Salvation
He always made doughnuts
Thousands of them
Alongside doughnut lassies
Sugar, lard, eggs, milk (evaporated)
Water flour, baking powder, salt
Ground nutmeg
Amongst mortars, mines, lead (assorted)
Wire, weapons, water and blood
Ground spirits
For bellies that lay flat on scorched earth
For mouths drained by oaths and fear
Watching as the Pain Cars inched by
While we mother hens and chicks
Wove in Nests, precious care parcels
With eager hands and keen intent
Shirts, pants, socks, chocolate,
Soap, paper, stationery
Home ground
Before exhausted souls staggered
Yellowed munition hands begging
For charity at home
But Beth never ate our doughnuts
She waited for one from the front
Made specially for her.
Abandonment
You deserted us, for You Tube illusions and an easy life
Made by others
You lined the pockets of our tormentors to make them strong
And us weak
You let others do the fighting for you
While you rest, and are fed.
The women who bore you, the old men who taught you
Look on, in despair
As our girls are preyed upon, and the fields lie unplanted
Those too sick to move plead for our aggressors’ compassion
In the absence of yours
Our dignity, our beliefs are not worth your struggle
Leaving those least able, to do the most.
Our future disappears over the horizon
As you leave us condemned to live the past.
If you had built fences rather than try to scale them
If you had bravely faced the enemy – as you faced the sea
We would be together now, pride intact.
Instead you beg for yourselves there
While the old, the sick, young mothers and children
Lie abandoned here.
The Journey
Uttoxeter
Stoke
Manchester
Liverpool
Bolton
Blackburn
Blackpool
Preston
Lancaster
Kendal
Penrith
Carlisle
Gretna Green
Lockerbie
Hamilton
Glasgow
Cumbernauld
Stirling
Bannochburn
Dunblane
Auchterarder
Perth
Pitlochry
Aviemore
Culloden
Inverness
Cromarty Firth
Cairngorms
Braemar
Ullapool
Stornoway
The Blue Men of the Minch
Gliding, their lithe forms wait silently
For the foolish and the hapless
Sentinels, guardians of the deep, they be,
When calm, as male mermaids they rest and play
Shadowy shapes, just out of reach, jostling
Jousting, watching, benign and fey.
Some say they were Picts, daubed in that hue
Others that they were Viking slaves in costume blue
But wherever was their place, whatever was their station
They now patrol in eternal damnation.
For their quarry to leave Loch Broom
And the Westerlies to arrive drawn by the Moon
So they can leap from feisty foam
Storm Kelpies rising in the spray
To hunt their prey to have their say
Their price for mercy from the brine
Is , when challenged, for Captains to respond in rhyme
And if Blue Men do not catch
A couplet whose words just do not match
As the sea horses rear, and the wind doth blow
So their captives, they drag below
From their duty they never flinch
The dreaded Blue Men of the Minch.
For Sheila
You will walk with me no more on these streets which held so much promise
Once. Long ago.
I want to tell you about Stephen, and James
I want you to smile at what I did not appreciate, but do now
I want you to tell me that it is okay to buy that coat- and that you like it.
I want you to say that Portobello has become good again- and aren’t the garlic breads big?
How I wish you were irritating Sarah by advising her on Stanley’s child care. He’s a bonny boy.
How I wish that fate had not dealt you such a cruel hand
Things are going on as if nothing had happened- it’s the way, isn’t it?
You would have liked Paphos.
I have changed the hall and bedroom
You wouldn’t like it
The Potteries
Made here
Pots and porc’lain
Fashioned by nimble hands
Wedgewood found fame amongst the smoke
In Stoke
Bright glare blazed outside
Patio bricks oozing heat
Our Saturday treat
Dan Yr Coed
Where Red Kites soar
No strings attached
And the Severn turns about face
A place, between
Where earthly things are ruined
In rubble and dry locks
And the hills hover,
Watching, and waiting
Where time is measured in rising falling light
Not the sweep of a second hand
And the rain hesitates
For a moment.
Dave
A politicians peccadilloes are a wonder to behold
Particularly those from the privileged, Eton and oxford fold
On a night out
Those from the compo’s , might play with a traffic cone or two
Placed on the head, thrown over the hedge, or used as a temporary loo
But the Galveston club, is somewhat more refined
It is where the toffs, and the young gentry, dine
And although Dave likes sleek Sam in high heels, how she totters!
He’s also quite partial to a set of hairy pink trotters
Those big luscious lips, the fetching curly tail
Makes something in Dave’s libido, start to whine and wail
And if it grunts nicely making him feel the special one
He’ll whip his own sausage out for a bit of porcine tongue
When this was reported it was dismissed as porky pies
But the great British public knows its swine and how to take the rise
He hogged the headlines, all else stopped, even Jeremy became a boar
Whilst facebook and twitter put their snouts in the trough, foraging for more and more
Now his actions may have been ham fisted, but his intentions I am sure were pure
Let us just hope that as PM that his thoughts have now been cured
Le Pen
All that it takes is a brush, rushed
A choice, to find a voice
Or a silencer
At a stroke, a line, bullet straight
Poised, for the noise
Of confusion
Expression and repression
Pouring automatically from the muzzle
Escaping, leaking ink, distorting
Born free, yet chained
This is my truth, tell me yours
Of what you can do instead of what you do do
Arms linked, fingers crossed
Friday Saturday Sunday and Monday Morning
I did not hear of it until Sunday morning
Instead slumbering while explosives murmured and air frame metal snorted
Tuning in, mid-story, is confusing
Who what where when and why?
A bit like being there
Fragments travelling to the nearest body
Yet reaching far beyond
Moments in motion
I did not hear of it until Saturday morning
Instead slumbering while Kalashnikovs, murmured and bombs snorted
Tuning in, mid-story, is confusing
Who what where when and why?
A bit like being there
Fragments travelling to the nearest body
Yet reaching far beyond
Moments in motion
I did not hear of it until Monday morning
Instead slumbering while Mirages murmured and bombs snorted
Tuning in, mid-story, is confusing
Who what where when and why?
A bit like being there
Fragments travelling to the nearest body
Yet reaching far beyond
Moments in motion
I did not hear of it until Friday afternoon morning
Instead working while Kalashnikovs murmured and bombs snorted
Tuning in, mid-story, is confusing
Who what where when and why?
A bit like being there
Fragments travelling to the nearest body
Yet reaching far beyond
Moments in motion
And I wondered how often this would be repeated
You try your best, but despite it all
Yearning for the time before your fall
When a day could be lived without sharp pain
When a night was measured in hours, not minutes
Again and again
Neighbours come and go, with a wave and a cursory smile
“I like your coat they trill- unaware of your guile
But when the front door closes, when the walls come tumbling in
That is when the fear starts of what the day will bring
Church
I don’t care much for Church
Our Christening Party outnumbered
The congregation many times over
And I wondered who was joining who
His robes older than the pews
The vicar conjured bonhomie and boredom
Unfamiliar hymns blared amplified
As if volume was enough to disguise bland dirge
There were no notices
Perhaps no-one cared anymore
