Horizon (draft 1)

If I'm gazing out to sea,
forgive, if it seems
I am measuring the horizon,
eyes narrowed, calculating,
enthralled, fearful, hands
fidgeting nervously
in anticipation
next to you, my audience,
forgive, and forget this
glimpse of my inner torment.

I'd like to think it's you
that am thinking of
but, thoughts hushed and secret,
I'm planning an escape
from you and this life.

I will keep it simple
in these final moments:
sorrowfully, it's a slow
and painful realisation.
I hope, for both our sakes,
to steal away and disappear
despite the conflicting surge
coming from the pit
of my stomach,
gripping like your hand
on my wrist, to stay, which
is what i'd like if only
I could face this life
beyond this moment.

A rite of passage

On the stony setting of the day, this woman blesses

           her son.

He'd dash to Totnes, then trundles casually 

North

to, what may be known as, the back and beyond

      of Scotland



 

The smooth sleek winding train yawns onto the

platform

inhaling from the platform his bags and bike to the

          lock up.

Her thin lips, held tightly into a smile, quiver as she stands like a

                                                    statue.

 

The tick of the track signals its departure;

it toots.

The sniffling woman with whom his eyes

meet . . .

Three pigeons, disturbed by the train, flutter and

fly past.

Escape

What is this ever changing state
where thousands cross border to meet their fate
and, in doing so, escape
from the destruction and slaughtering
- failing leaders who stand proud before them, and us,
as corrupt as ever?

Yet, the beheadings and bombings,
the suicides and exploitation
are not the product of
one man, or one vision, or one idea, or one religion.

History repeats itself
and this time the net is cast world-wide.
Atheists, the sinners, sit side by side
with Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Protestants, Catholics,
for a cyber showcase
in shock at what unfolds before their eyes
on our screens
(and what we hope is a million miles away).

Innocents march, stumble and fall
alongside once corrupt officials,
ID-less, paperless, homeless.
Like the crusaders,
they hope for a better future
that sadly comes at a cost.

Everything costs.

Desperate parents guide their hungered children
in the shroud of night across continents.
Friends gather their energy and traverse countries
full of repent.
Sick and sorry that it has all come to this.

I sit aghast.
Horrified at what has passed
and feeling utterly powerless.
Gutless.
Scared but full of sympathy.
Silently grateful it's not me, or us,
... yet.

The World Yesterday

The hurt doesn't go away
despite the passing of the day:
indifferent to the moon
traversing the sky at night
after the sun has taken flight.

It hurts remembering
and this backwards thinking.
An intense heat.
Even the buds opened from the bright day
making it feel like yesterday.

The hurt doesn't go away.

Then, when the rain had
fallen in a summer shower, carrying a myriad
of the flowers scent;
then, when the swooping birds at play
held me silently, dumbfounded by the day.

What can I say about the world yesterday?
The hollowness hurts.

The bruised bark of the tree,
suffering, reaches above me.
A starless sky.
The stillness of air is suffocating,
when it's suddenly battered by a wind that's biting.

Don't

Don't -
don't console me
that way you try
with sad knowing eyes
and a questioning, quick shift of your lips.

Don't -
don't console me
and hold me close
so I can hardly breathe:
suffocating and choking my tears on your chest.

Don't -
don't console me
with a stroke and tap
and grip and grasp, with fingers that grate
like sandpaper they shred my sensitive spirit.

Don't -
don't console me
and think those atonal words
you offer can change anything
(if I hear the dry, dreary drone at all through my torment).

Don't -
don't console me.
You try: you touch and speak
too much to nothingness, to a shell,
echoing your efforts out to sea - words wandering amongst the waves.

Window

Her sadness was double,
it had two edges.

One looked out -
at a budding cherry tree,
and corrugated roofed
barns, and a road,
and fields turned up
like churned feelings.

The other stayed in
to see
her thoughts unwravel
and her lines
all wrinkle
in the lit up mirror.

Both were torturous.
If they met they
made a window.

