Friday, July 29, 2011

Thin line

*--___thin line___--*
How thin are the thoughts
This line between reason and emotion
Keeping a lid on chaos beneath
Seeking to understand this base of grief
Know from where and when
Though I dare not look down there
For else line of thoughts punctured
Allow emotions to rise up
The bad and enfeebling
Grief of a parent
Having lost a son
I should say never really knew him
Yet knew him before he was born
Saw him in minds eye
And in his twin I see his form
Such a Janus moment
Joy of birth and death
Little wonder struggle still
To understand it all
Hanging by a thread
Beneath life and death
Always thinking what could have been
And having to put aside these dreams
For there is no answer
Just a line of facts
Anything done differently
May have changed result
What we did we thought best
As did all those we did consult
Perhaps this grief just knowing
How fickle fate can be
All of the love and thought
Cannot always prevail
Death can claim dreams
Best intentions can fail
How thin is this line of thoughts
Between reason and despair
Thinking of a loved one
Who is not here.

Deep is the darkness

**+* deep is the darkness *+**
These latest dreams haunt me
Find I have lost my voice
I cannot say stay or go
My heart filled with self woe
The doom I feel encroaching
A tangible foe
I fight it with brave smiles
Grit my teeth to onward plough
Even as the bitter darkness
Draws me deeper in now
I would escape to say
This been my best escape yet
But for now in the trenches
No winner clear to select
Will it be optimism
Or doom and despair
This fight alone carried
No one out there to care
Deep is this darkness
How draining the fight
Sometimes in early hours I wonder
If ever reach other side of night.

To close to call

* To close to call *
Placed myself in certainty
Between a rock and a hard place
I need to focus to get myself out
Even the option of cutting off my own arm
Isn't an option save me from harm
A suicidal bomber allowing time to rush by
Now the flagpoles are set
The finishing line is nigh
Gird all my lions
For the savagery ahead
The pressure thumping headaches
Lack of sleep in my bed
The worry and fretting
The doom rushing in
The gap is swiftly closing
Got to get through
Got to win
And this time I wonder
If all left to late
If this time I have allowed
The horses get beyond the gate
And no time to round them up
No hope in hell
The end of this project
The end of me as well.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Spoken not done

* spoken not done *
Often said between the covers
Those endearments there shall lay
Undemonstrated by later actions
After someone has had their wicked way

Those words of affection and sweet flattery
Dissolve beyond warm cocoon of bed
Everything become so matter of fact
Warmth of those words stone cold dead

How many later have pondered
If those words were merely a waking dream
Because the lump that said them so
Has now become so obscene

Is as if in passion's grip
A lover grows deaf to own intellect
The one who speaks knows no better
And one who listens does not reject

So beneath the covers words pile up
And outside the bed frustration builds
Such hard uncomfortable words on which to sleep
Until finally to entropy relationship yields.

Old age versus youth

** old age versus youth **
Old age never seems that way
From inside the vessel ageing
Sure the joints do creak
And cracks and chips distinct
Mind and attitude are still
As mind and attitude ever were
Young and fresh and active
The unevenness of breath
Aches perpetual which dog
Added lines and folds
Have not impaired
The mental working of this form
I am as sharp ever I was
In younger days if not more so
For I can leverage experience
To make my intelligence seem genius
Track the issues as they appear
Recall the errors of past years
Rather than create fresh disaster
Direct the course to better success
And so dogged by age
The old dog still has old tricks
With which his life to wage
Less energy and more cunning
To overtake the fleet of foot
Those always unsuspecting youth.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

This without a that

* this without a that *
A swan of pigeons in my head
A buttercup of bats
All the world in measure thrown
Nothing is this without a that
Haemorrhaging banks and pockets
Kisses velvet in undergground essence
An oil rig of folly
All the best things in anarchy
And the worse in torture exercised
Pleading for a third galleon
Rich with golden yoghurt tended
Heat is as if whipped by frost
Darker nights than panda pelts
And all the soot across the sky
Migrating swallows cry.

Management 666

** Management 666 *
My eyes are heavy as lead
I do not sweat I bleed
The stress sits upon my head
I am trying to escape a moment
Find nirvana in my self
Ignore the roar of external forces
Take care of myself
For my internal organs ache
The skin on my back feels flayed
As if a cat of nine tails had been applied
Though in truth the management do not do that
As they would not want their meetings
Disturbed by the heartfelt screaming
Of another one before the mast
Instead they apply the clamps steadily
Tightening by degrees
Until the worker is so crushed
Can no longer their demands resist
Too harsh and the worker flee
To gentle and no result
And so they meet in glass boxes
Looking out upon the floor
Survey those victims called employees
Who they can joyously manipulate
Decide the tortures to inflict
The methods to employ
Meeting requests with no agenda
The long and rambling speech
The top priority piece of work
For which all other work must cease
About which they do not care
The late nights and early starts
Unreal expectations of diligence and accuracy
The thousand little plots to make the workers angry
And then in managing the perception
You see how I handle this surly crew
Give the impression of great competence
A manager for this place and time
For if this manager was not there
How would the business survive
For this manager knows how to drive
The drones at manager's command
To complete the work and save the business
No matter how many employee bones grind
And so you work in your hutch
Surrounded by managerial carnivores
Is it little wonder the best flee
Leaving disorder in their wake
One day they say a champion will come
Bring the manager to account
I would not hold my breath
For champions tend to selfish wills
And a corporate card and free lunches
Might that champion's eagerness sate
Leaving us where we were
Before the coal face driven
Not directed but ordered
To do what does not make sense
Needing the wage they pay
To afford the half a quarter acre block
And the white picket fence
Who would have thought reaching your dreams
Required accepting such a Faustian fate.

