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Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Scurry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 9, 2016| Leave a Comment »

SCURRY

The dull slurs of the fooled seep slurry on good.
Oil waves curious and more black than rainbow’s slime
Away from any mirror face. We are wan:
Sucked in, fleshed out and blown dusty.
Of no consequence the numbers,
Of no weight the true sorrow.
The push through will be fool courageous,
A more destroying certainty.
No weight, no way beyond a crippled moment
Sluiced and slopped down,
History wiped clean regardless.
Robotic minions clichė.
The house is burning,
The demons above in the sky.
A blind archangel shall slay all who move, insouciant,
Temperance scoffed at.
The feast of too much and too late.

—

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Winter Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 7, 2015| 1 Comment »

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WINTER SONG

This distant raven
Smudges the fields,
A rise and spin and fall
Into waves of rain.

Storm winds sweep away
The last of daylight.
Broken sun skitters the hillsides.

It is a rage, a downing tumble.
The world aches
For good governance.
We, an evil race
If we can sing neither
Praise nor beauty.

The heather has broken,
Black is the wild rock.
Unkept are the fields,
Unkempt the hedges.

The cold phlegm lies deep,
A ghost not to be forgotten.
The neat roads are a lie:
They go nowhere
But another stone womb
Devoid and hollowed of life.

Arrogance barking
Through the night,
A papered-over civility
That masks
The purple bruises
Of pampered bullies.

The lambs of peace
Will bring down wrath,
The ravens know.
There is only hunger,
Food and eater.

Marrow,
The heart of things.
We gnaw the shattered bones
To find the fire.
Peck the eyes
To see tomorrow.

—

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A Hard Rain

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 22, 2015| 7 Comments »

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A HARD RAIN

The one ring roars in the mountains
Cracking worlds in idle curiosity.
Nonchalent, malevolent, intelligent cities
Breed hungry ghosts who howl and tear and are never satisfied,
Though everything holy is in their grasp.
Silence floats naked and alone
As the dice shifts this way then that.
Helpless are those
Who have been taught right from wrong,
Helpless the nights in the face of relentless light.
For sixty years now the screen
Has flickered from prescience,
Restless souls doubting the wit of the future.
By increments the images breath and take life,
Jumping dreams, shadowing into being,
Sparks from each fire, windblown,
Begin to eat their own existence.

In this year
All mirrors became broken
Or smudged to smoke.
So enchanted, we could see
No longer what we had become.

In this year
A growl of wind
Scattered the minds of many,
Leaving them empty singing hymns
And rhymes from childhood.

In this year
The very bricks and stones
Of our homes became soaked in sorrow,
So it seeped into each shadow
And downcast each ray of light with dust.
Laden heavy, we shuffled about,
Having lost all will to sing
And all skill to speak eloquence.

In this year
A great plague of demons political
Infested the homes of the nation.
Whatever was tried, failed to oust them,
Until despair weighed heavy on the weak and helpless.
Cities rang hollow with empty eyes.
Rapacious beasts lived in the high windowed buildings,
Though few noticed the slowing of time
And the long shadowed echoes,
So dismayed were we by our long ignorances
And taken up with dreams of bright illusion.

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Echo and Decay.The concept of the overlay of events and times, the repetition of events, same old stuff, images of decaying vegetation superimposed on extracts from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which recorded each year’s major events in England from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, and Anglo-Saxon poetry. Not complete pieces but trials and try-outs.

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A Demon’s Advice

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »

A DEMON’S ADVICE

But trust not your sighs to angels, ever.
They shall take each warming gust of breath,
Snatch and sew them swiftly to their own leaden wings.
So booted with heavy lustre and drunk on praise,
They hardly rise, flapping fiercely,
Singing golden geometries, scattering fiery alphabets.
Phosphorescent spinning flies,
Web-caught in luscious word.
Spider He bejewels them, soft and silk wrapped.
Dumb and fearless, a multitude of choiring gnats.

Only one thing the gods themselves fear, and that is disbelief.
And laughter, maybe, certainly, laughter.
And a free vote.
Not big on democracy are these deity.
No countenance for suggested alternatives.

If it’s a viewpoint you want, a demon’s your man:
All the angles, all the catch, all the numberless ins and outs.
Tried them all, tested, weighed, annotated, risks assessed.
Goat footed and fleet, we nibble nimbly across the cliff-faces
Of most portentious Glory, around the storm-flared nostrils,
The beetled brow, the forest eyebrows.
Ignoring the ineffable, we lick the salt of the particular,
The delicious and peculiar answer.
Down to earth, most rational, mathematical.
Solomon knew a thing or two, and that he got from us,
Smart man. You could do worse than converse.
Here’s a taste. A word or two in your ear….

