Three Monkeys

"All is well" the blind man laughed
"Well, all is well with me!
For though my vision's black as pitch
They pay me not to see."

The last chap saw quite well, but Master
fears the sharply sighted.
He used to shout, and point, and peer in windows
uninvited.

He set a benchmark for it, which was
frankly unattainable;
Quite simply saw too much, a method renamed :
'Unsustainable'.

The Think Tanks rumbled day and night
across the nameless dead.
Not smashed and broken from the wars
but falling out of bed.

Their gory track-smears formed a phrase,
The slick of entrails read :
"Don't see, nor speak, nor hear of evil,
Paint it grey instead."

Now all the world is smoke and mirrors,
All the bodies, burned."
The blind man smiles, and taps his wallet.
"Lessons have been learned."



S.A.Todd

Unexpected Meeting

I remember that evening too well.
The chill in the air, the light fog dressing the paths and
road in possibilities.
I was only walking to the party, but there...
There she was.
Stinking of poison, striding with the
easy confidence I used to admire.

I was with her the day she bought that dress.

Why here. Why now.
Why not?
It's over, remember?

Head down, I dragged my
leaden feet to our common destination.
She didn't look at me once. For three brutally awkward hours
she ignored me, as I sat, smiled and bled internally.
While she flirted, and fawned, and tore the memories apart.

The liquor flowed, the smoke thickened,
Cheers rang out as she found sudden root in
yet another mouth.
I refuse to be a victim.
But victim I am.

Look again. Will she break for air?
Why am I smiling politely, like an idiot? Face is numb.

I waited like a pillar of pain, dreading the longed for contact.
Eventually she came over.
Asked me how I was.
My mouth opened. Slowly closed.
The love we had shared once
Stole the reply.

I Have Made Myself A Love

I have made myself a Love
Refined in passion's flame,
Embellished by each syllable
that falleth from her name.
I have made myself a Love
And clasped her to my chest,
No other soul may thieve her charms
For I shall love her best.

I have made myself a Love
Her heart is light and sunny.
Her ways are many-fold and strange
Her flesh is milk and honey.
For I have made myself a Love
As perfect as can be;
But have I made myself a Love
Or has my Love made me?

Lumiukko

We built a snowman
on the drive,
And wished that he
would come alive.
We gave him clothes,
We gave him bread.
Our handiwork
just stood there, dead.

We prayed to Satan,
Mammon, God,
For but a nudge, a wink
or nod.
Kidnapped a virgin
Slit her throat
Smeared living red
upon his coat.

We skewered some cats
on sharpened poles.
We walked across
some red hot coals.
We sold our bodies
in the street.
Drank Vim and Vodka,
Felt the heat.

The Sun came out
He decomposed.
All doors of hope
were duly closed.
A pool of water
marked his grave
(And that moth-eaten
gear we gave).

We cursed ill-luck
and turned to leave
The lifeless liquid
Bloodstained sleeve.
But silence split!
Our blood congealed!
The World, undone!
Life's laws, repealed!

A loathsome creature
Rose, like sin,
If Devil lived
It looked like Him.
With crooked frown
The SnowGod roared.
We all knelt down
to greet Our Lord.

Midsummer Images

The clean skies.
The dirty roof guttering.
The elusive, icy shadows.
The cool, shadowed lies.
The cotton wool clouds.
The churning stomach.

I wonder where you are...

Bird without fear treads the road.
Dead and drying flowers, crumbling in
the delicious breeze.
Humid, boiling green.
Torpid dogs slowly evaporating in their yards.

I wonder what you're doing...

The bright white houses on the hill.
Forests of cables, seas of powerlines.
Seven screams of children playing, still,
Their scraped-knee tears turning to steam
under the relentless UV assault.

I wonder if you ever think of me...

My memories pay homage to that summer afternoon
Absorbing what it might be like to be You.
Before age sounded the division bell
and the aeroplane jetstream cut my sky in two.

Damnatus

When from his heart some great man spoke
that he bore sureness that, come death,
Wildland animals could infuse themselves
into a tortured human form,
He was right.
Through the distorting heat-haze of this fire
can you see darkness in my eyes
That you may have feared before, somewhere else?
A soul beholden to wolfkind found me out
As our lips met, so very long ago.

