The Equine and May

On the flatland was a field so green, had cute blue
flowers that tend to disappear in end of spring.
The pasture was framed by purple poppies and no
sheep around, those infernal eating machines that
graze meadows into wasteland. Stood in the middle
of this succulence, the aroma was overwhelming...
I swooned.
Sank down on my knees buried my face in the moist
wondrousness and wished I were a stallion.


Clear as Rain

Drizzly day, on the terrace a damp dog, wants to come in, no can
do doggie, but I let the cur into the shed where it curled up on an
old carpet and looked at me with soft brown eyes full of gratitude.
I remembered times gone by, on a drizzly day, when I walked past
the railways station’s restaurant I saw her sitting there talking to
her brother. I hadn’t seen her for six months I think, and thought
I was over her by now, I took a step back, but her brother saw me
and grinned maliciously; before she saw me I hurried away didn’t
want her to see me like a clammy canine looking for compassion.
Since she left I had been drinking too much and lost my job, it was
like nothing mattered and I was enveloped by a miasma of sorrow.
At the station I bought a paper, and just stood there, hoping to see
her again...I did. Saw her walk to the train, lovely as ever she was,
soft brown eyes that didn’t look my way. Her brother saw me and
whispered something to her, but she did not turn her head to look
and see me. I knew it was over, finale, what an utter fool I had been.


Interlude

The air was still and trees in the forest stood in frozen silence.
A rare day, animals listened to the echo of last summer.
Hare trails in the snow made without haste, the persecuted
had nothing to fear on a day when mountain lions dream.
The bear in its den deep under an oak tree, dreamless sleep
whether still or storm, but do not wake him up before spring.
Tranquillity of peace is only a brief interlude, kill or be killed,
eat or starve are wild life’s merciless destiny. Calm cracks as
the cold intensifies; there will be a toll to pay if spring is too
late with its promise of continuity. Behind the forest, where
the blue mountain begins, a pack of wolves howl to the moon,
the soul of hunters lied bare in an endless nocturnal dream.


Friends

It was running wild, running through the house, unstoppable.
Down the road it ran... filling cities and town with a quiet scream.
What is happening, no one asked; people just stood there
and questions were not answered.

Rain was, a whisper on your umbrella, so what is new baby?
How should I know... the new thing was the world had
fallen silent, humanity had to listen to the world’s voice.
It was then, a small nation, that doesn’t follow rules, decided
to drop a bomb, that stunned the globe into hush.

Silence, silence do not open your mouth and express an opinion
less a written word will appear on your screen ...forever
screaming noiselessly into your ear: you must not have
a view contrary to the mainstream. And the big silence will
overshadow our life and reduce it to baby picture on
the facebook a place where you sold your soul in order to
have 7234 friends.


The Mighty Fall

I fell through the night under me I could see white crested waves
of the sea and there was little I could do to stop this freefall.
It took 3 minutes to reach the unforgiving surface of the vast ocean.
I screamed like a hurt animal and began sinking could not breaths,
fought and struggled to be free of this huge amount of water; and
there it was my heaven, full moon pulling me upwards so I could
fly and dream amongst stars; but I had to swim to Saragossa and
find the secret island always hidden in a miasma of the absolved.
I could not do it alone. On my back floated my body was anemone
and incredible beautiful. The sea was a mirror now, yes, affable as
it is when looked at by a young girl of eighteen, I was held back by
the sea as the moon tried to possess me they both wanted me and
this filled me with ecstatic happiness as the current slowly helped
me to reach the dawn of Saragossa.


A Silenced Voice

They were playing our song, Anna, the evening you walked
into the dank, dim lit hallway where your assassin waited.
You saw his outline and turn to run away, even though you
knew it was too late; and our song that you had hummed
disappeared into a vacuum where no murderer can shot
and disrupt the tune. Along the coast of Siberia they built
giant ears of steel, which can detect the slightest whisper;
who paid your assassins? They hear biased political tales
and gossip, as the echo of a sad voice that grows fainter by
the day. The truth will out, it is said, but when it does it is
often too late, the slayers are dust in the wind; yet history
will know who did this deed, they will forever be shamed,
as they become villains hurtling screaming into an historic
humiliation..... Anna Politkovskaya, your name is liberty.


Light Shoes with Straps

In Aruba I bought a pair of sandals, with leather straps and
shiny steel buckles; I wore them with white ankle socks.
Coming home from the sea in June no one in my town had
sandals like mine. Mind, not much call for sandals in
Liverpool, winter rain, soggy streets, hailstones and so on.
When I went back to sea, I left the sandals under my bed
to wear when returning, but when I came back brother had
worn them to death, broken straps and rusty buckles.
I was very sad, but then I met a girl called Sandra and since
it was October, too cold for sandals and white ankle socks,
I got over the loss.


Magical Canvas

The final painting on the wall, the one which adjusts
with the seasons; autumn, and leaves fall on my floor.
I hear a shot a rabbit falls out the painting, liquid ruby
trickles along the floor, down steps and into the yard.
An arm comes out of the painting, picks up the rabbit
and a hunter walks into the woods at the top right of
the canvas. I look at the picture a small plane has
landed its pilot leans against it, smokes a cigarette,
(Virginia tobacco I’m sure) and there is Sunday calm.
I get mop and bucket from the shed, wash floor and
steps; in the yard a dog licks the spent life force.
I look at the painting again the plane has flown what’s
left is a crumpled packed of cigarettes with a picture of
a camel, thrown on my floor.


