Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Finish

* finish *
Quietly bring forth the finish
The End of Time and beast and Life
All opportunities and distance cease
In heartbeat vulcanize existence
Form diamonds from our cells
Immortalised an flawless wait
To be jewellery for angels.

Hope for love in Kings

** hope for love in Kings *
When Princes crowned Kings become
And princesses formed unions sacred
And queens are upon the land shown
Such Spring joy for people so governed
For in ruling with smiles
Infectious liberty is a joy
Confident in self and life
Finding unquestioning loyalty
Occupied by joys domestic
Has no time for fear
Fear which breeds heavy-handedness
Fear which makes laws arbitrary
Fear which seeks to bribe
A surrounding of favourites to protect
Life crown throne and family
So the rulership is dour
Out of rhythm with population
By setting fear as guidance
Entire realm by fear infected
Rule becomes shortsighted and inglorious
So hope your rulers love
And this love does spill over
To provide an atmosphere of respect
Mutual and enduring
Across all the land made rich
By rule benevolent and loving.

Monday, September 19, 2011

S and G as footnotes

* S and G as footnotes *
Simon and Garfunkel always seemed
To get the clarity dreamed
Of modern life as it were portrayed
A mixture of pop references
And pseudo intellectual babble
Hinting at books read or stolen
To hold up naïve rights golden
Snap frozen idealism of youth
Their songs laden with proof
The young see most clearly
Feel for the world more dearly
While we in living intend to
Just live and survive and get through
Our idealism all rubbed off
In getting this far paid the cost
Each corner cut and pragmatic decision
Leave us exposed to younger self's derision
So we ignore and cocoon ourselves
Leave ideals and rights on the shelves
Listen to the songs of Garfunkel and Simon
To remind us of a more honest time.

Friday, September 16, 2011

On the evening flight

** on the evening flight **
Somewhere high I am looking down
Seeing lights of night shining up
Fairy hills sparkling
Those homes and hearths of men
I wonder what they might think
If they were to lookup
And see our flying steed of steel
Lights flashing metronomically
Crossing from horizon to horizon
Are we heading home or away
Our days starting or ending
A flight or joy and toil
So the person might ponder upon the soil
Looking up as we disappear into night sky
An extra star flickering past
And as I look down the world changes
Clouds crowding sight
Bringing gazing up short
To only those things glimpsed
Beyond the length of light tipped wing
Are walls of solid white
Through which we carve
A sharp plane on the evening city flight.

Waiting over coffee

** waiting over coffee **
You are waiting over coffee
Smudge of foam on upper lip
For conversation to continue
A conversation of which you are very sick
This wasn't how it was meant to be
Being told I hope you understand
I care for you but don't love
Feel I need a different course
As all the things you plotted
Begin to come apart
Most terribly in the growing pauses
Between each word or statement
You hear the silence of the future
A lonely space of nothingness
Till someone or some other great affectation
Can fill your life so holed
Below the waterline of consciousness struck
A harpoon through your spirit
Dealt by one you thought
Would turn aside all harpoons
Be your support and lifesaver
As you expected to be theirs
Instead a coffee based conversation
Somewhere public where you cannot collapse
Where you must perform charade of caring
As you nod numbly dumbly
Agreeing to the unagreeable unforeseen
When all you want to do is scream
Over coffee waiting for the torture to end.

The art of performing

The art of performing
The stance and voice
How you cast your arms about
The posture enunciation and action
Talking of them does not touch
The feeling of spirit flowing
Burst supernatural of confidence
Ay walking the tightrope
Of cariature and reality
To be yourself and extend
Encompass the universe of audience
Wash into niche of each consciousness
The reality and statement of who you are
Greater ever than once were
Colossus striding ever onward
As at same time you are grounded
In reality recognisable and relatable
The very air caught by you
And floating omnipotently above all
You are art and action and presence
A rendering of entertainment
Caught and managing the very spirit
Of the art of performance.

