HOLIDAY ROMANCE

Yippee!!
I'm free
to bask in the sun
and have some fun.
No more bosses
fretting over losses,
or devious shirkers
posing as workers.
Let them tie each other in knots
'cos here they're only minute dots
out of sight across the sea,
far enough away from me:
out of vision is out of mind,
at least that's what I always find
when lying on the golden sand
of Egypt's legendary land.
And when I'm done with lounging here,
I'll be taking in the atmosphere
of Sphinx and lofty Pyramids, where
the Pharaohs' treasures are laid bare -
oh I hope their curses aren't for real!
But, then, I'm not here to steal,
just to experience the foreign culture
of baking heat and desert vulture.
The camels, too, are quite an attraction -
although, trying to mount one I'm driven to distraction!
But that's all part of the thrill I seek,
especially when riding with a handsome Sheikh
to his bedoin tent as his special guest,
where we'll stop a while to take a rest
and dine on eyes of sheep in aspic (??)
(oh do please find me a toilet - QUICK!).
The bubble pipe is more to my taste,
to all inhibitions it soon lays waste.
I'm carried away on flattery's tide -
it feels so good being by his side.
And, before I know it, he's proposed to me,
wants me to be his wife number three!
Oh I'm very tempted, I must admit...
but think I'd be jealous more than a bit
of his other two beautiful wives,
don't fancy a lifetime of crossed knives!
So I tell him his offer I must decline,
'cos I'm much too fond of my life being mine! 😊😊

ASSASSIN

Are you aware you're being stalked by an
                                                              ASSASSIN?
Will he put a gun to your head and pull the trigger?
Or maybe run you down as you cross the street?
Oh no,
        not he,
               not this ASSASSIN -
his unique modus operandi is far more subtle than that.


He will creep up on you by degrees.
You'll have no inkling he's even there -
                                                         he's much too wily to be rumbled,
                                                                                                           this ASSASSIN!
(And much too clever)



And please don't fool yourself
that you can hide
                        from the likes of him:
for he will find you
                           wherever you go,
                                                  make no mistake of that.



In fact, he's killing you slowly
                                             even as you read this,
                                                                            your ASSASSIN.
"Well, does he at least have a name?"
                                                     I hear you ask.
                                                                        Indeed he does.

It is..............."TIME."

REGRESSION

Appointment on a hot afternoon:
the way to mend a broken mind, they said.
But it felt like Judgement day had come.

This was scarier than anything that came before.
He instructed me to relax, to just think of nothing
to begin with. Then he counted me down into deep hypnosis...

Instantly I'm crouching in the midst of raging fire, my hands
raw with burning weals. Bombardment of flying brick fragments
hitting me, unseen in the suffocating smoke

of cannon and musket fire. The window panes
shatter inwards. Men dying all around me,
shouting, screaming. Cromwell's army

grossly outnumbers ours. It's a hellish
nightmare, to be helplessly witnessing the fall of Basing House.
A hat feather lies crushed and broken on the ground beside me.

With terror-numbed fingers, I carefully take aim.
He's so close I can clearly see his brown eyes and his spartan armour,
cold and impenetrable as his Puritan Soul.

BANG! Dazzled eyes see rainbow stars.
Then shredded flesh gives way to bone
of bloodied skull: beautiful, like ivory.

More and more come to take his place. I'm out of ammunition.
My sword, the final life-line. It's cold steel
animated by hatred for these perpetrators of high treason.

Grey eyes now, and I think of the King
as I stab and stab, frantically seeking armour's slightest chink.
All I see are feet, vague cameos, and faces

contorted by sheer malice - now fading into agony
and dimming consciousness. Row on row
encircling me. Strange how dying now seems

so easy. A mystical transformation, deep and slow.
Sorting corpses into lives, making sense of how
they all fit into place, as if parts of a huge jigsaw puzzle...



NOW I understand
my incapacitating terror of crowded places
and bearded faces, of clamour, of fire, and of battle sites.

No therapist can erase my Karma:
only LOVE holds the key
to the whole meaning of reincarnation's experience.

I, alone, have made my choices, both good and bad
and there is no going back, only retrieval of squandered Soul parts.
Rising from the therapist's couch, my Akashic Record falls wide open.

I feel unbelievably LIGHT.  So much still to achieve
with this new knowledge: atonement,
in the language of Spirit,

is FORGIVENESS.


