The pretentious prattlings of a piss poor poet
Unhinged
The night
Full fear
Dark dreams
Black
Foreboding
Ghosts
Memories
Haunting me,
Hunting me
And I run
Fleeing
From these miseries
And bury myself
Within the hidden folds of my dread
27/11/1999
Leave a CommentTime is no friend of mine
Its hateful onward crawl
Into the future
Over the ruins of the present
Away from the darkness of the past
Leaving warped wasted wrecks in its wake
A cold, cold fiend
Full of malice and hate
Uncaring of those it leaves behind
Those like me
31/12/1987
Leave a CommentSuburban walls, suburban gardens,
Suburban bricks
Confront me
A decade on
So much has changed
Behind my suburban exterior
Am I as unrecognisable
As the scene before me?
As cold, as hard, as bleak?
So much changed
Beneath the same shell
Like these houses and shops
Am I, like them,
Decaying,
Rotting from within?
Have these ten long and weary years
So etched their pain
Into the very stones of my soul
That I may never return
To what I was?
But if I could
Would I?
Have I endured the torturing winds
And tormenting rains
For nothing?
Have I watched them erode my hard exterior
And expose my raw and bloody flesh
To the tempestuous elements
Just to say
“It is right,
Right to suffer so”?
No, no I will not
But stand and shout
At my new found strength
Swept clean by those who seek to hurt
And once more return
Return to this suburbia
Unlike those around
In their safe suburban lives
A newcomer
Returning to my fathers’ land
To these
Suburban walls, suburban gardens,
Suburban bricks
13/07/1990
Leave a CommentWhat memories will die with me
When I am gone?
What thoughts, what words,
What voices
Will silent fall
And never again heard will be
When this all too short term
Is passed
And I to dust am returned?
20/04/2018
Leave a CommentSo many years have I
The littling voices heard
And listened whilst
They lying spoke
And mouthed deriding words
Malignant in my mind
Of how I ungainly, unseemly and unfit
For custom social and for life unsuited was
Of intellect enfeebled and any skills divorced
And so believing siren song
Until now I travelled blind
But now I meekly sit and I ask
The truth of all I knew
If so unskilled am I
Then how have I become
All that I am and that is much
And more there is to come
So now must I
The littling voices still
And onward go
And higher still
To see what lies beyond
Then shall I with perfect peace
Full consummated pass
To darkness then
To seek what lies beyond
29/11/2009
Leave a CommentI started seeing skeletons on the street the other day
Not clean, clinical, comical, classroom ones
But stinking, putrid corpses where rotting corrupted flesh
Hangs in stinking, putrid strips
The puss of a thousand dreadful sins dripping in their wake
I started seeing skeletons on the street the other day
Their hollow vacant eyes hiding hollow vacant lies
Hiding evil done and good undone
Inhaling hypocrisy, exhaling insincerity
As they crawl through painted gilded lives
I started seeing skeletons on the street the other day
Where faces were, bigotry remains
Where hands were now deception lingers
What once was flesh is now duplicity
Arrogance like skin wears them well
I started seeing skeletons on the street the other day
Smelling their lust, their greed, their fear
As I walked among these living rancid dead
One with them, part of them
A fallen soul in a fallen world
I started seeing skeletons on the street the other day
08/02/2017
Leave a CommentSilent stone word carved
By church and heath
Says so little
Of the soul that lies
Under turf
And sky
What spark was lit
From that mortal frame
And raised
From lowly shepherd
So divine a voice
In this lonely place?
I feel a debt
Of thankfulness
And humility
To this kindred spirit
Whose majesty I feel
Reaching out
As I stand
Before the
Silent stone word carved
19/09/1998
Leave a CommentHow many years have these stones
Here stood?
Mute watchers of hurrying seasons
Here where once lived voices
‘Neath turf and heather roofed
Lie now open to storms hungry soul
Windows where eyes once gazed
On walls and ferns and burn below
Now lie open to the clouds
Like needle eye unthread
All is silent now
Except for winds harsh howl
Garden grazed by black faced sheep
Lichen grows on fireplace
Where peat a family kept warm
All is cold now
Untended
Unheeded
As I walk on
18/09/1998
Leave a Comment“It’s not as good as ours” he said
We stand looking at new brought trailer load
Of Yankee maize viewed under azure sky
Got from a silo in the town
By road-sore tractor on road-sore roads
“No, it’s not as good as ours.
Look at all these husks and leaves.
I’ll have to get rid of them
Before I can mill them down.”
By I, he means, of course, They
Who long, hard labour for his pay
Whilst he and I sit in humble shade
And drink of coffee while they sweating sort
The useful from the dross in that heavy load
And feed the hungry maw of hammer mill
With maize from foreign, far off land.
He gazes at the work and load
“No, no it’s not as good as ours” he says
24/04/1998
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