tell me a story

Tell Me a Story 

The man who asked me for money so he could take the train home,

a sad figure when asked he, didn´t knows where home was anymore.

And he told me a story how he lost his wife.

She was knifed when coming home from a girls’ night out, just outside

their house, he heard her cry ran she was on the pavement bleeding

from a wound in her chest and the assailant had fled.  

He had no phone everyone else had been running away, it was just

her and him in the dark street; he picked her up and ran barefoot to

the nearest hospital and passing cars would not stop.

She dies in his arms, knew she was dead when he saw her souls, as

plasma, leaving her body and she became slack and heavy in his arms,

forgive me I have left you down he had whispered.

I was deeply moved by his story and gave him money to travel to his

nowhere home. I didn´t believe his story, had read the novel, but

thought he told it beautifully and had earned his keep.   

the life of a war horse

The Life of a War Horse

The horses I remember as a child were very big working horses,

not nervous like race horses who need a rub down and soft words

before racing. I remember specially a giant tanned coloured horse

left behind after the Nazi occupiers, it was a victim of war.

The Nazi leaders who were fonder of animals than people, just like

the British, had given the horse an animal iron cross, and had its

flanked and neck stroked by Herman Goering no less; but  it was

never taken in by this barmy philosophy.

Alas, the horse belonged to a survivor in Holland, it was shipped to

the Middle East ploughing soil that hitherto had been tilled, by grey

donkeys, ploughing shallow sandy soil. Than it happened having been

exposed to so many confusing ideologies the horse bolted and kicked  

the farmer to death. There was a court case it was proven the horse

was racially biased and sentenced to become legitimate dog food.

war without borders

War Without Border

Smoke and fire, burning building and leafless trees,

behind a low wall a solder lies on his side, head resting

on a brick, his rifle neatly beside him and the enemy

was advancing throwing hand grenades.

I look at the picture of World War 1, the scene is of

utter destruction, and the sleeping soldier who doze

the longest sleep, wears a grey coat and I´m drawn

to the peace his body exude.

His body will be picked up by stretch bearers who,

will put him in a basement of a burnt out house,

check his name and put his remain in a mass grave

interment of individuals takes too long.

This war of mass murder was not fought for freedom

or to get rid of a dictator, pursue democracy with guns

in hand, but for big power to flex their muscle and its

outcome was odium and the rise of extremist parties.  

The emperor of trivia

Ronaldo, The New Emperor

It is the news in Portugal, the footballer Ronaldo has won a golden football

and the country rejoices, after Eusebio died a new emperor is needed,

a hero people can look up to, one who can continue the people’s culture....

Football!

This, perhaps, is modernity, technology that and instant messages is coming

down to a game of football and a TV that has commentators who cannot stop

talking about  it. The mind appears not to expand as modern skill does, oft it

 little behind to the days when people asked why rivers tended to run into

the ocean, luckily they lacked skills to make rivers run faster by making them

straighter shaving off curves and circles.... The reason we live in relative peace

has to do what great thinkers thought and wrote about and influenced our

imperfect brains, we looked up to the stars and asked questions, a curiosity that

made us civilized, but modern mass media made us multicultural and bland.

 In the end life is a game of soccer, and a football has no corners. 

futurist

The Futurist

I was looking into the magic box of colours

and saw a kaleidoscope of dreams ready to

be released to those with a vision.

A saw the dream of a farm hand and his

milk maid girlfriend they were getting married

and the dream was to lease a bit of land and

start a pig breeding farm. A dream measured to

the reality of what was possible.

 Most dreams in the box were fanciful, the ones  

one smiles about in mature years, yet worth

dreaming as it makes the dreamer aware of colours

shifting hue.  Sifting through discarded dreams

I didn´t find mine, which I was glad of, because my

dream has yet to be fulfilled.  

Kaleidoscope of life

 Kaleidoscope of Life.

And behind the forest sings that nothing is the way you think

and try as you might make love to one you do not love gives

a feeling of lost time, of a useless pursuit of finding happiness in

momentarily lust that leaves nothing but melancholy behind.

 The coir of the forest knew this, nymphs sang about it warning

 you, cheap pleasure too dear for your soul as summer dust on

asphalt road, bleak as the word of love uttered by a floozy in

a nightclub of gaudy gastropods and dancing long tailed rodents.

Dew on straw and deeper into the woodland walk to find Dryads

or best of all Meliae, the sweetest aroma, but her kisses sting your

lips if she´s upset with your craving for more. Be careful of Lempo,

the Finnish archer god, he is capricious and likes honey too.