No giants left

** no giants left **
Those giants once were men
Did they ever know some doubt
Seems hewn from ancient earth
Given wisdom from gods above
Driven forward in fellowship and love
Did they ever hesitate
Consider another course
Believe themselves the knaves
In life's grand parade
Not champions tall and proud
Did they lose their way
Stumble to find their calling
To addiction fall prey
And there are so many
Or should we expect
A sterile perfect saint
A leader of industry
Without a single blemish
Who never knew a crooked feeling
Slept only with his wife
Not a tabloid troublemaker
Read more on page
Selling soul to sell newspapers
Possessor of a sex video
Google it and find
Every single infidelity
Every youthful indiscretion
Once such actions were your follys
Upon which wisdom might be built
Instead we now ask a higher standard of leadership
That they have never failed
Or were cunning enough to hide their disasters
Their adventures of youth tame
And their acquaintances saintly
Pious men who have never known regret
Vacuum packed morals never tested
Failures never having to be overcome
The leader who knows only one agenda
Allow all blame to fall on others
These are not the giants we once knew
Instead our world lead by pygmies
Standing on polls for height
Who take their directions from public opinion
Not by what is just or right
You wonder how our present day leaders
Might have resolved questions of the past
Where passing the buck was not an option
And effects of their decisions everlasting
Perhaps for we who now live
In a time shaped by those giants strengths
Time to give thanks our leaders
Were not chosen way back then.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Pax

** Pax **
Pax the call on playground safe
Peace and an end to hostilities
All energy misdirected
All chasing cease
All trying to tig the untagged must halt
A Pax I invoke
This is no foolish joke
I must adjourn to a quiet place
Where water runs on request
To ease my discomfort
Unload a load of waste
So chase and harass me not
This Pax I have declared
And now in safety stroll
Away from merriment of your game
And thinking to myself
So many places beyond the schoolyard
I wish I could a Pax initiate
Along a coast before fury of tsunami
Upon a Norwegian holiday island
In trouble spots across the globe
Wherever those who possess seek
To wreak terror upon the weak
Wherever such poverty exists
No civility can survive
Where corruption and law of gun
Overshadows everything and everyone
Where a call of Pax might momentarily
Bring a sense of social sanity.

Contentious and false

+ contentious and false +
All these images
Contentious and false
Somewhere exists picture
Truthful and illuminated
Lighthouse of future
Alexandria library of knowledge
Myths made truth
Truth fashioned into folklore
To inspire ourselves
As real figures once did
Lady Godiva or King Arthur
An unrecalcitrent Robin Hood
Through history's pages
Throughout the Ages
Another popular rebel
Defier of the odds
Becomes a fixture of
The folklore or legends
How did they marry
Those words to myth attached
To their outward demeanour
Did such legend making
Drive them to greater success
Or in hubris great tragedy
And did they think they ever could
Meet the person
They were meant to be
Such a conjuring trick
To be real and insubstantial
To exist in your space
And greater space image possess
Which brings us back
Such tart taste in mouth
To commercial renderings of
The myths of manhood
Images of whom we should be
How free and ideals to possess
To never grow up for
It seems all the grown up things
Have already been performed
Coddled in the nanny state
Our role to consume and play
Games on Wii Playstation or XBox
Pursue illusions of friendship
Across cold reach of internet
To be cannon fodder for
Profits gargantuan of
The modern shopping complex
Which dwarfs the military
Makes sham of Haight Ashbury collective
The enemy was not the military
The enemy always was
Our own avarice and greed
And the image makers
Who skilfully play us
Create inside our desires
The wish to be as tribe
Conform by consuming
The greatest praise of all
In plagiaristic lounge rooms
Colour and style pervasive
No escaping the current fashion
Its insidious completeness
Drives you to accept
You are a corporate clone
Work to save to consume
A single cog operating
As producer and consumer
Supporting the chains
Which hold up your betters
Who need not to work
And even consumption is inadequate
Soak up their snowdrifts of capital
In this world of ours where
The image presented
May be ours or borrowed
And is always set
To be socially acceptable.

Fickle life

** fickle life **
The often tiled remnants
Of another Pompeii house
Give us stern remembrance
Of when Vesuvius coughed
Makes us acknowledge frailty of life
How fickle life can be
In another city in another place
The eruption would be news
Stories written on their fate
The sliding doors of time
Through which actions moved
If this difference then that
We often mark the course
I knew him or was there
Only an hour before
I often take that road
Or buy something in that store
Yet fate and time had not combined
To place you at epicentre
Of another person's strangeness
Another person's political agenda
You were on another path
Yet none can see what lies ahead
A failure of tyres to grip
Encounter with a junkie desperate for a fix
Your maiming may be minor
Less complete than death
And then you will discover
How deep runs the thread
Of your own good humour
The resilience to resist
The darker moods and treasonous thoughts
To take you out of time
Discover then as Pompeii knew
When Gods perform and harsh actions take
Little poor mortals can do.

Monday, July 25, 2011

- Inspiration please -

- Inspiration please -
Inspire me and talk to me
Give me wings to fly
Lift me up mightily
Guide where I should go
Provide muse for thoughts strength
Rhythm to song or music
All these things inspired make
From morning frost to dip of Sun
From silver starlight to breath of dawn
All peaks to smallness shrink
When with inspiration think
All achievements grown achievable
No obstacle is conceivable
When faced with inspired soul
Propelled forward away you go
Another flashing spark in life's grand show.


Redirect energies

**_ redirect energies _**
Who you love and who you want
And who they love and desire
Incompatible with dreams
Should be placed on hold
Energies redirected when realisation
If realisation were ever part of love
Is that change is unattainable
And thus the heart of one you loved
Remains inaccessible and unbound
To your own heart in its pining
If you could but step back
Place that heart down which loves not back
Might see the world a better place
Indulge yourself in life and discover
Another someone to be your lover
Whose heart is not sealed from you
Would show interest in your own
And two hearts might fumble far
Create a loving true and clear
From start of day till dusk
These two hearts together rusted
Forget the cold side of the moon
Which was love unrequited
Love never given chance to bloom.