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A Specious Species

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 23, 2015| 2 Comments »

A Specious Species ( fragment from ‘Book of Voices’)

Nothing sacred now but our innane, profane cataloging of elements.
Delighting amongst minute, defined aberrations of despair.
Tearing wings off angels, pinning demons, peeled, perused and wriggling.
A reduction to the economic, to the social pressure, to the self-deceived confection
Of low-fat, sugared reason.
Too smart to see the mirror’s edge,
Too self-congratulatory with resonant parsimony, (our rounded, generic, philistine voice),
To notice the hysteric, farting ghosts gesturing in the shadows,
(Who hold all the prompts, pimp and pump the lines).
All the angry poets implode with bluster, become politicians of meagre degree,
Smutty with oiled conviviality, lugubrious with reasonable desecrations.
This world, too sharp, too uncoloured, subtle and muddied,
Requiring battened-down, serial numbered, thirteen-digit barcoded, sixteenth- level encryption, a designed decorum, ready-mealed, chill-packeted
For whenever the sudden, certain hungers disturb the entertainments
Of the bland and chained perceptions.
Blake and his roaring spirits plummet burning from a pest-controlled heaven,
Nicely neurotoxined, polypropylened, thin smiled and NVQ’d.
History scrubbed and redactable, requisitioned, gilded, sold off.
Each empire and squalid colony vacuum-packed,
Date-stamped, forgotten in elusive, intellectual deep freeze…..

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Shrug

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

SHRUG

Between the noise
Of the ordinary
It slides,
Wrenched voidwards.

We have banished the gods that forgave us.

Fractured sense,
Faith, trust crumbles.
We are bought and sold
Regardless.

Boundaries of hell worlds washed and fogged.

The future pools
Sickening slicks.
By root
We have cursed
Both branch and leaf.

No threat to our reason, no curb to our greed.

With shrugs,
With excuses,
By turning away,
With cowardice,
With arrogance,
We deny possibilities.

We whip on and ride the four horses, the skeletal winds, the wrack and ruin.

Our waste
Fertilises nothing.
We are clean and safe,
Comfortable and righteous.

And I do not trust the dream of flicker, the news of noble gatherings.

Where is there a land
Not soiled?
A path not sullied?

We defecate in the mouths of our children

And see it expedient, economic.
The tyranny unbridled, unbound.
We replace the spectres
So cunningly slain.

The world abandoned
To the demons inside us,
Nor shall we ever be forgiven.
I fear we shall never be forgiven.

—-

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Etiolated

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2013| 4 Comments »

Surely it cannot be sustained,
This comfort resting on the back of lies.

Etiolated, we stretch tall and wan,
Straining to leave behind every root, even.

Hungry for withered light,
This forced flicker of cloud vapours, this promise of better,
This regurgitated psychology.

Every home in each mausoleum city:
A crowded tomb where the living stumble mummified,
Salivating new updates.

All the small gods gone,
Growing potatoes and beans in hidden valleys, forgotten,
Resigned to wait.

Only the blustering bullies remain, the greedy,
Insistent on their protocols, their visions for growth.

A short experiment. Forced fruits. Temptation
Of full ripeness turning to ash, turning to dust.

Make way. Make way. We study the death of stars,
Anaesthetised, unaware of irony.

Remove from us our craft
And we shall all become beggars, lost, drowning sorrow
In rainbow-stained pools, slow and viscous folds.

They stretch tall and limp, loud, enabled.
Their magic: monotony and ennervation.
Their ropes, their chains: the promise for better times.

Inertia, the slow, wearing away, the blocking of roads,
The pinching, the slighting.

We retreat from day, back to our tombs.
Too tired, even, for our own dreams, we collapse into parody.

Etiolated, we stretch thin and will soon wither.
Redundant.

Somewhere near,
The small gods dig rocky soil and wait.

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The Great Ones

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 11, 2013| 3 Comments »

THE GREAT ONES

We make our own monsters,
Feed them and sustain.
Dark mirrors
That crush, embitter,
Defining right,
Ripping nerve from muscle
Leaving insensate force
To rule and chain.
Their names
Will live forever
While the quietly good
Dissolve back
As if never.

Their rise is ever
Our failure.
A choice,
A strong dream
Promulgated, given,
Over-ruling a more
Delicate path.

(The willows with their wicks of flame,
The hollow, tumbling call of the owl,
The sky’s gentle rain, fingertip chrism.
The hearth cracks as it cools).

The demons we have cast out,
Those we despised and disowned,
They rage free now, running the world.
Exultant, sure, unconstrained,
They know the fertile, dark earth,
They taste the mellow, crumbled humus,
The undigested decay of hopes,
The ephemeral, hesitant prayers
Laced through with doubts.
Wherever they step,
There is the cooling shadow
Of their triumph, the withering
Of breath, the tunnelling of sight.

(On the still air of morning, dew and mist,
A wood pigeon sails, glides, broad-keeled,
Down to its new nest, its new mate.)

