Author: celfypridd

…

The Cold War overshadowed most of my childhood

fear was latch hooked on everyday things

it was the Reds they said would do us harm

…

Fear went on through my teenage years too,

the continuous threat nuclear arsenals posed

the bombers of all sides armed and ready to go

…

Polaris submarines lurked in the deep oceans

and Cruise missiles came in as a late addition

something changed something called détente

…

The wars continued they just found another way

around that inconvenience it was simple

they just stopped calling them wars

…

But now we’ve all caught amnesia

and fear is spreading everywhere

politicians can’t seem to help themselves

…

Ladling fear wherever they can

it’s an all too obvious narrow man’s plan

while the dismantling goes on

…

Of Education, the National Health Service,

Social Care and so much more

it’s easy to spot the distraction of fear

…

While the narrow men shout watch for the reds

but the same time get into the Chinese bed

remember there is a collective amnesia at large

…

Soon we’ll hear the justification for war

soon we’ll hear the need for boots on the ground

in whatever land is decided by the narrow men

…

And now we’ve got drones and assassinations

taking place without a Judge in sight

no rights, no wrongs, executions keep going on.

….

And the ramping up of the war of words

to justify, bamboozle and hoodwink

that the actual threat is their stupidity.

….

And were all living in that fear time again.

and nothing has been learned

nothing has changed the narrow men

the narrow men keep getting richer

and the poor get poorer and poorer.

©robcullen2018.

Light Blue

…

a long light blue shawl,

the colour of forget me nots,

used now as a tablecloth,

a way of remembering

those days I suppose.

…

It hangs on the wash line,

stained by a spill of red wine,

remains of the house party,

celebrating your birth

and the four years since your return,

 

…

Distant memories of Addis

somethings still vivid.

I regret the spill, despoiling the blue,

the stubbornness of the stain

lingers still. An evocation of the way,

life turns unexpectedly.

…

The accident of your creation,

the battle of your birth,

the fight for your life.

and now look at you.

…

For Beth.

 

©robcullen17032020.

And so life renews

….

Picking the last of the runner beans,

dried out, papery pods, left to run to seed

withering vines, clinging to cut ash poles.

…

I run my thumb along each brown pod,

split open, see the gleam of seeds,

nestled in rows strangely foetal pink.

…

Black striated markings, a reminder,

of Yellow Hammers, scribbled

warnings to Adders – dangers close.

…

Each bean wrapped by the silver sheen,

of a delicate silken layer, an amnios of a kind,

such care the plant takes to protect its young.

…

I’ll store them now dried and hardened,

in a dark cool place to wait the coming spring,

plant them in waiting beds, and watch life renew again.

….

robcullen©02052020

robcullenfoto©15072015

”’

….

I count the species in the orchard hedge

Maple, Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Hazel thrive

Blackberry and Honeysuckle intertwine

Elder pruned and cut hard to renew

two Oaks, two tall Maples break the line

a Red Admiral sits on a Buddleia leaf

needing to find a place to hibernate.

….

An idyllic scene a man laying a hedge

the clear blue skies under an autumn sun

but never far from my mind the other world.

…

Of war in Syria, in Yemen, Somalia, in Gaza

The unrelenting brutality, murder of people,

and the suffering of people in these times

and of the silence of people of my kind

and of the silence, the discordant unravelling

of the myth of the Wests superiority

of the myth of the Wests democracy

of the myth of the Wests morality.

…

Politicians assume the cloak of Pontius Pilate

and wash their hands of responsibility.

As they have always done.

…

©robcullen2016

Clearance.

…

I see my people’s names

in all the places I search

but I do not see them.

…

I read my people’s names

on the dry page of the folded map

but the land before me is empty.

I watch the landscape

identifying the marks

that my people have named

but the sound of their voices

is no longer heard.

There is a quietness

no echoing of names called

no trail of our footprints

only the trail of names

in a land that calls itself

by a strangers name.

A land echoing in its emptiness.

…

The mountains are still with us

but we are nowhere seen.

…

At Kinlochmoidart 1993.

…

“And we will present our eyes to the world.

Is it pretentions to believe that we are equal?

Is it asking too much that we want to live?

(From Deliverance: Alan Stivell)

Clearances from “Uncertain Times” Collection of poetry & photographs Rob Cullen published 2017.

Thinking of the people of Gaza & all dispossesed people.

And no person of a Celtic background should support a clearance of people from their lands.

…

Guilio Regini Disappeared

…

On 25th January 2016 Giulio Regini disappeared?

And nine days later as if by magic reappeared.

Words like disappeared seem so stupid somehow

as if the torturers and killers didn’t know then and now

who I was, where I was, and what they’d done to me

over those long hours of those nine days and nights.

Now in the silence I am able to speak about me and them.

Three times you broke my bones, and tore the nails

from my feet and my hands. And please forgive me

I confess I fully lost count of the number of times

you burnt me with cigarettes. Did you forget?

And you punctured my body with stab wounds.

And how could I overlook the sparks and electrodes

on my genitals, after all I was a man among you men,

and then you severed my spine with that final blow

and so my life was taken. Another stupid phrase…

But the torturers and executioners have many lives.

So many lives, far too many for me to easily describe.

Imagine them with their wives and their children,

all that sweat, blood and gore, my blood washed

and cleansed, as they handle their daughters, sons,

mothers too. The intimate way they touch their wives.

Are they clean and free of all, no, all that stains them?

How do they forget what it felt like holding me down?

Of the sound of rasped breathing, the smell of my sweat

as they strapped me and held me down. It’s forgotten?

Let’s agree not to call them monsters and demons

shall we? They are brothers, fathers, uncles, sons.

If we make them different we act and conspire

to make them special, different to the rest of us

making them different provides an excuse for us

to say too that we would not do what they did or do

when in fact they are like us, all of us, me and you.

A sickness been unleashed on this earth, this world.

Humans look at what you are, and all of what you do.

…

On 25th January 2016 Giulio Regini disappeared

the executioners reality was – he was in plain view.

…

©Rob Cullen20/08/2019.

Very pleased to have work among so many good poets!

With many thanks to Peter Thabit Jones.

credit robcullen21092024