LAMMERGEIER

I am a bearded vulture,

I wanted a crunchy meat pie,

I saw one crawling beneath its shell,

Across the mountainside.

So, I swooped and grasped that tortoise.

With my strong sharp claws

And carried it up and upwards,

Without the slightest pause.

I am a bearded vulture,

My eyes are as keen as blades,

So, I saw a round rock, far below,

Shining up out of the shade.

I am a bearded vulture,

I decided to loosen my grasp,

The tortoise descended,

With increasing speed

Smashed into that round rock fast.

I am a bearded vulture,

I killed a philosopher dead.

I am winged king of mountainsides,

I dropped a tortoise on his head.

DON'T THINK

I pull on my socks and

Think of a Victorian electroplated

Sauceboat, with four little feet

Crafted to look like the paws of a beast.

I brush my teeth and

Watch a vortex suck debris down a plughole.

I blow my nose and

Ideas flee from me like herbivores,

That catch the scent of a meat-eating beast.

I see them poised for a split second,

Then they run.

I try, unsuccessfully, to call them back.

Because I’d rather think of anything than

New born babies swaddled in blankets and foil,

Lying in no manger

But on a hospital floor

Waiting to die,

In Gaza.

All Saints’ Day never dawns

Unrelenting grief from Gaza

Haemorrhages out of my media

But, I can switch off my radio, my phone and my computer;

I have a comfortable home,

With food and medicine provided.

So, when I say that I am now numb,

I’m not as numb as some,

Who are tucked in by the devil

To sleep forever under the concrete blankets

Of bombed down ceilings.

Maybe they’re the lucky ones,

Others are doomed to survive

Entombed alive;

Or lie crying with wounds and hunger untreated,

Until the ethnic cleaning is completed.

In England, winter has come,

Ending this year with the day that the dead walk,

But All Saints’ Day never dawns.