the vista

The Vista.

It was a long climb up the mountain, cumbersome too

I used golf shoes, bought in a second hand shop, which

On reflection will endorse, but it had leather uppers

It was tiring, yet had no choice it was my mountain,

there were dark moment when I felt like giving up, but

the alternative was melancholy of the uncompleted. 

 I finally made it the top had no snow and whirling fog

made it impossible to see and hear anything but my

laboured breathing and colourless wind of nothingness.

It the way life is, those on the top see little of what is

going on, one has to go down to ground level to see

and understand that love needs fertile soil to thrive.

love and wine

Love& Wine

How can I forget her, eyes green as spring water cascading down

 a mountain side in Norway. Her skin silky as a morning cloud in June

and her laughter was like chuckling pearls of joyfulness.

So much festivities, wine and song, it took time before I noticed

 anything was wrong. Rages; tears of melancholy, lover of the night

 I became a spectator to a slow downfall. Eddy of too much living

 I could not go there I had my own demons to battle.

How rapid her fall, a woman every man could have and I cursed my

eternal cowardice. At her funeral I spoke to her mother we cried for

a beautiful woman we both loved, but were not able to safe.

lions of freedom

  Lions of Freedom

 Two lion cubs, their parents were smuggled through

a tunnel so the oppressed people could have a zoo.

This little enclave that has shore lines, but cannot use

the sea, which their tormentors claim for themselves.

The lion cubs have become the hope for the future of

 people who, despite the tyrant´s effort to make their

 country ghastly as the ghetto of Warsaw; they shall

 overcome. The cubs will one day grow big and strong,

break free of their cages when the enemy is beaten.

tanka

Tanka

Respect your elders

Mother always told me

But where are they?

Walking up and down the street

I see no one older than me. 

a maritime story

A Marine Story

It was an early evening on the Pacific sea, the skip was sailing

with ease towards San Francisco, the cook was clearing up

In the galley and the chief steward was down in the walk- in-

freezer making a list of food that was left and how much food

he needed when the ship birthed. The ship shock violently it

had struck a mine and the door into the meat freezer was stuck

and the ship was sinking. The cook knew where the chief was,

 ran down to the store and was able to open the freezer door,

they grabbed life jacket each and jumped overboard.

Eerie silence they struggled to stay together, then the unholy

scream from the ship as it was swallowed by the voracious sea.

In front of them the raft used to paint the shipside, scrambled

on to it totally shocked and exhausted they fell asleep.

 At dawn the chief couldn't wake up the cook, an elderly man,

this had been too much for his heart. The chief knew what he

had to do, but waited till afternoon before he rolled the cook

overboard, curled up on the raft and closed his eyes, had seen

grey fins and didn´didn't want to witness his friend eaten by sharks.

The chief was picked by a passing liberty ship the day after and

three day later, he walked ashore in San Francisco.

 A sliver of war´s agony, of no consequence, for its outcome of

the except for the man who had lost a friend.

the nuclear issue

The Nuclear Issue.

 There they sit the high and mighty

And their lackeys it is serious

Business, who can have them and

Who cannot have them.

How important they are these

People who dare not think or whisper

About the elephant in the room, yet

It sits there glaring for all to see.

Confirm or not to  confirm, we know

They have it. Will this conference fail?

Most likely, the enemy of a deal only

 Wants total surrender.  

digits&words

Digits and Words.

Manuscript page 100, a digit of colossal abstraction, 

standing alone, inconsequential, just another zero.

When I was five I could count to hundred, stood by

the window counting people walking by.

It was a small street and not many walked there, so

I learned to cheat, counting people twice.

Sundays was especially difficult I had to count people

three time, when I first saw them, when they were by

the window and when they disappeared.

Then suddenly I was six and could read, and count to

thousand, but by then I lost interest in numbers and

fell in love with words that could create visible beauty.

But there is no getting away from numbers when my  

first poem was published they paid me 5 coronas .

the date

The Date.

Sat in a pub talking to a woman of no substance

other then she wore a skirt and had boobs.

Pub closed, I was allowed

to follow her home

through dreary streets

fine rain and yellow street light.

I kissed her dry, bloodless lips

We parted.

Walking back to the seaman´s hotel

she stood by a bombed out church and had damp hair.

This it too absurd

again I was a place I didn´t want to be.