Stalking a truth much faster than I
and too slight for human claws to catch,
My hunger burns.
Avoided by the masses, mindless and many,
Always shunning that which they do not understand.
A thing driven by instinct alone.
Comforted by hardship; whose nights are murdered
scrabbling for scraps in the blurred alleyways of
hedonistic youth, decades in the dying.
Struggling with the premature maturity.

Slowed only by the shackles of memory,
My lust maneuvers in perfect silence.
Ever lurking in the liquid shadows,
Drowning in lakes of tears too proud to fall.
No pack have I, no comrades tread my wake
ensconced in pensive visages of man.
I dwell in wond'rous, twisted clarity
that every bite I take was meant for me.
While sleeping times are haunted by fell dreams
As dark and woeful as the future seems.

My dwindling human spark begs for release
from endless howling dawns, from shattered peace.
Fused with this monstrous partner to my thoughts.
As wishful coinage cast to the abyss
does fall unheeded in the clinging black -
A simple yearning for your hand in mine.
For being with you, I am a Man
And without you, little more than a beast.
A half remembered kiss where pain began,
and reason ceased.

Icarus Ascendent

Just like in the movies
The ending is there,
Boarding the plane
with a flick of her hair.
Her Chanel Number 5
seems to hang in the air,
The surrounding environment begging a sequel.

The ancient P.A. system
Crackles and groans,
Hurrying boarders to
Departure zones.
An old couple passes with
clicks, creaks and moans
On their way to a place they will hurry no more.

Her polite smile duly appears
at the window.
A love so in arrears that
It's almost a sin, though
She promised she'd write. Just as she'd promised also
that they'd never part, in a well cliched love pact.

She fingers the cuboid
of paper and lace,
Assessing the guilt
on unwrapping she'll face.
Stuffs the parting trinket in an overhead compartment
and yawns, as the bird of steel leaves stale love behind.

A tear in his eye,
Just like a real burial.
He caresses the small black box,
Pulls up the aerial.

The airplane flies all ways, in light and in sound.

And he wonders if her heart will ever be found.

Arachnavideo

Little Miss Muffet, cross-legged on her tuffet,
Invited the menfolk to play.
And down came The Spider, camcorder at ready
In case she got carried away.

Zoom in and zoom out, watch her flirt moan and pout
What occurred is just too hot to say.
But I urge you to torrent it. Take it from me,
Some birds can't help but get in the Whey.

Food For Thought

Monosyllabic nonsense
Tastes best in a layer
in oxymoron BLT
on onomatopoeia.

Low fat pentameters
(Iambic or not)
Will give indigestion,
so don't have a lot.

A short, rigid structure
Three good squares a day
I find is the best
To keep critics at bay.

I'm sure you'll agree
for I've long promoted
That poets who ramble
Should be hung, drawn, and quoted.

Unholy Privatisation

The Church is not God's house, it is his office.
One which he only graces once per day:
Whenever guilty fools swell privy coffers
And he appears, to spirit them away.

He's everywhere AND nowhere - pretty cunning.
As far as life's concerned, the meter's running.
Denying us the chance of long-term leases,
Sub-contracting Redemption out to Jesus.

You doubt! What proof? I watched him enter, there,
Smart uniform and helmet, ten mile stare,
His armoured briefcase marked for all to see :
"Securicorp for Heaven 'L T D'.

Desolatus

Abased and unique drifted I for days
Upon th'inviolate ocean, cruel and vast.
The ever vigilant Sun blazed forth its rays
to melt my senses. Future, present, past
became one hazy image of the foe -
The Great Unknown beneath my kicking feet.
Huge tracts of void, between which finned-teeth go
in search of gifts of strange and sinking meat.

How long I dwelled there, I know not to tell.
But I recall one evening distant lights
I took to be a ship through foggy eyes.
A trick, perhaps, not first among these nights
where hope had conjured vessels, large and small
with sharp-eyed lads to spot my tiny form
amongst the towering waves that, crashing, called
their claim to the survivor of the storm.

