brian

 Who can I argue with now?

About everywhen, whenever, who, whom, whomsoever, what, why, where, wherever and how?

Who will remind me that all insects are dying?

That I need to build a compost heap

To keep the flies flying

So swifts, martins and swallows

Can swoop screaming down,

To feed themselves from the food of the skies.

Who will warn me when I want to surrender,

Bury myself under blankets,

And escape into slumber?

Who will provoke me to use my brain

To cope with a world run by greed?

Who will needle me again and again?

To do the little I can

To argue and explain?

But it was scientifically impossible,

As you could never see,

For anyone to be

As wrong as you,

And as right as me?

youtube justice

I watch lost souls through a machine,

Their faces appear as they drown in despair,

Whilst I’m safely watching my screen

I’m just like the gentry ages ago,

Who would gape at the Bedlam boys restrained,

And be pleasantly distracted,

By lunatic paupers secured and enchained.

Some lost souls are bewildered and dumbfounded;

Some have strange hopes and strange beliefs;

Some naively believe that justice will prevail

That a rightful conclusion will end their ordeal.

But they are all only fish trawled up in a net,

Tipped out gaping onto a boat’s deck.

A few will be thrown back free to the sea,

Most gutted, locked in boxes and left to freeze.

Police, lawyers clerks and judges

Work the fishing machine,

It’s a job or vocation that must be enacted,

Dooms must be deemed as prescribed and contracted,

So, I can eat my tinned tuna and be entertained

By the evil, the innocent, the unlucky and the insane.

cab to the crematorium

My own personal grey cloud

Has been hanging unmoving over me

For weeks now

Reason, which used to be my best friend,

Is no help to me.

Only a singing blackbird

Can teach me a true philosophy.

So, I caught a cab to the crematorium,

Where I sat on low brick wall

Looking at the manicured lawns and trees

Above me a skylark sang,

A buzzard sparred with gulls and crows,

Then another hawk appeared.

These are all good omens.

The mourners assembled below,

Not somber suited as usual,

But a multi-faceted colourful crowd,

Gathered to pay their many respects

To a multi-faceted colourful man,

Who after floods of praise and love,

Was burned in a wicker casket.

A true Druid.

dambusters

 Heroes are necessary,

To oil the meat-grinding wheels of war.

Those mired in a deadly dreary slog,

That might well only lead to death or defeat,

Need shining examples to encourage them.

Wonder weapons and shortcuts to victory,

That confirm the righteousness of our side

Are deployed, tales of them told

Again and again and

Songs are sung about our brave men,

Who flew into darkness,

Braved flak and fighters to breach dams

To drown people in darkness,

With the waters that they unleashed.

Yet, if in a different time,

A different dam is blown,

And towns are mown down and drowned,

That is different,

That is a war crime.

Decades

Un

Like funfairs or amusement arcades

Decades

Are not, after all, a laugh.

They’re no fun,

They cannot be outrun.

From time to time, I’m

Deluded into thinking

That I’ve made a gain,

Or overcome some

Injury or setback

And now, I’m back on track,

Rolling on like a moving train.

But Decades will never let me get

Away with that

They rush past and overtake,

Faster and faster.

 

In the nineteen fifties they bought smog

To pollute my young lungs

They bestowed whooping cough and asthma on me,

Then they killed my mother in flu epidemic

A death to set me up for life.

The nineteen sixties

They brought bullying and miseducation,

At the hands of nostalgia addicted dregs

Of a dying empire.

The seventies sweetened life

With sex and drugs and rock and roll

Since then, it’s been downhill ever since,

Like the falling pebble that moves the small stone

that moves the bigger stone,

that moves the small boulder,

that moves the bigger boulder,

that starts the avalanche.

 

I saw that sweep my father away,

Why did I ever imagine myself immune?

 

Decades

Are not, after all, a laugh.