Boy, Man

From mist, light:
hard shadows lengthen the day;
once, cow-parsley on road sidings
promised luxuries beyond what
you, young boy, could imagine.

The damp night opens around you now
like a closed fist
relaxing. 

Cooled ardour in  a summer breeze.

Leaves seem like surreal green spots
as grey becomes blue.
And birdsong - positive as music -
is only catcalls and threats.
Eggs are easily broken;
Small and blue like ice;
small heartbeats brought to life
and ugly skin to frail bone, stretches.

Teeth clench then backs press
now against each other.
Two Cs - one as in a mirror -
Reflecting back to back
a naked gun-slinger's dead sleep.
A baby unborn but grown.

All the little weeds and the hot smell of
growth.  All is vacant like lots,
puddles of digital seeing of the
unimaginable and the pale
obviousness of scripted passion.
Such went youth; so went man
and then goes time -

The Party's End

The glittering things were taken down
and packed into dusty boxes
with romantically curled edges.
The lights were switched off for
another year and new locations
thought of, new things to do.
The winter seemed milder
but for how long?
It always seemed, around here,
to come back and bite,
broken mirror sharp;
cutting the most washing-hard
skin.
There were times when the
heady stench of warm bodies
felt good.  Now it repulses like
cigarette butts in ashtrays
piled high in old pubs.
Urinals marinading chewed gum.
The party's end brought with it
a hope and a thought of
something lost
and something yet to come.

Remembrance

I'll live with poets not with God,
For they have lived and felt in
ways he never could.
All his creation and what of that?
All sides knew him and all
sides fed on beliefs of his salvation:
And what then?

The clamouring of haste at the bugle call?
Is this His stupid beckoning?
Or is it - as he says - with much
gesturing form the pulpit -
Our human failing to understand the
book, the word, the bits of insincerity?

I have stood by graves of children;
Noted the words of grief;
seen the white slabs on slabs,
Row on row.
Have knelt in wonder
at Poelkappelle
And seen those torn from life and being
Without even a name to take them.

How can I sit in cool chapels
lit through glass bearing sacrifice
and see it all as one?

I'll live with poets for they have lived and know.

Forever

I am yours alone forever:
My eyes and hands, heart and
other parts.
I am hunted by your smile,
I hide in deep woods and mists.
You pull your bow and I'm shot!
You see me now as I strain to
keep patience as they skitter
and fritter away at time.
You watch as I sometimes watch you
through the glass,
seeing what you do not know.
You all bodily innocence of my gaze
My wandering imagination.
Nothing is ever the same: new suns
New growth, new shoots.
Do you know me like I know me?
Is it for all time this lovers' bliss?
tell me how it will be;
For forever is all the past.

Grass and moss

While the summer tickles long grass
Its feathered heads shiver in the air.
Below, the grass wages war with moss:
The spongy soak and squelch which grows
Like violence in the trim rectangle
Of the lawn.

Beyond windows reflecting
Back pale skies, the moss seeks to sow its
Vile wetness, destroying the grass much
Undersold.

Somewhere, there is a good man, toiling
And doing his best.
Yet some other
Spreads lies and deceit. 

This latter Squeezes out the life and talks
Flame and death through a gritted-teeth
Smile. He shakes the former's hand And pats him on the back -
Knife concealed.

Here, the grass seems defeated but,
Look closely at the sun burned moss
Frail and dry, crisp and fragile,
The loose earth beneath showing
Willing to take grass' seeds and grow.

Exams

Arrivng late at the exam hall, As if getting to a battle spent - After medics had packaged the bodies Rags and tissues and broken bits Remain And time stands, pauses and air Takes stock - deciding what next. The silence almost whispered and echoed Throwing into relief the scratching and tumbling of chairs. Arriving at the exam hall late A window ajar, pivoted idly. Small scrapes of metal and the cooling waft into the empty space. A chair untucked by some Grateful youth into freedom. A picture askew - some uncaring Shoulder barge. Beyond blue walls sounds of play After day And me here, late, alone A fly trapped in amber.

Flowers like Children: Syria 2012

At the time I fussed over flowers;
Some burst open, vibrant red like flame,
like a shower of spray, colours of fecund possibility.

I worried that the lawn grew moss,
that the rain would stamp on the new buds -
When it came - in Grey-booted clouds, kicking violently
At the borders and the shrubs.

I would have to weed, stab and hoe, tie, slice,
dump weeds, struggling for life, into bins;
pull out roots, cut deeply into earth and emerge
muck under finger nails, palms stained with dirt.

The sun lit down and enticed the little ones.
They responded, earth tied but stretching,
And as the purple petals shrivelled I cut them off,
sometimes picking them between my nails, feeling the cool, clammy liquid
and poured them into Compost bins,
sweet smelling, like open fruit Left on hot windowsills.

Meanwhile, in noiseless horror, in muted
Terror a story emerged, shy into the light.

But the world seemed to move on.

Other small mouths stopped, their spray carnation lips,
beheaded.
Small forms in small blankets in rows like sleeping babies swaddled.
One report said the head had been topped like a boiled egg.
Another, asleep save for the cavern of a little half formed skull
Ajar like a neglected doorway.
The flower of three years, hands tied like some threat of rebellion -
as if the tiny nails might scratch a wound:
a lesson to those daring enough to want to talk of choice or poverty.
Innocence in robed white, stained dark black
In pictures grainy with the camera's honest diffidence:
Even too ashamed to reveal the girl's vest "dolly" print
Slashed like tyres, blood dripped and sticky like oil.

Little hands do no harm. Tiny mouths only want to sing,
small flowers are often beaten down by winds and late frosts.
How men can stand and idly watch as youth is
hacked like weeds one by one by one?