UPON DELIVERY

Tags

angels, Devils, Evil, good, love, poem, poetry

UPON DELIVERY

delivering (me) from
evil, such a bitch,
who would have thought it?
determined, desperate, the angels
and devils
thrown into confusion by
my poems
the morality of which
all over the place

and then the spirituality
the dude so much-deceived
into thinking
God really likes him
since that moment
at the bottom of
the swimming pool so
much to and fro

and now I sense these lines
being read as I write them
(long before I wrote them)

the
switches so
fast and furious
between thunder and bright sun
between
anger and
pleasure

but, still, the critic’s eye
and respect for every little
feeble
attempt to emulate
gloriously create

BURN AWAY

Tags

Humanity, Judgement, love, Mother, poem, poetry, spiritual

BURN AWAY
(For M.G.E.D.)

a back slash
came between us

something uncoupled us
twisted your love
into shape, I’m afraid to say,
I see as swastika

and yet
that was not your way
you were not
born that way

nor were you that way when
your eyes first alighted on me
and I was thing
most yours in the world

there to nurture, yours
in love forever

and yet
you did decide to
turn away

something in my words, my smile
you did not savour, something
I could not
avoid, not change
being reflection of yourself

and so
I observed from a distance, took
in all that I did hear
shedding
no tear

but do offer
this, my prayer of fire,

that all that came between us
all you
put between us

might burn
and all that was mine in you
was truly mine, eternally mine

I might
lift from those ashes
and reclaim

WORD FROM MY FATHER

Tags

Difference, division, father, Humanity, love, poem, poetry, reconciliation, redemption, Unity

WORD FROM MY FATHER

before this is over
let us have
tales of courage, tales
of hope and
tales of redemption

I see so many
basic mistakes
lost opportunities,

and yet, as a species,
we are still here
talking to each other across
divides that seemed
they could last forever

learning
what is precious

before
it is too late

it is
almost too late

LET HILLSBOROUGH

Tags

Britain, British, football, Hillsborough, Justice, Law, Liverpool, poem, poetry, Shakespeare

LET HILLSBOROUGH

let Hillsborough
teach Shakespeare
about the quality
of justice

for here we
see things
strangled

more than
strained

a system that
plods and plops and
crawls on its belly

determined to keep
what must be kept from blame

PIXEL

Tags

Censorship, dissident, freedom of expression, human rights, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Torture

PIXEL

they took him
to the place of torture
which, as you have guessed,
was deep downstairs

there
they broke him like bread
with none
of the religious symbolism

or rather, they broke him
like a twig,
or rather,
they broke him in a way
for which we have no comparison
(no simple simile here
doing it poetic justice)

just scrambled his picture
at a whim, as is
laid down in the law

irony being, this all just a show
a display of power
power of
the artist
(this their deep bond, this
their deep affinity)

power to
change the world
redraw the landscape
pixel by pixel

WAKE UP CALL

Tags

poem, poetry, Universe

WAKE UP CALL

he woke
with his head full
of alien landscapes

felt detached from
all mortal, terrestrial love

that is so
dull, self-reflective, pitifully sublunary

yet keeps the jewel-blue planet
from sinking into a morass
of human engineering

so much of who we are
still sub judice (the great
religions remind us)

still in that cosmic window of
under advisement

GOOD TO KNOW

it’s good to know
we are fashioned
in God’s image

and thus
suicide
is a
mortal sin

but then
we come to the issue
of machine guns,
flamethrowers and
nuclear weapons

when wondering
why Heaven is
so huge but

they let
no one in

THE PROFESSION OF BEAUTY

RECKONING

in the end
there will be a reckoning

us called to account for
the green, blue paradise
left a sorry wreck

though in mitigation
we might attest

to
thicker smoke
in our tribute

taller, more
heavenly chimneys