To rise

* to rise *
Between the troughs of waves
Such sweet relief found atop
Tip and cape of white crest
Able too see clearly toward future horizon
Find in those stolen mighty glances
Energy to move forward and on
A reservoir of determination stored
Stored for use when down in trough
Caught in plunging darkness
Between this wave and next
Not knowing if descent will arrest
If ever shall rise again
This life set in such unfamiliar rhythm
Consistency is not life's trait
To ride the waves and rise
To glimpse horizon clearly
The best a mortal soul of one can do
In chaos of this choppy sea.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

To drown

* to drown *
Sitting in a railroad station
Waiting on a yacht
Caught between sun and rain
Undressed for either as they fall
Own smile radiant
Press of warm skin
Who were we and what could we
Believe in from noon to dark
As cold rain turned warm
In kisses passion blast
Storm forgotten and wind replaced
With our own natural energies
Beneath the shading protecting trees
In a forest wide and soft
No danger here but what we have brought
To drown in each others gaze
Be lost in kisses plentiful
Beyond the sight or fears of others
Finding love first time remembered time
In your arms so warm and true.

Crash

** crash **
Washed winter blues
Hues of bruises and dead fish
Sound of sirens caught
On the icy road
Your smile paused
As brain exacted to high a price
To change expression
As with life diced
The sliding grinding grating crash
Finality of halting
All the air expelled
A human scream of fear
Drowned out the car horn
Perpetually permanently hooting
So memory recalls
Tiny details seem more now
Smell of petrol leaking
Frosted sparkle of broken glass
A fine powder everywhere
And the creaking of suspension
Spinning tyre in the air
This world of fractured plastics and steel
Crushed and broken shell
And still the screaming slices
Through the cold night air
Even when no one could be screaming
For a stillness from passenger chair
They said death almost instantaneous
Probably never felt a thing
Instead you must feel forever
The guilt of her death's sting.

Religion

** religion **
Religion in all the different disguises
People using belief to sustain
Against the fickle and the wrong
Unlucky or inconsistent breaks
The decisions made flawed
By time or place or opportunity
Learned experiences found wanting
As circumstances and world shifted
What was never always is
And the change for today may not
Sustain the tomorrows hinted at
As catch lava flow of time
Irreconcilable with the desires of humanity
Unstoppable and impetus glacial
So to religion turn
Events of cosmos interpreted through human lens
Edifices built to what may be
The organisers of our lives
Mandated by human claims on divine
That we are here and will prolong
Forward into another realm
For those who believe no dusk light
All of life a stairway up
To door beyond and heavenly delight.

Kites

*+--- kites ---+*
Kites flying
Squares escaping us
Made fancy with bowtie tails
Restrained by string or wires
Darting on the wind
So free and true and loose
How we in jealously watch
Thinking our own bonds are tighter
Than strings to kite
Our own lives less adventurous
Than those kites wind currents carry
From here to there and back again
Free unencumbered and excited
How our souls young again rejoice
As their flight is sighted.

Starvation diet

* starvation diet *
In a small pool of water
Could be a mug deep pond
Swirling imagination plunges
Wet through and depth deprived
By exorcised sleep none left
Pirate bones on gallow rotting
Branches in wind windows scrape
Entire house of horrors presented
Lonely spirits seeking warmth
Knock on doors and fires move
Shake the curtains and set all trumpeting
Such a mundane existence otherwise
Without your fears to guide you
Restrain you from adventures extreme
Safe upon your favourite seat
Television's flickering friendship
All the world you need
To your soul a starvation diet feed.

