NOTHING'S YOURS ALWAYS

Nothing’s yours always, anyhow,
And Time shall lift from off your brow
Your troubles, wrinkles, hat and wig,
Leave you the basis for “long pig”.

Published: Metverse Muse, India, March 2008

DEATH WILL BE HARDER NOW

Death will be harder now, as, year by year,
We solve the clues of immortality:
Emotions sink to animality
As false hopes tighten screws of desperate fear.
Hormone control will make age disappear—
After false starts, most horrible to see—
But those already old must beg to be
Frozen for the genetic engineer.
While war, starvation, pipe Earth’s gruesome jigs,
Successful businessmen will fight to gain
Some dead teen’s body, to transplant their brain,
The already-old beg to be guinea-pigs.
Children, look back, hear our despairing cry:
We bred immortals, but we had to die!

Published: Ambit, UK, October 2007

FOR PETER, DRUGGED IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL

In the winter the Interior stops

The shops close
Clocks unwind
Clothes hang frozen on the line.

With the summer tourists gone
Birdsong is ended
The water is locked away in the hills
And the waterfall hangs suspended.

No one takes down the signs that read
“Entering tunnel, remove sunglasses”.
Stopped by the wind at the top of the passes
We look down
On some tiny, frozen, unmoving town,
Down on a land without seed.

The city, car-filled, cascading, bickering,
Seems so long, long ago.
Look down on the river trickling
Through the desert dusty with snow –
The tracks of coyote and deer
Echo the unseen in our own austerity.
Will Spring ever come, here?
In this desolate clarity?
With blossoming fruit trees and softening lakes?

It will, and the snow will be brushed from the sage
But until then the only life that we see
Is:
Giant snowflakes
Lily pads of ice
Flowing down the Fraser to the sea.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, April 2004

YOGIS

Though mystified why yogis walk
Across the burning coals,
We know they stand upon their heads
To elevate their soles.

Published: Metverse Muse, India, March 2008

AUNTIE'S MODEL NIECE

Auntie got her
Maid to knit a
Set of under-
Wear,

For my frozen
Sister Flo's end
That was posing
Bare;

Flo then wore 'em
With decorum
And she swore 'em
Grand,

Undismayed by
Undies made by
Auntie's maid by
Hand!

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, August 2008

TO MYSELF IN 50 YEARS TIME

Old fool! You really think yourself the same
As I who write to you, aged 22?
Ha! All we’ve got in common is my name:
I’ll wear it out, throw it away,
You’ll pick it up some other day....
But who are you?

My life’s before me; can you say the same?
I choose its how and why and when and who.
I’ll choose the rules by which we play the game;
I may choose wrong, it’s not denied,
But by my choice you must abide....
What choice have you?

If, bored, I think one day to see the world
I pack that day and fly out on the next.
My choice to wander, or to sit home-curled;
Each place has friends, good fun, good food,
But you sit toothless, silent, rude....
And undersexed!

Cares and regrets of loss can go to hell:
You sort them out with Reason’s time-worn tool.
Today’s superb; tomorrow looks as well:
The word “tomorrow” is a thrill,
I’ll make of mine just what I will....
What’s yours, old fool?

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, September 2008

OLD SOLDIERS

Sitting blowing bubbles,
Each one a tiny world
Of monumental troubles
And how they all unfurled:

"The desert - Cairo - jaunty -
A blue room and a whore -
And so I said to Monty -
And so we won the war!"

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, August 2008

The Score So Far - 45

One of the joys of getting my poetry published has been to realize a) how diverse it is, b) how careful I have to be in sending the right stuff to the right place:

Bleak, sarcastic: Ambit
Flippant, silly: Snakeskin
Landscapes as expressions of personalities or moods: Candelabrum
Religious, Christian: Penwood Review
Religious, non-specific: Rubies in the Darkness
Anti-religious: Ambit

So my stuff is totally contradictory? So what? They're just expressions of different moods or ideas.

Fun, isn't it?

WHY VINES?

Why vines on desolate winter hills? we ask;
The chill bird seeks—a fruitless, wormless task;
But still, with faith from deeper knowledge grown,
The calm vine-grower renovates his cask.

As vines in winter store, and bloom in spring,
Our hearts, though dull, absorb, later to sing;
Grapes ripen, and are picked, ferment to wine;
Our sweet-grown works, inspired, true knowledge bring.

Our wheat-yield’s up, and Science we exalt,
And say life’s pointlessness is not its fault;
And wonder why our bread’s so tasteless now—
Forgetting that we are ourselves the salt!

So we learn Triad, Twelveness, Mystic Seven,
In seeking knowledge for a rise to Heaven;
As with the best in West we didn’t rise,
The dough we are with Eastern yeast we leaven.

As wine aspires to grape, water to wine,
The guided mass aspires to the Divine;
We only ask the guidance of the Mass
To further our intention to refine.

As Calyx turns the petals to sun-glance
Chalice turns flower of Chivalry to Lance;
The purple grape foretold impassioned Christ,
The shared Cup turns and feeds us in the Dance.

Choose faith as you would choose a favourite star:
The one that’s brightest to you where you are;
Search for your key right here where it was lost,
With light of Tao, or Christ, or Inch’allah.

Only: exemplify by work your love—
Clear the blocked way for those too weak to shove,
Light up life’s scene for eyes to weak to see,
And help transform Below into Above.

Published: Rubies In The Darkness, UK, Winter 2005

FOR ELIOT

I guess
Success
Not elation
Or creation
Alone may men not mock;

God bless
T.S.,
Spared the temptation
Of our generation —
Writing rhymes for rock.

Published: Metverse Muse, India, March 2008