MichaelAitken

The men with clubs

The men with clubs are on their feet
They swing their clubs around the street
The flower children fall,
They had no help at all.

The men with clubs were on their feet
They swung their clubs about the street
On the Christian bodies they trod
The lovers of the sole God.

The men with clubs are on their feet
They swing their clubs around the street
Juliet will die of sorrow,
And Romeo will die tomorrow.

History as if by rape, fashions the world according to its will
And does so by the threat to kill
With fear and fire, it gets its thrill
and from the innocent blood, that it will spill.

At the very last minute

At the very last minute before you went away
You caught my eye with a cat-like glare.
I am not a mind-reader, I am not a psychic.

I told a friend how in the pupil of your eye
Volcanoes erupted and the universe shook
And you sailed to the door like a ship of the line.

“And it came to pass” that all that week
I feared the end of the world and I saw
The beginning of all time

2008

It is night

It is night, in the drizzle the street lights shine
The river writhes through London from a mountain of brooding sky.

Everything is silent in the town
A breeze, a wind; the moon peeks from behind a column of smoke
There are bridges, the bridges of London.

Tonight I have crossed every one
Drifting like a cloud from some far sea;
Legs, rain and street lights are jumbled
On the great treacle black back of the Thames.

I carry a sleepy eye over the humped back bridges
As the river slides beneath like a slow black cat.

I awake from sleep under the thin winter sky
Sparrows of cold air flit by me.
The morning sands of humanity pour across the passes
Like the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae.

The road went through a subway of bad dreaming
Cars came to a final end and love lost all meaning.
Time became a spectre that crossed from life to death
Time seizes control of your travels, to recompense its loss.

Were you wrong in what you said? Were you out of depth?
Who speaks up for you? Was there anything left?
The thread of sinister shadow reaches in with lacerations.
Perils have crossed over you, led by accusations.

Cruelly you lived long enough, surely you asked why
The secret arose over you, why were you meant to die?

The blind country boy

A blind country boy in the city of love
Touches no one and no one touches him.
The world passes by, so much blinder than he,
Weighed down by worry but not doing anything.

When Gods word came forward and divided the sky
To make the moon rise as he stood by the way
Standing on a corner singing his song
Not knowing the light from the day.

The earth spun around like an acrobat’s ball
Beneath his feet spinning on the overhang
And the blind country boy in the city of love
Imagined the world as he sang and he sang.

He touches no one and noon touches him
The world passes by, not doing anything.
He’s the blind country boy in the city of lies
He’s singing his song – until he dies.

Updated Blues

Updated Blues No. 1

I need more cardboard for my cushion
An to fill up the hole in my shoe
I need more cardboard for my cushion
And to fill up the hole in my shoe
Some leather would be useful
Some feathers would be a good thing too

The police came to see me
After my body began to bleed
A policeman came to see me
After my body began to bleed
My mother dropped dead in the street
My father is waiting to be freed

Can you spare some change
I’m fresh out of university
Can you spare some change
I’m fresh out of university
For the declaration of rights says
That all men must be free

Updated blues No 2

You can keep a poor man down
It’s very easy to do
Just kick him in the gut
And take all the meat out of his stew

You can keep a poor man down
He cannot say a word
He may never have a funeral
He’s as luckless as a Kurd

Take away his raincoat
After his beating
Then leave him in an alleyway
Bleeding, bleeding

To keep a poor man down
You catch him in a trap
With a little bit of bread and cheese
You can make him snap

The hurricane has its eye on you
It has a plaster cast of your shoe
It knows you like to go to the poorer part of town
It knows you like to keep the poor man down

Updated blues No. 3

While you were rolling up your sail
The poor man was walking naked through the gale
While you were rolling up your sail
The poor man was walking naked through the gale
It’s funny how he’s smiling now
He’s happy because he’s just got out of jail

A hundred million poor folk
Are found buried by the tallest mountain of the land
A hundred million poor folk
Are found buried by the tallest mountain of the land
They began without a penny
They were hoping for a helping hand

From the north, you can see London
It looks like a little pin of light
From the north, you can see London
It looks like a little pin of light
Now you curl up in your sleeping bag
And hope that you can make it through the night

Into the heart goes traffic

Into the heart goes traffic

Into the heart goes traffic of every kind;
everything you feel, everything you drink;
everything you dream, everything you think;
goes into the heart.

Not all of it is good, not all of it is bad.
When there is more good than there is bad
going into the heart, you will be at your finest.

God’s Word

The bible is good for you personally
The bible is good for your community

But do not let any man rule over the bible
Let the bible speak to you itself

If a man rules over your relationship with the bible
He can say he knows the bible better than you

This is like taking a baby away from its mother
This is making an orphan of you

The bible contains the milk of God’s kindness
Do not let others drink it for you

Turdus merula : Blackbird – Turdidae

Source: Turdus merula : Blackbird – Turdidae

Here is a recording to remind myself and for any visitor who loves their song of blackbirds singing. In the summer I would fall asleep to them singing outside my bedroom. What has happened to them? I hear nothing.