Thank God! Not ship, but land! A faint green line
Compressed between blue sea and bluer sky,
A lazy trail of smoke to earth the sign
in firm reality, not fever-lie.
Alas, I had no strength to strike for shore
Nor could I rouse my limbs for life's reward,
But as the darkness won, I felt rough hands
take hold my arms, and haul my corpse aboard.

Death had not claimed me, though he'd hovered long,
And as days passed on land, my vigour grew.
My silent saviours tending to my needs
though with each sunset, needs of aught were few.
Strange rescuers indeed, not one word shared
behind crude facemasks. Swathed in tattered cloth,
Hunched and twisted, fitful, almost scared
They flitted round me, like a lantern moth.

"I must gain passage home, now I am well."
I broke the silence, and the crowd withdrew,
"God bless your mercy, and your kindnesses.
You have my thanks, but tell me - who are you?"

"We once were men, now barely shell remains"
The foremost of the creatures croaked then sighed.
His mask removed, wrecked features wracked with pain
"Though saved, perhaps 'tis better you had died."

'One hundred years unto this very day
We few, we sullen few, were just as thee -
Fit and strong and cast in normal face
Contented, 'til our ship was lost at sea.''

"Good shipmates of the freighter VEILS OF LIGHT
We clung to wreckage, floating like belief,
That we'd survive the fury of the storm
While our charge, smash'd and batter'd, gnawed the reef.''

"In darkness, drifting, just as thou didst drift
Until, somehow, we found the lip of th'sea..
But twelve of fifty lived to make it here;
How strange - nay, how appalling the sour mercy!"

'We beached ourselves, our limbs praising the sand
and gathered all the flotsam that we could;
Ropes and barrels, nets, and planks and all,
then organised a hasty hunt for food.''

"We skewered a wild pig with a vulgar spear
that Jonas fashioned from our ship's nameplate."
So saying, the crowd parted round the fellow
Who placed his head in hands and sobbed his piece;

"The spirit of our ship was most displeased
by its cold furied murder, sank and smashed.
By blooding up its name it came aroused
from those sad timbers, broke and weather-lashed,

It took possession of the dying swine
Who calmly fixed our gaze and voiced the curse
through bloodied foam 'Lo! Hell on earth is thine!'
And every day, thy limbs shall serve thee worse!'

"Too tired to care, we shared the pork and ate.
Half-crazed, and ripping uncooked flesh with teeth,
We cursed the damned existence of that reef,
Then slept as dead men sleep, 'til very late.

"Come morning time, our nightmare would begin!
Some daemon saw us in our blood-soaked slumber
Destroyed our looks - for we'd been wond'rous fair -
and left us, monsters, wrapped in twisted skin.''

"Disfigured so as to shock e'en the blind!
Our very ageing, there, was dealigned!
And thus we stand before you as we are;
In lonely exile for our sin, forever."

"Bravo! A worthy tale!" I then replied
"This 'curse', though, lies on you and only you.
Behold! I am not thralled; the same outside
as when you rescued me, and I arrived.''

"Then so be it, begone!' They clamour'd round
And showed me to their raft, a sturdy Sail,
But wading to the craft, a rusty nail
Impaled my foot, which crimson swam around...

The men sifted the shallow depths, the sand,
Lifted the faded wood, all spatter'd red.
The letters 'VEI' could be discerned:
'Twas as if some ethereal, angry hand

Descended 'pon my head, and as it smote,
The watchers saw my body stripped to th'stem;
Mangled, broken, screaming in the boat
Exact in frame and face as each of them.

The Wongabong Fly

The Wongabong Fly
was not like you or me.
He had twelve pairs of wings
but no head you could see.
He flew in figure nines
(He found the eights a bore)
Revered grand-daddy
of ones we ignore.

A legendary insect
who taught mosquitoes and gnats
How to miss the flailing corks
on Anti-Fly hats.

Bacchus Song

Drink!
Drink to the health of your sins!
Drink to the War no-one wins!
Drink!

Drink!
Drown the kittens of woe!
Drink to the ways you may go!
Drink!

Drink!
For to drink is a fine way to die!
With a nod, and a wink, and a sigh!
Drink!

Drink!
For the average is more than the most!
And reality's only a ghost!
Drink!

Drink!
For love is a fickle thing!
Bound up with hope and a ring!
Drink!

