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
Sycophantic,
word-pedantic
dictionary whore.
Your literary vacuum
leaves me wanting more.
Your spewing words
thick with rot,
from something ill ingested
tie my patience like a knot,
intestines worm infested.
You’re like a stain of afterbirth
stillborn and flushed away,
I’d write a book about you
if I thought that it would pay.
As it is,
you’ve raised my hackles
and forced my angry tongue,
I’d restrained it under shackles
until my hate you idly won.
Please walk into an ocean
a propeller,
or a plague.
If justice had a notion
you’d be renditioned to
The Hague.
© Wolfgar 2018
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.
© Wolfgar 2018
Dogs on cobbled hobs
warmed by early Sun,
their owners folded into news
of things in flux and things to come.
In sleepy hope the town awakes
its people’s heart beats anew,
though leaving slow my own does break
to be just passing through.
© Wolfgar 7/2018
A disused children’s playground
the Carousel and Ferris Wheel,
where the seesaw’ed
when the peace thawed
Over there a shell hole
fifty meters from the breakfast buffet
The Al Deira Hotel fly’s freedom flags
but no castles in this sand today
The crippled body bent and cast
like a post-card from the edge
the broken promise clear at last
just another worthless pledge
© Wolfgar 2/2018
He found a stone in-between the fences
matted with blood and hair,
across the wire blackened canisters and rubber
which came from here but landed there.
There’s a fat old sloth slumped by the checkpoint
his weapon slung like a child’s toy,
he drags laboriously on filterless tips
and has no concern for a wounded boy.
From the tower, cameras scan the terrain
everything on CCTV,
while the man with the stone in no-mans land
ponders, which side of the fence should he be?
Ramallah 4 Feb 18
© Wolfgar 2/2018
On this my first night here the house bristles with life around me,
I listen to competing calls, whose unfamiliar tongues command.
Streets kid’s playing football, Manchester and Arsenal below The Mount,
The fragrant waft of Orange Groves, my senses overload.
A red sky wipes itself to black, Cross and Crescent bejewel the night,
feline skip invaders pick the flesh off lesser lives,
they see me come and slow my step, but they belong, not I,
unflinching from their well marked place, it’s I who pass them by.
Yesterday I left my mark
today my mark breaks virgin ground,
I lay my head at last to rest
and drink in every new-heard sound.
©Wolfgar 2/2018
On this my last night here, the house settles still around me.
I listen to the street with its familiar hum,
the foot-fall of people I’ve never seen but know instinctively
as they pass then move along.
Silver shards of moonlight pierce the slatted blinds
my friendly wild eyed fox sits beneath the window,
does he hear me breathing? imagining his movement,
he skips and slinks back into the starless forest.
Tomorrow I’ll be far from here
in a velvet seamless night,
my bed an empty impressed tomb,
My soul flying towards some other light.
© Wolfgar 1/2018
On the brown bracken hills blown and stripped dry
lived beasties and birdies all under one sky,
they scratched and they fluffed their feathers and furs
though they knew they belonged they knew not where they were.
While below in false order lived beasts who stood straight
who fenced themselves in behind stone-wall and gate,
they had names for their buildings their streets and their towns
they had rulers and workers and faces with frowns.
And it seemed to the beasties and also the birds
that they lived just fine without borders and words,
so they cherished the soil and they worshipped the air
and they all lived together without knowing where.
© Wolfgar 1/2018
Not a single pin hole pierces the sky
tonight its black as the flat-topped-sea
the gulls have migrated to where fishing boats lie
and the harbors a haven if only to me
There’s a hum from the tavern and a welcoming glow
it pumps at right-angle’s the beer in full flow
though not grape or the barley could sate me tonight
for its you that I thirst for to bathe in your light
As the cold of the wall creeps to my core
I long for the mornings reprise
and give thanks for the days the two of us saw
and throw curses at nights such as these
In some long enforced good-night
the darks cold lips kissed sacred ground,
unmoved the earth froze ghostly white
not able to recoil or speak she lay bereft and still,
while nature through that sunless night
bestowed ill deeds at will,
there too the pale daughter, enslaved and cruelly torn
accepted fate as if by rite,
and hushed her breath till dawn.
(Dialogue kicks in after first few bars)
Through a tunnel carved in dead mens bones
the living went to hell
the stoker fed the flaming mouth
as the hammer struck its knell
The landscape flattened beneath the plain
its rivers turned to dust
strange tepees ripped ragged by blackened rain
sit fragile on the crust
Passengers cling to souls long sold
confessions too late to speak
they will not endure to grow ever-old
for they were not the meek
As downward-downward still they surge
descending into fire
the darkest of them all are purged
as hell-flames venture higher
