Regarding subversion

Regarding subversion

 

The words are like so many dried bones

Ossified. Dust collects on them

Laid out in their piles in ossuaries

I read briefly a few words, a few lines

And feel myself begin to dry out too

As if the dehydration is contagious

Simply by casting an eye in consideration

Words without meaning or relevance

Seem to threaten to invade my thoughts

I think of Flaubert and his dread of stupidity

Words that were viewed with some importance

Apparently by a particular favoured circle

Concerning kitchen sink dramas or the view

Or the intricacies of a morose sex life

Or the guilt of solitary masturbation

Or the endlessness of the doldrums

Of the middleclass way of life

The writers speak for a narrow few

Of endless shame, of existential threat

But hold nevertheless a stranglehold

On who will be treated seriously

There lies the trick do not be serious

Do not write about spleen or phlegm

Or write with any kind of reality

Or challenge those who helplessly write

But have nothing to say

About nothing in particular.

Subversion is needed no demanded

To bring the ossuaries down.

 

RAC

Afernoon sleep

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Poplars

Fluttering

Leaves

Birch trees

Jackdaws unseen

Seeing us sleeping

Soft pink wooden walls

Our small school

Clouds pass overhead

Green canvas

Stretched tight

On steel tube frames

Old grey army blankets

Brought out of storage

Smell

Dampness

There is no rush

Time passes slowly

Lying watching clouds

Sleep again

Afternoon sleep again

Time to wake up

Red leather sandals

Grey socks

Green and red belt

Snake head buckle

Pale brown shorts

White cotton shirt.

 

Childhood has changed

God knows life was never simple

Growing up in a mining valley

But now a narrowing down

Childhood brings pressure early

The need to perform

The continual auditing

To ensure achievement

Of the goals of learning

In a modern age

Ignoring the needs of a child

So very young

To grow in their own time

In their own way

To socialise

Build friendships

That narrowing down

The increase of prejudice

The re-emergence

Of pre-conceived

Convictions

Of small minded

Preference

Of a previous age

Closing down

Instead of opening

Growing

And looking out at the world

Encouraging curiosity

Of life

This earth

And all who live in it

We cannot remain silent

There is much work to do.

 

 

 

 

 

Autumn Edge

Autumn edge

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I count the species in the orchard hedge

Maple, Blackthorn, Hawthorn and Hazel thrive

Blackberry and Honeysuckle intertwine

Overgrown Elder pruned and cut hard

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 that other world

Of war in Syria, the unrelenting brutality

And the suffering of people in these times

And of the silence of people of my kind

And of the silence, the silent unravelling

Of the myth of the Wests superiority

Of the myth of the Wests democracy

Of the myth of the Wests morality

We assume the cloak of Pontius Pilate

And wash our hands of responsibility.

 

RAC

Afternoons work

Afternoons work

 

I like the business of working

With a hand tool that weighs

And feels right to the touch

The heft of a hammer or an axe

A wood handle and sharp edge

That balance in the hands grip

With the job of the day ahead

I hear the buzz of a chain saw

But I prefer the slow rhythm

Of what I can do over hours

That stretch through days’ time

I listen to the buzzard mew

Overhead and the jack ravens

Call of warning as I tread out

Into the orchards quietness

It’s a place I can feel the strain

And the connectedness again

Of mind and body and soul.

 

 

Preparing

December 2015 002.jpgPreparing.

 

In this quiet time before winter draws in the light

We prepare the ground for the months of rest

Bill-hooks, sickles and cutters are sharpened

And so it’s a day to shorten and lay hedges

Birch and poplar are shedding their leaves

Oaks begin to turn though the change is slight

I hate to look at the Ash my favourite of trees

Diseased leaves hang in blackened bunches

But now is the time for the heavy work to be done

And in bad weather winter days writing begins.

50th Anniversary.

50th Anniversary

 

I was sixteen when that mountain of muck

Roared with the sound of the worst hurricanes

Rushing from the mountain top above Aberfan

To consume the life of a school, of generations.

I was being kept in silence in a dark room

And knew nothing at all of that place

Or that small children were drowning

In the slurry storms black torrent

The blackest news was kept from me.

My lungs were drowning me and I was fighting

For my own life. I make no comparisons.

The old priest sat at the side of my bed

Gave the last sacrament, words I barely heard

I was more concerned with the pain

Of taking the next breath and if the next

Would be my last or the pain would come again.

But I survived bed ridden through winter months

I was told my lungs were free of scarring

And in spring I was allowed to walk the mountain

When life is on the edge of a knife’s sharpness

The sun looks different, light has changed

The air of nights darkness has another meaning

The anniversary of the tragedy is near.

Watching them fly in.

 

Watching them fly in

 

I never agreed with it

Too much emotion

The rejection said

 

I wrote something

After nine eleven

Watching them fly in

Not knowing

What they’d been leaving

Arriving in distress.

 

She had a brother

Working in the first tower

A place that I’d known

A place I’d been

She didn’t know

If he was living

The phone call came

And she smiled again

He was alive.

 

Long ago

As I walked home

I heard

I felt

The explosion

My classmates

Fathers, brothers

Uncles, men

Had been lost

We use that word

Too loosely.

Killed.

Too emotional.

What have we become?

Stone pillars

Wooden Indians

Vacant

 

People live

Vicariously

Just by television

I’ve lived in a time

That isn’t literally

Real or unreal

I write

About emotions

The connections

People, times and places

That are real.