not a victim

Not a Victim

It is important for me to begin my day by not
feeling guilty or inferior for what happened
when I was a child; abuse, those grasping hands
I should have pulled a way, didn’t -out of fear-
but I also wished to please an adult world.

It is important for me to believe this every day
and not let the past break me down into despair
and hate them, for they are dead and lived a life
of little moral value; but I must be unafraid and
forgive myself for what was done to me.

the politics of the ridiculues

The Politics of the Ridicules


Dear teacher, from Liverpool, going to work in Sudan and
let the children at your school call a teddy bear Muhammad.
Didn’t you know you’re dealing with bigots scouring texts
to find an excuse to say that Europe has insulted them again?

You are amongst people, who are three centuries behind us,
and in no hurry catching up. Odin is the name of my cat, and
that’s also the name of Iceland’s god, I better be careful when
going to Reykjavik on my holiday next year.

senryu

Senryu

Lucky butterfly
It doesn’t look like a gnat
And get whacked.

Gun Culture

Gun Culture.

They teased the young black boy in the school yard,
his older twin sisters went to university and dated
White boys; he had lost street credibility and respect.
“So he bought himself a gun” as the song goes, four
bullets too. Next day at school when one of the boys
taunted him he pulled out his gun and shot him three
times in the chest.

So much blood coming out of the shot boy’s mouth;
so much noise he couldn’t hear, he ran and ran didn’t
know where; into a park where a blizzard of autumn
leaves fell and he was lost in a world of delusion.
“They will respect me, look up to me, I’m their hero,”
he said to the trees, one bullet left he shot himself in
the head, empty gun and end of dreams.

At Anchor

At Anchor


From the hilltop I can see the townscape,
a maze of roof tiles rust red in the sun,
a tank ship has anchored in the bay that is
blue with glitter on. I can see people on her
deck looking towards shore; and they have
dreams they do not share with fellow sailors.

If they get a chance to go ashore they will
find bodegas that serve good red wine and
stronger stuff as well, food is wholesome
and generously served. But they’ll not find
what they came for, windows are shuttered
and no home light illuminates their path.

epitaph

Epitaph

I scratch tiny letters
in the exercise book of the world
You’ll need a magnifying glass to read them…
and yes I know it is vanity,
but also so you can remember me
If you come across my words, say,
when you look up and cloud formations spelling
“worship” with a double “P”, you will sweetly smile
turn to your new friend and say:
“He was a hopeless speller.”

senryu

Senryu

God doesn’t do email
Hand delivered post only
Stamps not needed.

Sleepless in Portugal

Sleepless in Portugal.


Late night television, a group of middleclass people
discussing art and its funding, they are so very polite
but only listen to their own voices; people, who make
a living writing about poetry which sells better than
writing it; nevertheless they are my only company this
long night, one of the men tries to control the erection
he gets when looking at the nice woman in red dress.

I have turned the sound down no need to hear what
they are say, gentlefolk but I do wish there had been
a scruffy artist there as well, to livening the proceeding
up, but often artistic people are not nice they have
no patience, not really in a group of bright people who
have gone to university, have a degree in something or
other, and work in the talking industry.

Commercial break, I turn the sound back up, a smooth
talking man has a cure all pill, tells us the medical
industry tries to ignore his wonder drug because it will
make it redundant. Artful mendacity there is an absence
of shame; his sidekick, a woman, who wears so much
make-up, feign to interview him. Soon it will be morning,
and the talking and pretence on the TV will be forgotten.

europe

New Europe


The white face of Europe is slowly fading away, middleclass
couples have few children; there are exiting careers to follow
in the world of business, media and the glitzy entertainment
industry. Shake their heads, in united dismay, when reading
about a poor woman, from a sink estate, unmarried and with
seven healthy, white children; they reward her with contempt
and without shame let her live in disgraceful poverty.
There was a time when a mother like that was given a medal
called mother of the nation.

When the same couples are mid forties and successful they
miss children and import some, 3, 4 or 5, preferable healthy
ones from Asia or Chad in Africa, shower them with riches
and a superior education. Europe has a new face, a smoother,
darker skinned one, on holiday it can sit longer in the sun
without getting burned.

There are, however, a minority of people who wants
a white European culture, without ever having read a book
other than pamphlets of hate; minds blinded by fear of
the future and with hearts that only know love of kit & kin,
fight desperately against a tide of humanity that will eradicate
them. Will they be reduced to a footnote, in the era of white supremacy, when its history is written?

Encounter

Encounter

Profound tiredness I’m sinking into myself
body gone, weightless now but my mind
sees that sea and sky are one, the aimless
cosmic cloud is a redundant god that has
been alone so long it will see no one.

Mother Teresa tried to talk to It, but failed;
she was very tired when she died. There is
stillness here where there is no night or day
and a forever fading cumulous;

I have great fear, will not sleep before dawn
is here, delivering me another day.

Wick & Candle

Wick and Candle

I woke up in a strange room, couldn’t find my way out
collided with a standard lamp, thought it was an intruder
and wrestled it to the ground. Ice on the living room floor
fell many times till a Chinese lady, dressed in a short,
green shirt and blouse, showed me where the loo was.

When I came out I was very tired I’m a fireman, you see,
and there had been a forest fire, laid down on the ground
and could smell freshly dug earth and noticed, before
falling asleep, white coffins being unloaded from a truck.

