Category: Poetry

I began writing poetry as a teenager and never stopped. I read poetry, my all-time favourites, are Marina Tsvetaeva from Russia and well, dozens of others.

Why do I feel

Why do I feel
As others have
That lived
In harsh dictatorships

Why do I feel
As others have done
Who lived
In and out of freedom

Why do I feel
Like a fish reeled in
From the freedom of the sea
Onto a grey slab

Despite all the freedom
They say I have
Why do I feel
I don’t have any

Freedom is academic
It’s a document for a brain
Freedom is a political word game
For people to solve

Many are laughing as I write this
They laugh because they think they are free
But if we are free
Why do birds fly everywhere
And not we

 

 

The in-house slave

Let’s see inside your in-house culture?
Let’s see who you really are
Enslaving all of your workers
Keeping them down and poor

Look at you on the TV
Dodging publicity
It’s part of your in-house culture
It’s the shield of democracy

Against those who need it
Against those who are poor
You must blame your in-house culture
That goes on behind closed doors

Inside your in-house culture
What is this mask that you wear
This is your in-house culture
This is your wolfs lair

In your in-house culture
It’s your way or not at all
You stop the poor advancing
To give the rich man more

Everywhere we go now
The in-house culture’s there
They have their own way of working
That means they can do what they want

Do you march your workers to their stations?
Do you use them as if you own them?
Do you tie them down to their workplace?
Do you restrict their breathing?

It is all a part of your in-house culture
And you are sucking people’s blood
Working to your own advantage
Ignoring the common good

You hide inside your in-house culture
You feel safe behind your closed doors
You treat all your slave workers
To your own made-up rules and laws

Are we all just slave workers?
In an unjust economy
All we all just slave workers
In this so-called democracy

If your in-house culture
Has made a slave of you
If you’re so low paid that you
Don’t know what to do

Expose them to your neighbour
Expose them like you don’t care
Only to find that it’s like that everywhere

The in-house slave is angry
The in-house slave is poor
The in-house slave won’t work for you no more

A tree with many shaped leaves

A tree with many shaped leaves
Glows in a clearing in the heart of life

A tree with many kinds of leaves on its branches
Leaves of oak, chestnut, elm, and poplar

All these leaves grow on one tree
One magnificent tree

Then came the burning fire
Then came the raging flood

And its branches were torn from its trunk
And the seed of the many leaved tree was scattered

And many different kinds of trees
Began to grow in place of the one

But never again
Has there been just one tree

Magpies proliferate

Magpies proliferate
In their squawking, I can hear
Swords banging on shields

They fight for their territories
And where they have their nests
They fight with unrelenting courage

The magpies control the trees
But you do not see them in their leafy coverings
Looking down on the rooftops where we live

Every so often, they clash with squirrels
They do not let up the fight until
The squirrel is driven away

I hear rain

I hear rain, but outside there is no rain
No, the rain must be inside my head/me.
But where?

I focus on the pavements, the roads
The surface is reflective
It rained overnight while I was indoors
Now, the rain I hear now is trapped inside me.

Now I hear the sound of a violin
Yet the strain is gliding, hovering
On the dark reflective surface
Where is the sound coming from?

It must be coming from inside
It fills the skies now like music in a cathedral dome

But it comes from somewhere else
Comes from somewhere inside
Comes from somewhere inside me.

The Vanguard

Following behind
In the dusty industrial houses
Walking tiredly
Through the collapsing sunsets fire
The vanguard, so forgotten
By the laughing worldly crowds

Someone playing the official
However, did you get that name?
The leader of the free world
The tallest tree attracts lightning
The father destroys his own
The leader destroys his followers

A well fed cat

On a pavement in the early morning
A headless starling, its heart ripped out
through a hole in its breast
A sign of the times
Cruelty born from plenty
A well-fed cat
leaving the carcass for it masters approval

A child, untaught in love, acting cruel
perhaps unloved, perhaps not loved enough, confused
capable of expressing the demonic
A terrifying consciousness; of expressing the uselessness of its own love
Or maybe angered by an aggressive starling

A predatory cat possesses some very sharp, awful abilities
It claws through, its eyes are surgical instruments
That can see with X-ray senses
the heart and brain beneath the victim’s flesh
Its eyes within its teeth are
animal axmen executioners, Aztec priests
And its prey today is
a pretender, an ex-wife, a rebel, a minor sacrifice.

They all swim in the same sea

They all swim in the same sea
Feeding off of each other
Aliens, politicians, demons, priests
They’ve all been lovers.

They all swim in the same pool
Fenced in, protected
They all drink the same drink
The poisoned wine – is the most selected.

The poisoned wine of the sea
The sea of the sunset, the sea of blood
The vaults protected from the bombs
Of anti-love

The marble slab is moved away
Cobwebs and bones and funeral cash
Death, dust and fire on a silver tray
Buried in the soft stinking ash

They all swim in the same sea
The Fuhrer, the Caesar, the monarch
Babylon, Pharaoh, senator
They all have sacrificed to Molech