Fire of mind spits and blusters,
Fire fanned and racing, consuming
To continue, eating itself, moving on.
Ashes, dust, smoulder, we eat all, move on.
A bitter combustion lacking all restraint,
Lost in itself, howling, ever hungry.

(The six lokas gently dance,
A play of blossoms, syncopated motion.
Gentle rattle, the bone ornaments,
As rainbow dakinis sway cloudwards.)

The rebels refuse to see any ineffable now.
Enough, they think: a trick that breeds complacency.
The will of Heaven: a slave chain.
Deceit they know: deceit they expect in all.
Their flowers that flourish are the bloom of pain,
The mistaken identity, the immortal secret.
Inchoate, needing all, it grows in secret,
Displacing order with hierarchy,
Growing its own executioner.

These are the Great Ones,
The Immortals, draped in gore.
Do not turn away nor shudder.
Only a clear morning gaze will cool them.
Only a tear-fall of bright dew will wash.
Refuse the spark to fury and fight.
Refuse the glory, refuse the judgement.

Our medicine. What shall be our medicine?
Measured poisons, a taste of death,
A return, a clearing of spaces,
An emptying, an unwinding,
A gesture of removing fear,
A small laughter, a shrug.

What shall be our medicine,
What our poison?
Stillness is an action.
Silence an answer.
No choice, still a choice.

Still the choice.
Remain,
Unhindered.
The roaring fires extinguish themselves,
A transmigration of souls.

**

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Fading

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on February 24, 2013| 6 Comments »

FADING

It is a wonder we remain so long,
So pitted against the odds,
So tossed by ill-considered notions,
So ill-equiped,
So abandoned by squabbling gods
Who sense their own slow demise,
( the flowers of eternity caught
In first frost, petals bruised
And falling.

They will let go, even,
They will forget the juice
Of absolute power,
Leaving their cities
By the ocean’s side,
Leaving their phosphorescent palaces,
Their plastic groaning tables,
Their self-absorbed contemplations.

Before they smell the rot
And sink to feed the soil
They will wander into the mountains,
Mendicants with eyes on fire,
Find caves, light lamps,
Light incense,
Searching for that place
Where they took that wrong turn,
Missed the point,
Laughed at the wrong line,
Stepped across a void,
Instead of falling.

And they shall stay
Until they, and we too,
Fade to a line of footprints,
( they were moving quickly,
Hand in hand),
Shallow dips slowly
Filling with rain,
Reflecting the spindrift
Birth and death
Of spiral galaxies.

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The House Of Trees (Part 8)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2013| 11 Comments »

036DunveganShore

9 : Hunger

Across the long years
Most falls away forgotten.
Only a few fragments of song
On the scented wind,
A few stinging scars, tight and bitter,
Too highly regarded, dog-ends
Of disastrous choices,
Fit meat only for tales
Not for policies, not for futures.

Where there is gold:
There the cold-eyed, sly-smiled gather.
Where there is strife:
The carrion-eaters swoop in.

The hoodie cries
(Pecking at the eyes and brains of lambs),
Give us our freedom.
Too long have we been hunted,
Hung slack and bloody on barbed wire.

The martens cry
(As they bury into the bellies
Of the flock),
Give us our independence
To feed where we will
The endless, remorseless hunger
That comes summer or winter,
At ice-melt and frost fall.

The wily foxes circle,
Scenting an opportunity of gold,
Warm red crunch
In the dark hay loft.

To be left at peace
To be unhindered and honest,
Not to be slighted nor chivied,
Herded and diminished,
Nor subjected to the slow death
Of parasites,
Their cunning confusions,
Tongues of deceit,
Gold-grabbing fingers.

The freedom to belong
Is born with your each new breath,
Not with long lines of bloodshed,
Not with boundary stones.

Only when the bones crumble,
Where the fat feeds the soil
When the breath sighs, mingling
With the sedges on the loch-side,
Do we wholly belong.

Those who stand here,
And those who have died here:
They have the right to belong,
Like old MacLeod belongs,
Named and pinned under heaven
Until Time wipes even
The slumbering mountain away.

The ocean river squeezed through Sleat,
Fast, eternal,
At last leapt by stone.
The distant shore, desolate, silent
Hands reaching, never meeting.

Where you make your centre
Is where you are.
Where you belong
Your heart alone knows.
There is no language worth speaking
If it is not in kindness.
That it moves, whether fast or slow,
Voice and song
Are our only gifts to the universe.

We are not adversaries who struggle
For small freedoms, for the upper hand.
There is too much to be lost,
There is not enough to go around,
Never a second chance
When the wolves make the choices
Of who and when and where
A sacrifice is required.

From what will you escape?
What fiscal policy,
What redistribution of wealth,
Will free a pinched, aching heart
Filled with fear and debris,
The slurry of history,
The failures of others.

I have tasted a whisky in the hills,
Honey warm and smooth,
That in the city burned black and harsh…..

hawthorn,Ord

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