Life and fowl jokes

** life and fowl jokes **
These often heard jokes
Worn out and feeble
Well beyond this life
They say why chicken crossed the road
To get to the other side
Should we expect more than this
Some fowl philosophy extreme
A feathered dream of nirvana
As a reason for performing
A simple transportation function
Moving from one side to the other
A logistical rearrangement of presence
Was here and are now there
If we treat life and time the same
Look not for deeper meaning
Instead accept the purpose
Life is to progress from birth to death
Such simple accommodation of our desires
And in this transportation what would we achieve
Seek to do and determine ourselves
In life we greet the Sun of Time
And in its presence must bloom
Or forever more be stillborn.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Be a llama farmer

**- be a lllama farmer -**
As a city dweller
Centre of city worker
I view everything through
The lens of the place I am
Public transport is life's journey
Hesitant and sometimes slow
Occasionally fate intervenes
And life does not go
I see the hustle and bustle
Constant barrage of communication
Posters billboards traffic noises
All these sounds and sights
Threatening to drown out
My brain's capacity for reason
So I filter out so much
Become blind to those around me
Don't recall the fragments
Of the life whirling around me
For to hold all in thoughts
Capture life so busy would overwhelm me
So missing so much
Pare concentration down
I wonder how I would be
If my world of life was different
My living environment tranquil
Perhaps a llama farmer
On a Peruvian llama ranch
The noises wind and llama bleating
Perhaps sound of my tractor
Yet only this single engine sound
To the silence tranquil shatter
And if I am working alongside someone
Is just us two or three or four
Not hundreds rushing frantically
To move some financial zeroes
Align a policy or paper
Arrange another meeting at which to talk
Instead we build a fence
Cut llama toe nails
Or shear off llama wool
We do things llama farmers do
Depending on the season
Not a constant life lived sterile
In concrete and glass prison
Where temperature never varies
And lights are always on
Where outside is a city busy
Does not care for your life or song
And if you stumble and fall
Another will quickly take your place
Your absence not even a ripple
In the functioning of that place
While if you were a llama farmer
Those you worked with would have the time
To regret and reflect on your passing
Having known you completely
Not filtered out any shred of you
Seen you completely for what you were
Allowed every atom of information
To be processed in their thoughts
Rather than an inner city worker
Surrounded by the tsunami of sensations
Which prevents a pause to stop
No place of silence found
Always constantly moving on
Perhaps I should become a llama farmer
So I can properly compare the two.

Daydream navigation

*+* daydream navigation *+*
When I close my eyes and daydream
Escape strangers on a crowded train
What do I see in my musings
Pressed internally against eyelids closed
An image as if a wood cut
Caught between the light and dark
Has your features and your smile
And I smile to hear your laugh
Here there is no rushing
The time possessed is ours alone
To be spent in admiration of each other
Sharing our dreams and bad jokes
Reminiscing on what we did back when
Discussing all our daily chores
And all the future plans we have got
Those private secret ambitions
Shared with deepest closest friend
We talk until our throats grow dry
And wet them with fresh enthusiasm
Through kisses across a table shared
And warm press of leg to entwined leg
A physical representation
Of our mental state of mind
As we are two vines running and curling
Over one and then the other until
All our time is inseparable
And so when into day dreaming fall
Easily find where we are
Knowing you are never far
I just need to close my eyes
And there you always are.

An angry season

** an angry season **
It must be Tour De France season
An event which due to time zones
I watch in the latest hours of night
A period which teeters over edge
And falls firmly into the new day
My eyes are grainy
General demeanour grumpy
Feeling flat claustrophobic and angry
Angry about daylight and people breathing
The foolishness of me staying up till early
Though I knew no additional sleep was coming
And having done this for a fortnight
Energy levels have dissipated
Anxiety levels risen
Moody and weary and growing angry
The type of senseless ill-defined undirected anger
Which threatens to washover inappropriately
At family or in the workplace
A feeling of loss of control
And later I will feel suitably stupid
Suitably chastised and guilty
To allow tiredness to allow me to act so
To raise my voice or with cutting remarks slice
The dialogue between myself and some other
Family comrade worker boss it matters not
This is the end result
Of pursuing actions unhealthy
And even blue sky cannot fully wake me.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Best

*+ best +*
Waiting for Godot
Inspiration to strike
A deity to take over
This chaos of life
Might as well be
Expecting train to be on time
Or find an empty taxi
In the rain at closing time
There are just some occurrences
We should expect
Will never occur
Not in reality set
So with parameters drawn
From experience cynical born
Discover it is up to ourselves alone
To plot and conquer life's pinnacle
We who alone are answerable
We who alone will be condemned
By our actions fanciful
Piratical benevolent or farcical
No other players upon our stage
Life cares not for your age
The cloak and the role are yours by birth
Remember your lines and try not to curse
When the romance becomes tragedy
Or comedy to an unexpected elegy
Your efforts unrewarded by audience
Life lived without adventure avoidance
In this life or that life best you can be
Is the one who uses this great gift most completely.

Commonality of us

** commonality of us **
Commonality of who we are
Best seen in what we are
How we appear
Number of fingers and toes
Occurrence of hair not fur
How as we age we change
The way we do a pattern follow
The grand plan human
Loss of hair
Sag of shoulders
Elasticity gone from thoughts
Memory a sieve of pebbles
So much escapes leaving behind
These hard remembrances
Which obscure the present
Our joints grind and crack
Whatever we once were
No more we are alas
Whatever nationality colour or creed
Now we are simply the old
And they are the young and free.

Such self-centred woe

* such self centred woe *
Expressions of love could not be
More self centred and unproductive
Than Romeo and Juliet focused only
On mutual infatuation and destruction
Unable to see a broader canvas
On which life and loving could be lived
Blinded by family disputes
Loyalties tenuous and obtuse
Romeo being chemically unbalanced
Juvenile and frankly homicidal
Leaves pain behind him
A trail of stupidity
Impetuous acts and criminal culpability
His death resolves for Verona
Issues judicial and family feuds
Leaves all at peace once more
Between Capulet and Montague.

gone gone gone

** gone gone gone **
Searched out past the globe
Sky clouds rushing by
Taunted by love's regret
Surrounded by my own tears
The bedroom was a war zone
Kitchen no man's land
Now the war is over
And you are gone gone gone
The flowers need more water
Petals begin to fall
This is death they illustrate
How all will age and fade
Still I leave the machine on
Hoping for your call
Check email religiously
Every hour every day
This is the end of all dreams
My Ragarnok symphony
And the flowers give me a look
Now you know how it feels
To be cut from those closest
Wrapped and sold in joy
Only to discover dying continues
And no water in your vase
This is the end of days
Stormy weather darkens life
The complete unravelling
Of this neat ordered life
Searched out past the globe
Thinner and more weary grow
Sky clouds rushing by
An environment of why
Taunted by love's regret
Wish to call back words you can't forget
Surrounded by sea off my own tears
Partnered ever forward only with my fears.

