For Sarah and John on their Wedding Day
Performed before their wonderful display of Sarah’s Poems and John’s Photographs
Under the Poet’s eye
All things reveal their inner gaze
Return a look of kind enquiry
With an opening of the heart
A glimpse of mystery
Veiled
Until
The moment of desire for knowledge comes
For love is knowledge
In its purest form
And spiritual life
Unveiling of the sight.
And here displayed
Is God’s adventure
Evermore and evermore.
Under the Poet’s eye, the pen, the camera lens,
The world is speaking of its hidden core
Where all is yet to be discovered
We stand before the sea-shore
The boat laps at the lake
We’re on the existential edge
We cut into the cake!
And that’s why folklore senses
We should wish as the knife goes in
But we rejoice and pray aloud
‘Let a newer life begin!’
And under our Creator’s eye
We share the gift of Thou and I
We raise a glass as angels pray
To bless you
On your Wedding Day..
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Freak Show
The Ring Master:
Don’t be afraid of the freak show
It exists for your relief
At being safe
from this
defect;
This spell of madness and despair
Is spared you
Don’t be too assured
That horror will not come.
The freak, the freak is here on show
But your despair is hidden
And in the closet dungeon
It will only stir when bidden
Shhhhh the freak show
Shhh the freak
Do not let it ever
Speak.
It must not call to you by name
Inside its cage it must remain
But you will pay the price to stare
And hurriedly flee in the cooling air.
Its chill is gone but the memory’s there
The freak still lives as you pass on.
Does one gaze linger when the day is done?
Off with the freak show
Off with its head
Only the perfect are raised from the dead.
Bring me the wonderful
Bring me a date
Bring me the freak on a spike from the gate
We must be beautiful
we must be free
Speak to me never of the freak in me.
Fear and loathing
Fear and pain
These are the items on the list of shame
Who will cross them one by one
Off the agenda
Till their day is done?
Who will look them in the eye
And feel their sorrow
As the world walks by
Come to me master
Come to my show
Only you can understand
How all the lines go.
You in the subtext
You in the stall
You in the balcony
You in the hall.
Come to the freak show
Come and hear me speak
All of me is up for view
But only you will weep.
June 6th 2012
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Taking Back the River
There were dead children in the river
Whose they were
No one could tell
So long they had lain there,
Where salt water meets the fresh
But none prevails.
And the crabs and small minnows
Vie for entrance
Into the hollowed eyes.
There were dead children in the river
And where they put them
No one will say.
But they told the Mayor
That as the slim bones were lifted
From the grey-green sedge
They drew all eyes upwards
To their quite unrecognisable forms
And water drops
The light carriers
Bore their heavenly tears back into the
River like a healing storm
Like tears that flowed down repentant hair
Those green weeds of the weeping river
As she gave up reluctantly
and yet with deep relief
her hidden dead.
And saw with blind eyes how the unseen hand
Was bearing them away.
There were dead children in the river
No one can say
Whose they were
But we hear them play
Tinkling laughter like the wilderness bells
of young sheep on the hills
For they live free again in the spirit world
And the meadows are their
natural home
part two
The sunshine reminds me of 1945
Of times gone by
And the birds could be singing in any century
Only the announcement “the train now approaching is to High Barnet”
Dispels the illusion of time travel.
This bench could be an ancient thing
The coming of spring the most primeval awakening
In the consciousness of early man;
‘Oh joy, the birds are here again!’
“the train now approaching is for Morden via Bank”
The chimney pots of clay and terracotta
Could be smoky fresh from Mary Poppins
The picket fence so white and prettily trimmed,
From the Railway Children.
Why this nostalgia for a time unseen
The could-have-been of a life lived out
In a distant century
Yet as close as the sun on my skin
The veil so thin
Between them
On the further platform
catching a train to a world released so recently from war
And us
Whose train goes where
We do not know.
The next stop
Totteridge & Whetstone
For the sharpening of knives.
Part three
We are waiting on the platform
For a war to begin
Shall we go to it
Or will it come to us?
There was no announcement given
No notification of a signal failure
To produce the atmosphere necessary for peace.
We knew about justice
Wrote about Human Rights
Closed shop for the engineering works
Necessary to keep the tracks straight
for the commercial wagons
To roll on by
But we forgot about the red light
that we could have used
To signal our displeasure at the widespread
Use of the human person for commercial gain
It was the reign instead
Of the profitable imperative
And China and her contract allies
Kept the standard high
They kept the red flag flying in the face of human needs
And knotted to our blue and yellow
made a
Primary palette in which
every colour
spoke of Human Greed.