'Look at life!' cried the pane.
'Look at the clarity of your vision!' cried Mother Nature.

Political Sickness

This is a satirical ridicule played out by hocus-pocus jokers, proletariat pricks,
who have their eyes on the honey pot and hands on their dicks.
Cutting support for the paupers and desolate fools
who should have just behaved themselves and "tried harder at school".

The retrogrades and renegades are fighting: tucked up in bed
or sat fiercely with their hands held firmly on their heads.
Dumfounded, desperate and belittled by this constant source -
suffering a degenerative standard of living - dished out by the Conservatives, of course.

So we're baffled... numbed...
and pretty soon (with these cuts) the lowest of the low, doing their sums,
discover their worth pittance to this country. And to top it all,
now a third child won't be a thing of joy at all,
so baby making is stalled.

Government, take a bow: for destroying the simple things we hope for -
comfy homes, a loving family, a hot meal a day and knowing we're safe behind a locked door.
Take a bow: for corruption and lining the silky pockets of your velvet suited friends
and comrades in power - to this greed and monetary gluttony, sadly I see no end.
Take a bow: for the neglect you seem intent on inflicting
on Health, Education and Welfare - pillars of the community we once lived in.
Take a bow: as more and more desperate people struggle with their own reflections,
their decisions and the urge to tip the bottle and succumb to a life of liver infection.

The utopian vision seems a childish whim
as we listen to the Budget cuts that Osborne ushers in.
Dystopian Orwell society drawing ever closer make us question if it's fiction:
a gloomy, muggy future is one artistic depiction
of the results of your catastrophic changes
(as everyday grows ever stranger)
and it leaves us wondering how far we are from real danger.

Posing as a saviour, you hold up your policies
like trophies -
a win we find it hard to share in.
And your proud, wolfish grin at each announcement
makes the common man shudder.
Then you slam us with another and another and another.

Then finally - the pièce de résistance, the card up your sleeve -
you're 'giving back to society'. Surely this will make us pleased:
"we're raising the minimum wage to £9 by 2020" you say (blow me down,
hold the phone, and all the other clichés around)...
I am sure you've made the 2.5 million people low paid workers' day!
(apart from with everything else, they'll actually be worse off year on year. I'm dismayed).

So this election manifesto, the one you acted out in May,
turns out to be as sour grapes as I anticipated on results day.
It turns my stomach and makes me sick
to think about which decent folk gave your their voting tick.
Who put their blind faith in your dirty, grubby hands?
Who carelessly (or naively or ill advisedly) is now stood shaking their heads trying to understand?

I voted Green, but that's not the point,
and I won't be worse off, but that doesn't oil my joints.
Childless, working adults are some of the winners in this policy change test
and the upper, earning elite who got us in this mess (again, they're treated the best).

A society of ambitious loners, in swanky cars, one-bed homes and loveless sex,
of companionless managers, unattached bachelors and successful bachelorettes
or suffering swarms of abandoned, uncared for, forgotten family makers,
children below the poverty line. No room for benefit fakers,
not in this Conservative paradise, where you work for what you're worth
and you get what you're given (or not given), if you've already money in your purse.

Now, before I get into senseless exaggeration, hyperbole for effect you might say,
my pain and concern is very simple really, despite this poetic essay I've typed today.

It's simple because I don't lack the capacity for empathy or sympathy for others;
I climb right in next to those you beat down to understand how and why they suffer.

They're suffering because you're lying to yourself and the whole of the United Kingdom,
because you don't care - you're not charitable, and are lacking in basic wisdom.
You're mugging my neighbour, my friend and strangers in broad daylight
and you want me to keep my mouth shut? To put up? Well, I want a fight,
I want to put this injustice right!
I want to shout with all my might!
I want to drag minds into the light.

So, I sit tucked up, typing poetry in bed,
or sit fiercely with my hands held firmly on my head.
Dumfounded, desperate and belittled by this constant source
of ill thought - prompted by the Conservatives, of course.