Oh tree Oh tree
how can you be where water doesn’t flow?
how spread the spores of conflict
from seed not nature sown?
Yet here you stand so wieldy
rootless in the sand
a pollinated theory
blown far across the land
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
(Initially I wasn’t going to add the link, but often subtlety will get you nowhere)
© Wolfgar 2018
Leafy letters drifted free
released from the claws of a Skeleton tree
on golden pathways they wrote your name
which blew away when Winter came
and now the seasons turn again
I shall not walk that well trod lane
or fix my thoughts on what could be
If I found what fell from the Skeleton tree
© Wolfgar 2018
Along the hedge row Surrey lane
a last light shimmers by moonlights wane,
as bar staff stack the chairs again
he walks the road by which he came.
Can’t hear the sea this far inland
or recall the feel of hand in hand,
though in his ears still sounds the band
his mouth turned dry with blackened sand.
He shuns the lies of suited men
hunched by stones in London rain,
who meekly say with fingers crossed
We really do regret your loss.
The lonely house stands guard alone
for this old soul returning Home,
to sit it out just one more night
and pray for dawns relieving light.
© Wolfgar 2018
They are but da Vinci coded Roman Statues
pointing the way to final solutions,
more obvious than a turd in a swimming pool.
Dogs piss on them, drunks puke on them
whilst they remain aloof.
Then back from the front the actors come
with their moral compass spinning.
Welcomed by the virtuous bystanders,
those poets of peace who change the world?
and take credit for thinking they think.
We need active players
not Ikea desked and pyjama’d clones,
Latte quaffers and subscribers to literary rags.
By all means point and pontificate, but save your piety
and never steal what others win.
© Wolfgar 2018
Within the harbour wall the sea is black as oil
it licks the little fishing boats
it glides along the granite stone
where silver fish scales twinkle the moon
The steps as slick as frying pans
descend through water cold as graves
yet none of those lost fisher men
can place one foot upon another
That they departed once from here
in boats of wood from forests full
to trawl a scape unknown to them
its voids as empty as their souls
Nets outcast in open water
beneath them only inner space
the shore too far to run for home
between the dark and the days safe haven
Yet still they venture into night
that they may crave the mornings light
the call of gulls when nearer home
the white peaks of the tidal foam
The Sea does beg without a name
to those who feel unbound to home
it welcomes all for all are same
and all embraced though all unknown
© Wolfgar 2018
Oh you can tell
from that bewildered face
he isn’t happy in this place
Here come flags
and banging drums
the marching men
the single mums
He hates these men
his dads old muckers
drunken medal wearing
fuckers
When poppies fall in civic halls
his only thought
to burn them all
for all he wants is what he had
the fallen poppy
he called dad
At nine fifteen on the twenty first
all lessons ended for the One hundred and forty four
the toil of a nation slipped
and never again was it like before
Never the laughter
never the joy
never the going home bell
only the prospect of childless future
and drinking oneself into hell
Out of the window see the infant ghosts walk
little satchels and skipping ropes
innocent childlike talk
ascending through thickened colliery dust
please?
if there be god to him we entrust
Yet still the monument stands unheeded
we still pull the life from the ground
and for the loss of One hundred and forty four
it seems not much has been found
Whilst Children of Eden whether Sunni or Shia
cower in stair wells and die from their fear
whilst our empire of greed reigns down on their land
we bury their dreams under overturned sand
Whilst the oil we pull fuels our progress
in concert with their demise
our toil is slipping upon them
and blackening out their skies
and blackening out their skies
© Wolfgar 2018
With gargoyled faces they stare dead eyed
into the past of their happy lives.
Not yet removed from the field
their souls still warm as breath.
These stupefied few ripped and flung like dolls,
look at their carcasses, what do you see?
lies and hope and pride, innocence?
regret or loss, no there is nothing.
And over there the same,
staring back visionless masks of puppets.
Above acres of mudded blood angels weep,
while demons give thanks to eternal men.
These ragged children, bastard sons fathers,
with never the chance to nurture or love.
Now they know the truth,
their voices disembodied for evermore.
© Wolfgar 2018
Do you think they felt the weight of history
pissing down in the drizzling sea spray
or when pulling on their mudded boots
that trod and fought through blood and clay
The fingers that caressed old photographs
were the same that clawed and scraped the skies
their last wept tears streaked ashen cheeks
as they left their deadened eyes
Were their grotesque withered bodies treated
solemnly and kind
or tossed as cannon fodder
in the trenches dug behind
Do you think their brothers cried for them
or resigned themselves to meet
and secretly reached out to them
to embrace their own defeat
And how can we in all truth now
profess to know their pain
and promise we’ll remember them
when the drums beat hasn’t changed
© Wolfgar 2018
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
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,
Cinematically Stunning.
© Wolfgar 2018
