Sense The Siege Is Over

Sense the siege is over,
climb the stone steps
to the high watchtower,
look out across the plain
to see no blade of green grass,
no yellow wild flower,
just abandoned engines,
black craters made by the force
of one super power.
It seems the war was won
not by the one with the greater army,
the better air force or navy,
but by the one with the superior weapon.
See the bomb blasted cornfields,
the orchards are barren with no fruit to ripen.
The circle is broken that we failed to widen.
Ring of standing stones on a grassy plain,
blown by wind, lashed by rain.
What we lost we cannot regain.
Exiled from Eden with no hope of pardon,
we still remember the words written,
what the serpent is said to have spoken
in the ear of Eve in the first garden.
Only in vision can we summon
the paradise long ago to us forbidden.
The circle is broken that we failed to widen.
Sense the siege is over,
now there’s nothing left to defend.
What will be in the future?
How will it all end?
The door was not locked,
the window was open,
but the guests did not come,
once the beast had woken.
The circle is broken that we failed to widen.

Edmund Mort and the Aerial Thief

Edmund Mort was his name,
became the complainer.
He liked to complain,
so was no misnomer,
was irked to complain,
complain to the water board,
too much rain down the drain,
complain to the railway guard,
the train was late again,
complain to the roulette wheel,
too much pain with no gain.
A seagull stole his doughnut
as he sat in a deckchair on the shore.
Edmund told a policeman,
said he had to hide his sandwiches
in case it flew back for more,
had ruined his seaside holiday,
surely such a theft was against the law.
The policeman, straight as a lamp post,
studied him, stern and cold,
told him he could not arrest an aerial thief
that swooped so savage and bold.
Herring gulls are scavengers, he explained.
Was sorry it stole his doughnut,
but to escape the woes of the world,
you must live like a hermit in a hut.
Besides, humans had spoilt the herring gull habitat,
and that is most unfair,
so you cannot really blame them
for stealing food from the air.
“Is there anyone else I can complain to?”
Edmund asked the policeman, peevishly.
“You can complain to the council,”
answered the policeman, calm as can be.
Edmund strode into the Town Hall,
and there he made his complaint,
inside a stuffy office,
he barked on till he grew faint.
Later, he decided,
next time he would eat his doughnut
in the shelter of a cafe,
knowing he was certain to complain
about the service of the staff.

Nefertiti and Akhenaten

The black cat and the golden lion
retreat into the past,
inside glass cases in museums,
what they were could not last.
Ancient Egyptian craftsmen carved them,
carved them in wood and stone.
They were un-hinged from a rotten root,
left to decay alone.
Some say the pharaoh Akhenaten
has not a human face,
study his strange elongated skull,
suggest he came from space.
If he was an ancient astronaut,
they ask did such a skull
contain a larger than human brain
with celestial pull?
Now queen Nefertiti was his wife.
If he came from the sky,
he came down to awake her spirit,
un-lid her sleeping eye.
He seemed to her to be like a god,
more than a human king.
Inside his gold wheel she flew with him,
like birds without a wing.
Nefertiti and Akhenaten
were lovers long ago.
Who they were, how the world was for them,
experts will never know.
Do not be fooled by authorities,
let the mystery grow.
Nefertiti and Akhenaten
were lovers long ago.

Outside the Structure

The sky was big, bigger than usual.
The clothes he wore were roughly casual.
He shut his door, left his shelter,
to be a stranger, outside the structure.
The sky spread its size with no roof or edge.
He heard a sparrow chirp, hid in a hedge.
His path grew narrow in a park,
decided to hire a boat for a lark.
So he rowed out slow on a boating lake
while the park keeper worked with spade and rake,
drifted by a duck and a swan.
Later, had tea with a strawberry scone,
sat at a table in the park canteen,
he admired the walls painted frog spawn green.
After that, he felt much better.
Outside, the sky looked as big as ever.
Lamp posts, however, stood too tall and thin,
they seemed to wait for the night to begin,
but were redundant in daylight,
nothing more than an ornamental sight.
While he was stepping by the shop displays,
his mind summoned visions of early days,
slide shows of a helter-skelter.
He un-keyed his door, entered his shelter.
In his chair, felt a tad or two better.
A splat of rain made his window wetter.
Everyday shortened his future.
His way always lay outside the structure.
In the human play, anyway,
his steps would stray outside the structure.

In the Land of Bhutan

A young yak herder
woke in the Himalayan dawn
to the cry of a crane,
not a bell or a horn,
batted his eyes open
to look at his yaks,
so hefty was easy
to follow their tracks.
The land of the thunder dragon
was his land of Bhutan,
and he saw quite clearly
the face behind the fan.
With fellow yak herders,
after breakfast of rice,
he guided the yaks,
big but quiet as mice.
To pass the hard trudge,
up a steep mountain path,
they sang the old songs,
told tales for a laugh.
Back in his village,
not long after noon,
the young yak herder
sat by a stream to attend
to its water tune.
The young yak herder
knew he’d be an elder one day,
would tell each village child,
though the world was wide and wild,
would be wise not to go but to stay.
No finer thing for a woman or man
to live in the mountains
in the land of Bhutan.

