Followers

Saturday 25 April 2015

SOLILOQUY


By the golden light of new-born day
and the cool of evening's promise;
by the visions that take my breath away
in all-absorbing bliss;
by the beauty lavishly bestowed
upon the one my eyes behold;
by all the days I've longed to hold...
I'm trapped in would-be lover's mode.

By all of woman's hopes and fears
and the greatest of poets' rhymes;
by each experience of laughter or tears
and every sign of the times;
by all those love letters written in lieu
of being there by your side;
by all the emotions I have to hide...
I know I've fallen for you.

Yet fear of rejection renders me mute -
oh how can I bare my heart
in an out-and-out relentless pursuit
that could drive us further apart?
If only words no longer mattered
and you could read my thoughts today...
but then I'd be terrified you'd send me away
with dreams all painfully shattered.

Friday 17 April 2015

DOOMSDAY

Fanatical minds fall apart by the hour:
on planning atrocities they're focusing their power
to bring to the world it's darkest hour.

Craters are blown in field and street
that obliterate cars and acres of wheat
'til just staying alive becomes major feat.

Skyscrapers fall like decks of cards,
leaving heaps of rubble and metal shards
that bury row upon row of back yards.

Oh when will this terrorism ever end,
this breaking of Commandments that cannot bend:
this bringing of innocent lives to an end?

So the Gods intervene bringing lightening down
in vengeance upon the perpetrators' town
until everything in sight is glowing red-brown.

Then instead of twelve the clock strikes thirteen,
trapping these warped Souls between
their barbaric acts and this nightmare scene.

Now upon their knees the misguided ask,
"What have we done to incur such wrath?"
and "To earn a reprieve, we'll complete any task!"

Well in booming voices the Gods reply,
"It's too late for that, now you all must die
for basing your lives upon the lie

that yours is the only opinion that matters,
while reducing the lives of others to tatters
and contaminating your Souls with their blood spatters.

So for all those you've maimed or killed in our Name
each one of you shall suffer the same,
but without your coveted martyrdom's fame.

Instead you'll be despised then rapidly forgotten,
your remains lying naked in the gutter until forgotten -
a dire warning to all who crave glory ill-gotten."

Saturday 11 April 2015

TOUCHING THE MIRAGE

For Ryan Gage...

You enticed me into a fantasy,
well your smile it had me hooked
and the pixels projecting you seemed to say:
Come find me beyond the H.D.!
But I had no idea then who you were -
until the final credits rolled.

Well now the mirage has a name
it's fuelled some kind of obsession.
Yes you've stepped from the screen
and into my head -
though still insubstantial as air,
yet the stranger is taking over.

Don't they say that wishing hard enough
can make a dream come true?
Well last night as we danced, black curls
softly caressed my face
and dark brown eyes sent my pulse
racing into outer space.

A picture of you in period costume
standing with your head held high.
Oh God! What have you done to me?
But how can this be you?
I've seen him in a history book.
It's Louis the thirteenth of France!

So where are you -
then or now?
And where does that leave me?
Teetering on the edge of reality
between delusion and heightened cognition.

Oh what the heck...

Will you dance with me, your Majesty?
You see, that twenty-first century man,
your alter ego is out of reach.
So it might as well be you! ;)

Friday 3 April 2015

SANDWOOD BAY


It seems a lifetime ago that we camped at remote Sandwood Bay.
Thick drizzle was falling when we arrived,
seriously swelling that portion of the sea just south of Cape Wrath.
Although it was mid-June, we wore heavy rainproof coats and hats.
We were freezing cold and were beginning to wish we hadn't ventured
this far north, to such a barren wilderness.
Our biggest mistake had been to imagine this place crowded
and bathed in bright sunshine like on the postcards,
and to picture ourselves spending idyllic days
swimming in the North Sea and sunbathing on warm sand.




And oh what luxurious accommodation! Ruined Sandwood Cottage,
with it's cold stone walls and ill-fitting windows
that let in continual icy draughts that howled and wailed
like a pack of half-starved banshees on the rampage.
Sleeping, I wrote in my red leather-bound diary, is a total impossibility!
But it wasn't only the wind. There was that other thing too.
What we'd encountered earlier had made us doubt
our sanity. We were seriously scared.
So we huddled together in a corner in our sleeping bags,
gulping the brandy we'd pilfered from our respective parents' cocktail cabinets
and praying for the swift arrival of daybreak.

The rain couldn't quite penetrate to the ground floor
were we were, but the damp clammy air certainly did.
It settled in our lungs, making us cough like life-long smokers.
Ha...I remember how you played it up, rolling around
on the time-worn earthen floor and pretending to suffocate,
and how you accidentally kicked the gaz fire over in the process-
only just averting a major catastrophe!
Oh how I laughed, but I knew how nervous you really were.
Being a few years older than me, you always seemed to feel
you had to take control of the situation - to be the strong one.
But I knew that what we'd experienced earlier had seriously unnerved even you.

So what really happened to we teenage friends that summer,
on that first holiday without our parents
that we'd pleaded so hard to get?
We'd packed everything we considered we would need
and rented a beaten-up old red mini. You drove,
I read aloud, feet up on the dashboard, from Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
It took us twenty-four hours, with breaks, to get there.
Then the road just ended and we had to continue on foot for the last few miles,
carrying only the few essentials we could manage.
When we finally arrived, footsore and weary,
the Bay was eerily deserted. Like a graveyard.
The only sounds were the surf crashing onto the shore and the cries of gulls.
We began collecting driftwood, intending to light a fire.
Then we noticed the mast of an old wreck protruding from the deep sand.
We were intrigued. We walked over to it and began to explore.

I can still picture us there now in my mind's eye:
terror stricken - when a mariner in old fashioned uniform
shouted at us, telling us that the wood was his and to leave it alone.
What time-slip had we fallen through? We dropped the wood
and bolted for the relative safety of the cottage. And to this day,
neither of us has ever dared mention to anyone the fact
that the old captain had left no footprints in the soft sand...