On a stone she sits, the siren of deep tarns, her smile is deadly close

your eyes and run for your life, her former suitors sleep in silt.  

The English Couple

The English Couple

They had a dream the old couple who came

to our hamlet, their dream was a tiny house

painted white and blue. A kitchen garden they

had, lettuce and tomatoes, carrots too, and

the gods smiled upon them, but not for long.

She got bad knees could not bend down,

he had back problem could no longer play golf

or tinker with his car;  their garden became

a jungle, where weed strangled useful plants.

back to their own country they flew said to

come back soon, when wellbeing got better.

He died first in his sleep, she followed him into

eternity a month later. Their dream had been

so modest, white and blue

the last soldier

The last Soldier

 From the narrow back streets in a town of conflict came

A whispering, the great man has finally died and muted

Voices grew lauder till old buildings shook and dogs howled

Imitating the humans in a jubilation they didn´t understand.

 For eight years this heavy shadow of the past had hovered

As an ill omen and cowardly politicians found refuge and

Excuses for doing nothing, trying to find peace and fairness.

There will be display of mourning and his departure will be

Recorded in international presses despite the fact his nation is

Small, yet has unequalled nuclear power in the region.

Not only his detractors, on the other side of walls of trepidation,

Was glad to see him go, eight years a slowly rotting corpse kept

Alive, silent day and night. How tortured this man must have been

Endlessly waiting in the anteroom of hell.

tanka and senryu

Tanka

It is amazing

How many things happen

In a tiny village

When you have time to see

How busy quietness is

Senryu

Illness of boredom

A sedentary affliction

Lack of imagination

the yard

Thoughts in the Backyard

The sky is white today but the sun gets through

warms my face where I in the backyard and enjoy

the good village´s peace and harmony.

I like the winter sun in Algarve, the summer one

is too fierce I have to hide in the house and put

shutters on windows before noon.

 In my childhood I used to draw faces on windows

with night frost, saw them cry and melt away

never to reappear other than in dawn dreams.

 Infancy, spent long time looking out of windows

seeing all the seasons and watching other children

playing hide and seek.

Hospital walls, grey as rainy autumn days, and

adults whispered not for a child to hear, surgery

and endless tests, the child could play again.

The whiteness on the sky is a mist now, curtains to

the past is drawn and I do not miss my childhood,

too much pain and aloneness.   

almond tree and prisoners

Almond Tree and Prisoners

As a child I lived near a farm a farm that was

next door to a prison camp. Russian prisoners

marched up and down trying to keep warm

it was January with much frost, year of 1945

I thought of this today on my walk passed my

almond tree that is situated so good it catches

most of the westerly sun, yet hidden behind

a Holm oak protected by Nordic wind blasts.

My tree is already flowering, it has pink petals

shivers a bit dressed in a delicate nightdress.

The Russians had to wait longer for their spring

when it came, it was  false one,  they were sent

home and put in prison camps for surrendering

 to the enemy. For some the winter is endless. 

looking for heroes

Looking for Heroes.

This small country with a glorious past so sceptical

of the present a longing for what once was and

will never come back; a country which songs echoes

gentleness and sweet melancholia.

A famous sport star from the near past died and

the country fell into a collective mourning that

seemed to go deeper than the legend´s passing, but

a profound unhappiness about the future itself.

This austerity imposed from the outside is like a chain

a vortex of misery swirling around making the  land

grey as the politicians who rule them. A country needs

its sporting heroes, alas, the modern ones go and play

abroad, better pay, ok, but not the same, the legend

who died, played for his country.     

the placid people

The Placid People

Portugal one of the most unequal countries in Europe is going through

the throes of austerity but this doesn´t concern the rich who do not

 pay taxes or do pay as little as they can; so its up to the people those

who get up at five to make a living, to pay their taxes and filling in

impossible forms. In 1972 there was a revolution in Portugal, a friendly

one no one got killed and guns were loaded with roses. Nevertheless,

those who had gained from 4o years of dictatorship fled to Brazil and

modestly returned  after a few years... They have got their property back

and rule the politicians, life is just like it used to be, the elite is back in

power and their children rules the media to keep, the people passive,

idiotic programs are played on the TV. Portugal needs a new revolution

where a young generation is in charge, I hope that will

eradicate corruptions and bring in true equality for all the people.

love counsellor

Love counsellor

So he thinks it is easy, the man who gives advice to married

and loveless couples. What does he know, goes home switches

on the telly and watch the programs he wants, simply because

he is a lifelong bachelor.