This post was inspired by a recent visit to the ruins of Basing House.

CLOUDS HILL

Whenever he was away
Lawrence pined for Clouds Hill more than any other place on earth.
He'd wanted a snapshot, taken in summer
when the rhododendrons were in bloom.
And he'd longed to share it's tranquility with Auda Abu Tay,
his closest friend, who had introduced him
to a myriad of Middle Eastern culinary delights, as they'd sat together
watching the sun set over the desert's vastness.
He had taught Auda warcraft - and taught him well.
It was so good to be with him, there at the oasis.
But he still couldn't help wishing to be back home...

And, now, here they finally were.
Arriving in the dark small hours, both in Arabic dress,
with Lawrence carrying a jar of sand as a momento,
and goats cheese, and his camel's harness in a hessian bag.
And it is like being in Paradise: introducing Auda
to his hidden retreat from the world, to his few close friends -
laying on an informal party in Auda's honour, relaxing again,
and lying in until well past noon...

But the old restlessness possesses him once again.
So he does what he has always done
when he needs to process his thoughts -
takes his beloved Brough Superior for a spin
along the twisting Dorset lanes: pushing,
pushing her to her ultimate limits - topping
eighty, ninety, one hundred...

There is no advance warning.
No horrified shouts in Arabic or English,
just two errand boys on bicycles.
No time to think, only
a screeching of tyres as the Brough upends,
followed by a pink explosion of rhododendrons.
And the hands of time stand still.

THE SHOPPING TROLLEY

The bridge beside Jubilee Park
stands barred like a fortress.
It's reflection, broken up by the current below,
jiggles and dances on the surface of the water.
A woman with a dog
pauses here daily, to shake her head
while leaning over the railings
and peering into the water.
Her gaze shifts searchingly
until it alights upon the shopping trolley.
Occasionally,  she scrambles
down the river bank to reach it,
sliding fingers between the bars
now beginning to rust from contact with the water.
She attempts to pull it up
as she imagines again the group of teens
with their loud voices and manic behaviour
taking the trolley with them,
then shrieking with laughter as it falls from the bridge
with an almighty splash.

But, alas, her best efforts are ineffectual. The thick mud
of the river bed refuses to surrender it's prize.
The shiny, silver, alien treasure is just too great a status symbol...

THE CANNON

Standing by the old army cannon,
linear time visually shifting.
I'm drawn here again to touch the past,
my hands resting on metal:
an organic sensor. Through it
I'm back there in the thick of battle,
dodging the explosions all around me.
Been here so many times I'm part of it all -
will probably physically cross the barrier one day
and be generations back, on the Continent...

I'm in military uniform, firing at the enemy.
The noise is deafening, the fear overwhelming...

No one notices me standing here -
I'm already fading into the history books.
Only a lone gull is curious and approaches
the strange time-traveler only partly here.
The ether shifts around me, above me,
but I am utterly still. Observing the wraiths, listening
to the muffled shouts, until I feel dizzy.
Then I shake my head and push them back.
And I am, once again, alone.

LINES...

written on 28th June, 1989.

These sterile walls are bare, except for a framed representation
of a nursery rhyme whose title escapes me.
Apprensions dwell within it's symbolism - and my worst nightmare.
The mouse's burnt dress is a portent of my destiny.
The sun creeps across these walls, dazzlingly white.

Darkened walls now. Blank, devoid of hope. Utter desolation.
Wish I could escape my own mind: thoughts
spiralling down into a black pit, with emotions swiftly following.
There is no way out of this place
of perpetual profound agony.

The red depths wince continually:
a broken pump and two struggling bellows,
mechanically clinging to a pointless existence.
This is all I am now. This - and the terror
of glancing behind myself and seeing what I know is there.

Suddenly, outside, deafening thunder and lightening.
It's as if the World's very Soul, like mine, is being ripped apart.
All hope of salvation is lost on this ward.
Petrified, I turn and approach the incubator:
my tiny, helpless baby is still lying there,

but now she's no longer moving.
She is turning grey as a leaden sky.
She will have passed away in the next few moments. It
is only now all the myriad tubes have been removed
that I can finally hold her for the very first (and last) time...


I have more medical tests and treatments coming up in the next few weeks and months, but will visit as often as I can.
Do hope you can forgive my absences as and when they occur...xxx