My Poetry: It Takes A Train To Forget part2

Electric chug of box-car
Pulls me from the city
Carriage window sits silent
As brick and people rattle by
Until…
Rolling banks of reborn trees
Become the backdrop of virgin views, 
Pregnant with Mother Nature's promise.

White bob of spring rabbit tail 
Speckles the stillness like 
Summer clouds, as it
Darts under rotund hedge. 
Fawn elegance of unstartled deer 
Chewing in unison,
Graceful beast in the belly
Of wild England’s strolling habitat.

Swans slowly circle, 
Fleck plate glass lakes
Where hibernating boats wait
For winters kiss to fade
From multi-coloured hulls.
A fox stalks sly as a card shark
Waiting for the spade black night
Before reaping princely rewards
Of an unspoken instinct.

Patchwork cattle sadly grazing,
Growing milky fat,
To feed our yoghurt obsessions - 
When…
Forgotten childhood memories 
Of careless country summers startle 
Empty-headed days spent 
Stoned, skipping crusting pats in the heat.

Oh, country,
Prised from your bosom
It Takes a Train to Forget
The city.

My Poetry: It Takes a Train to Forget part 1

 

Prised from your arms,

I turned to stone in her embrace
This city offers no milk of inspiration
From her tainted breast
My wet nurse cannot sate
This appetite for isolation.
Soiled senses see trees
Used as grey urban ornaments,
Grass a 20 bag hipster accessory.

Prised from your bosom,

I turn ghost white in the half-light
Of fluorescent city streets,
Your pleasant, ancient beauty
Used to sooth my blues,
But too long
In the exhausting fumes
Of bricks and morter vista
Have calcified my senses.

Prised from your touch

Empathy dulls, as I settle
In concrete confinement
With sullied city machines,
Pavements smog thick
With broken men marching
From door-to-door-to-door-to-door.
Punching keyboards, clock
Watching, waiting for weekend reprieve
From jobs which define their happiness.

Oh, country,
Prised from your bosom,
It Takes a Train to Forget
The city.

My Poetry: I Watch the Ship Pass

I watch the ship pass the horizon,

For a long moment all I see
I do not notice the sun
Fading, turning the world red,
The ship becomes a silhouette,
A clipped shape in the dying daylight
And I know, if I wait
Returned from whence it came
Held like a baby
Where it waits, salt water rusting
Its once steely hull, till from solitude
To the vast black ocean
It goes, one last time.

Is the ugly metal hull carving its path
Through the steel cold sea.


Its pulchritude slowly dies,
Leaving just the rose gilded clouds -
A reminder of its lost beauty.


For the embers of lightTo reignite the dawn
This vessel will not be here;



In the still berth of the harbour

My Poetry: Struck Dumb

Struck dumb by a mild dose
Of contentinitus
I hang to old social media posts, 
like a barfly holds onto a drunken dream.
Squirrelled beneath the stairs
I watch the world spin
And wait for malady to return,
wanting more
Like hungry grave craving
Dirt falling on mortis body
Placating grey silence of death
With red platelets of inner horror
Carpets smeared
With amorphous art from
Untwisting the stomach’s loathing 
Grown bloated with love
And from nowhere I’m dancing
Blindly to a playlist 
Compiled ten years ago, while... 

Truth's blow strikes low
So drunk I sway to slow songs
And drink and dance 
The tango with my impassive
Mistress the night.
Till all I hear is the folk songer
And understand what he means 
When he sings: “New York, New York, you're nearly gone”
Like pernicious ghostly whispers
Of that raven beaked beauty
Who taps at my bedframe
Till the madness which follows me 
Drives me from my bed.
And at half-mast I dance
Dance, dance, in the lamplight
And wait for love 
Or boredom or hate
To tear me apart again.

My Poetry: Litter the streets with love

Litter the streets with love
Rain down kisses, like confetti
On the heads of pedestrians
Hold hands with loved ones,
Touch cheeks with acquaintances
Smile at strangers till they reciprocate
Or for acts of gross kindness
Your great blue heart is arrested.
Deck the high street windows
With red paper hearts,
Let yours thaw from a lover's breath
In a public display of affection,
Like OAPs still leaning on each other.
Fill the air with war time hits
So when we meet again
You can say I told you so.
Lend me a Leonard Cohen love song
So when we part, i'll understand
For me you made that exception.
Give me a song so we may
Sing together when times allow,
Give me a kiss, for when they do not
And litter the streets with hearts
For today is Valentine
I am yours, will you be mine.

My Poetry: Why? (the lie and the truth)

Why?

Did we let it go from fistfights
To flick knives to 5millies
In under three generations
Curbside gangs striking fear in commuters
City sink estate teens
Supplementing dole handouts
By selling botanicals
From homes with no gardens.
Up for the fight,
But unsure of the opponent.

Why?

Did we let racists kidnap the Union Flag
Beer fuelled pasty opinions
White inked skin, Red and blue
Swollen knuckles tattoed with 88
Blaming foreign populations
While Oxbridge ties secretly
Destroy neighbourhoods,
But history is cyclical
If we vote for campaigners
Of hate, genocide, fear
We will continue to forge links in the chain
Keeping us bound on repeat
Lest we forget our forefathers fought
For freedom without DOMination
From oppression, repression and obsession.

Why? 

Did we let prostitution move
From Street corner to computer
To handheld screens of pre-teens
Posting selfies of waxed pootangs
Playgrounds turned from French kissing
To noshing and Porntube banter
And still wonder how
A 4-year-old can be charged with raping,
While the establishment rises
From the grave on tabloid front pages
Each with a paedophilic cross to bear
Each leaving a legacy of dead souls
Of care home survivors.

Why? 

Did we let religion be reduced
To headlines: Islam is terrorism
Christianity a punch line,
Now men kill for cartoons
And atheists for cash prophets
Some fight in the name of Allah
Others for peace from occupation.
Millions spent maiming while
Education, food & medicine
Become commodities to fund lifestyles.
Left with Beckham and Cowell
We’re spiritually rudderless
God knows we need a new figure
Since they stole Jesus, Ghandi, and King
From us.

Because if my generation,
Is dumber than my fathers and so forth

And so forth and so forth

By the time our grandchildren rule
They won’t know the difference
Between the lie and the truth.