You can´t do that when married, she doesn´t want the news

but a program about romance and he relents, because a man

who doesn´t care about his wife´s feelings is a bully and made a

n example of and called names in a woman´s magazine.

A marriage counsellor´s job is to tell people to fake love until it

comes true.

a pair of shoes

A pair of Shoes

She was nine years old wore a cotton dress, barefoot and had her

picture taken. Her mother had bought her a pair of new shoes,

and the shoes were so lovely she didn´t want to put them on yet.

 Her mother relented the photography was taken the girl holding

the shoes firmly in her little hands.

She looked into the camera with intense seriousness seeing into

a future she was not yet aware of, perhaps she was but couldn´t not

articulate it, hence holding on to her shoes a symbol of the losses

she would suffer.

 She married a farmer in Congo they had cattle and coconut trees.

Then came the revolution and since they had the wrong colour, not

black not white had to flee when crazed soldiers came, freedom

was or the masses, who took over the farm ate the milking cows, but

neglected to till the land. She ended up in a foreign land, but she

didn´t mind that so much her children had prospered and survived,

but she was always thrifty never threw away a thing.

zhivago

Dr Zhivago is not Putin

Nature yes, it does its own thing it will never be tamed and behave

in a predictable way. Outside mild rain falls there is no wind and

the weather is content, freedom from  Siberian frost...for now, but

when frosty days arrives, with ice pearls on your breaths and frozen

key lock in your post box, it is not fair to fault Vladimir Putin, he has

enough on his plate with silly girls dancing in churches and offending

good people´s sense of decency, and tax avoiding tycoons .

But of course whatever Russia does it must be wrong. 50 years of anti

Soviet propaganda has left its mark.

Islamic terrorists have been bombing and killing many people, this does

not cause stir in western press, some even thinks that the Russian ought

to treat the terrorists better, it is Putin´s hard line attitude that causes

this problem...The enemy of my enemy is my friend so welcome to

The wonderful world of double speak, treason and never ending scheming  

on how to mould Russia into an image of Dr. Zhivago.

new democracy

The New Democracy

So many words written, millions of words and they tell you nothing new,

except familiar things what you know and are safe and dull as a film star

interview. If we throw into the ring the idea that democracy as we know

it is corrupt, will there not be a scream of protest after all social equality

is Italian ice cream parlour, a multitude of choices, but it is all ice cream.

Justice and we will oversee the fact that this type of freedom to vote is

being exploited, the last thing politicians, the errand boys of the elite, is

to give you freedom of choice, but they will give you the illusion that you

have got one, the Donald duck version of reality.

What if the people ruled, rather than elect someone who speaks well, and

we had the tyranny of the masses? But the idea of this is wrong because it is

about shifting power from one hand to another and the exploitation of

the individual will continue as before. Capitalism has made people hungry

to consume to be content, but we know there is a cut off point when world

riches are depleted and the old adage less is more comes it will hit us like

 a boomerang because there is no more. Then perhaps we can find the true

meaning of democracy which is about sharing what we have, so no one goes

hungry and that no one swims in the stinking puddle of exploitive excesses.

the big eve

The Big Eve

Tracer bullets on the night sky Aleppo seen

From a hotel veranda, I hear screams, but

It is the raucous laughter of too much wine

Noon in Sydney and New Year festive

Rockets in the sky or perhaps I´m seeing

 a war that has not yet been declared or

perhaps I have seen the future the holocaust 

of mankind, the last hurrah and the blow

of a whistle calling full time... Whatever it was

I saw spectacular colours like rubbing ones

eyes when tired and seeing mystical rainbows

belonging to an unknown existence.

Friday Evening Opus

The blaze in the fireplace burns with easiness, but

without mercy burnt my old boots to grey cinders.

They were made for walking on stony ground, but

time and wear ragged them, they fell out of fashion

and were stored in the shed in a black plastic liner

and forgotten so the one who discarded them should

see them and feel guilty for not walking anymore as

I cycle for my life on the training bike in the yard.

 On evenings like this I should be an old man looking

contented into the fire surrounded by pictures of life

lived in faraway places, but I find no contentment.

The sweet taste of success has eluded me, mind I do

have diabetes, and in the end what meant something

ends up meaning nothing; so let the fire of hope burn. 

weather forecast

Weather Forecast.

There used to be winters before the weather became entertainment.

There was frost, rain, flooding and landslide one had to accept as norm,

unless it was of a disastrous dimension. 1948 was so cold birds fell

from the sky and we had steal coal at the depot – a hole in the fence not

repaired before spring- the worker knew but looked away, this was a time

of social cohesion, we´re equally poor and recovering from a war

 Snow in Ohio, and we see cars skidding on icy roads, what a distraction

from our sheltered life, nature actually exists and we better show respect

if not nature will turn against us and shake us into obeisance.

