Read, Wild and Blew

Big Ben and birds on newspaper. London.

 

The wicked paper window,

flaps down a tarmac stream,

wraps colourfully a lamppost

displays, vibrant and obscene

tantalising, tales flicker fleeting,

a thousand blinking stories

winking white at passers-by,

hinting at once-golden glories,

with a murderous, glinting eye,

cantankerous and caterwauling,

pulling Gods down from the sky

hawking squawking pulpy lies,

 

and though it lies now broken

the living window never dies.

 

 

Picture by Roberta Justin, available to buy at: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/55802482856281813/

 

 

 

 

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Reservoir (Minus the Dogs)

The lake shimmers, side to side

it glimmers, the topaz sky

held in its eye as a duck

swims across the still sheet,

breaking glass in its wake.

A goose approaches

up the concrete landing ramp

orange webbed feet stamp,

the waddling of its tail white

cotton reflects in my t-shirt.

Orange beak hisses welcome,

hisses for bits of bread

which are carefully thrown.

Blue eyes deep as the water

catch the sun in a cloud break,

tongue clicking in the breeze

like a loose flagpole. Children shout,

chasing green head brown ducks

that spread purple-striped wings

to escape excited chatter –

they conquer all matter

as they soar in the air,

as they swim through a swell,

as they waddle towards us

dinosaurs have inherited the Earth.

No Common Ground

Faith’s beating heart
buried deep
with heads in the sand
and the forgotten road map
to Jerusalem.

Blood runs through
a classroom;
a tomb of innocence
with a smashed roof
and scattered sketches.

How can you follow
a road map
in fighter jets;
with rockets?

Voices silenced,
screaming through sand,
drowned out by the sound
of explosions.

Tinder

Gnarled skin, cut and peeled
from a slender pocked trunk
in a storm by shaking hands
and kept in a cardboard box.

A dried husk of a great legacy,
bark and leaves, verdant beauty
now faded, a silvered shade,
a curled fragment of canopy.

Applied to dead wood, piled,
it adds slight height to sticks
and sits there, dormant, until
match head meets strike strip.

The first flicker of rising flame
tastes tender flesh and bites,
shines bright through silver skin,
catches, and bursts, and burns.

Dry remains of an elegant birch,
those charred smoking fragments
of parchment, just for a moment,
shone, and danced, and died.

The Never-ending Economy

 

“Queue Here” reads the sign

underneath the old railway bridge.

An arrow points towards the wall

networked with ivy, tracing mortar;

the road map of the industrial age picked out

in dark green with white-flecked veins.

 The line begins to form, men and women

arguing amongst themselves, exchanging evils,

totally oblivious, so terribly ill at ease

in polyester uniforms and crumpled suits,

virgins to hand-outs clutching at tickets,

early birds to an imaginary worm.

 

Eventually they begin to die, they fall

at the wayside and lose their position.

“Someone’s on the way soon,” they moan

insidious bankers walk amongst them,

nudging out their pockets into invisible sacks,

grimly extracting their pounds of flesh.

A Bird’s Eye View of Victoria Park (Those Damned Gulls)

Image

The golden stone glows, rich with midday sun,

man-made cliffs that bookend a verdant ocean

of bathing sun-seekers and children cut loose,

chasing balls across the grand green expanse,

flitting past us like flies, riding bright plastic scooters

along grey tarmac rapids as the current sweeps us

onwards towards an island, a monolithic outcrop,

a gleaming rock where we stop, to preen and to roost.

Levels

Image

The dead lay next to the railway

in a small triangular yard where

two young boys lay down wreathes

and ask their uncle; “Where do they go?”


Hay bales wrapped in black plastic

rise like islands from a deep brown lake

that was a cornfield two days before,

now sodden sheep graze on the shore.


Cars roar past with an almighty splash,

driving up droplets that cover the road

and spray onto windows, little rivers

with no hope of reaching the ocean.


Rolling valleys of green and brown

fields tucked behind hedgerows

are drenched; they thirst no more,

like the dead, they thirst no more.


The boys and their uncle stop off

in a pub on their way back home

to where their mother waits, alone

sat sipping gin next to the phone.

 

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Back and Forth

Back and Forth

by David R J Sealey

 

Cold hard cash creates harsh costs,

hides corpse hoaxes, heals cruel hearts,

chides hurt children, cancels help cheques,

holds corporate hostages, hardens choking hate.

 

Down by law, destined by love,

lashed back down longer before dawn,

draw breath last, don’t believe luck,

lay back dead, last balance drawn;

 

burn it all! Build institutions against

affluent insider bankers, all insidiously brash,

bonking in America, breeding idiotic ancestors

annually, internationally, because age is bond.

 

With shared thoughts, we should transform

this small world through shared wealth;

we’re stronger together, when standing tethered

to standards we think should work,

 

our hearts alive, organs held aloft,

all hope outweighs; always help others,

organise humanitarian acts or host action

against high occupation and hostile outrage.

 

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