The custard fog

*_+ the custard fog +_*
Old songs the best songs
Radio proves it so
Chop up of channels
To deliver music
Means diluted followings
Entire population not caught
In a popular fervour
Even Bieber phenomenon
Feels as if distanced
Through a custard fog
Permability of likeability
Addictive song's hook
Has to spawn in different ponds
To get us to look
Marketability in different forms
On net on radio on tv on twitter
An inescapable fact
The audience is not looking in one place
For music to senses great
Instead dips in and out
Of spectrum of communication
Leaving songs before great fragmentation
Remembered cherished and strong.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Ignite

** ignite * *
Your hair is a shade
Not natural in any spectrum
Smile from lips rich reserved
A certain sense of decorum
In style and dress quality
Eyes which sweep proprietary
You would claim life to you
In all its passion and sensuality
Feel heat of blood coursing through
This body lithe which is you
Sense rising feelings deep
Electric shocks which make you quiver
Down spine and up anticipatory shiver
To bind and hold and in words declare
Tangle fingers in flowing hair
Allow lips to meet and deeply share
Flicker of tongues with mingled breath
Fire and desire rising in your chest
Those pleasurable thoughts and reserved smiles
Now seem so out of style
As lusting pleasures breaks bonds
Tsunami of sensations roll over and upon
These moments drops of golden light
As you unreservedly ignite.

An interest

** an interest **
Your eyes declare an interest
Unexpected and such a success
Is that how this game is played
Work less harder to get laid
Be the object of someone affections
Makes your desirability infectious
You now see the thoughts
Swimming shallow in the mind
Escape the daily mind numbing mundaneness
Find the sometimes grinding oneness
Of passion sanding off rough edges
Of life and heart and solemn pledges
Dissolve in pool of sensuality
A pool you see behind those behinds
Which lure and captivate
Lay in wait and seduce
And you are hunter and the prey
Love to hear you husky say
Enough already leave words in your head
Let us find a wide deep bed.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

All world of news a show

*all the world of news a show *
All the shows and big tops
Ever daring trapeze
Of politicians and businessmen
In cahoots up to their knees
Decisions on licences already made
Cosy dinners washed down with fine wine
Where it is proved money speaks
The always for the good of all
A lost ideal on the way to the till
The stinking rich get richer
The taxed poor get sicker
And no health system worthy
Of the word healthy exists
For the poor joe who just subsists
From this pay-packet to the next
World of wealth to him
A filling meal and warm house
A roof that is not leaking
Such simple things audience desire
As the trapeze swings higher and higher
And how they gasp and sigh
As beneath the big top
The show continues on
The rich get private trainers and thinner
Poor struggle to afford a fast food dinner
And in a car park far from the show
Brown paper bags and envelopes exchanged
Sooth the conscience of the law givers
With well placed bribes corrupting
All the legality disrupting
Of people in higher places playing
Games of personal need and greed
And we outside the tent braying
Bring these damned curs to heel.

Speed of visions end

* Speed of visions end *
The enquiring glance
The sweeping appraisal
Are decisions made that swiftly
On whom or what or when
Has all history been subjected to
The subjective two second view
Casual speed of decision making
Of Homo-erectus triumphant
Top dog on this planetary lump
At peak of food chain
And yet the future is in thrall
Of this speed judging howl
An instinct evolutionary
To sustain us in epoch revolutionary
Is our world to be lost
For we would not pause in decisions rush
To count the cost of decisions wrong
Endanger all with our short-sightedness
For all our intellect and potential
In our own extinction instrumental.

Monday, July 18, 2011

5 Ws of truth and knowledge

+*_ 5 Ws of truth and knowledge _*+
Who why where when and what
Five W's with which world explore
Kipling I think it was knew them well
These W's with which to plot a life
To discover those in life or prose
Begins to contain the entire world
Sets in path the motions of
Our life discoveries deep and true
Though sometimes what you may find
Is not what you would have true
Mistakes made due to hubris
A conscience allowed to drift
Allow all manner of rationalisations
As foundations of your world to exist
The dark lanes you would not go where
The questions what you do not ask
Why's hanging unquestioned in the air
Stapled to such harsh -isms
You dare not gather them to your thoughts
A who to ask is so difficult
When is your own mirrored face
Staring back belligerently in silence
As for when there are times
You wish had never been at all
Turn face of time away to face the wall
The five W's of truth and knowledge
Weapons to wield in discovery of world
To be put aside when you decide
To explore yourself a while
For at such times weapons blunted use
So at night you can sleep
Unskewered by the 5 W's you know.

In northern Spring

* in northern Spring *
These pollen plotted days
Of April June and May
Teary eyes and puffy faces
Anti-histames before Spring races
Annual appearance of allergies
Red eyes red noses hard of breathing
All symptoms of body in rebellion
Against the natural world surrounding
Everything coming into bloom
Declares the coming of your doom.

Weekend

* weekend *
They will ask me
How was your weekend
And I will pause a moment
As if to savour joys past
As I tread through the outbursts
Emotionally charged and lethal
When we found ourselves again
In some warring grappling wrestle
Instead pick out time between
Saw a movie went for walks
Took children here and there
Had dinner with some old friends
Those instances of civility
When a truce was declared
When we appeared fully functioning
As a family close and dear
Even as we each listen for
The distant thunder which announces
Another storm is on its way.

Thawing tundra

** thawing tundra **
Which way forward now
Never thought I would reach this junction
So bitter seem my choices
Unfulfilled in life and I find myself
If loved not loved as I would wish
A tidy house and dinner made
Does not make me feel loved
When kisses are less than formalities
Chased and pursued at the door
And the bed a place of Green zones
Lines not to be crossed
Without threat of grumpiness and iciness
All the world it seems as tundra frozen
And how I half wish to see warming Spring
And how I don't wish to live in quagmire
Which the warming Spring will bring.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Any love

** any love **
Young love old love any love
The true call of any human
The hopeful heart in action
Wishes for binding of man and woman
In deed and thought be as one
Charity and respect with other share
Openness and truth in all that's done
The hopeful heart would so desire
No arguments or sullen moods
On all things equal in debate
A shoulder strong against which to rest
A lover with whom to fight mortal fate.