Money changed hand

and my loneliness laughed hysterically 

food banks

Food Banks.

There is a cloister up north where you can knock on its oak door

and get food parcels. The abbot, a stern man, will give you food if

you are nicely dressed, have a house, band are briefly out of pockets.

 If you are really destitute and dressed in rags- often of Roma

origin- he will tell you no because your need is self inflicted, but you

can, if not too lazy, go to the winter field and dig up roots; he will

 bless you and say you are god´s children, go to heaven without a trial

 and sit by the lord´s side.

  

If you are old he will also say no, because you have money

under the mattress and only pretend to be poor so you don´t have

to spend your own money, but he will bless you before kicking

you down hill with gentle smile. Once there were food banks in every

town, but now they are hard to find and far away, this because

the rich will no longer pay for you extravagance.    

chemist shop

Chemist Shop

At the entrance of the pharmacy a dead sparrow,

no one seemed to notice this tiny death.

The bird just lied there with folded wings and eyes

suitable closed, ready to be put in a coffin.

I told a shop assistant about it, she swept the bird

with a broom, into the tall grass.

There were many women inside, talking about none

prescription medicine, for aches and pain,  they were

mostly middle aged and middle class and had not yet

realised that elderliness comes at a price.... pain.

 Shelves full of revitalizing creams, promising a young

 glow and sagging faces bought this overpriced stuff,

when a bit of olive oil on cotton swab would be more

effective, but not smell as sweetly.

November Wind.

November has till now been mild I had a window open

 suddenly a cold blast entered. I got up closed the window,

which when a strong young seaman called a porthole.

the top of the TV, which at the time, was showing  a program

The cold blast, unfamiliar with being indoors settled on

of old people´s home and how badly they were treated;

abandoned by a family for whom they had become a burden.

 I switched on the heating and cold air soon dissipated.  

Today I bought 100 kilo of smokeless wood, it was a heavy

going pushing the trolley to the car, a young man took pity

helped unload the load and put it in the trunk of my car.

When I came home I sat down and cried a little, this is what

It is coming to, 100 kilo is an obstacle and I have to buy more

before winter is over. Freedom is the ability to move and be

able to look after oneself; I fear for my future, sooner or later

I will be a prisoner of old age, but I will not surrender yet.     

food kills

Food Kills

This is a poetry exercise, write down what´s comes

 into your mind....lobster. What the Hell?

A red crustacean on a bed of lettuce with lemon

and mayonnaise sauce sprinkled with parsley.

Can one taste agony?

Dipped alive in boiling water unheard screams,

 a long tool to retrieve, white meat from claws.

Am I a surgeon now?

The lobster catcher is not guilty of anything he

just catches sells them, but cannot afford to

eat them.... He has a lobster pet at home, it is sort

of brown and lives in tank, calls it Charlie but he

says nothing, this trader of food for the rich. 

loss of innocence

The Loss of Innocence

At a school sports day I was running 60 metres,

 I wanted so very much to win, could taste blood

didn´t quite make it but got a bronze medal,

 which I wore on my lapel with pride.

When I joined the merchant navy and when going ashore

I wore it too; no one else had a medal like me.

Girls in bars admired it and wanted to know why I had

such a splendid medal. I could not tell the mundane truth

being a compulsive story teller I spun a tale.

Alas, women are destroyers of young men’s pride they want

to possess what they can´t have.

It was in Le Havre I met my downfall, she promised me

heavenly delight for the medal, and I succumbed; the delight

lasted a few minutes and my medal was forever lost.

the seer

The Seer

My mother was a utopian communist

or rather a Marxist, she had only contempt

for the Soviet Union which she called

state capitalism gone mad.

 She believed only communism could

bring about democracy where the people

controlled the means of production.

She predicted the globalization   would bring

wars, workers against workers,

on slave wages. A world where the rich

got more affluent,

 and material success meant everything.

 A world where workers believe in their own failure

and deserve to be poor.

And she was right.

We are ruled by corporations and our freedom

have been curtailed, we are consumers

in a world where even art is commerce valued for

its sales potential and not for its beauty.

they have got him now

They have Got Him Now

War is a great adventure, every boy dreams about it. And writers of lies tell

 stories of sacrifices and great feats of courage.

I have done it again being a place don´t want to be, sit seven floors up on

a terrace and all I can think of is falling into oblivion. it only takes few seconds

 the air stream and the noise and the blessed silence.

