Add five parts blood to five parts blood

shake well till indistinguishable

Add five parts lies to five parts lies

remove the scales that fall from eyes

Add five parts belief to five parts belief

filter well, truth lies beneath

Add five parts hate to five parts hate

let stand and watch coagulate

Add five parts word to five parts word

knead well until you have the herd

 

Add five parts truth to five parts truth

let rise to witness wisdom’s proof

 

Remove the filtered parts of waste

Add seasoning and love to taste

 

You tether your thoughts to a leash

and send them out with gnashing teeth

 

They slather through the mystic maze

to tear the flesh from fragile days

 

You feel them pull and twist and jerk

those thoughts released become berserk

 

They bloat and swell beyond inception

too large to shrink at mere rejection

 

You feast and gorge on their return

such well-placed words can make worlds burn

 

They are now beasts beyond command

unbridled from their master’s hand

 

There’s no dominion of recall

what comes for one will come for all

 

The mountain of rust dripped its tanks dry

shedding the remnants of journey,

 

the prisoner withheld true tears from his eyes

surrendering himself to the gurney.

 

Neither of which had fashioned their end

envisioning fate in form or time,

 

enabling the factors with which they might mend

the wreck of their ruinous crime.

 

Yet as they lay to rot and to dust

real meaning they found in their way,

 

that all things will be in the ways that they must

that all things should come to this day.

 

 

In the twilight of the waking day

the early bird unplugs the worm,

and I along my well-trod way

observe its hapless tangled squirm.

 

Eager beaks pluck spring fresh reds

as blossoms blush unperturbed,

while those still slumbered in their beds

seek in dreams what they once learned

 

as children with their minds alight

each early wonder newly seen,

would wish away the endless night

to once again be where they’d been

 

I mourn the worm and praise the wing

I breathe the air that holds the day,

these early hours make old men sing

as if again a child at play.

 

 

“What’s past is prologue”

 

In grayscale worlds of discontent

through glorious summer lions slept,

nations shaped new continents

with pledge and promise never kept.

 

What laid dormant was never dead,

each solstice bore a thousand sons.

Arctic freeze withheld its breath

when all around were levelled guns.

 

Whispered words and words emplaced

are bulbs for shoots in years ahead,

history writ and truth defaced

but on the script was not what said.

 

The Masters game to blend each season

toward some future masquerade,

Where flowers bloom they need no reason

of why their hopeful seed was laid.

 

 

Today he only wants to drink

perchance to dream

but not to think

 

Today he picks the scab anew

to make it clean

like surgeons do

 

Today he shuns his injury

to feel it like

it used to be

 

Today he peels his memory back

sticks his fingers

in the black

 

Today he does away with words

what use of those

that never heard

 

Today he digs his pockets deep

to spend the hours

he cannot sleep

 

Today he sees his various self

where he left them

on the shelf

 

Today he dives into his pool

and knows himself

to be the fool

 

Today the day is all too much

he cannot stand

without his crutch

 

Tomorrow comes with wound and bruise

and more torment

he’ll never loose

 

 

 

The horror of an upturned shell

the Sky above its feet,

so close the Oceans saving swell

too near to poisoned meat.

 

Right yourself or skewered be

pivot upon your nose,

flip yourself toward the Sea

escape approaching toes.

 

For I have been that stranded beast

forlorn upon the sand,

prospective flesh of tainted feast

an ending most unplanned.

 

I know I’ll kill lest I be killed

that slowing down of time,

the sharpness of each second filled

it’s your life, never mine.

 

I am a tiny little breeze

whipped up upon the hill,

I’m gentle when I’m in the trees

and in the valley, still.

 

Blow me through a Desert,

a Canyon or a Gorge

repeatedly and over time

you’ll see my pathways forge.

 

I’ll twist and rip the very earth

you’ve built your world upon,

I’ll shade the Sun that nurtures birth

till all that’s good is gone.

 

So, if you sense me stirring

dismiss me not with ease,

for Storms are reoccurring

and will Ravage where they please.

 

 

Dad, I won’t forget you as you’ve forgotten me

your memories cruelly blown

like leaves

are from The Tree

 

      I still feel your hand upon my troubled head

your words of guidance

softly spoke

each one thoughtfully said

 

      I see you fade in the days that pass so slow

before the care home window

where you sit

each time I go

 

      I’m just a boy like you were in your time

and though we’ll lose

each other

your memory is with mine

 

     The world was cruel but you stood as The Oak

your branches gently sheltered

those souls

you called your folk

 

So dad, I’ll slip away now I’m sorry I can’t stay

and though you’ll be alone now

you’ll be with me

every day.

 

I cannot taste the salty air

too far am I

since last was there

 

Though in its waning withered way

my heart leaps up

as if to say

 

No age endured no distance gone

shall come between

where I belong

Covenant

 

Your charity offends me sir

my gut, my guts

begin to stir,

I left my friends alone out there

your virtue

is beyond their care.

 

Your hand is clean and offered well

my sense, my senses

prick my smell,

that what you seek is not for all

a misers gift

so very small.

 

Your mind is set on quick return

my finger, fingers

flesh that burns,

what you don’t know is what I’ve learned

the worm that lives

Is one that’s turned

 

Your corpse yet breathes though dreadful cold

my eye, my eyes

will not behold,

a Kingdom bought, so lowly sold

that those that fight

shall grow not old?

 

 

On the good days we stole cars

just to get beyond these streets,

Its painted curb-stones scars

of our childhoods, incomplete.

 

Toward the border wild and fast

between the check-points glare,

we never thought our luck would last,

that we’d get out of there.

 

Some are dead and some exiled

some others disappeared,

but some remained to be reviled

by those they never feared.

 

The balaclava’d beasts have gone

the pigs and armoured cars,

but drums and whistles still play on

in church halls, clubs and bars.

 

It’s nostalgia now and frontline tours

all Guinness, Beer and Songs,

fine words agreed by titled whores

forgiving all their wrongs.

 

The “Fifty-fifty” and the “Six-pack”

are forgotten now by most,

though not the shattered kneecaps

or by The Mothers of The Ghosts.

 

We’re a two-name town of nervous souls

pressed up against our past,

Joy Riders to the future

and going nowhere fast.

 

In The Church of The Holy Sepulchre

Kneeling’s quite the thing,

that Slab is not a replica

it was bled on by a King.

 

The grovelling and the weeping

the wailing at the wall

is well within the keeping

of doing bugger all…

 

for the dead whose numbers rising

are stacked against the sea

their leaders compromising

definitions of the free.

 

Pilgrimage and worship

tourism and tat,

their thorny jagged crowns slip

at calvary’s thunderclap.

 

No miracle of deliverance

no parting of the Sea

just continued cruel indifference

to whatever there must be.