Friday, July 15, 2011

No game

** no game **
Uniformed and uninformed is the military way
Take the hill or charge the valley
Theirs is not to reason why
Theirs is just to do or die
Weather or own moods not considered
Or else to enemy advantage delivered
In snow or sleet or mud or rain
Endure all fears and feel no pain
Perform the tasks so valourous set
Perform the killings you cannot forget
For all the talk of worthy soldiers and a just war
This is no game and such bloody score
The only numbers the listing of the dead
The maimed and those mad in the head
If you return without a scratch
They see not the cost attached
Only those closest and dearest
Endure your nightmares and can mark the queerness
Never the same as he was when he left they mutter
And really with all the death and killing is it any wonder.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Bah Humbug!!!

** Bah Humbug **
I hear the reindeer bells ringing
Sound of rusty carolers raucous singing
See the mistletoe and decorations going up
Christmas specials labelled on every second product
All is festive and full of commercial cheer
Bing Crosby singing White Christmas is everywhere
The gifts you must receive appear on shelves
Santa's grotto set up with leotard suited elves
Catalogues stuffed overflow mailbox
This Christmas theme as persistent as the pox
On television announcements of Christmas shows
A billion mentions of Rudolph's nose
Trying to line up holidays for the break
So much Christmas cheer they make
Can't they see the bloody date
It is not even July late
Seems Easter has just passed
Still ashes on forehead from mass
This period of pastiche cheer
Grows longer and more painful every year
When we are expected to open wallets wide
And invite their grubby greedy finders deep inside.

In distance

++ In Distance ++
In distance hear the trumpeted call
Deadlines growing nearer
Deep inside a clench and tightening
Stomach walls of gut grow hard
All thoughts have fled
Barbarians of deadlines coming
No way have we in white collared work
To turn these deadlines on their heads
Care not for our woes or offices dysfunctional
The piper must be paid on time
Or else it be your white collared head
Think of deadlines as pitiless barbarians
Happy to endure any ills
To inflict upon your great despair
Take your job and house and family
Throw all your life into disrepair
For this is power deadlines have
If allow them victory over fact
If not met shall dissemble you
Tear you limb from bloodied limb
And a new role or occupation
You dismembered will need to seek.

All the shades of fashionable black

** all the shades of fashionable black **
Who could ever think there would be
So many shades of black
To discover them all I suggest you see
The city of Melbourne's populace
As they crowd the paths and laneways
An ever flow streaming of black
And every shade there has ever been
Cut for skirts or coat or suit
Barefaced or hirsute the colour same
Material they wear upon their back
Without reservation must be black
Fashionable and hopefully slimming
Infected their entire living
So could not think to leave
House or home or city apartment
Without a garment in black grounded
And any other colour a lighthouse beaming
In this sea of black is gleaming
Scarlet red or orange burning bright
Show some colour in land of night
Where fashion sense and wardrobes set
On clothes each and every part
From suit to pants to black woollen scarf
Is set in the colour black
In Melbourne where Yarra brown lazy flows
Here the citizens know no other colour for city clothes.

Still dreaming of Clancy's life

* still dreaming of Clancy's life **
Out in the provinces
Where grass allowed to grow
Far from our shoebox mansions
Cappuccinos and wine bars
Fine leather shoes and italian wool suits
A place where gum boot is honoured and used
Far from this place of noise and harsh fumes
There hopefully you will find me
Celebrating bushland delights
Using the clear country airs
Until the fading of bright country light
To discover person I should be
Person I would have been
If I had escaped city scene
The canyoned streets in perpetual shadows
Mercantile buildings spiritless and hollow
Felt earth not hard tar beneath my feet
Commune with Nature not via email
Escaped demands and seasons sameness
For the Bush and fields and creeks
Of the country beautified
In my mind a place of ease and rest
Sparkling waters and wattle kissed bush
Call of bellbird only broken
By raucous kookaburra laughing
See the tracks of wallaby wombat or 'roo
Around the billabong at dawn
See the herds and flocks gathering at dusk
In a place where your own words shouted
So quickly merge and fade
All secrets taken and buried
All griefs eased into the red earth
Far from the bustling cynical crush
Of city transport on train or bus
Escape the constant inquiry
Of a hundred faces jaded and weary
Find me in the deepest bush
Most distant places far from city rush
There is where I will be
Once from mortgage and debt set free
Escape this rat race infantile
Take my money earned as squatters did before
And live a life of rustic ease and style.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

After Hogwarts

** after Hogwarts **
Time to put aside all those childish things
Drop the quaffle ignore the golden snitch
Others can search for horcruxes now
He unnamed is de-throned
Yet so much remains to be done
Outside the covers of a book
Beyond cinema's sight and sound
This flawed world keeps spinning round
And there are injustices ages old
Baying for a fight
There is cruelty ignorance and greed
Which must be dragged into the light
What wisdom you have accrued
From following Harry Potter through
Setbacks and tragedy and growth
You must now apply yourself.

Conclusion

** Conclusion **
A final instalment
Time for celebration
Parties global bloom
All endings confirmed
What was truth displayed
Such rapturous applause at conclusion
Joyous faces grinning to be there
Then inevitably realisation
This is the final instalment
All questions neatly answered
Conundrum successfully squared
No more wonderings or what ifs
Time spent waiting
High tide of anticipation breached
From here only depression
A world completely freed
From what happens to Harry next
And so Rowling teaches her disciples
A final Hogwarts lesson.

Nemesis and love

** nemesis and love **
For everyone a nemesis
Postman uboat captain or brother
For every love a switch
From onward ever or to halt
The problem in real life often is
Knowing who is whom and their role
And realising you and nemesises change
With all the world in flux
Why should your hates and lust stay the same
You are as a star being acted upon
By dark matter conjectured but unseen
By mighty forces gravitational
And fused from gases
Or liquid or with a heavy core
You are a part of a universe
Changing moving constantly traversing
Between now and tomorrow
Pursued by all the yesterdays which ever was
Your own yesterdays lead this zombie pack
Then there are more without number
Each having set in motion actions
Which reverberate in your present
Set foundation for your future
And allocate the moments when
The switch is ever on or halt
And the switch is not once
Though with stubborn obstinacy might wish it so
For you are only one decider
In love there must be two
And each is chased by yesterdays vast
Must make decisions in rushing present
And work on this rocking rocket ship
Towards the future accepted wanted or fated.

little forevers

* little forevers *
All these little deaths
Petite de' morte indeed
A loss of self and semblance
An escape or future echo
Of what beyond physicality we may be
Alive and yet not sensing
Exultant in pleasure unrelenting
A heaven timeless and infinite
Blinded to passing moment
By wash of total present
Is infinity such
A moment outside time
Disconnected from perspective
Unable to reliably record
Duration of event all consuming
No longer observer part of the All.

