Is it a bad thing all this death? Making room for something else, shuffle along and don’t block up the hallway please. I’m having a substantial meal later today, my Yorkshire Puddings will be floating on pints of Guinness. I’m socially distancing myself from sanity, it’s comforting to surrender responsibility and to do as I’m told. Holding my partners hand has become an intimate act for which I’m grateful, we could have sex in a public place provided no more than six people are present (does that constitute dogging) can I mitigate it as a necessary act to maintain good mental health? A return to innocent pleasure has heightened my appreciation of intimacy. The sale of “Viagra Connect” has notably dropped in my postcode. Spotify reminded me today of my favourite tunes of 2020, they are a requiem for a lost year, a reflection of woodland walks, of marital breakdown and a flood of tidal booze rising and falling to the sound of the Netflix home page opening. “Rightmove” is now at the top of my Bookmark tabs and I have come to despise estate agents even more than I used to. I haven’t hugged my mum and dad for over a year but to be honest that isn’t such an unusual occurrence, although the imposed restriction has made me realise I should have done it more. Even Bob Dylan got his mojo back and wrote a song like a Psalm…I guess “The times aren’t a-changing” See you on the flip side folks…I’m off for a substantial feed.
Beneath horse hair flax a wretched creature stirs,
off the well marched blood stained tracks
beyond the bawdy ale soaked house,
The Scarer wakes with field mouse.
The dust of bones that fell in France
was scattered here to bring advance
to farmers field and heavy plough,
The Dead are churned to feed us now.
A soldiers bastard boy who no Mother ever mourns
another blasted Cannon, another Empire Dawn,
his clapper claps to scare the birds
Each clattered beat drowns out his words.
Across these patchwork Jaded Hills
an echo gently whispers still,
of all the voices never heard
Drowned out by time to scare a bird.
Molly’s in the basement
underneath the cement,
I’m on the pavement
thinking about enslavement,
the man with a rope
hammer out, furloughed
says he wants his job back
coughing through a dry hack,
watch out kid
it’s not something you did,
but they’ll be laying you the blame
when they’re doing it again,
you better duck behind the firewall
get yourself a clean name
trade in all your currency
Beat the enemy with a new game.
Get tested, get free
Car Parks now the Surgery,
wait weeks, wait years
Government still grinding gears,
well read, well schooled,
educated, well fooled,
watch out kids don’t fall for it again
they’ll clap you through the Streets
while they obliterate your names
cross here, cross there,
putting crosses everywhere,
no peace, no truth,
all their lies are people-proof,
pick up cleaver, pick up gun,
tear down the rising of their Sun,
wear shades, wear masks,
No answers for that politely asked.
A stone in my Palm,
grass as soft as tail feathers,
trees that paint the sky
where sunbeams cup the bloom of flowers.
In these dreams your face smiles,
in folds of sleep I rest our memories
here the pain retreats to silence,
where tides defy the bone white Moon.
Though I know you are gone to nowhere,
unconscious selfish wanderings will not lasso you back.
Gravity awakens me to birdsong,
I curse the sweetest sounds of day.
The garden is no more grown than was when left,
the Sea Spray of Portsmouth the Grime of Waterloo
Cling fresh beneath the reawakening memories of you.
Between the leaving and their return the world shifted
their brains rattled by battery and bomb,
Something replaced the life in them and something now is gone.
The surrender of innocence on English Summer evenings
was stolen by the rape of youth and a fleeting fuck of liberation,
Is a bottle of flat brown beer enough to drown their bitter indignation?
They must now retreat from the front they made themselves
to cower silently in their peaceful rage,
Returning to sweet freedoms won, inside a gilded cage.