seek
Where physical capabilities are more discrete
And wisdom earned with a dash of rat cunning
Can bridge difficulties confronted
Rather than a brutal frontal assault
Unlikely to succeed but welcomed
By those adrenalin junkies in my head
I drift where before I raced
Choose where before gathered all with haste
Having consumed life's toadstools toxic
Seek the mushrooms more palatable
Is no Old Testament parable to say
Have chased and brayed as a wild donkey
This stallion is now more content
To seek the shelter and eat the hay
Appreciate Sun and wind and day
To take the rhythm of world and life
Live without tempest and without strife.

No escaping

** no escaping **
The old lion is tired now
Battles fought left scars deep
Past combats disturb sleep
No escaping the yesteryears
Roars and tears and fears
All your hopes rubbed down
A mere nub of what was is left
These tears spill forth from a hidden fount
A deep well long undisturbed
Walls are breaking all around
In sentiments long repressed fear to drown
All the present lies sit
Such inadequate squalid things
Been composed in dark cold places
Light of day melts them down
Feel no more can contribute
The laurels of past no more be won
These limbs are weak and eyes grown dull
Mind is disorganised and character hardened mean
So we find ourselves each day
Staring into the mirror wondering
What became of idealistic knight
Where did he so lose his way
An inch closer to the grave
A minute nearer to the blade.

Still the same

* still the same *
All the refinements of the age
The running water in every room
Flowing electricity from every point
Light available at touch of a switch
All the modern conveniences
Carpet lush and deep as quicksand
Wallpaper flocked with Georgian beauty
This synchronicity of design and elegance
Achievements to civilise our homely caves
Fabricate them in brick or steel or wood
Still a space as ancestors knew
Still seek house to make a home
Imprint our own personalities
On banality of walls which surround
Our hiding holes from other souls
Our measured space of privacy
Here we can be strong or weak
Let vulnerabilities show
Engineered marvels of the age
Electricity, water, the squawking wireless
Cannot hide the obvious truth
No matter how comfortably fitted out
For all our civilised modernity
Fashionable design and tasteful restraint
No blinds or vines or Japanese panels can disguise
These are caves made livable for human eyes.

Tribute to be paid

+ tribute to be paid*
Sun fails as if shot
Dusk glowers at us all
Deepening our need to escape
Eyes close and softer breathing set
The commuters sleep as if dead
Lose in human motivation
Become mere sacks of corporate lard
Swept from work to bed
Each other's body heat provides
Cocoon warmth in which sleep thrives
Rhythmic soundtrack of wheels
Set down by Morpheus kind
Release you are from who you be
Demands this tribute from us all
This time of sleep at ease.

The drowsy drift

* the drowsy drift *
This rattling rhythm
This seat on moving train
Lulls me to Morpheus's palace
As sky is flocked with grey cloud
Sun made dull by its absence
Entire world in a dowdy cloth presides
Over wet footpaths and rain-drop weighted trees
My eyes in empathy slide shut
Shutters seal on soul's pools
I begin to drowsy drift
Place and time are removed
I am of sleep and at sleep and in sleep
There is no outward exploration
My mind turns upon itself in dreams
As train rolls rhythm across sleepers and full of sleepers
On a dull cloud locked sun shrouded Autumn morn.

* a Victorian Age measure

* a Victorian Age measure
Let the measure of a man's worth
Not be his bank account or properties
Instead let all men's wealth be measured by
Those he calls friend and who in return are glad to greet him
For all gold is cold and titles do not warm
If your respect is only gathered so
By acknowledgement from those in your debt
Or slavish devotion of those who would wish to be
Such respect is only worth your monetary value
Allow it to slip and those false friends shall yield as well
No more acknowledging any value
As you are become bereft of value you bring to them
You are as a whore who lures unsuspecting gentlemen
Into the clutches of her villianious associates
Discovering when her looks fade and charms decay
She is cast aside as no longer useful to their ventures
And none will offer her their trust
For so long has she practiced deception
Tally not your bank notes or bills of credit
Set no store by a grand cellar
Look through family name prominent
Find the man who inside resides
Peel aside all artifices of wealth
And find the character of who remains
Then call them friend if they so deserve
And perhaps in return they might offer greeting
In same heart and manner to yourself.