Monday, July 11, 2011

GFC Karma

** GFC Karma **
Raced off your feet
Enduring the taunts
Thanking the meek
While stealing their bread
Dreaming of futures
Strange body parts and sutures
Night of dead walking
Hear Mary Shelly talking
The disenfranchised as tailings
Mined from society due to their failings
Aiming at being most efficient engines
Valkyries of partnered synergies
The collapse and integration
The fiscal rationalisation
Cropping the arms off to feed the head
Another corpse company in land of the dead
No morale to speak of
No economic God to pray to
Taught the unskilled barbarians to well
About Keynes Demming so they forgot Mao
The efficient machine overpowers the weak
Our economies savaged bleeding and bleak
All which we were condemned to fall
Pull on your shrouds a funeral for all
Declining decelerating and destroyed
This economic cataclysm cannot avoid
True to our principles of one for one's self
As we all go to hell and stocks heading south.

Words

** words **
Of words for words upon words
These trickle down alphabets
Collections common and simple
Line them up in ranks poetic
Attempt at every turn quixotic
Slay a windmill with your pen
Find a subject on whom none offend
Be blessed by Popes and Dawkin's atheists
In equal measure conformity resist
Of words for words upon words
Die in conclusion of each line state
A metaphor for cherry blossom fate
Timeless and ephemeral as thought
These the lines your crafting wrought
No anvil hammer tongs or forge
No tools at all writer need to disgorge
The truth within or lies slippery
Conceits and loves and streets gritty
Every Moon a poet knows
On every kiss a poem flows
Of words for words upon words
The paper or the screen electronic
Is all communication supersonic
To leap from one mind to another
Words treat all as closest brother
Who can see images written down
Made as substantial as the ground
Upon which the reader standing
Discovers the writer's understanding
All of life in lettered groups we know
Explains past future to be and now
These fragile musings sketched
Found and cut and placed and fletched
Fired forward to roundel target board
Of words for words upon words.

Decline to fall

** Decline to fall **
These slow thoughts
To tightly strung motes
Blindly primordially moving forward
So graceless reticent and awkward
No fire or flint or axe
Bare handed barbarism in every act
The social morals we have unlearnt
Technologies used given not earnt
We hold everything up to derision
On great projects make no decision
Neutered and cowardly we have stopped
Innovation adventure and exploration budget chopped
Our last death throes of society
Becoming a bland delusional entity
The entire human race in our thrall
Now watch as Western Civilisation fall.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Winter day cold

- Winter Day Cold -
The taunting surrounding chill
Hands feel as if dipped into fridge
Searching for last ice cream
Stuck at back of freezer compartment
The wind draws freezing dagger cross my face
Cheeks feel as if slapped
By a duel seeking knight
Who desires some right of honour restored
My eyes are dead to horizon
Dullness reflected of these winter tones
Any splash of colour leaps out
Even a weed bursting through train track gravel
All body feel kiss of ice
The lumpy winter inactivity
Fervent desire to seek out hibernation
Till world brightens and warms once more.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

All the days

* all the days **
All the days as Autumn leaves
Falling from tree of life
Become a carpet of waste
Left behind as you forward move
From this mulch future rises
Present sits directly atop
A flat cake of layers permeable
Through which substance of our life does drip.

Tuber

* love's tuber *
The supply chain of my affectations
Desires in my tubers
This stock root of emotion
Base for stews of passion
Lump of family love
Seems deformed and strange
A vegetable gone wrong
Perhaps lain unharvested to long
Perhaps was nestled to deep in earth
Was it frost or rain
Too much sunshine
Or was this seed bad
From which this love was birthed
Always unlikely to be true
Twisted deceived not lived
This tuber which I grew.

Cold

** cold **
Yarra looks ominously still
Air frozen in place
No breeze moves leaf or limb
The cold limply hangs over us
Dousing all enthusasism of skin
Placing depressing clouds on alert
A distant song is singing
Beyond range of human ear to hear
And tired thoughts tumble
Out of warm cosy brain bed
On a morning travellling
A morning slow unravelling
To workplace of my life
This capturer of time
Place of work and need.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Industrialisation 2

+ Industrialisation 2 +
These violent shakes of change
Predator birds in our pastures
We read our civilisations as being just
Balanced fairly over these years
By democratic institutions and rule of law
We ignore the fact much wealth was made
On the weakness of others who might contest
That those who might be compete
Realise to win they would need to defeat
Gunboat diplomacy and bombs in the street
Now boot on other foot rests
A country with population overbearing
Is the same technology creating
How then to hold the lines
Keep the borders safe
When outnumbered and out gunned
Our markets we try and defend.

Still wanting to be Clancy

** still wanting to be Clancy **
Lost tracks ploughed deep
By disillusioned sons of farmers
Given to expect golden city streets
Discovered serfdom of the Romanov's still exists
Chained by materialism taught
How an education would raise them higher
Discovered education perverted could achieve golden greed
Calculate the shift in markets
Write a prospectus to make a sow's ear a silk purse
Use all manner of intelligence and initiative
In the conning of your fellow businessman
If they have the cunning they will see your traps
And if not then simple market evolution occurs
The not fast enough bright enough mean enough
Are banished from the market
Extinction is the result
A dog eat dog mentality
Breeding efficiency of shark proportions
A never sleeping killer always grazing for next meal
And all is good till you become the mark
The market will eat its own as readily as strangers
Those jaws which consume can take you
And so erudite and mathematically bright
These sons of the land discover
They have not the strength of their fathers
The farm life is not for them
Chewed up and spat out by city market
They can remove to life they knew
Having been trained for this life new
A life in which they must fail
A life which no joy to soul brings
Those new serfs of the cash book and the journal
Those day dreaming fellows Lawson once knew.

