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.
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.
Stopping for early coffee,
the car park is strewn like an abandoned chess board,
its players wantonly sprawled in beds of refuge
or drinking from lonely cups.
The airfield is a natural draw for cyclist
going round and round,
their music never stops.
Sit down, take a break,
you’re not the only ones awake.
Night workers and Day-breakers shuffle their biorhythms
into unnaturally fitting impositions,
chemically induced endorphins weave their moods
until the new day glistens.
Sporadic private jets interject my contemplation,
Sunday papers unfold as Marr awakes the Nation.
A subtle drift of aircraft fuel blends itself with caffeine,
I drink myself to life
and swipe my homepage clean.
I’ll drive from here to work and melt into the landscape,
becoming part of the art-form, part of life in just one take.
A panned out long-shot with credits running,
wide-eyed in widescreen,
From brisance condensed in hatred
ignition came,
like the dormant dust of ages,
from careless words and truth-less history,
it came.
Some unknown, immolated, evaporated, disappeared.
Others reconstituted, pulling limbs and minds together.
Whilst the lost fragmented to darker corners,
into the splintered flash of a moment, screaming for eternity.
Thunder roars silent in their dead ears.
The grey carpet laid randomly where it fell,
its fabric now woven into mine.
I wait for the second wave
to wash me clear,
away from the expanding storm,
to an untouched atoll.