painting of oblivion

painting of oblivion

Painting of Oblivion

The canvas is uniformly white  

As a screen depicts nothingness

And there is immobility.

Occasionally a red dot appears

when a mass of void is moved

Into life in the form of a life

A beast or a man?

The mystery is no one knows

Why this randomness occurs

a sonnet

a sonnet

A Sonnet

If I knew you loved me, I would have

killed you before,   a
sentence that makes no sense

keep swirling around my head. William Burroughs

could have said that or perhaps he has.

 I meet I woman once,
not the first, and fell in love

with her, she was or could be my soulmate with her

I felt at ease not straining to be funny.

I was drawn into a black hole of love that could only

end in hurts weighed down by my past.

So I ended it short, brutal but with sleepless nights. 

I met another woman nothing about soulmates; she just

needed a place to stay near her place of work.

That was a long time ago, and now we are two lost souls

comforting each other in the midnight hours.

modern cafe

modern

Modern Café

The café near the local petrol station and taken over

By people who had studied food catering when I opened

The theme was artistic copies of famous paintings and

Trained chef who saw themselves as creators of food art

The waiters wore black shirts and ditto trousers and

Where called sommeliers I think.

I ordered grilled mushroom got five on a big plate

Garnished with shredded carrots and a brush stroke of

A sauce rather like an abstract painting but if I want

To see art, at a gallery is better and much cheaper.

What happen to the guy in the backroom reeking of drink?

At least he could cook a hefty meal for a truck driver.

trees by the lane

trees by the lane

Trees by the lane

By the old road, few cars use stand two trees

the oldest one is leaning on the bough of the young on

Mother and daughter, I take it.

The old tree is blind, and the hearing is almost gone and

leave it to her daughter to tell what is passing.

Not many hunters this year mother and their barking dogs,

just as well the old lady says, I have been shot twice by

hunters mistake my exposed root for a rabbit it didn`t

half hurt and I will not mention what the dogs get up to.

One day two men in a jeep stopped by the trees looked up

to the old mother and said: time to chop down the old hag.

The leaves on the young ones stressed and froze.

What did they say the mother wanted to know?

Nothing to worry about mother they are talking about

some trees further down the road.

The daughter knew soon she would be alone by the lane

talking to no one just standing there as the seasons pass. 

Behind High Walls

Behind High Walls

Behind high Walls

When I opened the door to my cabin was met with a summer day

 that felt like a
lingering kiss by the love that will one day say goodbye.

Sneeze and make a haiku words dotted on paper napkins while

waiting for the bill three glasses of wine and a packet of
fags

At the outdoor restaurant I was trying to remember about my

experiences what I have seen, heard and read becomes a ball
of threads

swirling through space and I try to get a loose thread to
make sense of

my life but I have to act fast the idea I had disappears in
the sand of time

and through the din of stillness, another glass will not
come amiss

I no longer live in a forest I never had a garden, and I now
think about

robot sex with a vulva of silk I will train to love me and
when I die

It will lie beside me in the coffin and when we are found a
skeleton and

 a bit of rust; come
to think of it a dog is a robot in its early stage still

obedient but tries to fool its owner into loving it.

a Friday of gayness

a Friday of gayness

A Friday of Gayness

Today I drove to Faro town I wanted a meal of tuna steak
with

onions at the café I used to frequent fifteen years ago.

The place had gone upmarket and so had the prices one waiter

remembered me but not my wife and she took a dislike to
him 

said he was effeminate; the café has two parts, one with a
wine bar

I mostly sat there.  Oscar
Wilde came in or someone looking as him,

he remarked of what he had observed during the day an intelligent

mind who could recite his own poems beautifully .

I decide to become gay too, to be frivolous and happy, but
avoid

the sex thing the very thought made me shudder.

Alas, I had to drive my wife home I tried to translate some
of

Oscar`s remarks into Portuguese, she didn`t think it was
funny

But that was my fault telling jokes is not my metier so I
was

back being my pedestrian self 

nature park

nature park

Nature Park

In Yellowstone, a man fell into a
spring

A geyser brought him up again alas
by that time he was cooked

And crows came to eat him     

It is a bit like Brexit it is good
for the elite but bad for

The common man who always get
cooked and eaten by capitalism

That understand the rules set up to
blocks democracy while

At the same time preaching equality
and beats the drum of wars.

Portugal, Greece and Spain petted a
bison called EU,

Now forever doomed to bondage by
their rescuers

So never go to Yellowstone and be
fascinated by the flora and

Fauna is a trap and if you have
walked into it wrest yourself lose

And cook your own food. 

finding the needle

finding the needle

Finding the needle

Sit by my side in the small garden
with

Tall trees that cast shadows and
cools the summer

Just sit there at my side and let
me narrate

My story, how a poor boy from a
Nordic country

Ended up in the interior that has
no sea.

