Is it a bad thing all this death? Making room for something else, shuffle along and don’t block up the hallway please. I’m having a substantial meal later today, my Yorkshire Puddings will be floating on pints of Guinness. I’m socially distancing myself from sanity, it’s comforting to surrender responsibility and to do as I’m told. Holding my partners hand has become an intimate act for which I’m grateful, we could have sex in a public place provided no more than six people are present (does that constitute dogging) can I mitigate it as a necessary act to maintain good mental health? A return to innocent pleasure has heightened my appreciation of intimacy. The sale of “Viagra Connect” has notably dropped in my postcode. Spotify reminded me today of my favourite tunes of 2020, they are a requiem for a lost year, a reflection of woodland walks, of marital breakdown and a flood of tidal booze rising and falling to the sound of the Netflix home page opening. “Rightmove” is now at the top of my Bookmark tabs and I have come to despise estate agents even more than I used to. I haven’t hugged my mum and dad for over a year but to be honest that isn’t such an unusual occurrence, although the imposed restriction has made me realise I should have done it more. Even Bob Dylan got his mojo back and wrote a song like a Psalm…I guess “The times aren’t a-changing” See you on the flip side folks…I’m off for a substantial feed.
Visiting The Dead
A sodden wreath wheels across our gentle path
while scudding clouds like aftermath
chase crows across greyscale skies
that in their bleakness ask us why
both young and old succumb to war
to lay beneath this forest floor
where reverently we softly tread
and whisper praise upon the dead
Then with your hand so firm in mine
among the ruins of our time
I kiss your warm and loving face
with thanks that I can leave this place
In nature
Two chestnut horses beneath a Blackthorn tree
their perfect forms against the sky,
we stopped and watched incuriously
as they no doubt did you and I,
their breathing heavy, their eyes afire,
alert with every sinew flexed,
did spark in us our bright desire
to follow that which we know best.
A place called home
There is nothing new in any day
that wasn’t there before,
though once a while along the way
there opens up a door,
which through a beam of light might shed
some loving warmth unknown
to take a soul thought long since dead
toward a place called home
Cathedral eaves
In the eaves of this ancient place
nestled in what once grew free
a feathered ball of gods good grace
its eyes plucked out no longer see
and further up toward the nave
sweet Jesus bleeds for you and me
a crown of thorns which Jokers gave
though fashioned from some crueller tree
and here below we raise our eyes
still sighted clear though not as wise
as those now passed and gone before
who closed them dead beyond this door
so what is clearer to be seen
What is to come or what has been?
© Wolfgar 2020
Perennial
A flower now so open toward The Sun,
unshielded from harm in fleeting perfection
knows not the seed from which it was begun
nor fears the darkening skies that prophesy rejection.
We see that undue power in the faces of the young
who with momentary glory believe it is forever won,
then with that memory captured we hold it close a while
and like a bloom toward the Sun we raise our heads to smile.
© Wolfgar 2020
Rural Rides (The Bird Scarer)
Beneath horse hair flax a wretched creature stirs,
off the well marched blood stained tracks
beyond the bawdy ale soaked house,
The Scarer wakes with field mouse.
The dust of bones that fell in France
was scattered here to bring advance
to farmers field and heavy plough,
The Dead are churned to feed us now.
A soldiers bastard boy who no Mother ever mourns
another blasted Cannon, another Empire Dawn,
his clapper claps to scare the birds
Each clattered beat drowns out his words.
Across these patchwork Jaded Hills
an echo gently whispers still,
of all the voices never heard
Drowned out by time to scare a bird.
© Wolfgar 2020
Bootleg Beatnik
Molly’s in the basement
underneath the cement,
I’m on the pavement
thinking about enslavement,
the man with a rope
hammer out, furloughed
says he wants his job back
coughing through a dry hack,
watch out kid
it’s not something you did,
but they’ll be laying you the blame
when they’re doing it again,
you better duck behind the firewall
get yourself a clean name
trade in all your currency
Beat the enemy with a new game.
Get tested, get free
Car Parks now the Surgery,
wait weeks, wait years
Government still grinding gears,
well read, well schooled,
educated, well fooled,
watch out kids don’t fall for it again
they’ll clap you through the Streets
while they obliterate your names
cross here, cross there,
putting crosses everywhere,
no peace, no truth,
all their lies are people-proof,
pick up cleaver, pick up gun,
tear down the rising of their Sun,
wear shades, wear masks,
No answers for that politely asked.
© Wolfgar 2020
A Pigeons Wing
A pigeons wing is a useless thing
when all it is is a pigeons wing
The parts that make it swoop and flit
are all the parts that come with it
© Wolfgar 2020
An accompaniment to “Meat”
Meat
Does a body need a passport when it crosses borders?
Who vouches for the grimaced face if one is still attached?