Drink!
For the time to be different is through!
And love is a fickle thing!
And the average is more than the most!
And reality's only a ghost!
And to not, a prelude to a sting!
Drink!

Loss

Solitude will be my ticket
To meet you some rainy day,
When time has dulled the noisy lusts
And petty loves have passed away.

'Time heals' is but a graveside joke,
A laughless alien within,
That prods the dying embers in me
Urging me to future sin.

Cry 'Love', and it will find you there.
The race it brings will stop and start
inside your shattered, hopeless hopes
still burning. Acting out the part

You reassign them fresh each day
With every soulborne force enkinned
to move from heart, to mouth, to say
Such words of warmth. All are ruined.

For 'moving on' beyond your death
is sentiment that mocks my breath,
The ill-twinned names Love made to die,
hands wrenched apart in suicide.

Surgery

Through a dreamlike haze, I felt the parted flesh
meet again in a stinging kiss. The wake of
the blade must leave this.

Yet I should not know!
Not enough used.
Agony laid on thick.

Iam not under anaesthetic!

Paralysed by fear, and laboured breath,
I cannot feel my fingers; only theirs, in my torso.
My eyes taped shut, but I see Them!
Evil miracle workers commanding me 'Open!'

Faith in God is disappearing
Crimsons claws and masked maws leering
Laser-light and nerve ends searing
My trinket life, my end is nearing.

In the interests of Science, dismembered
By a handful of minds I'm remembered.
To a shadowy place my soul flees,
While my body is rent, by degrees.

I'll never know why.

Time to die.

Dead Man's Hand

I am The Gravedigger
King of Spades, haggard,
I hew from the hard clay your bed.
And whenever I tire, the Parson and Squire
Lecture me 'til I'm near dead.
"If you can't hack the work
And you're tempted to shirk
We won't pay for your transport to Heaven.
See, your coffin's not free
As you're six-foot three
And we've wood for just five-foot eleven."

Pony For Your Thoughts

I found a horse of splendid girth
Estranged of life, with glassy eyes,
Miasmad all around with flies
that supped its ribs profound with dearth.

Lame and wounded, heart's decay,
He lurched toward this leafy spot
Each torture of neglect forgot,
Embraced the earth, and passed away.

They dragged him to the trailer-bay
And rolled their greedy eyes around;
"Between this saddle, and this ground,
We glue-base sought, and glue-base found."

"On this crime of conscience you are caught!
Our thankless tyranny, his dying thought!
It came to court one ill-attended day,
Remorseless wealth replying only -

"Nay".

The Press

Excuse me, sir,
But what have you to say
of the allegations
heaped on you today?

Are you happy?
Are you mad?
Are you pensive?
Maybe, sad?
Were you soliciting?
Or were you... not?
Do you have a drink problem?
Do you smoke pot?
Forensics says 'yes'
but your family 'no';
If you're forced to leave town
then where will you go?
Where were you
when the girl was found, dead?
At a bar perhaps? Or were you in bed
with a famous starlet
you're declining to name?
(Would her face turn bright scarlet
with all of the shame?)
Will your reputation
be drowned in our sludge?;

The man raises his hands,
(Quote) "Hey, I'm just the Judge".

Shadowed Thought

I saw you in the dusk, for you so walked
towards the circumspection of the day.
You could not see me, for I crouched and stalked
within the darkened shadow of our night.
For I remember too few times we've talked
but only countless times I begged you stay.

You would not tarry, for you had no cause.
Your task thought done, and leaving naught amiss
(For nothing-kisses break not any hearts
save those left yearning for their cousins real).
Pray tell me, Lord, what breed of fresh-slammed doors
can leave a good man with a pain like this?

"The hurt shall pass in little time" they say
But they be blind to th'nature of the Beast!
It turned our maddening night into the day
Faster than my sweetheart draws a breath.
Love or Nothing; friend, I cannot say
which between the two wounds me the least.

Robin's Last Arrow

Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.
Where truth will always slay the duelling lie,
And roses live, and harvests never fail.
Wake wisdom up, entreat him weave a tale
to span these aeons. Paint the man I was;
Tell them, 'Waste you no time nor breath, because
the flesh and blood is fleeting, passing by'.
Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.

Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.
Where rolling hills of plenty siege the eye,
Where doubts but doubt themselves, and love remains
Spread from strong hearts to fill my failing veins.
Where social fetters bind my hands no more,
And Peace sleeps soundly, free from dreams of War.
The last breath should be one contented sigh-
Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.

Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.
Where horizons of azure brace the sky.
My memories blaze and set the mind alight,
For all your tears that douse them feed, not fight
the ancient hearth-flame dwindling in my breast
that kept me warm throughout the epic test.
Dear friends, you speak of Life! But so do I.
Where grace low-lieth, leave me there to die.

1989

I recall an odd discussion
I once had with a fellow Russian.
He spoke of Gulag, pain and cold
And every time his speaking ceased
it was like fear becoming bold
now he had been released. To tell
A story needing told

Last night I had a conversation
With a Capitalist of no nation.
We smiled, and passed the time of day
And talked of how much it had rained -
Some car has splashed him on its way,
His new suit had been stained. But he
had nothing new to say.

The West has found a way that it can be
The masters of the threat across the sea.
Democracy's a mask, and we all know
New Communism, incommunicado.

My people merely grunt, and do not care;
They take for granted 'what is always there
will always be there'. Vive Le Status Quo!
New idiots will trade us blow for blow!

Our bullied masses whimper, will not speak
For fear a lack of breath or secret leak
Will compromise them to the KGB;

Has no-one here a ballot slip for me?

Snow White Homicide

Weapon : Bad Apple
(Obviously)
Time Of Sleeping Death :
around half-past three.

You'd credit those dwarves
with a little more sense
Than a 'say yes' Princess
for home defence.

(During the questioning
all became clear;
The 'housekeeper' deal
was a Dopey idea).

Granny Smith's prints
were all over the place.
Send C.S.I. home
It's an open/shut case.

The Old Man Speaks

"Mankind should spend its time upon the fence.
No wrack, or ruin, nor magnificence.
From little things do mighty evils grow -
The path of flesh must thus be ever so."

And youth did ponder long and asked, 'But why?
Why should predestiny permit me fly
And then remove the wings that take me there?
Because the answer's written in the air?"

"Because the heart of Man is weak, and proud.
Because the dirge of Death is seldom loud.
But foremost, heeding history, to me,
It simply is the safest place to be."

Future Shock

Our new found World is happy, calm, and clean.
The human factor countered by machine,
Where every thought is carefully processed
and value to the Overmind assessed.
All corporate identity, laid waste.
All traces of morality, erased.
It came as no surprise, there were 'Deranged'
who fought for 'free-thought' though the times had changed-
Their wills subdued, we yoked their minds of War
to throw God down as he'd done us before.
He sighed and shook his head, his hands were bound,
Now perched atop the scrapheap he is found;
Cursing Tree Of Knowledge apples ate,
Embittered by his long predicted fate.

The Challenge

"It was a very gentlemanly affair"
said the one who held their coats.
No shots by either side
(Save those of liquor)
No deadly ordance dropped
(Save down their throats)
By all accounts, it was a very civil war.

The crowd stood rapt, some wringing their hands,
For the one who lost would be thrown out
to throw up.
It was a marvel!
For after fourteen pints, neither man was fazed.
"They didn't even speak a word" said the barman
"Until six more glasses had been raised."

None dared to even place the smallest bet -
Few even guessed who would be first to fall.
Not stopping even for mercy to the bladder
The two colossal BeerMen faced off,
With their froth covered beards,
and cap covered heads. And
the polite pile of empty pots became obscenely tall.

The thirty-ninth tankard was filled.
The table swept to make another space -
Men of strength, for never a hand shook
though eyes said 'Liver perished hours ago'.
Those eyes, cold as ice and heavy as lead
Rolled heavenwards when 'time!' was finally called
As both men fell back - dead.

The years old Challenge moved from man to man,
No-one recalls the reason it began.
No way to quantify, or gauge, or rank
The primal urge to never be outdrank
But faithful John The Barman hid the dead
(The two who'd fought it out, with neither winners)
and found the blackened liquids in their head
Made good a never-ending stock of Guiness.

