Poetry

Thursday, 9 April 2020

How long is your love?

How long is your love

Will it wrap the whole world around?

Will it stretch to the moon

Oh how long is your love?

Will it be the end of the line

Pretty soon?

Is it as long as the river that flows 

Oh from the mountains above 

Down to the valley below

How long is your love

How much farther to go

How long is your love 

Is it as long as a blue moon 

Or as long as a red letter day

Will it be gone too soon 

Or is your love gonna stay?



Is it long enough to care

Is it too long to bare 

Those soft southern hills

Well I've sought and I've plundered

I've lied and I've lamed

In the hills, in the valleys, in towns without name

In the streets of the city so pretty it kills

I left my woman behind at the foot of the hills


I've bought wheat and meat with my feet on the bills

Sought gold of all kinds in the valleys and hills

But I left behind my lady of the lake

To stake my claims was my big mistake

Well ask me one question I'll answer no lies

Was it worth it to live if the price is our lives?

And if it's for gold you will dig

Is it for gold you will die?

In the streets of the city far from the love left behind



Will you buy back your soul with all the money you earn?

Well if it's a claim that you stake

At its stake will you burn

In the streets of the city, so pretty it kills

But nothing compares to those soft southern hills

Saturday, 4 April 2020

What does it mean

What does it mean to fall in love?
No angels there singing above
No locksmith's lair
Or mortal snare
To fall in love with you, to dare

Where are the bands? The beating drums?
No fanfare, no angel comes
Just listless air that seems to fight
The very breath of the sweet night

I cannot climb
But I am One
The mountain side is where I run
Away from lies
That hide inside
Oh but what does it mean?
What does it mean?
To fall in love with my own pride

The jagged rocks
And twisted roots
They give a shock
In my pursuit
The ghost of you is on my trail
To love you I cannot fail

But who has won and who has lost
No angel has seen to count the cost
I count my lives on fingers worn
Down to the bone from which I'm born

And you are there
You have seen
But to fall in love
What does it mean?

Thursday, 2 April 2020

COVID 19 - The Virus

Here I am -Enter stage left
Back from outer space
(You might have guessed)
But no I am from far closer to home
I am from Mother nature
No ET phone Home
I am already home
This is my play ground
It's been me and the devil, since before you all were around

The fact is you forgot about me
Something buried deep in your collective psyche
An itch you had to scratch and then you opened up the genie
Now he won't go back into his bottle -that's me

You know deep down you wanted this
You know deep down I'm good
I'm giving everyone what they wanted
A break from metal and science
And technology
This is wood
This the human body on the wrack
It is under strain, under attack
It is pulled apart in vain
To look for the soul
Because we lost it some where
Back there, when we gave away control

I am athwart to progress
Because you know progress isn't good
There is pressure
There is impetus
There is the worldwide neighbourhood
And not in my back yard
But now everyone is a neighbour
There is no gerrymandering
No public profiteering or gambling
This is role the dice and come up aces
Or else lose it all, reset the clock
Have egg on all your faces
Because you cannot manage

It is too much for your lives
You are individual cases, but in your nervous system I will survive
I am the psychic phantom of all your imagined
Fears
The phantom of the Opera
The last music in your eyes
And the last note to be struck
By the chiming bell
When they toll for the dead
You know I am doing well

Well, well the other choice is live in a world
At times a living  hell
For some it will be a relief
They are old, can't you tell
But I also take the young one's too
I am a humanitarian
I see everyone as equal
There is democratic decision making
I'm not like some kind of crazy terrorist cell
Which by the way my presence seems mysteriously
To have quelled

I am a bigger threat
I am a government of one
I rule not in net
But in the Genetic details of everyone
I unite you all in your susceptibility to my spell
Like a master magician
I know my audience well
I pick out my victim from the crowd
Work my hypnosis
He gets drowsy, pliable unproud
Then I bend him to my will
It is a mind control
Touching other bodies, like king Midas
Now I'm being droll
So the golden seal is passed on
And like a sunset I shine
And my sun will rule the live long day
Until my sun goes down

I will say for my brothers SARS and Mers
Like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse
They too made it theirs
There was Pestilence and Famine, Plague and War
And we all came to walk among them
Without a cure
But if you want to know the problem,
Then look inside yourselves
There is usually a psychic cause
For every affliction
Mine, his, hers or yours