A loadmaster or an administrative clerk?
A paper shuffler, a Northern line strap hanger in training shoes?
The piece of meat that once was a living thing, where will it come to rest?
The birds pecked it while it smouldered, recently detached.
I recall staring vacantly at the matted mess wondering whose flesh it was,
It didn’t matter anymore as both minds had ceased to function.
I will never know what part of you that carcass was….
I hope that it got home and someone lays flowers where it lies.
© Wolfgar 2020
Bottled
Getting a ship into a bottle is easier than getting a man out of one,
Trapped in a town,
In a house,
In a room,
In a mind,
Bobbing like a cork, a crows nest among the swell.
He see’s land then not, so puts his head back under for another shot.
The Sober Sextant defies blurred eyes,
Measuring fixed points of reality in liquid-like skies.
In the noise of the gale there’s the sound of a War
but the wind in the sail helps deaden its roar,
So it’s further and deeper out into the foam
his voice screaming madly the echo his home.
Until at its centre the voyage is done
and in the eye of the storm a battle is won.
© Wolfgar 2020
Constructing an exit
Everything in its precise place
this house feels like a guilty plea
just waiting for a hammer to fall
we shall be taken from here to a place of isolation
suspended in time by a perfectly woven noose of self destruction
All our misdemeanours shall bear witness
in a parade of failure and pitiful bitterness
An internet search will throw up the number
116 123,
“The Book of Job”
too late now the bended Knee
Farewell then it must be, it must be,
death the pendulum that turns the cogs
though even our passing
Won’t stop the clocks.
© Wolfgar 2020
Waking
A stone in my Palm,
grass as soft as tail feathers,
trees that paint the sky
where sunbeams cup the bloom of flowers.
In these dreams your face smiles,
in folds of sleep I rest our memories
here the pain retreats to silence,
where tides defy the bone white Moon.
Though I know you are gone to nowhere,
unconscious selfish wanderings will not lasso you back.
Gravity awakens me to birdsong,
I curse the sweetest sounds of day.
© Wolfgar 2020
Plinth
Not for a wilderness of monkeys
would I trade the shade of this green lung
that from once congealed and filthy foul
have all good creatures come
the canopy cut reveals the scar
the knotted roots of what we are
so better in the shadowed land
are we that in our knowing stand
beneath the blessings gone before
that we might count if nothing more
© Wolfgar 2020
Demob unhappy (An alternative VE Day)
The garden is no more grown than was when left,
the Sea Spray of Portsmouth the Grime of Waterloo
Cling fresh beneath the reawakening memories of you.
Between the leaving and their return the world shifted
their brains rattled by battery and bomb,
Something replaced the life in them and something now is gone.
The surrender of innocence on English Summer evenings
was stolen by the rape of youth and a fleeting fuck of liberation,
Is a bottle of flat brown beer enough to drown their bitter indignation?
They must now retreat from the front they made themselves
to cower silently in their peaceful rage,
Returning to sweet freedoms won, inside a gilded cage.
© Wolfgar 2020
Frog Spiel: thoughts and ramblings on lockdown (profanity warning)
Frogs
Phones squat like idle frogs on lily pad desks
screensavers roll impatient eyes so unimpressed
the cleaners missed the paper cups
where penicillin grows un-supped
the water coolers sulk forlorn
no whispered love no spat out scorn
When static has no hair to raise
it saves itself for future days
unseen in its electric shroud it wanders
lonely for the crowd
no hills or vales to float on by
pressed up beneath a white tiled sky
And those who parted from this place
the Exodus’d the chosen race
who once beyond the crippling cage
re-found themselves and turned a page
might they retain their hearts that sing
when once again the squat frogs ring
© Wolfgar 2020
The Forest at Night
Through the glade there shines a light
in shafts of fiery flare
and none who come to shelter
will find much solace there
The shaded track and hollow
are beacons to the few
who lead where others follow
to rest on natures pew
Yet when the fallen spearheads dull
and silver black returns
there settles in a peaceful lull
for which the Spirit yearns
No sound of voice or foot befalls
the blanket laid so fine
I walk the path that gently calls
to where the forest’s mine
© Wolfgar 2020
You never see the miracle that saves you
Quietly and without attention nature turns
pushing itself toward sunlight from the darkest places
From the root to the flower each day a perfect miracle
yet not one that could make a Saint
but an every-day-taken-for-granted-kind-of miracle
trod down by those too busy in their moment
If time should halt Gaia would not pay heed
stepping past the unmarked days she would instinctively proceed,
In our stillness will we hear life louder or feel it stronger,
Might its never changing resonance change us?
Beyond this hectic place far from artificial light
The world beckons us out of silence.
Should we emerge unchanged our eyes still blind
Or might we be freed by a miracle we’ve missed?
© Wolfgar 2020