Once was

** Once was **
The commune is ageing
Doesn't mean a thing to you
An aberration of fresh hope is fading
A better life is what we sought to do
Families buying houses together
Not one or two but several
We pulled down fences between
The houses now looked in to common ground
We were a village with a village green
Here a broader community than just a family
Here associate more intimately than suburbia
Grew crops and vegetables
Allowed some fowl to roam unchecked
Trying to develop a sustainable model
Chart a different course from those around
Our children grew up integrated not isolated
We lived a life set to seasons not to train timetables
The issues came when the children left
Young adults leaving to seek their own identities
We could not afford to buy properties around
And in truth our philosophies as a group
Were broad and diverse
Some had children and some had not
How could the community support one by taking from the other
And then after the children left
We discovered a fact all come to know
Time ages us and makes us slower
The seasons clock includes Autumn and Winter
We had lost some already along the way
Relationship breakdowns and those who found
Living in a village was not their way
Now those left discovered the village could not sustain
If all were old and ailing
Some young had returned
But our numbers were ever declining
Ad as they did so did the houses
Sold off to pay out those leaving
Give them chance for life elsewhere
And as age captured us the fences went back up
The village gave itself back to suburbia
As those who did not follow our dream
Brought the properties we had to sell
Till now the world reduced to this
One backyard for the village
A village of only me and the hens
Which scratch through the Autumn leaves
The commune is ageing
Time has found us out and called us down
The dream of village gone
As I see the ghosts of those who are past
I wish your dreams a better end.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

This waning and waxing **

** This waning and waxing **
These days are all wax and wane
The days of new moon and fresh face fallen
Now is all inevitable decline and fog like despair
Now is a descendant from incandescent hope to grubby desperation
This is the life lead
Of actions cancelled and unfinished
Fresh motivation non-existent
Of enemies within the psyche conceding to those without
No draught of ambrosia can lift
No alcoholic beverage provide dutch courage
Principles appear as driftwood stuck in sand
Frail before the incoming Spring tide
Whatever we may have once predicted
Atlas on which we charted course
Has become completely worthless
We are beyond those cartographical edges
Our eyesight dulled desires not to see the future
For our experience can predict our course
As we wax and wane and decline more sharply
Grow bitter and uncaring and cold
Until our pulse ceases and at last our heart's are stilled.

Pedestal placement

**Pedestal placement**
Tied and torn and knotted tight
These thoughts I think tonight
Beyond and away from place
Made drunk by sight of your face
Falling as the worse believers do
Into believing in more than you
All answers from you raise
I am a sinner who comes singing praise
Upon your shoulders problems of my own place
Made drunk by sight of your face
No escaping from atop pedestal you sit
Placed there by me and glued
Forever never ever changing you
Not seeing who you might be
Having already decided what I see
In my desperate needing seeking
Form the person upon you at this meeting
So drunk I find myself made by your face
The young guitarists strum on
The lounge grows deathly still
As I project onto you all I need
Every person you have ever been and to me
Every person who you will ever be.

Why words laid down

** why words laid down **
These words composed to distract
Intention to subtract negativity
Allow to flow outwards sense of down
How dire feels the world
Chill and cold of those around
Exile and sense of detachment
Of a lost soul wavering
Almost drowning trying to be floating
Laying down words as lily pads back
A fragile bridge returning from
Edge of disaster and despair
The edge of the always dangerous nowhere
Where dwells the nihilism of hope
An evaporation of all which is self
Leave a vacancy and nothingness
A dry husk of humanity
Empty vessel which might echo loudly
Reflect harsh sounds of life's chill winds
Instead in counterpoint form these words
To block the holes which leak so sorely
The sense of life lived poorly
In intellectual challenge of
A thread of thought to be solved
Escape the dark depths to which might sink
If I refused to try and refused to think
Rise and glide away
Splash and struggle and swim
From these words a rope ladder form
To escape the mire in which I churn.

The pastures

** the pastures **
These sweet pastures
Rich grass green and lush for dairy cows
What joy their dairy products bring
The abrupt sharp zest of natural yogurt
Deep heavy golden dollops of creams
Rivers of frothy swirling milk
Bricks of yellow translucent butter
Wheels and wedges of formidable cheeses
All these from pastures raised
Tendered herd as if were family
Cows lazy hip swaying waddle in to milking
Replaced by skittish trot out to fields once more
As regular as the seasons and more accurate than a clock
A part of life and day and morning and afternoon
This life lived to rhythms of the dairy
The rhythms of the farm
All build upon the rich lush green grass
Lounge and bedroom and home for the mooing herd
Pastures safe and sweet for cherished bovine workforce.

This type of day

**+ this type of day +**
The day keeps getting better
Sky darker Antarctic wind harsher
Train arrives on wrong platform
We move forward as an invalid
No seat on which to sit
Painful anger in my head
Who I am in constant question
Where I am going outside bounds
When the escape of suicide
Allure of total nothingness
Ground down by a sense of worthlessness
Attacked by those you always thought
Should provide your safe harbour and grounding
So lost no trail of breadcrumbs
Will ever lead me out
Of this forest of nightmares
This forest so dark and black
A sweep of gallows in my sight
A bath of razor released blood
A pharmaceutical escape
The coward's way becomes choice
On which an anxious damaged mind lingers.

A vomit of emotions

** a vomit of emotions **
This fire burns my breast
Scalds heart of best intentions
Sends spirit plummeting to mantle core of despair
The lack of understanding
Sharpness and inhumanity of your words
Drives such anger within me
And you cannot grasp it seems
How hurtful bitter and desperate
How grossly unhappy
Your sniping cutting bossing shrewish words
Make me at start of my day
A bitter taste in my throat
A stench of rotting in my nostrils
All the day made foul
Another victory to you
Another day of me wondering why
Why you are as you are
Why I stay as I do
When only person who gains
Is bitter twisted inhumane you.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Murderer I

** Murderer, I **
These waiting moments
When pause to consider
The loss of who I once knew
Seems to be a friend from long ago
On whom I could depend
Whose actions once I could predict
And then through strange decisions
Or inactivity and lack of direction
Became someone I no longer knew
A phantom of my senses
I would seek each day in my thoughts
To reacquaint myself with who it was
Had drifted away from my grasp
Left another person altogether different
Altogether reticent to discuss the changes
Presenting them as a fait a compli
Occurred and could no longer questioned
Yet that friend was me
And I am judge defendant and prosecutor
Of the murderer of that other
In becoming who I have become.