Awoke it was morning in the mirror I saw a dead man he
had sot in his face a victim of the fire? I tried to get him
out of there but couldn’t break the mirror; and anyway he
disappeared when I got up from the floor.

“Not your fault, he died of a heart attack,” the Chinese lady
said and with that she climbed back into the picture on
the wall. “Your heart is weak” the cardiologist said,
“Walk an hour a day, you have to let go, someone else has
to extinguish the forest fire.”

still life

Still Life

He sat in a rowboat, in the deep fiord, with
a bottle of vodka, a flask of tea, bacon butty
and an apple. A mild spring day and he was
fishing mackerel; many he hooked too, soon
the boat was quite full of blue, silvery bodies
writhing and painfully dying.

Tea and vodka he drank munched the butty,
ate the apple; lit a cigarette inhaled deeply
and enjoyed his solitude.

Bodily functions never stop, he stood up to
have a pee, slipped on his catch and fell into
the sea; heavy boots he soon sank down to
where the sea is dark and unforgiving; rain
fell on an empty bottle of booze, apple core,
thermos flask and fish that had lost their glow.

the visitor

The Visitor


Sensed his presence, on the terrace, when I turned to look
he disappeared, first I wasn’t sure but when they rang and
said that my old friend had been claimed by cancer.

I don’t know why he came hadn’t seen him for many years,
we used to chase girls, drink a lot and live it up, but he was
claimed by love and got wed; and so did I …five times.

Oddly enough he rang me six month ago when we had
spoken of the old days we didn’t have much else to say and
I was relieved when he hung up

Don’t know what he wanted to tell me, I know one thing,
though, I can never go back to the past, lost the passport
called youth long ago, but I will remember him well.

thew future

The Future

When the last fishing boat docked it had only
a sardine and a haddock and eerily the sea
washed an indifferent shoreline;

the rich moved inland to escape the stench
of rotting seaweed that grew so thick that
one could walk form Calais to Dover in a day;

the poor took over what once were posh villas
but since they had no money for upkeep, houses
sank into ruin and stank as much as the sea did;

and the moneyed class said: look at the poor
we gave the fine housing and they have ruined
it all, their slothfulness is genetic you know;

the sardine and the haddock were preserved in
spirit so future generation could see what filthy
food people, in the old days, ate;

everyone is vegan now, even the poor who have
to do with potatoes that makes them fat, the rich
live on soy beans, cuscus and fried bananas.

more senryu and tanka

Senryu

I’m getting old
I used to think of sex a lot
Now I consider death




Tanka

Sparkly consider this:
At ninety ageing ceases
And it’s good to know
That can you run at ninety
You can do so at hundred

senryu and tanka

Senryu

Epiphany me now
With your enchanted smile
The forever I’ll see.



Tanka

Lucid as the day
Blinding sunlight obscured you
When I could see
The night had devoured you
The time when all is too late



Tanka

Mirror in the hall
Don’t sarcastically laugh
When I walk past
On my way to the kitchen
To eat another strawberry tart



Senryu

Night time lonely
Fear the encroaching stillness
Till you call my name

as the clock ticks

As The Clock Ticks

Shall I resign to old age be a kind elderly man
who sits on a park bench and smile to passers by,
and wait for something, not knowing what it is,
but serenely accept the ending of the script and
not fighting back as brain cells die and my body
is a ruined edifice where the elevator has ceased
and the plumbing is unreliable?

Much time has been fritted away on sugar coated
banalities, sweet tarts and grapes of the reddest
kind; hang on, I’m so wrong, tell myself lies, this
was life, that and bawdy songs agreeing with my
sentiment; my salient friend literary learning is of
little use, hollow pursuit, what matters is human
companionship, the rest is a waste of time

the mislaid

The Mislaid


It was a strange October day, yet it behaved as that month
does, blowing leaves off trees and filling gutters into fast
flowing rivers where a child can launch a matchbox and call
it a ship, it was just as I had misplaced something of value by
my own carelessness and now it was out of my reach.

Went into a bar, beside me sat a blond, big busted woman in
her late forties, she looked like the archetypical barmaid, only
she was a cook at the Excelsior Hotel, up the street, on her day
off. I told her I had lost a thing of great sentiment, together we
went from bar to bar looking for this nameless thing.

Woke up in a strange bedroom, pink, and it had teddy bears
strew around, mostly on the floor; I looked out of the window
it was raining and remembered that yesterday was my birthday.
The archetypical was sleeping, in the grey morning light she
looked vulnerable and forty eight.

filling in the blanks

Filling in the blanks

A spindrift of an abstract screen,
it blinds me I can’t think of words to write down
to break the monotony of whiteness,

Bush’s wet-nurse was a Mexican,
peasant woman, that’s why he likes to hug,
and touch people;

maybe he’s a nice man
who has only seen war movie and think
all wars are like that;

he only wanted to be president
because his father had been one, wanted to prove
that he wasn’t stupid;

but he was hypnotized by an evil neo-com,
and lost the thread of his dream in
blinding spindrift

getting away

Getting Away

I rubbed my eyeballs and
saw a universe of millions of stars,
not unlike the one I see at nights,
only here stars where rainbow coloured baubles
on a stygian background
and void of life;

not even a bambi or a lion cub crossing
this firmament of endless night,
and soon it will be christmas,
baubles, coloured light and worried faces
everywhere, except for the grinning shadow
that brings winter wind.