Poem for teachers

Teachers, teachers don’t be preachers

You don’t know what the students may teach us

You don’t know the truth of all things

Power in the class room ends when the bell rings

Outside

Only respect rings true

But it rings hollow

When activity staff look at you

They have venom, and bitter jealousy

It is wrapped up in their modicums

Of daily pleasantries

It is barely hid

By the failures of their day’s pursuits

But hey everyone needs a scape goat

When a leader they can’t shoot

Power to the powerless

Power to their heads

Run around a young circus

Who have no frame for the nervous-dead

Some incognito tribal rallying drum

Beats their rather void like lives

For to borrow the gun

Aim it like a coward at someone else

But them

Then justify their actions

In the guise of men

Nothing can excuse them

Not even being young

Just the misuse of wisdom

Borrowed from someone

Just the stupid actions

Of some young guns

When eighteen meant dying for country

Now it means dying for fun

Well go and die for your gods

For your false idols

I had my dreams in education

Of the ranks of chivalry or bone-idle

And I see that it has failed if a pupil

Can turn out like you

That a few glasses of the strong stuff

Can reveal your true colours to be

A faded hue

Nothing but the shades of racism

In a classes war

Nothing but the bitter rivalries

Between rich and poor

Nothing but the dumb distinctions

On a playing field

Where if you paid attention in school

You’d remember

all men were created equal

And deserve such dignity

Despite the way your insecurities

May make you feel

English Oak

Old tree stump

What do you know?

The corn has been cut

Now only corn storks grow

Where are the dancers

Who with their right hand

Lead you in the dance

Across an ancient land?

Plush are the hay bales

Rolled up to sleep

Lying in their yellow beds

Yellow blankets at their feet

Somewhere salty death

Is wrapping her fingers

Around the candle stick oak trunks

And waxing its leaves

It’s bleeding in the heart wood

It’s rotten to the core

But it stands upright in the night

And shines on all the more

It shines on in its dying

And in its finest hour

It shines until the sunlight

Has burnt out all its power

And in the death of the English oak

Grows something more

Not as strong as once was known

Its mantlepiece not made of stone

But a force to hold a door

Less in its redistribution

among the rising ranks

But in its ten thousand multitude

For its own strength we still give thanks

Cloud Watching

Once I did see jellyfish

Swimming above in the sky

And then a tiger’s stripes became

The image in my eye

Sudden flames of grey hue

Change to lakes of sacred dark blue

As the fires which rise in heavens

Part from their earthly curfew

And the firmament of stars

Turn in pin prick turns

The saddle of the space cowboy

Cradles the knowledge he learns

And from the tentacles of grey grew

The leaf veins of life

The lung like bronchiole tendrils

Breathing in space dust

I stayed out upon the hill

Feeling that familiar chill

When the sun has lost its grip

And the moon’s power is yet to slip

Its hand to take the reins of control

That twilight- dusk

Where do cross the souls

From one side to another

To my left the sad dark forest

Green in all its envy

Yet to the right, chasing the light

The creatures like me

Flee to keep up with the sun

A cheesy line

A pleasant scene

So nice and green - a riparian garden

Through the hills

The winding rills

Twist gentle then they harden

The Summer spring in elysian fountain

Coy carp rest easily in reflected black

The lilies float

In moon mountain craters

Elephant footprints smack

A trinket for a cat

A piece of reed

She swallows flat

The tiger and the mouse

Both escape near Martin’s House

For the followed, swallowed fog

Has escaped the abandoned dog

And the buzzing dragon fly

Beneath the cat’s claw does lie

Out upon the frosted moor

Where grass snakes knock on the door

To the anima enlightened

Just the wolf don’t be frightened

Firing Squad

She said that time
went upwards
And I said I thought that was spiders
No memories, she claimed
Were washed down the drain
When the single sun shines in the sky

I got the feeling of abbreviation
In the annulment clause
That somebody was not
Connecting what I was feeling
Like a draft coming in from outdoors

The house was sacred yet shattered
It had been, but would be for no more
The type on the computer mattered
But it was tattered prit-prattled
and poor
By the evening of the atomic bomb
A large shark was thrown through the roof
And the oceans boiled
As with turtles and whales
Who suddenly knew their own truth

You she said in closing
Have been acquitted of the true crime
There was dust on the shelves
Of your library of selves
The further back you looked in time

A candle was burning the evening
A thought conspired to form
But extinguished it was
By the hot winds flush
From the salty fleshed
Women of the storm

I slugged my way to the carpet
And left with a terrible head
The dawn came up on the parapet
And in the morning we counted the dead

Hegylab

What do you know of mountains?
I only know of the coast, the cliffs
The taste of the rain
The smell of toast
Or the streets

I could follow the cats
And tap them on the shoulder
I could caterwaul the taps
And turn over a new rocky boulder

But what use is all that?
What is the revenue?
Where are the black shadows
that pass under the rainbows
Along the avenues?

Mobile phones kill quality time

I lost my mobile phone the beginning of this course
And I have never been happier
No body phoned me up in my sleep
No one invited me to things I did not care for
Or if they did I felt ok not to go there

I was not pestered by whats app
Or meeting reminders
Or mobile phone updates for whatever crap

The organizers did not have the ability to contact me
I was free
In a word
If somebody died I would have heard
Somehow
But it did not trouble me
Nor did any desire to phone or speak to someone
Unnecessarily
I did not waste money on texts, endlessly
Inquiring of another's business
Or even organizing skype

However what I had was more cash
To spend on useful pursuits like swimming
That in fact chilled me out

When in the waiting lounge of certain arrivals
I looked up from my lap top
Which replaced my attention's focus
When the world got wired
And I saw a room full of young people bored staring down
Someone commented look at us now
And I thought of what could have happened
In a situation like this twenty years in the past
From now
Some bright spark would have started a game
Some camaraderie would have brought us together

It was there in virtue in vitro
In idea the embryo
Perhaps instead we would have read
A book or done a crossword
It is just that life not is too often wired
To the these black boxes of electricity
That are an anathema to the Human soul
Perhaps it is not all lost
Just the Ghost in the machine
Is beginning to take control