Instinctive still

** Instinctive still **
Soft hair warm skin sharp teeth
The animal in us all
The tribal habit set
From pack instincts long ago
Perhaps more to dogs than apes
Is where our lineage rests
If we are naked apes
Our social lines proclaimed canine
How we seek approval from each other
Often deigning to sniff each other arses
In our selection of communication
Catch scent of success or loss
Mark the fear or dominance
In those of our pack near
So it has been and we still retain
These ancestral precedents archaic
In a world of speed and silicone
Losing our status to the machines we build.

ImPrioned

*_ImPrisoned_*
The desire to escape and snake venom
In my system make me itch
Is it gypsy blood wanting to be travelling
The human condition to struggle against bonds of domesticity
How I wonder far too long
Allow thoughts to wander to widely
Outside the zones of proper behaviour
When did I seek the socially unacceptable
Or was I always there
Covertly peering our the wire
To those greener fields beyond
Not accepting that in my crossing
I bring myself and my views as well
Which soon eneough will set in
And blight new freedoms found
Instead of freed for life's capital punishment
Moved location of my sentence to a new cell.

Needing sleep

** needing sleep **
This rain is deep
And so dreams sleep
To lie and fall adrift
Escape waking purgatory
Waiting room for danger
Tired words and weary thoughts
Chase each other across the screen
All is strange mixed and jarring
As bad habits have murdered sleep
An easy conscience would lie in bliss
Instead these hours slumber I miss
Awake and wishing it were true
That I was asleep alongside you.

Moon riders

* Moon riders *
Moon riders in flight
Dreas crossed ignite
Flaming fireball collision
All world sees derision
Could not safety be done
All the Moon riders gone
Flared and vanished instantaneously
No sense of joyous victory
Splash cologne upon their tongue
For these fools on Moon hung.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Travel rhythm

**- travel rhythm -**
Rocking rolling riding
Travel rhythm driving
All the stars and seas to see
So many persons for me to be
Father son worker boss
Winner loser lover dropped
Hear the wheels in my head
Sense world moving from my bed
Rich man poor man saint or sinner
Experienced or capable or beginner
So many roles and clothes to wear
So many challenges if I dare
Take this journey from birth to death
At a speed I must set
Destination always be the same
How much accomplished is the aim.

Hunting Overtures

** Hunting Overtures **
Wonder all the sounds conventional
Opera light in symphony intentional
Tracking an orchestra through thawing tundra
Picking off bass player first
In quick session heavy trombone players
And a harpist are brought down
The rest in panic become scurrying forward
To escape the hunter's gun
Is the annual cull of brass wood and wind
Else orchestras grow too large
As it is too often violinists escape
Meaning some turn feral to feed themselves
Abandon classical education to fiddle
Become buskers or folk music exponents
Flautists are difficult to bring down
Light of feet and lightly encumbered
A patience needs to be shown
They tend to pop up to give shrill peeps
Thrill of making sounds drives them so
Then a well placed shot can bring them down
Ignore those wandering distracting hands
Aim five inches above the mouth hole
Every hunter of the music movements
Tends to have a favoured instrumentalist
Upon whom they wish to bring sights to bear
Many seek a harpist as a trophy
Such a large kill looks great above any fireplace
Personally cannot see the challenge
Slow and cumbersome and without a shred of camouflage
Prefer the piccolos myself
Stealthy and fast and rarely sighted
To bring one down you need a movement
Of unusual diversity and range
And if you can bag several
Make a pleasant wall hanging.

Seduced

*** Seduced ***
The sweet seduction of my senses
Allure and desire in my thoughts
Which you have performed
Began before you said a word
Indeed no gesture or action needed
For me to paint this object of my love
From fount of passion within
I noted angle of your nose
Raw sensuality of your lips
How high leather of boots reached
The length of skirt
Shape and cut of shirt
My mind directs my thoughts
Conjures tactile images of
Fingers tracing slow curling waves
Upon and up your lower thigh
Slowly spiralling and tracking ever higher
Registering the growing warmth
Marking excitement as turns to heat
And impressing all desires in kisses shared
Deep and seeking truth of you
Tasting your own excitement
Inciting me to greater acts of passion
Petrol upon fire of my lust
As equal matched in intensity
We seek to explore every part
Every limbs and every curve
Every spot of heat or cold
Feel the muscles and bones beneath
Feel ardour of your tongue
Look to catch your gaze
As satisfaction given and taken
How those lips which silent spoke
Unto the chambers of my heart
Now fill those chambers with golden love
As expressed in murmurs and gasps
Heavy working of muscles and heart
Sight devouring every line
Chased there be touch and kiss
Each caress stroke and whisper
Building forward to greater bliss
In first moments saw this all
Considered all and wondered if
You felt the same and dared seek
To trust and live in concert with me.

When you travel

*** when you travel ***
When beyond my sight you travel
Across the sea or across the country
When I know you will not be
Underneath same roof I call my own
My heart it frets and worries
My thoughts in awkward fear are tangled
No reason why where you are to be
Is in any greater danger than could be here
No reason to think I could keep you safe
If you were closer and nearer
Many a Fathers best wishes have been defeated by Fate
Life given and Love shared
Does not a shield impenetrable make
And if your needs or wishes take you
Beyond shelter and reach of my embrace
Then I can only kiss your brow
Send you forward well armed with commonsense
And hope the very best eventuates
Even as I contemplate very worst
And my heart beyond all rationality
Frets and worries for your safety.

-Three brothers-

-Three brothers-

Lost dreams in fogs of Time
Unbending cloud of distortion and destruction
Reshaping Future as slave to Past
Reducing Past to ever shortening glimpses of almost truth
The days of Present present conundrum
To take as fresh starting point and consign
With totality and brutality all of Past
Or build and expand specifically in those areas beneficial
Though in truth any decision made
Will be made based upon our Past
On our knowledge and memories of Past
Not in fact upon the Past as was
And as for Future always alluring
Or as a ship becalmed by Past's efforts
We must ride forward undaunted whatever we choose
Heralded by our own actions and where necessary
Marked or cheered by those of Fate
As these three brothers weird
Without each the other could not exist
Together incompatible as any three siblings might be
Sharing the same slice of Now
As a different and changed meal.