The failure of many failures and I´m living tomorrows and can´t remember

the way home, the homes of homes where I was born.

The wrapping papers of gifts not opened how I can face tomorrow.

My cowardice is the only thing left I can trust.

Pre dawn and the echo continues, this is not your world it ended years ago when

you knew you are a ghost of childhood past.

the boredom is absolute. Tomorrows I will remember home and safe among

books that I once wrote I shall be safe and relive what I forgot. And wars will go on

as they always have but I will not play a part of lives’ brutal carousel.

Seven floors up, in my house there are no places to fall. 

pegasus

Pegasus

I saw a big plane coming from Lisbon airport flying high

it was a clear night sky

and I could see a horse flying beside the plane.

Did you see that, the chief pilot

said to the second pilot.

 Yes it  is a Pegasus

it delivers books to people who can´t read.

The pilot called the tower, we are

coming back, it appears something is wrong.

The chief pilot lit a cigarette and

the second pilot objected said it was not legal to smoke

in the cockpit.

The plane landed safely and the horse disappeared.  

When the plane was ready

to fly again the chief pilot was not onboard

he had been reported by the second pilot

for smoking on the job. 

time of forgetfilness

Time of forgetfulness  

He had been to my house often likes to come here, stay for a few days,

 because of the nature where he can walk along overgrown tracks and

see how life used to be lived before. Now he could not find my house and

called me told me the name of the cafe where he had stopped.

 After a meal he went for his walk, but didn´t return and it was getting dark.

we found him under an olive tree he was lost, nothing he knew before

resembled the forest of dread he was in now. It took a while before he knew

me and when he did he cried, the game was up he was slowly succumbing to

Alzheimer. In the morning I drove him back to the town my wife was driving in

his car behind us. He spoke little and when he did mixed the past and present.

When we stopped outside his house he thought I was Dali Lama was flattered

to be in his presence; we arranged for him to go into a home, but before it could

be done he had a lucid moment and cut his life short, as he refused to follow 

the lane of the living death, a ghost that had no memories.

the horror

The Terror

Late afternoon they sat on the bus thinking of a good meal and TV.

A man entered knifed its driver and two passengers. The murderer

dropped his knife in the bus and waited for the police to come,

 the remaining passengers stood outside and waited too, they cried

 and were cold.  The ambulance came first, could do nothing; they

waited also.  Finally the police arrived it took them fifty minutes which

must have felt as an eternity, arrested the man and drove him to jail.

 A deadly calm, a surreal scene, but why had the man kill?

The mass murder Breivik´s crime was temporarily forgotten, killer in

the bus was a foreigner who had lost all reason, had been told that

his appeal to stay in the country had been refused. For this and to avoid

expulsion he had done this. He´d rather stay in jail for the rest of his

life than facing going back to his godforsaken country. This type of

crime, however safe one makes a country horror strikes as lightning.

A river of blood, shed by those who just wanted to go home it leaves

 peaceful people stunned and fumbling for an answer.  

more short verses

Senryu

Brave new world

Reduced to a gossiping village

Spying on neighbours

Senryu

Freedom of speech

Everyone demands a voice

Babbles tower

Senryu

Liberty of discourse

Channelled through facebook

Baby picture

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tganka too

Tanka

If there are no bees

There will be no pollination

Bees are plants sex toy

Dipterous are not up to the job

A bee is your survival

Tanka

We created god

And gave him too much power

Mental tyranny

Lucifer wanted power too

Was expelled and made hell

Hemingway and I

Hemingway and I.

I do not want re invent myself rather I would like to go back

to what I used to be before domestic demands took my time,

and dreams became like hole-in-one at a golf course.

 I had to work to support a family of four and wearing a suit,

stole some time from family demands sitting in my garage

looking at my car...should I escape this domestic bliss?

Once my mates and I climbed trees I sat on an oak branch

told them when I grow up I will be a writer. Now that I´m old

I have my chance, but so much innocence has run into silt

I will never be a Hemingway of letters. 

economics

Economic Grows Theory  

A forest is beautiful to look at, it also has animals jumping

about not being productive for our common good.

So we chop down the trees and make timber, never mind

the animals they are dangerous anyway; who wants to risk

being attacked by a puma. On the cleared space we can build

 houses made of the former forest´s timber, this will give

employment for many and that is good for mankind.