Defective toys

** defective toys **
Every moment second thought
Spasm of consciousness devout
Unholy in idea to place
Holiness of existence in ego's grace
Without the me are we anything
Could we all be defect
Stumbling nuisances set free
In breeding more chaotic developing
A world outside perfection sought
A badly planned ill-designed thought
Cast offs here allowed to dwell
In case we develop something to sell
For all creation is not evolution
All this universe is a shop
A set of books with in and out
Expenses of profit and loss
A research development easy set
From the failures already met
Defects we have many
A sense of our destiny
Ignorance of our flawed design
How we are centre of a universe
Manifestly formed for our delight
From nuclear burning stars
Which give out our light and warmth
To the planet we can use and abuse
The greatest things in this place
When in truth we are playthings
For an experimenting race.

You were?

* you were *
There are some people
Who know every face and every name
In some places everyone they can greet
Always run into someone down the street
As if imbued with some local fame
Can recall their children and business
Know of achievements and any silliness
(That ill-advised costume choice at best and fairest count)
As if a memorex for a brain
Full of faces names and the inane
And then there are folks like me
To whom names refuse to stick
Every face a polyglot of every other
Lucky to recall facts on own brother
Stumble from the standard conversation openers
To an abyss of social embrassment
And upon meeting someone once more
Cannot recall what was shared or not
Everything about you been forgot
If you are a John James or Jack
Have children or are married
Work in retail or finance or on the track
Every fact and face eroded
Become a non-entity timid and shy
Because every name or face does get away.

After freed

* after freed *
Days of rain and clouds
Winds rushing by so loud
Proudest days and death
On continental beaches of '44
Was a time of war and woe
Freeing from tyrant's grasp
The old world enslaved
By the young foolishly brave
No body before war can stand
Survivours the lucky and the mad
And memories which sit
Almost at skin surface
Surge over and spill out
When stresses or tensions rise
Or what is carries echoes of what was
A siren wailing or door slammed
Scent of diesel fumes and a face
Remembered and never forgotten
Worn by a younger soul in a different time
And when the clamour dies
Heartbeat and thoughts steady
The realization you survived
And those waves of terror replaced
By constant drumming question of why.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Train whistle

** train whistle **
In the morning I can hear
The whistle of the train
Going down the tracks
They pulled up fifty years ago
The voices of engineer and driver
As they discuss the bridge
A mile on further down the road
Crossing a deep gully
Carved out from the soft bedrock
An eon or two ago
They are shoveling coal to keep steam up
Contemplating dinner and loved ones
Not much further down the track
Seems to them the train will be forever
A constant cross this land
And then the accident happens
The bridge fails beneath train's weight
Accusations and charges brought to bear
On the Board and Management
Irregularities in tender and construction
The legal wrangling for years
As track rust over and sink unevenly
Into soft soils on which they sit
The sleepers rot and all succumbs
To a complete lack of attention
The townships planned are shelved
Without a rail-line progress stalls
Other options instead pursued
The promise of the railway forgotten
This end of the world remains
Untouched unspoilt and untidy
And the ghosts of what might have been
Talk as they travel ever onward
To an end they do not yet know.

Trained avoi-dance

+++ Trained Avoi-Dance +++
Watching eyes wandering
Avoiding direct appraisal
The dance of sight
Performed daily upon
Crowded public transport
To not see yet note
The structure of surroundings
Be enclosed along with
Yet not interact between
Those other travellers travelling
Those other lives briefly shared
Whilst lives lived in isolation
If train is slow we all are
And yet no common bond have we
Beyond the fact we try and avoid
Eyes which might catch our own
Any semblance of shared community.

Grave thoughts

* grave thoughts *
Time till grave
Descend into
Each footstep carries
A Bergman film montage
Death chats cheerily
Though is surprisingly boring
As if heard all the stories
Always looking over your shoulder
To spot the next soul
In hope of something more interesting
While you are mortified
To discover your life
Treated so dismissively
Didn't you do some things
Strike some chord of wonder
Even your funeral it seems
Was cardboard ordinary
The eulogies by the book
Glossing over your inadequacies
Highlighting your flaws in a teasing manner
As you wait impatiently
As always ever you did alive
For the shuffling feet of the dead
To board the ferry
And the boatman smiles
Or grimaces in your direction
And points out sagely
"This is eternity - no reason to push".

