Oculus

Flooded with what we steal from eternity our Chambers are Gilded with the imaginings of victories and wisdom.

Yet all is illusion, not one atom is prisoner to man. For all men are bound by the fractured crust of expanding fusion, every cell entropic chaos.

Still, we record our various journeys as if they matter, we lie and deal and love and die for what is meaningless.

The truth burns holes in our mortal canvas and we perish to dust, to rise some other day beneath a weeping Oculus

Shut up and listen

Shut up and listen

I couldn’t have managed all these weeks without the unfailing ego’s of the ever-wise.

Where might I have found myself without the endless invites to self indulgent zoom circle jerks?

I might have simply gone for a walk shut my own self pity down for a while, read something a proper writer wrote.

Just for once shut the fuck up and listened to another voice not quite so in love with itself.

I wish more of us had done that, too late now you all look like the egotistical twats you truly are, damage done.

The futility of Seasons

And the tears that fell were as leaves falling out of season,

in no Earthly Cycle,

for no Human Reason

Yet still they fell and were trampled into time

dull footprints mulching

your memories with mine,

then when Spring time pushes its head above the soil

when new buds bloom that all may be forgot,

We’ll wish away the seasons but know that we cannot.

A Requiem of sorts

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.

Cathedral eaves

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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

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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)

 

Under Sack Cloth between The Cracks,

In ditches by The Workman’s 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 fields with Heavy Plough

Our Dead are churned to feed us now.

 

A Bastard Boy no Mother Mourns,

The Blasted Cannon of Empires 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

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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

Meat

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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