I fell victim to Asthma recently and spent some time in hospital on a ventilator. I recall that 30 years ago there was not even half the number of cars on the road and that the air was cleaner and that in winter the snow was magical.

The same thing has happened to the sparrows that were plentiful, even in Israel when I was there working on a Kibbutz in the 1970’s I remember them especially in the canteen where they would hop onto the dining tables.

I can see a lot of people are afraid of what they are experiencing in the environment just as I am. It was not mankind who set up the environment it is a gift from God. Hope is with Him. But who is He? The most accurate description of Him that I have found has been in the bible. It reports his name as Geova in Italian, in Sudanese as Yehuwa. However it is spelt or pronounced it means He-Who-Causes-To-Become. Perhaps in the time of Moses they did not have one word for Creator and tried to translate it in a hyphenated compound word. The earth is proving to be a unique and wonderful planet and those who search for another earth that is as wonderful are still searching. It is hard to understand that a spirit from heaven would want it for himself and start to fight over it with God. Neither are visible to us but their footprint in the visible earth shows there must be a presence to that footprint. Where you find a remote forest that has been destroyed in the past you understand that some phenomena in the past has caused it. If you see someone with a black eye you know that some one caused it. The earth too seems to have a black eye.

HOW I LOVE THAT GIRL

How I love that girl
she means the world to me
But I have been betrayed
by false friends and traitors
Who downgraded me
in her lovely eyes
Who treated me like dirt
to cause me ill feeling

How I love that girl
she means the world to me
But my honour is tarnished
by two faced treachery
Those who with responsible jobs
have misused their power
To condemn me as worthless
without a word from me

How I love that girl
She means the world to me
But how will I ever know
I meant the same to her
Because of interfering do-gooders
Loves course has been divided
I into the wilderness
She into her tricked conscience

How I love that girl
She means the world to me
But my love has been rejected
and maligned by self-righteousness
That belongs to people with stone for hearts
who play god with others’ lives
Who think that love can come and go
just as they can command or trick

How I love that girl
she means the world to me
But how will I ever know
the course our love would have taken
When those that purporting to guard my soul
against recklessness and sin
Have wounded the very spirit
that keeps it alive

Dec 8

DOLPHIN BOY

Dolphin boy-
walks up an elevator,
bites the sun,
sleeps in a tea chest.

In my dolphin boyhood I loved-
a rifle buried in the sea,
the saw teeth of sharks,

to bite the white exhaust of jets,
to pull them from the sky
through the wedding ring of the watery deep.

Dolphin boy-
his mouth cemented in,
ear lobes big as skyscrapers
hears the sound of atomic explosions.

In my dolphin boyhood-
dolphin girls lived in coral hotels
learning Morse code and glass blowing
going for long walks in hurricanes.

Dolphin boy-
dived into oil tankers with love cries
as sharks swam in filling stations
where raindrops cascaded in refrigerators.

In my dolphin boyhood
I visited the house on the edge of the world
where the skeletons of drowned sailors
played classical pianos.

GREEN DOLPHIN BOY

Green dolphin boy
Scream dolphin boy
Swim ship to shore.
Green dolphin boy
Dream dolphin boy
Dream, dream no more.

Upon a rock in Antioch
The mermaid at the door
There rode three knights
Who flew three kites
With this tale of dolphin law.

Green, green dolphin boy,
Orphan green and desert dry.
Locked up in the Barking Road
With the mis-identified sky so blue,
He blindly thought must be the sea so true.

The sirens wailed into the night.
The news report – “sky disappeared”.
Who stole the sky and why?
The S.W.A.T. machine joined the team
Of aviators searching high and low
In bowels of earth for rebirth –
The kidnapped sky, made young ladies cry,
“Daddy where’s the sky”? they sigh.

On Barking Road they saw a glow
Of morning light in the night:
Could this be the setting free?
Of kidnapped sky from dolphin boy?

Green, green dolphin boy.
Scream, scream dolphin boy.
Because of mistaken identity
You mistook the sky for the sea.

“Let it go, leave it be”,
Hailed the ugly chief of police.
Open the door, we’ll pass you a straw
Through which the sky can be released.

Okay, you’re on, but just one thing,
I want a ransom paid to me.
I’ll exchange the sky, the blue, blue sky,
For the sea, the blue, blue sea.

So through the straw the ocean poured,
The Atlantic, the Pacific,
The Indian, it was terrific.
The sky it was displaced by the sea,
Along the road, the Barking Road.

Everything was drowned by the
Exchange of hostages, sky for sea.
The water rose over Canary Wharf,
And dolphin boy swam free,
And Dolphin boy swam free.

Nov 21

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