These shores kissed now by poison lips
that speak of only love,
her mountains green ne’er trod by feet
sent here by God above.
Vexatious tongues rebuild her walls
and drown all those opposed,
that so each silenced thought destroyed
be as a coffin closed.
While men still talk of Nations
and plot with word and deed,
they anoint their aspirations
with blood of those who bleed.
Like outposts of Empire
with synchronised obedience,
instincts are embedded
every command unseen, unheard, but done.
People flee toward and from them
in blind eyed hope,
but they are mere reflections
of remote entangled entities,
engaged and yet repellant.
Giant men shake hands
tectonic plates shift, foundations shake.
Little people reach for each other
and fractures knit together.
Like Kubrick’s femur tossed by apes
our existence evolves and spins,
In time will it fall to dust from where it came?
to lie extinct between two poles.
While Starlings sketch the sky
you my love are gone
they fall and swoop to cloud my eye
and you my love are gone
The pier is thrashed by wave on wave
no pulsing swell will bring you home
unchained from hope yet still a slave
and slave to it alone
A thousand lovers pass me by
unnoticed in the throng
not one of them would e’re know why
I’m lost where I belong
As a younger man he had taken the cloth
had sold his humanity to God
had blessed babies and crossed the dying
had given assurances of eternity
and peace to those for trying
He had been a good father
a passable husband
he had wandered to and from his flock
but mostly he had held fast
and built his house upon the rock
He sat in a pool of his own piss
and was manhandled by ungentle hands
forgetting how to pray he cursed those he had led
in communion he forgave them
as they broke his bones for bread
O father my father your father
forgive us what we do
and I will pray to unknown gods
and beg
that they remember you
And I noticed the folds of the silken wings
had blended with the Oaken bark,
as one they formed natures pillow
both dead, yet comforting to my fractured mind.
Slumbering my memories carried me above the sheltering canopy,
they shook me in my dreaming yet still the lumber held me firm,
it’s rotten boughs forgave my fall
and Angels wings embraced me there.
In the forest of my darker days I lost my soul,
when all that could revive me was the pulsing heart of earth.
I was a knotted life lost in a womb,
yet from that depth of darkness to here I came.
Guidelines strictly measured
stretched across the fresh dug earth,
row on row
of where to grow
each calculated for their worth.
Tethered and twisted to unnatural climb,
to conform and deliver
in the meanest of time,
these things of great beauty crushed from the seed
all kept in a line by purposeful greed.
Happily reaching up to the scythe
joyful to give and to serve as they must,
sown by cruel masters who keep them alive
to feed off their bloom
then return them to dust.
© Wolfgar 2018
Take these eyes that I may not see
the harm that went before,
and take this tongue which silently
withholds the words of war,
yet screams within a fractured mind
where only I can hear,
the terrors that were left behind
so far away but ever near.
Take my hands and wash them clean
of flesh tainted by blood,
that in the night they might un-claw
and grip some peace instead of war,
and please take my heart and fill it full
with all the things I lost,
that somehow might replace in me
all I spent to pay this cost.
© Wolfgar 2018
In beautiful decrepitude
the structure stands bereft and crude
through windows cobwebbed and curtain’s torn
it gazes down where dust was lawn
the slated roof now patched with fern
its chimney stacks that once did burn
are housing rats that left the ship
but never quite abandoned it
and often when the Sun breaks through
it warms the rooms where love was true
and in that light see grandeur rise
where once the ruin beguiled eyes
© Wolfgar 2018
How proud the branches stood in spring
pink and bare with youth,
Un-leafed till then yet billowing
with natures un-spoke truth
that time will pass and weigh them down
with summer ripened jewels,
while all of earth might spin around
though never shed its fools.
© Wolfgar 7/2018
An updated interpretation of Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy
They throw in Drummer Lee-Rigby,
to bleed.
un-defended, just as culled.
His landmark a rain washed gutter,
which flushes the detritus of human life into a divisive Thames.
The cities true testament to multiculturalism.
Young Lee-Rigby never knew fresh from his red rose home,
that the pride of his life would out live that day, and be left to his boyhood alone.
And why up-rose to nightly unrest,
white boys with hate unleashed in their breast.
Yet portion of that well-trod street
will Lee-Rigby forever be,
from blooded tarmac to fiery melee.
From hate filled night,
to grief filled day.
The death of a forgotten land,
and a scarlet line drawn in their sand.
© Wolfgar 2018
