Ode to a lightning bolt

Where are you Oh Odin's thunder

With your head up in the clouds

Well isn't it a wonder

Lightning would strike

And you'd be caught under

That bolt from the blue

That has riven this old tree through

And split from its sides its ship-length timbers 

Going from the bells

Swinging in the tower

tolling in the wind with all of its power

Where are you now Mr Lightning Bolt?

Impulsivity is your nature

You feel the jolt

The knee jerk reaction

You can feel it in your knees

It will rain tonight

You can hear it in the trees

Get your feet back down to earth

And ground yourself in its dirt

Positive and negative and neutral

All your electrical impulses fuel

This storm, this tension

This heat

Then snap, of course

The live wire sparked

The sky just shorted

And found the easiest possible route

Where are you now the dogs have stopped barking?

Now the moon has stopped arcing.

The lights have stopped lightning.

And the drains have stopped draining.

All the water of the raining

Tell me where are you?

In my love spectroscopy in my love epiphany

Cacophony of kaleidoscopic free verse

Has anything changed?

Is anything worse?

Or are you just,

Down to earth?

Money-go-round

 You know you've got to

Make that will for free

Free that will of yours

It's as easy as 1-2-3

Make that will open some doors

Dill that bill, and kill that fill

Still that Jill

And Gill that mill

Will a pocket, spill a socket

Silly billy pick a pocket

Or three

Make that will for free

Jack and Jill 

Ran up the hill

And Will came following after

Jill broke down

And stole Jack's crown

Was then a fool lost to laughter

No one in town saw it coming

They thought they were 

The perfect disaster

A storm in a teacup

A Penny farthing rounded up

But too many tandems, and bicycles

Were rejected at that stage

For a bicycle made for two

Cathedral Crash

 We were holding onto the Cathedral

Like it was some kind of sin

And all the pigeon martyrs

Sent up their prayers on the wing

Coo cooing in tongues with the saint

The Angels could do with a lick of paint

But gossamer trees will shake

In their Spider web chandeliers

And stand like white skeletons remembering

Did the bough break

The baby fall?

Did they lop off a limb

When England's Head of State

Cut off the body of the Church

Like a hand of an octopus

It grew again in its watery garden

And we saw the car crash photos

Of your tumble

From a tight rope of consciousness

Into the dream scape

Where there are no trees, nor obstacles

Just miles of sea in which to swim

No they did not lop off a limb

They freed living being

Halleilulia to that

Amen

Love conducting

 

Where are you now the dogs have stopped barking?

Now the moon has stopped arcing.

The lights have stopped lightning.

And the drains have stopped draining.

All the water of the raining

Tell me where are you?

In my love spectroscopy in my love epiphany

Cacophony of kaleidoscopic free verse

Has anything changed?

Is anything worse?

Or are you just,

Down to earth?

Swimmer's cave

 while I was still young

I loved the truth and the gun

And all the youth poured

Out

Like gushing juice

From Over Niagra

Niagra, viagra

I have some vision of Las Vegas

And the nights are gone

But spent in Wild passion with you

Except

I was someone else

And perhaps

That dream is a book upon your shelf

But one day, some day

We have to live without

The confines of the pages

And book spine

I gave away in a glance

All the sea shells of youth 

That yet lie washing up

In the tide

I give you these cockel shells

nautiless, to listen into

And what you hear are echoes

of a sea I once swam in

Between the ears

 At last it came that I saw the light

The frazzled one of dawn

Too many nights of being alive

But at least I have been born

And seeing you

I brushed my hair

My fingers like electric eels there

Carried your thoughts and dreams

Into my consciousness salmon swimming stream

I fished for you

Down the years

And thought I caught you

Between the ears

Hearing me

But when I heard you

And your poetry

I had to leave

abandon

All the false dreams of youth

And ill pursuit

For you write a line

And it's not cute

It's searing and real

And it shows how you feel

I lay down my pen

And rest my case

Wooden man

There'll be blue birds over the white cliffs of somebody who used to like diving

Trip adviser score for Wuhan Wet market

Yard

Retiring like a dragonfly

He rules his kingdom

With an iron rod

There's no one above him

No one except God

And he gets to say who lives and who dies

With a nod of his head

Or a look from his eye

He is judge and jury

And the hangman

You can draw me in there

I'm a dead man

They tried me once

Below the flag pole

When they ran up the flag

So deep sank my soul

How long, how long,

How long you may ask

How long will I stand it

How long is my task

Will I abide and keep quiet

Hold my tongue

Let it pass

Well I find it so hard but I try it

The red man came to stand in the flame

And the yellow man too he did the same

Now the black man lived and died not in vain

But to the white man in charge

Its all just a part of his game

How long, how long will we wait to be free

Free from turmoil and flood and the blood of the the sea

Where is the love from which we can all be

With the wings of a dove flying like he

The coalman came to blacken my soul

And the hardman came to harden my heart

And I lost control of my horse and cart

And it pulled down the road where lovers part

How can, who can know his own fate

The garden of Eden, St Peter waits at the gate

But who will get there early, and who will be late

Now I don't have flower power, but I know Spring is a state