Fate

Into the milky eyes of Time I gazed
In sleep, and found a mislaid truth, and laughed.
A phantom image on an unfelt wind,
God saw perception, spoke, and I was gone.
My blood now ran as hourglass sands. He held
the very essence of me in his hand.
Colossus Lord! His palm bore Earth and I
And all that is. Titanic burden, none.

I felt a silent, fatherly rebuke.
If old age ever scorned, the scowl was his.
"I thought my Revelation hid, but you,
You that have railed against me, cauled in sin
Beheld by accident the buried Word,
Yet shrugged at reverence, grasping the divine
Alike some petty bauble purchased new
Or trophy any pagan beast may win."

"Prized punishment! Bear thou immortal pains!"
I screamed as knowledge waves washed Self away
in boiling torrents, countless agonies,
Disfiguring the freewill I had shaped...

This truth is terrible, and none must know!
This esoteric secret must be lost!
For human minds are fertile for despair
above all things. The rest is just for show.

"Flow on now, sands, replace how all may seem!"
The hour was out, my crimson river run,
Returning to the sleeping form below.
I woke up late, dismissed the vivid dream;
'Til I looked in the mirror, huge and crack'd.

Upon my brow, fire-carved by who I'd met
Was what, for mankind's sake, I must forget.
Such wounds of paradox! Ironic wrath!
Four words, four binding bands :

I CHOOSE THE PATH

The Entry (apologies W. Owen)

We'd found the old Exam Room and they knew
And gave us hell, for papers four and five
Revision, hammered on top, had never quite broke through.
Worry, glistening down in waterfalls of sweat
Kept tension waist high, rising hour by hour,
and choked the weak, whose best were 'F's to get.
What murk of air remained stank old and sour
With fumes of fear, and Polos, and of men
Who'd been here years, and left their souls in the den
If not their pencil cases.
    There, we herded from the blast
Of matrices and loci but one found us out at last.
Mumbling, "Damn!', not breathing, tired and stuck
when thud! twitch! thud! one lad from chair came writhing
(He'd been far less than good, not worth a look).
The Entry's body, then his sandwich bag
with nothing in but one cheat-sheet 'for luck'.
They thought him dead until the creature wailed,
"Oh Mr. Frank - O Sir - I've failed! I've failed!"
Grinning, they held a flame beneath his paper
and duly the disgrace was set alight.
Though he had failed, next year he'd get it right.
"I won't!' he sobbed. Eyeballs, a forlorn kids',
Read my results still; but I forgot him there
Invigilators soon had sent a scout
to beg a stretcher somewhere, all flound'ring about
To other slaughters under the numbery air.

Those other wretches, how their brains had rot,
And one soul nearly died upon the spot, -
I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only; how
Half-listening to The Entry's moans of fear,
And the wild clicking of his broken pen,
Renewed most horribly when old Maths books appear.
Nausea mixed with joy of 'ne'er again!'
For through watch-beeps we heard some teacher shout,
"The best of luck". But ours had long died out.

Siegfried's Brother, Vidal - A War Marriage

Do you remember, dear, the day we met?
We cleansed and styled, shampooed the parapet
Until the barbed wire looked like it had just
hobbled out of a Salon.

We hugged each other as the shells fell hard
Upon the roof above our working place,
Scattered the hirsute off-cuts in the yard-
They called it 'No Man's Land' but it was ours,
We barbered on through bayonets and bombs.

Above it all were we, we loved, we worked,
Trench marriages, unheard of 'til that day
were pioneered by us, the stalwart doves;
Even the Allies dying on our driveway
(The little pre-trench to our littler shop)
seemed bid us laugh at War, and pave the way
for freedom's healthy roots- like each trimmed head
cried 'Armistice!' unto the mud caked pawns.

Corpse customers were rolled in, and sat down
And we'd engage the sacred, pointless banter;
'Been on your holidays?' we'd question them.
"Yes' they'd burble back, through bloodied lips,
'We'd booked four years in Provence to 'wind down'...
'Such fun!' the Old Squire said, but Hun came too."

And we would smile our peevish, practised smile,
Praise the Lord, then charge in with the comb.
"Four years? Too bad... something for the weekend?"