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Now fall

** Now fall **
Without foundation falling
Grapples for truth
Destiny and departure
No hope of overruling
Fate has set a course
To deliver descent
Heart is heavy
Mind is inert
All we could lift
Tired and hurt
Muscles and brain strained
Ending in oblivion
Consumed as a fiery star
Collapsing in black hole of nothing.

Monday, September 12, 2011

Eclipse of soul

* eclipse of soul *
Lines of attraction
Sweeping curves of distraction
Blossom heat of lips
Tight fist of inner heat
Tumbling belief in something
Stirring deep inside ourselves
A switch is thrown
Arrangement met and made
When two into one seek
Set a tune of equal division
Give and receive
These fireworks of thoughts
Sudden eclipses of soul
A storm brewing delicious
To be broken by a touch
Then dance in rain of kisses
Find shelter in our passion
Beyond reach of world
Discover truth of ourselves forgotten.

All of the

** all of the **
Lines of white lilies
For all of the dead
Matching white crosses
Marching cross lawns
Paupers and rich men
Saints and sinners and clergy
All intermingled
In Death's growing host
Armies of yesteryear
Traders of yesterday
Young or the old
All come to stay
Our time is always short
Our stay only temporary
From first breath to last
Our course is preset
One day we will stop
In these lawns green and flat.

Where Towers stood

+ Where tower stood +
Bells were stilled
Taxis not queueing
The dead might smile
To hear how they are remembered
Best sides of their lives
Made immortal in remembrance
Absence makes heart fonder
All the cheering on hold
Such a sombre sober crowd
What was forever be
Marked by stone and silence
Marketplace takes on reverence
Where once Towers stood.

Friday, September 9, 2011

* Always been *

** Always been **
Crushed flopped and rolled
Always been the way
Ply them with alcohol
Steal their senses stealthily
Offer them companionship
A shoulder to assist
And take themselves somewhere quieter
Hint there might be romance
Pour a few more drinks
Until unconsciousness results
Then strip your prey naked
Take every cent they possess
Leave them humiliated and sleeping
Till morning welcomes them
Fools made wiser by
Your act of wisdom giving.

Thoughts never still

** thoughts never still **
If I could sleep
And find some rest
To weary and incapable of dispelling
These thoughts which are never still
A tumult in my mind
Such competition for attention
A dozen duties claiming ownership
Of my time and dedication
To do one I must absolve myself
Of omission of the others
And in my sleep they return
A crowd in rebellion
Demanding fair hearing for their needs
A slice of my time sleeping
Given over to judgement
On their officious claims competing
Each is sure they are right
And every other wrong
So my sleep is filled with disputes
A lack of completion
No way in sleep to judge fairly
And in waking find fresh disputing
And so it turn my back to them
And focus on only one
Knowing my sleep will again be broken
By these vexatious litigators
Requiring audience and latest judgement
On their persistent demands for recognition.

Self collapse

--- self collapse ---
These tired and worried frowns
A battle constant of emotions
Defeat indeed has been called
Sunset on once happiness
All the world in ruins collapsed
A chaos rampant in thoughts
Division between plan and action
All those walls torn down
Now a frog twitching to outside stimuli
No control or justification for actions
Lost inside eternal fog
Beaten battered broken crawling
From sun rise to sun rest
Idea of my individuality
Not a truth just a plastic token.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Eggshells of memories

* eggshells of memories *
The echoes of your dancing
Footsteps on the hall
Have all faded away
Even the photos are no longer on display
Letters written stored away
Eggshells of memories of once upon a time
Revisited in the quieter hours
Tracing where we were
Where we might have been
The words a seed of life undeveloped
A track not taken
Leaving eternal thoughts of what if
Even as the telephone rings
Or another chore must be done
We are who we are
And who we might have been
Was shed a lifetime of decisions
Though in those letters
Always seems to be just yesterday.