From seaman to poet, and yes how
they laughed when

I drunk recited my poems to an
audience of fools

Who didn`t see how exploited they
were

From ship to ship I was always
fired it was the drink

You see, or that was what they
said.

So many harbours and the sat in
bars by the docks

While I went up town to see reality
and not the whores

And cheap drink drowning in
sentimental music

Somehow I was always disappointed I
didn`t belong

And was a rudderless ship drifting
in the ocean of life?

You do not understand but hear the
pain I suffered

Not belonging to anyone. Freedom is
challenging, and

honestly doesn`t give you friends,
so just hold my hand

and let me rattle on till it’s time
for tea  

a pugilist and a whistleblower

a pugilist and a whistleblower

A pugilist and a
whistle-blower 

I never thought much of boxing

but I liked Muhammad Ali`s
forthrightness

steadfast stood against the storm
of

hatred and vilification when he
didn`t want

to join the Vietnam war even though

he was banned from pursuing his
craft for

three years, the best years of his
age.

It took a long time for me to
embrace his courage.

It took time to untangle myself
from the net

of lies and propaganda spewed by a
submissive

press and find the truth and ill
will behind

the mendacities of politics.

Now that the great on good hail him
and mourn

his demise perhaps it is time to
pardon

Edward Snowdon who exposed the
dishonesties

of the establishment

sun fall

sun fall

The Sun Falls

There is a haze over the evening sun I have parked near the dry lake

luckily it is free of brave men in helicopters and the gipsy horses too

are absent this evening their owners have left to find another camp

one near a stream where the water smells of the mountain dew.

I wonder if horses dream, say about pulling a cart of happy children;

yes, these futile dreams I had them once.

When you get old, you lose it all, first slowly then rapidly in the end

the only people one meets are doctors at the hospital.

All you held dearly loses its meaning nothing really matters I regret not

having fought more for as my uncles helped the Jews in the war but

one day they will be free of tyranny a pity it is taking so long.

I fill my lungs and scream like the man on the bridge my frustration is total.

 Had I been a cattle thief in Texas and caught they would put a lasso around

my necks sit on a horse doing the job I lack the courage to do. 

As I start the car to leave I see a man with a scythe cutting fodder for his goat.

evening and horses

evening and horses

Evening and horses

I`m walking on the bottom of an
ancient sea

The bottom is flat and rich in
grapes and cabbage.

The used to be a lake here, but it
disappeared

What is left is a small stream that
gets its water from

Water below. On the lake that was,
and no longer is

Helicopter pilots practice take-off
and landing

Some gipsy horses graze nearby and
ignore the noise

The choppers make- I took a picture
of one going in

For landing, it belongs to the fire
department, many fires

During the hot summer, some fires
need to burn

And some fires are caused by
pyromaniacs.

But never mind I will see my doctor
at the hospital tomorrow

She is like a beautiful race horse
on the wrong side of fifty,

She is forever telling me what not
to eat; she told me curry

Was fattening once and I said
nothing on her desk there is

A picture of her husband he is a
pilot.

the kismet

the kismet

The Kismet

Every life lost is mourned by some

But there are times when a life lost

Is mourned by the many like rings in

In the in a tarn thrown by a stone   

of a person with hatred in his heart

Rest in peace, Jo Cox.

dream homes

dream homes

Dream Homes 

After the sandy beach, the fenland
with birds, foxes, rabbits, woods and ponds,

 unspoilt by developers; but no more, real
estate, condos,

have turned over the land like
rancid butter, green lawns, soft grass, but not a cow

in sight, here only inedible golf
balls fall.

Come buy an apartment good
investment for you and the family, no one loses, why

have one home when you can have
four.

Thousands of empty homes only used
a few days a year watched over by bored

 security guards; poverty is unseen here it has
been eradicated, there is no need for

you to seek places where people
live in shacks and under dirty plastic

unless you are seeking redemption
for living a life of plenty 

stay with me

stay with me

Stay with me

The Zephyr breathes with lungs

unsullied by cigarette smoke,

siesta nap

a lazy Sunday on an afternoon

when flowers wilt sky is recklessly

nude in transparent whispers

of silky clouds.

Breathtakingly the silence

 if it should 
stop

I would fall into a chasm

of pale rainbows,

stillborn moons,

corroded  stars

where words of love

are unheard of a silent echo  

Inhale and exhale my lovely

Blow a gale too

but don’t leave me alone in

city parks where old men sit

tell how old they are.

Filthy homes

Shirts are worn too long .

deception

Blog

The Deception

Beware!

Her arms around my neck were cold

that was because they were
artificial

her eyes shone like a diamond in
the sun

yet with a hint of moonlight
serenade

and her lips like a damp vulva.