TV Christmas

TV. Christmas

TV channels are going mad in their hunt for happy

Christmas tales,  they have visited bald children

in cancer wards, giving away presents, which seem

to me to please the giver more than the receiver.

Interviews with parents whose children soon will be

dead, they try not to cry – for the children´s sake-

and there is jollity wrappers hiding unbearable

anguish. Today the dark side of the moon is not visible

it will be tomorrow though, but then our compassion

is exhausted by too much reality.        

christmas day

Christmas Day

Christmas day no ships anchored in the bay which

has crested waves that turn into cream like spray

when reaching sandy shores.  

The crew  wouldn´t have minded that so much,

as it is they are on ships that rolls and pitches

endlessly in the Atlantic sea waiting for Yule to be

over when normal trading begins.

To day there are no revolts in Africa, and there is no

war in Syria, because bad news has been suspended,

but there is a movie about a carpenter trainee who

became a preacher, but since I have seen the film before

I will go for a walk and try not to think of seafarers´ lack of

sleep, or poverty that hides in the nooks of Cascais, a town

 famous only because a king once spent a summer there,

the footballer

The Famous Footballer

There is a great sorrow over Portugal a dark cloud

of tears, the great footballer Eusebio has died.

All the great and mighty in the Portuguese society

 tell of their friendship with him, even the president

came out of his shell and declared three days wake.

 When the great Nobel prize winner of literature

Jose  Saramago died his departure hardly registered in

the papers...ok. So he wrote novels, big deal.         

Eusebio da Silva born in Mozambique son of a railway

worker, was a friendly man, just the type of black man

white people like to patronize. Sadly there is a political

angle in this out pouring of grief, Mozambique is rich

and Portuguese industry needs their minerals and oil.

Spilling of tears can be advantageous  

   

the bay today

The Bay Today

The bay is green today like grassland a spring day

moments before it´s invaded by cattle and cowboys

with six shooters full of dust.

Yesterday a tsunami struck filled houses with icy

water, to day shopping is free you can buy whatever

you desire but Persian carpets are water damaged.

Angry water is brown as a hord of stampede cattle

unthinking just moving forward unaware of death

and its own impending destruction.

Friendly and soft the bay is today, like a milk carton

cow painted green to better be seen on supermarkets

shelves that also have blueberry yogurt on display.

A, this inlet forever trying to be apart from the sea,

yet cannot stop a storm from  spitting foam.

the question of faith

 The Question of Faith

If al-Qaida likes to talk to me they can do through

face-book as I’m too old to be a recruit to this splendid 

group who wants the western people out of the middle east.

They see us as colonizers  from Mars taking their land,

 teaching things they don´t want to learn such as bought

democracy. For Arabs which have adopted the strange

cult of Christianity I feel truly sorry, when we take our

chattel and go back to Mars we have to take these lost

people with us as they have no raft for them on

the Moslem sea. There is a thing I want to ask al-Qaida

and fundamentalists worldwide why is it that you religious

people are so fond of killing us who do not share your

violent god, but prefer to believe in the goodness of man.  

sonata

Sonata

It was about noon and I had nothing to do, I had not written

anything for a week, no since my girlfriend left me, had deadline

an article for a magazine, they wanted something about sharks,

 like I should know, I had a pint of lager in a bar while reading

the papers; and another one, perhaps more while thinking about

sharks, my girlfriend and the deadline. I walked to the library to

Read about sharks-.But they wouldn´t let me in said I was drunk.

Please let me in I´ve to read about sharks; piercing library silence.

 In the park I made notes about sharks trying to remember if I once

saw shark fins while swimming in the sea off the coast of Trinidad,

but I kept thinking of my girlfriend, so I picked some flowers for her

and was promptly arrested. My editor was nice about me faulting

the deadline and published an article I had written about Russian

wolves, like wolves should know if they are Russians or not.

the miner

The Miner

Mining dust in outer space exploited planets full of

Holes and an eerie day, workers on strike.

10% ok, but nothing to spend money on except

in the company store

The workmen´s shuttle has broken down it will take

two years before a new one arrives with shuttle full of

whores, which are a long wait for anyone to suffer.

Long trek worker, been away for ten years now, children

moved away, wife has a lover.

But he has enough money to buy a car that needs no fuel,

the neighbours envy him tell him how terrible life was in

the years he was away...lucky guy waiting for the shuttle to  

take him back to wishful thinking.