I hear the things that go unsaid

that slip between the words,

the spaces where you think perhaps

your silence goes unheard.

 

I hear the things your voice betrays

that crack when horror speaks,

the cough you make you think perhaps

belies you’ve dived too deep.

 

I see the things you can’t relate

that dead look in your eye,

the moments when you think perhaps

your damage slips on by.

 

I see the things you can’t control

the tremor in your hand,

the steadying grip you think perhaps

displays you have command.

 

I feel the things at which you flinch

the things that bring you fear,

the involuntary twitch you think perhaps

too slight to be too clear.

 

I feel the things that give you pain

the turning of your face,

the lowered head you think perhaps

removes you from that place.

 

Of all the things I feel for you

the greatest one is love,

the scars you hide I see right through,

your healing is enough

 

The backbone of this giving Isle

from marshy fen to firth of forth,

has soured the face of many a smile

beneath the crown that ventured north.

 

Then Westward too, the Kingdom torn

across a Wilding Sea,

its Children poor, to paupers born

that bore the likes of you and me.

 

With baubles traded, power for land

The Lords abused their folk the same,

to sit opposed yet hand in hand

a Kingdom still by other name.

 

Yet here we sit behind the spine

that bears our history’s weight,

though all within is yours and mine

we are sold out at discount rate.

 

Should we seek beyond our view

with open arms to near and far?

what inward turns does inward harm

the sum of all we truly are.

 

I’m in the shallows now

the deep has stepped up to its shelf.

My feet firm in the silky sand

at the altar of this eroding land.

 

In the transition of silt and wash

a baptism of emergence plays-out.

The salty brine for peppered air,

where pollutants vie for surface share.

 

Where can I be cleansed

that I am not the host of dirt?

The Creator and The Parasite

a vehicle of entropic blight.

 

Between two worlds one world converged,

the Venn became a single sphere.

Withdrawn, diminished, bloated, full,

withered between two poles that pull. 

 

 

Scratch at the night,

the irritation of darkness has you at its mercy.

 

Scratch At the night,

the visions are advancing down mirrored corridors.

 

The rash of the Sun will return

to flake its hours upon your open wounds.

 

The rash of the Sun will climb high

to pour your memories back into you…

 

 

A Sea Loch Graveyard walled and gated

hues of purple peated earth,

the stones stand stoic, weather dated,

washed up from their briny birth.

 

Some names unknown “A Sailor” lies,

in silence resting side by side.

Adrift they came from distant skies

as tears that fell, though never cried.

 

On other shores long lives lived out

to wonder at what might have been,

had warships turned their hulls about

and left these barren hills unseen.

 

And here they stay to linger long

their bones and dust remembered well,

though this is not where they belong

they are embraced as those who fell.

 

 

To see a world in a coffee cup

and a hell inside a TV screen,

then still to rise and take a sup

and blink away the horror seen.

 

A memory flashed upon a mind

staunched by bitter pill,

to make a man and mankind blind

cannot the memory kill.

 

The slave fed by his master’s hand

is starved and saved the same,

he lives upon a lesser land

with no choice but to remain.

 

And trickled down as actions do

the roots of life are numbed,

there is no hope or help for who

to such wickedness succumb…

 

except they rise with opened eyes

unshackled from their fear,

no longer bound by chains of lies

nor deaf to what they hear.

 

With gratitude to William Blake

Not as canvas but as frame

the eye and hand do make the day,

which with the Sun unbeckoned came

and at its want will fade away.

 

Between the rise and fall of light

in all that comes and all that goes,

a wealth of life befalls our sight

that none before could surely know.

 

And in that fragile frame of time

our brush strokes fill the fleeting page,

which with its turn comes close to fine

to paint the picture of an age

 

Their squalid death to purify,

on Olives Mount a bridge to God.

Then Cedar Wood and Herbs burnt dry

to raise a Kingdom not forgot.

 

And in that ritualistic spell

the Kohen taints his cleansing soul,

that he is now unbound for hell

unless the cycle onward rolls.

 

For future joy why all this death

where toil and dark abound?

Why not the warmth of living breath

to bear us where new worlds are found?