Persecution Complex

What to do when ghosts appear at noon? Coming up the lane
to my retreat, where I have been hiding for twenty years, from
wife her eight children, five horses and a pack of howling dogs.
They are coming to take me away. Camp outside my cottage
knock on windows looking in calling my name want to come in.
How long can I hide behind the sofa the floor is stone hard?
It is dark now but they have flashlights shine into windows to
see sign of life, I have to try sneak into the kitchen they can’t
see me there, open a tin of sardines and drink cold water.
This is going to turn into a long siege. It’s three in the morning
they sleep in their tents, I sneak out take my scooter, and as
it is downhill all the way to the main road, they can’t hear me.
They can take my house, locus eat my land and sell my tractor.
I drive into summer dawn, free of domestic enslavement.


Life on an Island Rock

Wings, it is a good thing to have wings, wish I were a seagull.
Few want to kill them, when boiled they smell of open sewer.
Only Inbreeds, on islands, forgotten by god, find seagulls tasty.
People sickly ingrained, spending time fucking their own kind
end up being feeble minded they can’t even keep a fire going.
Sit in stone cottages and freeze cruelly, they eat raw seagulls
since they have forgotten how to cook one. Show me how to
light a fire? Rescued, sent to the mainland, the next generation,
having learned how to read and write talk about serene life on
a forsaken rock where paedophilia was the only show available.
Jesus, those dreadful little islands their sheep blown into
the sea and they forgot how to darn socks. Yet there are those
who think islands are places of lasting peace. God, what you get
is the tranquillity of stupid.


The Singer and I

I met the famous singer after her concert, we hit it off
as they say, drank red wine and had a jolly time.
Next day I made her breakfast, but before she could
eat her manager came and took her away.

It was a peculiar morning, the air was still and full of
heat, like suffocating in Finnish sauna, I tried to walk
into the stand up fridge, but the door wouldn’t shut
and I got strawberry jam all over me.

Spent the forenoon watering my flowers and myself
thinking of the singer. I only saw her again once when
she was interviewed on TV, but for some reason she
didn’t mention my name.


The New Knowledge

Early September, days are getting shorter and evenings longer;
the breeze that blew had pockets of cold air, a reminder of
things to come. Dawn when I got up looked into the mirror
and saw my father’s aged face. Lucid now and for once fully
conscious I had been asleep for forty years and lost the time
between youth and old age. In a foreign country and I could
no longer remember how I got here, or how to leave.
I pressed fingers to my cheeks, in quiet despair, finger marks
on inelastic skin that only slowly faded. Father, why did you
let me sleep so long, how can I now recapture my adult years?
A rumbling through the house, a picture in the living room
fell off the wall; it was of my mother and she looked so young.
The intensity of my reawaken consciousness overwhelmed me,
walls fell and naked I stood in the ruins of my unlived life


The Ship Wreck

A sparkle, the freighter exploded and up in the air I flew. Looking down the ship
had vanished in the glitter of sunlight. Into the sea I fell, bubbles and angst,
but I saw above me a raft. The sea, calm, always is, it’s the wind that screams
in defeat as it can’t bend the sea to its will; and shallow land that tries to stop
its progress, the freedom to be itself. Night, around me danced the women
I had loved. I drank their nectar and became the strongest man on earth.
My hearing, acute, when tons of iron hit the bottom of the sea I heard screams
of suffering steel and humanity, in a common voice. I willed sea to become terra
firma, silky sand; I dragged the raft behind me like a sledge, heading for the red
mountain where sun never sets because it has no sea to cool into.
Women had disappeared into fluffy clouds and useless heavenly angels, without
their sustenance I lost my potency, and the sea flooded the land. When my raft
drifted into Sidney harbour it was New Year’s Eve, fairy light committed suicide
by jumping into dark, shark infested water. The scream of broken steel and man
never stopped ringing in my ears.


Not under a Banyan Tree

I drink coffee under an elm tree, one of many in the avenue; filtered sunlight
makes shifting pattern on the pavements, and the sun loses its cruel power.
A willowy woman walks into the only café where one can smoke, she likes to
drink coffee with her cigarette, her dog sits by the door looking in waiting.
A woman in her sixties who wears a long flowering dress, plenty of bracelets
and rings, too exotic to be Portuguese, is coming up the road. Married three
times, first to an army officer, from an aristocratic family, then to a Swiss
engineer, who built ski-lifts in the Alps. Her third husband is a poet and that
makes her sigh (downhill all the way dear) She frets about her daughter, who
is forty and not yet married. She had hoped her child would wed into
lofty society, but now she wishes her only offspring will find a man with
a steady job; not a cook or a waiter though, one must draw a line somewhere.
She has a glass of beer shows me her latest bracelet, bought this morning;
she smiles happy as a child as the sun goes on shining and leaves on elm trees
are deep, cooling green.


A man called Anders

He sits in his cell, not allowed to read newspapers
or watch TV. The centre of his mind is the coldest
place on earth…. He gives, for now, no ground for
other thoughts, say, he might have committed
an unspeakable crime. His mother has forsaken him
his father wishes he will have the sense to take his
own life. His cell is frosty blue, those who feed him
avoid eye contact. No hand reaches out to touch him,
and his former friends tell us he was a big nobody.
He cannot hear this he will not hear, he is the king of
his own mind and mustn’t stray from his chosen path.
Cosmic loneliness, if he, one day, wakes up from his
slumber of self delusion and sees how grotesque he is
there will be no one to embrace him and give succor.