Illusions of Breakfast **

** Illusions of breakfast **
There is no delicious lightness of being
When confronted with a prepaid morning buffet
There is a sense of gravity
Never before marked in normal life
A questioning of capacity
Of what is ample for desires
When does enthusasism become gluttony
Taste become gastronomic suicide
As the plates pile up and each bain marie sampled
Bacon follows toast follows hash browns
Washed down with juices coffee tea and milk
Till aching towards cliche
A Mr Pompadu movement beckons
When epidermis will no longer stretch
And the entire taut balloon convulses
In an explosive failure.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Carre's messenger

* Carre's messenger *
In the rooms you think
Your seating should be exact
Lines of sight calculated
So unexpected will not excite
Though Dawson in De Janerio
And Walters in Prague
Show even the best precautions
Cannot prevent a determined strike
What happened to MacLeish in Lebanon
An accident without scope
A holy bomber indiscriminate
Claimed a richer kill than appreciated
Three years of undercover
And previous twelve of precious intell
Wiped by a single amateurish martyrdom
Targeted at expatriate businessmen
Drinking beer and padding expense accounts
Over lies in the Hilton bar
So you watch the waiters lean
Blessed with youth if not sense
In case one might be compromised
And offer up a threat
Though in truth you seek
Those with hooded eyes like yours
Which rarely settle on the inoffensive
See in each unsmiling tensed visage
Those eyes black as flint
The studied indifference brutal
Of a killer on a hair trigger
To find one you only need to examine
Reflection in your glass.

Summer maid

* summer maid **
Hair streaked with surf and Summer
Stained light by light
Flecks of sunshine cross your face
Blanket warmth of Summer skin
Coming in from salty skin
Caressed with sand grit girdle
A beach between your toes
Kiss is dry and hot and lush
Burst of Summer Sun
Evening finds you perfumed soft
Driftwood cast up on beach
Shaped and sculptured by sea
Mermaid green eyes capture all
Inquisitiveness of the free
And all the blessings rich or sour
Are never considered
As devour nectar of day's hours.

After 8

a** after 8 **a
These lizards tired sprawl
Wool business suits flap
A clumsiness to movements
Weariness of Time has them trapped
What energy once exhaled
Now parched the evening finds
Thoughts are rich yet tethered
By the falling of pulsebeat
Escape of all to sleep
In the gaps between each word
Mind a tiny nap occupies
And what was or could ever be
Sliced aside and gutted
Roadkill in the private lounge.

Sleepwalkers of Summer

** Sleepwalkers of Summer **
These long summer nights
Blue stretched lycra sky
Swollen Sun uninhibited beaming
We beneath bugs on the grill
Roads weep tears of tar
Dogs exhale noisily beneath bushes
Birds try to avoid flying
An oven heat consumes the air
Heavy in limbs and drowsy in mind
Sleepwalkers of Summer stumble
Ever onward in search of satisfaction
Wanting to live this time
Cavort and frolic in perspiring air
Be unbound unwound and free
For know beyond Summer heat
Closed doors and shutters of Winter cold.

Great leap to work

** great leap to work **
Another day of wake and fly
Intercity flight to save a ten hour drive
Instead a bus crowded flight of an hour and a half
The rub is the early wake-up call
The waiting for the plane to depart
Loading and unloading of bags and attitudes
Plying your high altitude flying ways
The benefits are seeing dawn on the wings
Clouds nitrate silver gleam
As on the runaway crouched waiting
For the takeoff leap and day's proper start.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Wait

* wait *
Words and deed and fire
The olden tales the best
Monsters are realistic
Lifted from malevolent evil
Nestled in a simple soul
From such uncultured nests rise
The spirits of our terror
Frightful fears of dark night
Between lightning flashes
When wind drags its talons
We catcha glimpse of something
Which evil caem this way
The travelling monkey of destiny
Pointed finger of fate
In every story participant
And real life must right now wait.