Was she an angel

And imp

Or from the netherworld

A Russian spy

A robot

An Israeli honey trap

A failed suicide bomber

 I felt my way perhaps her vagina

was a guillotine

I will not complain

 still got nine fingers left

Bus Shelter

Bus Shelter

Bus Shelter

Driving past a crudely made bus shelter, it looks like concrete box

I took a picture because a mystery story was told about it.

A stormy winter night a man found the shelter it had a bench

glad he was dry and he waited and waited only the bus didn`t

drive on this road any longer.

Years later passers-by found a skeleton the police was called but

the bones had no papers to tell his name and a mystery was born.

My dog disappeared when she found her way home she was

tired and petrified and like the skeleton could tell me nothing.

I think she was lured into the van of a hunter, tied up in his backyard to

be trained as a hunting dog. She got loose and ran and

ran perhaps for days and too scared to approach people.

She overcame this trauma lived a long life and now is a skeleton in

a black bin bag in the outhouse.

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography: poetry and social comments

Saragossa Sonnet 

There is a place in the
mid-Atlantic an island made of sea tare

and the mist never lifts sea and
storm avoid this island

that in the middle has a pyre that
must be kept alive and old men

sit cross-legged around the pyre
and feed it dry bones

of sailors who have sought shelter
but end up having their throats slit 

hung up like stock-fish to dry on
the eastern side of the island.

They never talk about this but it
is well known that a salted thigh

bone lasts a week and is delicious
with boiled sea-tare.

You can`t see the people who live
there clearly they are  sons

of mist and fog an unholy alliance
sex without pleasure, but they

must go on the pyre must be fed, if
not the sun will break through

and they and their home will
disappear as it never existed

the initiation

The Initiation

It is not easy to be young at 16 I was a galley boy

on a tankship that even then 60 years ago was ancient

crewed by old mariners who spent their free time

playing cards and talking about whores and now the ship

had docked in Le Havre.

It was dark when I went ashore sat in a bar and drank

Pernod I think. I didn`t go in there had promised my mother

to stay away from alcohol and women.

Light rain and the street light was sparse like there was still

a war on, a small girl standing in the rain looking like

a sparrow with a broken wing.

We went to a small hotel, but I didn`t have enough money

I got to keep my virginity for another day.

Walking back to the ship it was still raining and the old men

sat drinking one of them saw me and invited me in I accepted

by now I was so lonely and needed someone to talk to,

it was not like I could call my mother from a cell phone and

anyway, we didn`t have a phone back home.

The ancient mariners carried me on board.

we the stupid | Write Out Loud

we the stupid | Write Out Loud

We the stupid

Bin Laden was buried in

A watertight coffin

Worms shall not eat him

A shift of the earth`s plates

And he will arise

Atop a little volcanic island

A monument

To eastern failed politics

By France and Britain

Guilt is fathomless 

It was never about humanity

Only greed

And power

If you think we have

A Moslem problem

The East has

A problem

With Christianity’s

Interference  

a flat in town

a flat in town

A flat in Town

Tomorrow most of the time there is one, but for some, the unlucky

who died the day before, and rest in a coffin in a cold church, the tomorrow came too late,

I will be moving into a flat on the fifth floor in Loule.

See many roofs and if I stand on a ladder also see the Atlantic Sea and with binoculars

catch a sight of a passing ship.

Life will be so easy take the lift down to the street walk into

a café and drink coffee; I usually make my coffee but what the hell.

There is a park nearby with pretty flowers and tame trees.

The bank manager shakes her head and does some calculations asks me about

my age and before I can push the question away with a joke my wife stepped

in and told her. 

pot plants

pot plants

Pot plants

I have no picked flowers in my home

If I see a beautiful flower by the
wayside

I stop and admire it, perhaps touch
it slightly.

In my house, are there many pot
plants I water them regularly

Some thrive with much sunlight in
the window sill

Others like the shady interior.

If you hand me bouquet of roses, I
can`t think of why,

You are handing me impending death.

Fatima

Fatima

Fatima 

A lady rich, perfumed and dressed
splendidly was driven

by her liveried chauffeur to Lisbon
when she, at a certain

point, asked her driver to stop;
yes the rich also need obeying

bodily functions. Later she looked
down into a valley where

three children were guarding sheep
two of them were eight

the oldest one eleven, the lady
waved her manicured hands

and said something the children
didn`t understand  

except the oldest one who told the
other two it was Virgin Maria

who had blessed them and warned
them of secrets that could

only be told to a priest. When the
children came home, they said

what they had seen, but the secrets
the oldest one told a priest

and the secrets are still kept in
the Vatican.

At the place where the children
have seen Virgin Maria, pilgrims

came the blind, the sick, the lame
and the mad looking for a cure,

and today it is a holy site with
hotels, shops and restaurants.

