My Poetry: Notes on a Destiny, Ignored (The Fall of Icarus by Breughel)

In tired arms, a child sleeps

In crook of a widow's weeping,

Grief dressed like shadows

Hush the black room silent

Love's lasting touch remains.

But outside clouding room,

Where joy and heartache tales entwine,

The world moves a mile through space,

And because they do not know,

Men still laugh, and children play.

People move to fill the day

Do old things in new ways

Clones sell souls collecting pennies

Watch the world whirl by

Their windows,

Because they're numb to our fate.

And so nobody notices the boy

Fall from crystal blue sky,

Or see the ship which witnessed

History, but still set sail for the horizon

To fulfill its destiny anyway.

Nobody saw the boy’s feathers

Gifted by flawed prophets

Melt from his thin white arms

Just before he fell.

Were you talking to the ploughman

About reaping what you'd sowed?

Were you blinkered to history

Unfolding before you,

As you kept you head down

And miss poor Icarus, the fool,

Reaching for the sun?

His death made mourners

Of rubberneckers,

For a second a nation recoiled

Then returned to cups of tea and biscuits

Forgetting the death,

Because it did not belong to them.

My Poetry: We Could Have Been Friends

We could have been friends.

While you lived in town

We still had the potential,

But now you've moving on

And I know we will never

Meet up again.

Walking past the pub

Where we used to hold court

I remember the last time

We boozed together,

How I’d tried it on with your friend's

Girlfriend

Before passing out.

Our last goodbye exchanged

As you placed me in a taxi.

I blamed the stepped on coke,

It could have been the whiskey,

It was probably both.

My Poetry: Time For A Check-Up

Don't fcuk, you'll die
Screams the clinic’s literature,
Don’t be shy get down
Once a week just to check
Why’s it is itching.
Don't self-diagnose
The internet cannot differ
Between one discharge or another
Just scare you into thinking
The very least you’ll need
Is another dose of penicillin
And a lecture on wrapping
Up when out beasting.
Have you thought of onanism?

All meat is the devil
Says the latest, medical reasoning,
Don't eat bacon
No, not even,
When the hangover rages
Into that dying morning,
It'll cancerfy your colon.
It’ll strangle your heart,
One day while you wait
At fast-food check-out line
So swap your steak for tofu,
Add Qourn to your pasta
And live way past your fifties
In pompous misery.

Drink water each day
At least two litres or you’ll die
Ignore the added fluride
Calcifing your brain,
You won't need it where ya going.
Rub your balls monthly,
The telly quack's always saying,
But just a little -
More than five minutes too sexy,
In public it’s rude.
Besides the vicar told me
It’d drop off if not careful
And hell doesn't have
A free NHS,
Just a white coat with big hands
Who'll tell you to cough
Before inspecting your rectum.

Because you’re almost forty
It’s time for a check-up
Fornicating too much
Been drunk all last month
Eating red meat like its fashionable
Not seen your berries
Since the belly extended.
But don’t worry, I once read,
Of a man in China who smoked
Forty a day, ate swine between cigs
And he was just fine
Till one day he dropped dead.

My Poetry: Prophets Of War

Masked men throw sledgehammers

At antiquated figures of worship

Faces of historic pagan idols

Turn to dust under metal fist

Drawing blood red anger

From fusty academics

Fenced into wooden

Ornate graven boxes

Decorated with ornaments

Of their useless sentimentality:

Don’t forget, said ‘terrorist’ leader

History has no meaning

Art is narcissism

Leave the dead dead.

Sanctioned terror reigns

Bombs on deserts,

But who are our enemy?

Why do I feel empathetic,

Listening to this vandal?

What powers angers me

About society as it does he?

Under hajab, or behind tie

We are all the same:

Fundamental in our needs

Arbitrary in our desires

Horrible in our convictions.

Blood spills into the corridors

Of museums,

Woman martyred for shielding

History from murderous thieves.

Symbolic books,

Used to guide belief in death,

Now used to justify destruction

Of marble and flesh.

On plastic western streets

Our fight is for a choice

From whom to seek salvation

For when he who cares not

For sin or skin tone comes

His intentions will be most honest

He will make dust of us all.

So nail your colours to the mast

And pick a text,

But it took me five weeks

To buy a coat I don’t wear,

How long have I left to choose

My saviour?

I wrote this after watching a documentary on Isis - the film focused on their desire to destroy old images/statues etc of anything which people had historically worshipped. Of course the film also hinted that they were selling pieces of plundered artwork to foreign collectors; thus making money of the people they publicly want to frighten by smashing up museums.

My Poetry: Things Are Going Well

I

We threw splinters

Of ourselves at the rising sun.

Lost souls exploring the space

Between earth and eternity,

Then took what was left

Rebuilt ourselves anew

From the wreckage of a summer wasted,

Chained to a seaside town

Where ecstasy filled our weeks

With all the colours we possessed;

We inhaled the palette of that town

But we knew, we always knew

It was too small to hold our dreams.

So when the colour faded

From our cheeks, we

Picked poppies as a hobby

Like old people use walkers,

Drowning in isolated fun

Never saw the sun or moon

For the days never bloomed.

Rode the carousel

Listening to our bodies scream

Feeding habits in sneaky toilets;

Long nights kicking sweaty poisoned bullets

Into bare mattresses,

Just to get ill again.

Call. meet. nod. repeat.

Five years up in smoke,

Five years of nothing but

Turning tin foil sheets tar black

Girlfriends disappeared,

Relationships put on hold,

Wish I could have told them

I'd be back one day.

I was just sad, and scared of suicide

So become invisible instead.

But all they saw was a ghost

Squatting in my eyes,

As pale thin skin turned to plasticine

Like a wax work of someone

Nobody ever heard of.

II

Now, years later

I'm seeing friends

In the faces of strangers,

How I wish I'd known

The last time we said goodbye

There would no more hellos.

Emaciated corpses have grown fat

In semi-detached villages:

No more Hellos.

Some returned back to dust,

Freedom to fly without flesh prison:

No more Hellos.

Those of us who are left,

Watch our teeth grow longer each day

As we keep our beds clean

Dilute blood with new poisons

When mother nature knocks

Or rain clouds slip

Round the neck like a scarf,

Unable to warm hollow bones.

Sallow muscles plead

As I watch dirty faces

Nodding in doorways

Stop, roll two bag notes

Between fingers, then walk on.

I worked hard to runaway

From small town destiny.

Now things are going well.

My Poetry: The Fire By Which You Set Earth Alight

Her picture sits on the mantle-piece,

Next to a puddle of red wax.

The memory of its flame

Illuminates the shadows on my heart

When the empty bed

Leaves me unable to sleep,

As the nightingale rests

And the metallic moon hums.

I used to re-read our letters

By that candle’s light,

Every word an embrace,

But, long ago I stopped counting the days

Since that flame burnt out.

I remember Arles,

You telling me all about Van Gogh,

On the banks of the Rhone

Where you spilt red wine down my pants.

Where I snapped that picture

As we set fire to your fears,

While planning to conquer the world.

Your flame red hair growing back,

Your smile returning like a sunrise.

But that was then,

Before the fire by which you set earth alight was extinguished.