Light bright

** light bright **
Sun bright sun light
Scores windows clean
Turn mud to solid ground
Drains marshy Winter puddles
Gives us lift and sets dreams
In warmth and tranquillity
Bees fly and buzz
Birds in excitement flutter
A sense of Spring
Rebirth is the occasion
Waking from the dark
As days stretch longer saving us
From depths of grey tyranny.

Left

* Left *
Dream me a life
The constancy of occupation
Small bridge between here
And the sameness of tomorrow
What could ever be
Choices to be considered
Some decisions once made irrevocable
Others less significant than thought
No escape from life to lead
Only from channel life flows
Until all moulds broken
We have only the shattered pieces
To mark what was and what was formed.

Friday, September 2, 2011

* Radio electric dreams *

*-+- Radio Electric Dreams -+-*
Listening to music forgotten
Once rejoiced in by a younger me
Brings forth a tapestry of memories
Glass fragments of youth in my heart
Seems rapid world slows
Distance between the me of then and now collapses
Bridged by melody and lyrics popular
A million million heard the tune
And back then it was not so special
I would have marked it out for attention
Yet now it is a forgotten used train ticket
Discovered in a coat pocket
Connection to memories past and feelings once fresh.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

An hour of tidy murder

** an hour of tidy murders **
These murders often sleep disturb
Images of blood and bullet pocked corpses
Howl of police sirens
The gaped last words of significance
The unravelling of evil aims
How their procedure yields the same
From a fly speck of evidence
Build an irrefutable case
No cries of sound deadener not blood
No misdirection or failed detection
Every guilty party is conclusive found
Arraigned and judged and no escape
While innocent are always freed
Allegations against them proven baseless
An hour including advertisements
Of tied up life in little bows
Where truth and justice win out
And no one about human rights does shout
The wrong doers get just desserts
And our heroes never desert justice.

Manic

**++ Manic ++**
Silently the heart creeps
Silently the heart leaps
Exultation in internal chaos
A war of inner moods
Excitement despair surges black
And always ebb and low tide
The stinking waste exposed
Of carrion picking crows
A murder of them strong
Elsewhere rooks are gathering
Black in form and black in thought
The devil's birds and first to arrive
Before the battle fought
They live to strip the corpses
Bone gatherers on the wing
These beaked monstrosities
No spell there is to ward them off
Of darker sorcery are they
Brought forth by the dark dog
Whose paws in your tracks ever be
These are the harbringers of the dark
The pit into which you inevitably fall
After blues skies and champagne thoughts
Effervescent confection of world's delights
Filled till you can fill yourself no more
When the mood turns dark and sore
Beyond the edge of light
Turn towards pitiless unending night
Away from all true and fair
Into the infernal sink-holes of despair.

Corporate days

* Corporate days *
No pyramid build shall I
No babylon tower to the sky
My achievements will be dust
Even before I am laid down I trust
The things I have done of little consequence
Yet they were for more never meant
An evolutionary tweak here and there
Gaining a shift in perspective
Trying to bring forward the issues
Which encumber someone's everyday
Make safer someone's investment
With which someone else may wish to play
Defining what is done and how
So better doing can be done
Make it easier smoother less stress free
Explaining to those who have a must to know
What occurs and when and so many why's
If laid end to end circumnavigate the globe
Victories are often small
Battles never fully won
Always a loose thread or run
Which must be brought to rest
Always the shift of change
In this monolith of myriad parts
The politics to be straddled
Against inertia to be battled
As the work of business tidal
Rises and falls and always flows
Through good days and through bad
Of profit loss boom or bust
Simple tasks done well always must
And with commonsense tuned keen
Pragmatic decisions made which keep
A company firing on all cylinders
Interests of employers employees shareholders and customers
In equilibrium notable
For the persistently shifting target
Of what constitutes corporate success.