 Pilgrims keep coming some walk for days to
atone for sins they

might commit sometimes in the
future, what a wondrous thing,

how irrational truth can be a
diamond in the heart of worshipers

the boxer

the boxer

The Boxer 

 




  He had the saddest eyes I have ever
seen

 
hands trembled like a drunkard`s

 
after a fortnight's  bender but a dipsomaniac

 
can always have another drink

 Ali could not Parkinson`s disease saw to that

 This poet of the ring a victim of success

 egged on too long, just another fight my love

 Honours and medal they bestowed him

 it came too late his voice was but a whisper

 In the glade butterflies fly as he once did

 but not as fast as Mohammed Ali.

cloud on dreams

cloud on dreams

Clouds on Dreams

To believe what we see is often a
fallacy on a video

a rat attacked a cat; the moggy
scared ran away but was it so

I think not video and pictures can
be doctored so we are

left with a sceptical mind

Yet in the Sahara, I saw in the sky
a ship sailing upside down

I know what I saw yet it was a
mirage so therefore I can

talk about it without being made
fun of like the day I saw

a flying elephant it was slow and
met a crocodile

 that loved me, of course, it was a mirage

That is why I`m fearless telling
you this; you will think mirages,

was whisky involved?

There mere suggestion will send me
into a rage and I will

never speak to you again.

The cat ashamed, turned around and
killed the rat, just in case

you were curious. In the world, the
strongest win just looks to Brazil 

and what the heck was I doing in the
Sahara?

the news today

the news today

The News Today

Louvre in Paris has closed its door
the staffs stand

on the steps and sing the national
anthem they have

no lifeboats and can`t stop Louvre
being filled with

the art of debris, cleaning up will
be a headache

what is art and what is rubbish.

Meanwhile, 80 million rats have
sought higher ground

occupying rich people’s homes
sleeping and eating silk

sheets and Foie gras get drunk and
aggressive on rare

wine and defecating on Persian
carpets 

Also in the news, a boy in Japan
has been dancing with

bears and eating their blueberry
jam.

The boy says he will be a zookeeper
when he grows up

to put his parents in a cage. The
rest of the news is boring

the routine stuff about useless
wars on sand dunes

cold feet

cold feet

Cold Feet

 My legs are cold turning into lumps of ice

If I get up, they may break off
like icicle on roofs

In Oslo when the spring comes
around

Many people are killed that way an
instant frozen

Diffusion a deep frozen head that
can’t remember

Yesterday, but there is nothing one
can do about it

It is forbidden to walk in the
middle of the road.

Am I a snowman in a big garden left
alone at night?

Don`t people know a snowman too can
feel cold

despite coal eyes and carrot nose a
warm heart

beats and looks in the Guardian to
find a mate, but

the ladies demand too much wants me
to be funny

entertaining and most awful of all
sociable.

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography: poetry and social comment

Changing weather

There was spring, flowers and green
grass, leaves

 on trees , the lot, and I thought of immortality.

God has thrown everything at me and
I had been

prodded by doctors who all had
eccentric opinions

about my illness and I had
survived.

I looked heavenward inhaled without
coughing

and saw darkening clouds coming
from the north

 an incoming wind had the icy breaths of
Siberia

and the rain came like cold showers
given to boys

at the home  who could not keep their penises

just innocently hanging there.

I came home, was sent to bed, not
for my sexual

prowess but to stop me getting a
cold; I thought of

Stalin mother liked him he looked
so cool, not that

she would have said that it is me
picking up words

 from Facebook and I know how to give five
fingers

not one, I used to give passing
motorists; we live

 in an age of overdoing things.

Tomorrow the sun will shine again I
can go for a walk

and pretend it shines just for me,
the winter had tried

a com back and failed

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography

'Cracks in the Mirror' Poetry & photography: poetry and social comments

Of contentment

A musician at Heart

The uphill farmer had three sons who were small

and had gnome-like features they sat in

the wheel -barrow he was exhibiting them at

local fair to make some money, they hissed and pulled

faces their father didn`t care if he was lucky

someone, a circus owner, could buy them.

People like ogling those of odd shape and laugh.

The farmer had good luck that day sold his goblins for

a tidy sum bow he could afford to buy two more cows

sheep and a new horse, the one he had were for

the knackers yard; he could also do what he liked best

playing his fiddle at weddings and so on.

In the night, the barn without a goblin took fire and

burnt to the ground, but he was not down-hearted

he had been able to save his violin; farming didn`t

interest him and now he was free of pixies and cows.

mortal man

Mortal Man

 The water broke

Jubilation

Soon a child be born

The pain

Has gone

The battle

Is done

 Can`t see or speak

 Slowly life

Ebbs

And a life

Is extinguish

Sometimes  

The unspoken

Relief

Is etched

In mourners

Faces