Claude Midgecloud Obscured

A feather falls in a mist.
As lightly, obscurely must a spy exist.
Claude Midgecloud, an agent so secret he had no code name,
played his own lonesome game.
He knew the tricks of MI6,
left them behind with alphabet nursery bricks.
His own department was higher up,
served coffee in a gold rimmed cup,
so secret no one knew it existed,
its exploits never listed.
He told others he had an office job
that sometimes took him overseas,
his cover helped him hide his keys.
From what was false to what was real,
he unfixed his future from the roulette wheel.
To speak of a mission would be treason,
For every move he had a reason.
He was known by his suit and shades,
how he passed the tests with vibrant colours, highest grades.
He knew how to break a dark spy ring,
how to extract a scorpion sting.
He is the hero of no told tales.
If documented, his mission fails.
When no longer on the list
will be but a feather fallen in a mist.

Ostrich Race

A man walks behind you,
seems to speak in nonsense rhyme,
and the railway station tower clock
has quite forgotten time.
The man passes by you,
joins the ticket office queue,
a woman looks flustered by his side,
complains that the platform looks too busy,
and the glass dome roof too wide.
“I forgot to feed the ostrich,
and the peacock needs to see a vet,”
she tells him and shakes her head.
“And you wonder why I am pale as a polar bear,
and why I am upset.
I like the idea of an ostrich race,
but you cannot train an ostrich to behave.
The less money we have in the bank,
the more we need to save.”
Overheard conversations
in railway train stations,
strangers speaking with no explanations,
only concrete on their destinations.
You don’t know what is in that suitcase.
You don’t know what is behind that fenced face.
It’s all about arrivals and departures,
travelling in your own solitary space.
To travel and always be a stranger
suddenly seems the way to be.
To have that freedom and that danger,
to be always the visitor passing through,
always to be intrigued by something new,

Nothing Will Change

“Worse than the demon that lurks out on the fen,
worse than the dragon that sprawls
on a bed of bone and gold in his den
are the lands where the people allow themselves
to be ruled by not just bad but evil men,”
said an old man in an inn to any who would listen,
but such words spoken are often forgotten.
“That mystery has puzzled me, too,” said a young man.
“Why do people allow it to happen?
Why is the fruit allowed to go rotten?”
“It is a mystery, as you say.
It is a pattern that will ever repeat,”
said the old man, leaning further back in his seat.
“It is sadder than it is strange.
No revolution will come. Nothing will change.”

In Defence of the Magpie

A magpie never stole a diamond,
was never a bird burglar or a winged jewel thief.
It got its bad name from old folk lore tales.
It seems its love of shiny things fostered that belief.

The magpie is a relation of the crow,
classified with the raven, the rook and the jackdaw.
It flaps and hops round its own neighbourhood.
The air is an open window, an unbolted door.

Rest my case in defence of the magpie.
It’s as innocent as its feathers, black, white and blue.
The magpie never stole a diamond.
All the evidence against it simply is not true.

The magpie may perch on your garden fence,
flutter round your redundant chimney pot on your roof,
never be popular as the robin,
free of the accuser who could volunteer no proof.

An Exhibition of Early Aircraft

Freed from clock and calendar time,
the rock on the shore weathered by wind and the waves,
I open a door, attend to the structure of rhyme.
Let us go through, discover.
Land and sea, pass over.
Come down in a great field of mown, foot trodden grass.
Stand in a mirror far finer than glass.
It holds a picture from the past.
Seems to be an afternoon,
like any other, not happened to last.
As in an old film, no colour or sound,
only light black, pale white, rain water grey,
though feet solid on ground,
the escaping moments soon pass away.
Here is where I willed myself to be,
in the year 1909, in Brescia in Italy,
to witness an exhibition of early aircraft,
aerial pioneers, the pilots of the first flying machines.
Groups of spectators are there to marvel,
be entertained, not knowing at all what it all means.
In their innocence, they do not know
what aeroplanes and air balloons
will be used for in future war.
They cannot hear the harsh waves that head for the shore.
Among them stands Franz Kafka
and Max Brod, his friend and fellow writer.
Later, inspired by the event,
Franz Kafka will write The Aeroplanes of Brescia,
a short piece of prose.
I write this for I like the title he chose.
Alarmed and amused by his tales, I smile to see him,
as I would if I saw him on a tram or a train.
He is impressed to notice Louis Bleriot, the French aviator,
famed for being the first to fly across the English Channel.
There, the mirror is gone, will not come again.