Month: March 2014

We have come to your wilderness

For healing

For we are sick of accountants’ analysis

And the tensions of tabloid terrors.

Within your ancient, oh so ancient

Dumb stillness

We recognise our deepest need

And cling like heather

To your bosomed slopes

Rooting ourselves

Into your waiting skin –

While in the valley

Unconscious men drive blinkered on

Counting the units

Of their measured roads.

Curse this cross that nails my mind

Confines me in this tortured cell

Naked, but for one wrapped towel

Around the sex I’m taught is hell.

These polarised, magnetic spikes

This rack that stretches every joint –

Is this a resurrection life

Or what I worship, but a point

Towards a mirage in the sand

Where virgins wait to drain my powers?

Is my vain worship in between

The aching thighs of time’s twin towers?

Oh, I could wish a madman’s plane

Would lunge inside, expunge each tower

Destroying both to end God’s game

And let my soul burn in that fire.

I met a dog the other day

He stood before me in my way

He did not bark or howl or whine

And not a hackle on his spine

Was raised, as he looked full at me

And gruffly asked me ‘are you free’?

I looked him in his tired, sad eyes

This haggard hound, with some surprise;

Was I imagining he spoke?

Twas not a growl or snarl or croak

I had translated into speech.

No, he had loaded my mind’s breach

With canine cartridge so well fit,

Pulled the trigger, fired and hit

The very bull’s-eye of my heart,

Such I could not doubt we were a part

Of some lost, unifying tongue

That all spoke when the world was young.

I felt ashamed, I dropped my gaze,

No answer could I give, or raise

My eyes, and look him in the face –

So turned, and stumbled from that place.

I found a grave atop a mountain

Dug beneath a cairn of stone

And on a slate I saw was written

‘This is not my real home’.

‘Do not cling to flesh and tissue

Do not grieve for bones and blood

Do not pine for brain and sinew

The worms will turn them all to mud’.

‘But sing of that enlivening spirit

The light intelligent inside

Creating springs of living quanta

Upon an island in life’s tide’.

‘Until was formed a conscious person

Who fearfully learnt to be humane

Who faltering, danced in three dimensions

And slowly learnt his real name –

Which is the one you might remember

If you have loved what must survive

This chrysalis beneath this cairn-pile –

This butterfly is more alive’.

Shall I worship at your altar

Try placate your ancient fears –

Or seize the fluttering offering

And launder it with tears.

But I believe beyond religion

Still voice inside the trembling quake

The real you, born deep in fear

With fiendish nightmares lurking there

Which love may yet awake.

Truth is drawn up from the springs

Of the ground of being

The silent reassurance

That all will be well

That all will make sense.

It exposes it’s pictures

In the darkroom of the soul

Healing the shapes of nightmares

And lovingly breathing

Every fear away.

When the tortured silence

Is heard again,

After the bombast

Of man’s mechanised dream

Lies dumb – rusting, rotting –

Blown about

In the devil-dust wind

Only the rhythmic hum

Of the struggling organism

Will still be making music –

Ravaged, faltering notes

Striving for harmonies.

Then wounded, traumatised man

Will curse his ancestors,

Outlaw any hint of lost, Atlantian power,

Worship every uncertain element

Displayed by nature,

Project his every fear

Onto all that sings of something higher,

Deeper, transcendent, omnipresent –

Until the weeping, dribbling spring

Begins to rise again

Cleansing the toxins

From land and mind.

Then earth, fire, air and water

Flora and fauna

Will reach out again in friendship

Bidding the survivors

To join the healing dance,

Lead them again

In concert.

They screen out

All the smells and sweat

All the wild barbarian growth

Springing from the rampant earth

Their living, breathing mother.

Earphones executing songs

Drumming rain and choralling lark

Alone – web-bound they shout for hearing

Publicise their outward worth

Compare the image of each other.

The being’s arid seed cries out

To root and shoot and flower and fruit

To give and meet and spread it’s seed –

But all it hears are tombstone texts

Terse, brain-tweets of a robot lover.

Sell the image of your body

Kiss your unformed soul goodbye

Fulfil each siren ad-man’s message

To keep the ego’s flame alive.

There is no book beneath the cover.

Down in fair Devon a builder did dwell

He saw some green acres and his heart did swell

‘That’s four hundred houses and five million quid

When my friends on the council have backed up my bid.’

 

Chorus

 

‘I’ll have it, I’ll have it, I’ll have it my way

Most councillors worship the rich of the day

If I offer a hall and five starter homes too

They’ll jump at my plan and nod it on through.’

 

‘There’s an A.O.N.B. and a triple S.I.

A rough country park that I’ll offer to buy.

But they won’t be bothered they’ll do all they can

When I’ve wined them and dined them, they’ll vote for my plan.’

 

 

‘For there’s only one mantra that they understand,

Money more money if they sell off the land

To raise all their salaries, pensions and perks

With a little bit over to spend on new works.’

 

It’s not just more houses they’re eager to see,

It’s more and more tourists paying a fee

To park in their car parks and spend money free

When they fumed in the traffic jams down on the quay.’

 

‘But it don’t bother me, I’ve a villa in Spain,

Plus an old country rectory down a quiet lane

Near a friendly thatched pub where they serve a good meal

2 miles from my golf club where I can swing a good deal.’

 

‘Now I’m in limbo, I think I am dead –

A rich councillor friend at my graveside just said

‘How much did he leave then?’  he asked of his mate

‘Everything, everything – he left it too late’.

 

Final Chorus

 

‘I had it, I had it, I had it my way

The planet is dying, my children will pay

I made loads of cash, people thought I was smart

I wish I had heeded the voice of my heart.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been your MP for many a year

And I spent all your money, took every due care

But please re-elect me, now I’ve paid back some loot

I managed to fiddle before this dispute.

 

Chorus

 

And it’s yeah, yeah, ever

Yeah, yeah, ever, more, more

For I’m your hog member

Your honourable whore.

 

I’ll tell you my tale if you’re willing to hear

I was born to find claret, malt whiskey – not beer

Like those commoners drink in their houses so small,

I’ve always believed I had a much higher call.

 

I served on the Council, but the perks were quite thin

Then my whelk stall went bankrupt, and my wife hit the gin.

I felt hopeless and angry, and vented my spleen

Then my party said ‘this man is hungry and mean’.

 

In the hustings I beat the do-gooding has-beens

And was chosen to echo my party’s machine

With my no–nonsense sound bites ‘bout Europe and cuts

Plus some local concerns about unmarried sluts.

 

My income as MP is a mere 70k

But with claims for expenses, I can double my pay

A second home in London and a flat by the sea

All mortgages paid for by a kind Treasury.

 

A larger home beckoned the fatter I grew

As did my status – t’was only my due.

So I switched my main residence round every year –

To suggest this was greedy is really a smear.

 

It’s a family business, when all’s said and done

So I claim for my wife as well as my son.

She is my secretary, he drives the car

When he’s not running his London wine bar.

 

I soon reached the limit of all I could claim

But at the start of the tax year, re-submitted again.

My duck house was sinking, it would no longer float

So I claimed for a new one, fixed the leak in the moat.

 

Three plasma screen tellies, five i-pods and more

Plus a new granny flat and a new ballroom floor;

I don’t think you realise how long it takes me

To claim these expenses, but I hope you now see.

 

So now I’ve been candid, I’ve held nothing back

I feel hurt and betrayed to be put on this rack.

It’s all about Britain – it’s not about me – – – –

So please re-elect me as your local MP.