The workmen outside
They could be square bashing
They could be in a barrack room
They start up their noisy machinery
It could be tanks revving up a tank
It could be bomber aircraft ticking over
They could be on guard duty
At Waterloo
They could be firing cannon
At Trafalgar
They talk like a unit of soldiers
In enemy territory
They talk as if they were supplying
The front line
I’m so tired of war
Of living in its shadow
Of hearing it’s voice
Echoing like a fast train
Down through the generations
A million insinuations
Will not lift a straw
They dissolve
Incomplete work
Thought nothing of them
A million insinuations
Will not make rain
They build up like prayers
That no one hears
A million insinuations
I have a pocket full
Like whispers in a great hall
They burst like a balloon
But one I fear could win
It is the pin
Fields of sunflowers
Do you see the war above?
In the shadows with the thunder
To wonder where is love
Fields of sunflowers
All along the sea
Fields of burning yellow suns
Innocent and free
God made a tree
The tree grew into a branch
A songbird sat and sang
The song went through the branch
And through the tree
And God listened
In a book I cannot read
Beginning to end
I leave a bookmark
In a book I cannot see
Made of life’s sun and rain
I leave a bookmark
How far have I to go
How many window pages
I do not know
And even in the beginning
Yoked to the oxen of the past
Is no where I know
I woke up this morning and as usual I have to feed Katy the cat. She kicks up a fuss and makes end of the world cat noises and I have to fill her cat food dish as fast as humanly possible. So, I sit down for a moment and she starts running about like an out of control robot. She stops still then charges across the room and out the back door and back and forth with gusto and panic. Then she sits next to me and I notice something seems to be sticking out of her rear end. The moment I’ve always feared has arrived. I have to de-worm the cat. In great consternation and feeling probably more afraid than she is I look in the cupboard for the old deworming tablets, are they up to date? yes they’ll do. So I return to the living room. Where is Katy? Katy is in the kitchen sitting next to her food dish – obviously. I call her. “Katy, come and have your medicine”, thinking that I would be in for a right old battle now. Surprisingly she trustingly comes to me. I hold her mouth and with a finger on her lower teeth I prize open her jaw. In goes the tablet and now the rodeo begins as she begins walking backwards over the sofa, onto the floor and back onto the sofa again. I stroke her throat to help the tablet go down and then I see a strange look in her eyes, it’s over. I put out a little bit more food out which she eats and for now she is sitting with her eyes closed back on the sofa and all is calm.
The wind blows my words away
My wooden heart is sick
You cleaned me like a window
You pulled out the candles wick
The compartments of the magic box
No longer play a trick
The heart rolls between boulder stone
And crawls from avalanche
The heart falls like a dead bird
And is vanished between branch
The movie of the world
Goes through its windswept changes
Your love is like a lost bird
In yester years mountain ranges
Performance – he and you and what to do when shadows pull wings of death across the graves of ages made of stone and crucifixes and into seas of snowstorms anguish.
The performance crew of you and all that’s left of pain that swamps the stage with bloody clothes and masks of river rain
To be alive again and not to live; to be given life without its gift
It was strange, strange, strange performance that you gave
It was a strange, strange, strange farewell you made
Standing quietly still
Like this tree in the park
My face to the sun
My back like green bark
A tree that is blessed
With a new hearts awakening
With flowers and fruit
From another’s years ring
So much older than me
Yet the tree keeps growing
While in my years
I am painfully slowing