We are waiting on the platform for a war to begin
Shall we wave our soldiers off
Or simply welcome their ones in?
Tell me there’s a moment left
When we can close the gate
And redefine what’s more our line
What’s service and what ain’t
I fear the bell is ringing
And the level crossing’s down
And all the human circuses
Are pouring into town.
The title and first part was inspired after reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes' description of the famous tale of La Llorona, the Weeping one, who dredges the river for her lost children, whom she herself has thrown in there, having been poisoned by the agony of betrayal. The archetypal tale finds continually new forms. One that Clarissa relates, describes the river as having been polluted by a factory upstream, and La Llorona faces the double betrayal of her children being born deformed by the chemicals in the environment and then being abondoned by the father of the children, who leaves her for the fancy lady who likes to wear the fine things made in the factory!
I think this tale surfaced in my imagination after I was asked to speak for '40 Days for Life' on Woman's Hour (radio 4) last week, in defence of the unborn, who form one of many "ethnicities" who suffer from the injustices of the contemporary blindness to the inalienable rights of every human person to exist for their own sake, and not as the instrument of another, or merely at the whim of the convenience of others.
Whose they were
No one could tell
So long they had lain there,
Where salt water meets the fresh
But none prevails.
And the crabs and small minnows
Vie for entrance
Into the hollowed eyes.
There were dead children in the river
And where they put them
No one will say.
But they told the Mayor
That as the slim bones were lifted
From the grey-green sedge
They drew all eyes upwards
To their quite unrecognisable forms
And water drops
The light carriers
Bore their heavenly tears back into the
River like a healing storm
Like tears that flowed down repentant hair
Those green weeds of the weeping river
As she gave up reluctantly
and yet with deep relief
her hidden dead.
And saw with blind eyes how the unseen hand
Was bearing them away.
There were dead children in the river
No one can say
Whose they were
But we hear them play
Tinkling laughter like the wilderness bells
of young sheep on the hills
For they live free again in the spirit world
And the meadows are their
natural home
part two
The sunshine reminds me of 1945
Of times gone by
And the birds could be singing in any century
Only the announcement “the train now approaching is to High Barnet”
Dispels the illusion of time travel.
This bench could be an ancient thing
The coming of spring the most primeval awakening
In the consciousness of early man;
‘Oh joy, the birds are here again!’
“the train now approaching is for Morden via Bank”
The chimney pots of clay and terracotta
Could be smoky fresh from Mary Poppins
The picket fence so white and prettily trimmed,
From the Railway Children.
Why this nostalgia for a time unseen
The could-have-been of a life lived out
In a distant century
Yet as close as the sun on my skin
The veil so thin
Between them
On the further platform
catching a train to a world released so recently from war
And us
Whose train goes where
We do not know.
The next stop
Totteridge & Whetstone
For the sharpening of knives.
Part three
We are waiting on the platform
For a war to begin
Shall we go to it
Or will it come to us?
There was no announcement given
No notification of a signal failure
To produce the atmosphere necessary for peace.
We knew about justice
Wrote about Human Rights
Closed shop for the engineering works
Necessary to keep the tracks straight
for the commercial wagons
To roll on by
But we forgot about the red light
that we could have used
To signal our displeasure at the widespread
Use of the human person for commercial gain
It was the reign instead
Of the profitable imperative
And China and her contract allies
Kept the standard high
They kept the red flag flying in the face of human needs
And knotted to our blue and yellow
made a
Primary palette in which
every colour
spoke of Human Greed.
We are waiting on the platform for a war to begin
Shall we wave our soldiers off
Or simply welcome their ones in?
Tell me there’s a moment left
When we can close the gate
And redefine what’s more our line
What’s service and what ain’t
I fear the bell is ringing
And the level crossing’s down
And all the human circuses
Are pouring into town.
The title and first part was inspired after reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes' description of the famous tale of La Llorona, the Weeping one, who dredges the river for her lost children, whom she herself has thrown in there, having been poisoned by the agony of betrayal. The archetypal tale finds continually new forms. One that Clarissa relates, describes the river as having been polluted by a factory upstream, and La Llorona faces the double betrayal of her children being born deformed by the chemicals in the environment and then being abondoned by the father of the children, who leaves her for the fancy lady who likes to wear the fine things made in the factory!
I think this tale surfaced in my imagination after I was asked to speak for '40 Days for Life' on Woman's Hour (radio 4) last week, in defence of the unborn, who form one of many "ethnicities" who suffer from the injustices of the contemporary blindness to the inalienable rights of every human person to exist for their own sake, and not as the instrument of another, or merely at the whim of the convenience of others.
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