COVID 18- The Lorry Driver

I am in haulage
Lorries, lorries
Just in time
My wife tells me I'm a hero
I hardly ever see her
I named my truck after her
That was in the old days

When trucks were allowed to be named after ladies

Nowadays we hit the road
And never return
We can be gone for weeks
Not just days
Driving over deserts, along ravines
Through Marco Polo's Silk Road
If you know what I mean

This is big business man
The world is getting small
Faster, smarter
There is no let up at all

We are all racing like machines after the foot fall
Of the customers who keep going in the shops demanding what they've seen
On you tube, or TV
I want, I want, I want more and more
We in deliveries have to take em all
Ship them
You've got your TV's from China,
Your Spices from Turkey
Your Fresh Pasta from Italy
Fish from New Zealand
Clothes from Taiwan or Bangladesh
Its no wonder this whole systems in a mess

But what makes me laugh the most
Is while everyone else is on lock down
We hauliers own the road
Its the best driving I've seen for years
Except that it until we hit country borders
Whose gonna let you through?
When you're from a hotspot, no then we're in quarantine

But the food supply must flow
Those people keep on buying, spending
Their dwindling savings
Buying up more food than they will ever eat
That pushes up demand, and so now
Supermarkets have the upper hand
They need this stuff
They can't let the customers down

So even now
It is more, more more
No one ever learns their lesson
The world can't cope anymore
I mean I'm glad I'm working
But let's put on the brakes
The pace is accelerating
We are making mistakes
No one is thinking about what or How
They are doing
And for sure, they never ask Why?
And Why don't we grow things in our own country anymore
Why do we want so much from elsewhere?
This Globalization nervous breakdown
Should be our wake up call

COVID 17-The Lover

It was more than I could do
Not to fall in love with you
In the middle of a pandemic crisis
But you see you just swished your wand
And in a moment I was gone under your spell

Oh darling don't you know
I'd cross the desert for you
Sail over the Bering straits
March over bridges til it gets late
Under cover
After hours under curfew

While I am feeling blue
It's been so long since I kissed you
And I miss the touch of your flesh
The softness of your skin
The way you smile
And your bright eye like nothing
Ever bothered you

But we can't, we shan't you say
I shall, I pall, I bray
I pace the floor like a tiger in a cage
Like all heaven's in a rage
To quote a sage
I must see you now
Put down the receiver
Take a bow
And let me exit centre stage

Left,
What's left?
You refuse my calls
You refuse to use this virus as a
pause
It is a suitable cut off
An isolated situation
Perfect independence
No dependence on anyone

and I have been lying to myself again
I have been fooling myself into thinking
That the perfect world exists
This virus is just pathos
This world is bathos and chaos
And decay
From the inside
And this love is just an
Illusion of a union between two twins
Two towns that will be forever apart
Divided by a river that cuts through their heart
Like a knife
Pest on the left
Buda on the right
And this night
There is nothing
All is bereft
No bridges are working
They are down
The sirens are calling
In the wrong part of town

And I have no way back over that river

COVID 16 - The dead body

I'm one of the departed
I lay here on this trolley
They've brought me down here to the Morgue
They are treating me so carefully
Nobody is coming near me
I want to cry out what are you all waiting for

Of course I'm not really in there, its just a shell
Just a carcass
But I got used to my dimensions
Now I'm ten feet off the floor
I can't seem to leave, something is keeping me anchored
I think I need my family to release me

But when I see them coming through the swinging door
My daughter is there crying
She reaches out, but staff are pulling her back
They implore
Her to restrain her feelings, her need to touch my face
To kiss me and say good bye to her mummy
And my husband is there sobbing, he's trying
To stay strong for her, But I can see his eyes breaking
And his face is imploding in the shock of devastation

I just wish we had some warning, it seemed to come out of nowhere
I mean the neighbour hood we live in isn't very poor,
But still I have this spirit sense that its the same around
The world
In the slums people are dying, there is no place for a family's crying
They are quickly burning the body behind a cast iron door

And I know there will be no funeral for me,
Too many bodies
The risk of infection is too great
They may take me outside the city limits
To a make shift crematorium
To a charnel house of the infected departed
No one is allowed to visit or to mourn

We will be the lost generation
Gone before our time was called
It was not right
But was it asked for?
Did we deserve this? No as individuals it makes no sense
But as a society I want to ask
I want to ask God even more
But I shan't be able to leave
Until my family let me go
One touch will be enough my love
But ah I know...