This house is empty
I’m alone
This room holds all I have from home.
That portrait hung upon the wall,
Above the fire that gives no warmth,
Has been there half a century now
It’s darkened varnish gathers dust
I don’t know how my time has passed
I sat alone, content to wait
I thought he would return at last
I trusted fate
He had no fear
War makes young men disappear
war
war poets
if we all came crawling through trench wire,
torn,
back into life,
would our politicians and leaders
listen
or would our message be smothered in mud
as we sink back
into despair?
our death
and our words
have not been enough
Skipping Ropes
Down by the river, down by the sea
Johnny broke a bottle and then blamed me.
When he doesn’t blame me, he will blame you
And I can’t tell if his lies are true.
The game is up, the game is down.
The rules are bent and turned around.
We’ve got no access to the facts.
The words on the page have all been cracked.
The news is fogged and the page is torn.
The road they tread is so well worn.
They’ll find a way to bend the law.
These games are played behind closed doors.
I saw a broadcast on TV,
I’ll blame you, you blame me.
The same this time as the time before.
Jump the rope and head for war.
The wind, the wind, the wind blows high,
It blows little Shana through the sky.
She was young and she was pretty
She was the girl from the target city.
Chatanooga Choo Choo (written in a 1940’s themed cafe)
Churchill yells from the wall, ”Let’s go forward together!”
I look across the table. The Victoria Sponge is behind us. On closer inspection it’s dry and too heavy, rather like the days that are memorised here, in glamourised nostalgia.
I was born a little after the war and all I recall is the sweets still rationed and the bombsites; the sad, damp wall-paper flapping from shattered bedroom walls in the wind.
My newsfeed bleeps from my phone. Missiles aimed at Syria.
Back then Pearl Harbour was bombed.
The Chattanooga Choo Choo just keeps choo-chooing on.
Let’s stay at the tea table and just keep moving around. I’ll be the Hatter. You pour the tea. Be ‘mother’.
People have got to stop killing each other.
We’ll meet again.
Don’t know where.
Don’t know when.
Think About Aleppo
minds are filled with petty things
you look at the gossip columns
those things that concern you so much
who is with who, and why is that
and is he having an affair with her
it’s reported
mud sticks
it’s speculated
who knows?
who cares?
there are people in other lands
buried in despair
terrified
dying
no water
children who passed beyond crying
and no hope anywhere
slaughter
get a mind,
or stay silent
Fools!
the subtle changes of seasons
repeat and repeat
as they always have done
the wind and the rain
the storm and the sun
returning again and again
i notice each flower that grows
each new sapling that quickens
each ancient tree that sickens
so much is happening,
so much that threatens
this turning circle of life
i don’t understand the reasons
treachery thickens
the world’s full of war
and while we’re distracted
by power and strife
nobody works together
to care for these most precious things
nothing is ever foreseen
by those who claim to be wise
they cover confusion with lies
they don’t look to the future
they don’t look behind
while they squabble
the world turns to havoc
and dies
if i looked down from above
if i looked down from the stars
if i looked with no love
I’d laugh
The China Doll
the china doll stands on a shelf in the corner
kept behind glass, protected from dust
her painted face stares out with blank eyes
her fine silks faded by sunlight and years
she was bought to this house by a sailor
a gift from a far away port, long ago
picked up when he thought of his woman
waiting for him with patience back home
the china doll was a token a love
kept for years in a kit bag in war
she is a survivor of many sea battles
with never a mark on her beautiful face
but he went away and never came back
the china doll is all that is left
she has been easy enough to preserve
his life was as fragile as the china doll looks
the china doll stands on a shelf in the corner
while all around her life comes and goes
she is changed now from token to heirloom
her origins forgotten, no longer known
Beyond the Loss
from high above looking down on the land
there are signs of all that is gone
churches sit on old sacred sites
scattered across the earth
the motorway swallowed the village pond
the sea eats away at the shore
the old forests all gone to ships
gone to ashes and war
i see the ramparts of Rome
Legions lost in the earth
Saxon barrows and Norman walls
Celtic graves, the breaking of stones,
gone, in a battle for power
all for nothing
the land and the word lives on
the rhyme, the history, the song
deeper than dust
deeper than bone
finer, truer, strong
The Dreaming Path 