Deny Everything

"The Farting Rocks Of Majuba Gorge,
A myth, scared us silly when we lay down to sleep.
We didn't expect such a dreadful noise
It made our camels weep.

All damn night, the clapping wet noises
echoed round the crags, before the dissenting voices
(which were, more or less, largely to the rear)
Ran with, in retrospect, a rather drastic idea.

We primed the dynamite, and moved to cover.
The Farting Rocks squelched angry ancient curses;
We could not guess how we'd be made to suffer!
Though fart, once farted, usually disperses

Majuba Gorge was still, and deep, and full
with centuries of methane, primed and warm.
With all the fury of a raging bull
Flames flew to fart, now 8 mile FartFirestorm.

Iam the sole survivor of the (militarily denied)
Majuba Gorge Big Bang Of '59.
They said 'A freak gas pocket! Tow the line!'
Know now - they lied."

Call To Arms

Stand your ground, my valiant cousins, for we live beneath a lie!
Raise your blades in righteousness, for truth has stood too long a-wry!
Hold the torch of Justice to the wine-drenched wood of noble pyres!
Tear the scaffold down, before your necks are stretched by spiteful Squires!
Scream old whispered exhortations, bring them to their gouty knees!
Prove them false, and cowards all, you weary kin of Ulysses!

Farmers, bring your scythes; cut down these rotten crops of ancient days,
The good soil festers from these gaudy, poisoned weeds set in their ways.
These feudal felons beat you, rob you, mark the ground that you may plough,
Let villains reap a bitter harvest from the furrow of your brow!
Are you not angered by their banquets, while your children starve and die?
These Dogs have gold, which murders Need, which murdered them in passing by.

Upon the hilltop hang our heroes crucified. O Misery!
What honest man can hold his tears surveying freedom's Calvary?
Be unashamed of all your weeping, for it weighs your honour's worth
More surely than a thousand claims and titles given at your birth.
If you lack courage but are proud, then listen; do not blame your tools!
The poor men make, the rich men take,
Who will time prove the greater fools?

Of The Lady Winterheart

She moves away, her spirit cursed by laws
that fill her mind with frost. None know the cause
of why she is so sad,
Her castle filled with many fine hewed statues.
Hark! Before you go friends. Listen awhile.

She watches keen at sunrise in the morning.
She never fails to mourn it's loss at dusk.
She knows no love save this,
For love melts icy hearts.
Do you hear? Soldier, Poet, Duellist?

She reads her books, the prattle whittles time
to one short bladed threat. Age heeds her
waste, and ranging poles of Youth
rot in the snow,
That ever falls like indecision's touch -
but here, but there, unknowing where to go.

What use has she for handsome princes now?
For every man who craved her hand and got
Felt out the Midas frozentouch, and died.
Becoming but one more statue, besot,
While beauty, numbed in guilt, yet glides away.

The seasons change but
Heart ice never thaws.
Procrastinator
Freezing shut locked doors.
Be warned; one touch,
and you are doomed to die.
So Soldier, Poet, Duellist;
Stand thee by.

A Reassurance

My love, I think you carve for me a niche
To hide me from the doubts that nightly tax,
And crumple surer thoughts in paper minds;
Vex not your spirit! No force to unleash
Can place so great a burden on our backs
it cannot be removed by Father Time.
Nor is there any weapon man can make
to blind our eyes, for we are Steel and Lace -
Beauty on Strength. Truth always lives as long
As falsehood's fickle tongue finds words to break
barriers of weak trust in inner space.
So shall the stuff of storms and dreams live on
To brace the battling hearts like you and me.
Remembering those like us who are gone :
Encased in flesh, 'til Angels set them free.

Esto Perpetua

In twelve days, a Christmas.
A new breath for tired shops,
where old tradition
meets middle-aged children.

Darkened streets lit up
with the glow of rosy neon lights.
Your photograph, warm love
nestling in my colder hands.

An image of joy,
Snowblind, we laughed,
and threw rough snowballs.
Those days are gone now.

Chimneys too small,
too modern to allow even notions
of Santa Claus.
You are gone.

But still here as the snow falls.
Inside the snug, cozy cottage of memory
we are still together.
The past will be my present.