I ignore it because I have to
for if I don’t the end
might truly come quicker
and I’m not yet prepared to meet my maker and look
Her in the eye and have the smile of contempt and withering
look of told you come my way.
I’m not prepared to meet Her because you don’t deserve
the honour of being the one to finish me off,
too make this pain in my chest, which I refuse
to believe is anything but my heart shouting abuse
What do you do when Time has neglected to inform
that there has been an ache in your heart
which you never realised existed till the pain
hits you square in the jaw and rips your guts apart?
You can but smile and flash a grin, because you mean that emotion,
you revel in the mysterious and the unanswered question
for a short while until
Time has a habit of making you nod and securing a truthful exit
as you realise that deep down gnawing at your soul,
The room is silent
but I cannot help but hear the sound
of Billy Joel extolling the virtue of keeping faith,
the Piano Man with the tender voice that packed
several punches with each octave and tremble
on his lips, implores me to listen to the sound
of nothing there at all.
I head towards a home, one of many I have had
but one in which I didn’t appreciate till
I had been there a couple of years and the argument
I had one winter’s evening still pains me to recall.
Revolutions have fought over less
and the French aristocrat, the English Knight and the
descendent of Mohammed agree on one thing,
the corruption of the battle field must be cleansed
and fire stormed right down its roots
and if takes the Marshal in his white Stetson and polished badge,
his deputies rooting through the rubbish of thirty
years of wasteland dust and paper trails that lead to one
man dressed in black and spouting his own gospel charm,
to help them bring down the despot of the so called
There is a certain romance lost
when a communication comes out of the blue,
the modern love of the instant message received and crossed
is nothing to having a significant day made superior by a letter from you.
The hand writing, sincere, legible and carefully written,
has been pondered over, adjusted and cleaned by scraps
of paper unseen left by her own bin, tossed in by anguished hand and nail bitten
fingers as she gropes for the right, beautiful word, outlined by doodled maps.
The old scribe, worn out by years of writing
down the thoughts of kings and masters, of stable hands and squires,
the relentless drives of the damned and the dead, finally
finds solace in a discreet request from the much loved
daughter of Pharaohs to meet by the banks of the Nile as
she slips into the country unnoticed by spies
as she ends her long self imposed exile which had left
the country in tatters and the old scribe with no patron
or friend.
It’s difficult to remember you with clarity,
your face is but a shadow since you’ve gone,
you have left me with a feeling of emptiness, insanity
prevails as I think of you; the quick sprint in the Marathon.
You are missed as anniversaries are greeted at the back door
and the feeling of the incomplete fills my veins
the missing in life always leave a space that’s sore
I miss you in the ether now, your face, more losses, no gains.
But whose fault is it really that you are not here,
You may grasp for the gold under the soil
and all the platinum from the ground,
take whatever diamonds you need to impress, the coal the oil
take the flesh from my back if you wish, pound after pound.
Riches after all make this world go round.
The art of purchase, of ownership, of wealth and prosperity,
the conformation of a life well lived, of the jewel laden echo after the sound;
long may you reign, I will cheer if you wish but it’s not the life for me.
The evening that Banjo Don came back to town,
the sun curtseyed in the west and nodded its approval
and smiled a boyish grin at the grand old man and his upturned frown;
the banjo acolytes, the notes all slightly out of tune and reluctant call
compared to the sound that their chosen master. Banjo Don
took to the streets and under a glowing sun
proved that the people had missed his sound, for no one can
play the strings with melodic ease or deliver a grin when playing for fun,
To watch or observe a friend on stage
that is the true question that never gets answered.
Whether you simply enjoy their performance,
and laugh and cry at their antics,
the feeling of sympathy when their character loses their way
and the cheer of adulation when they rise to be the hero
you have always known them to be, the simple act
of watching and then forgetting all they have been through
to bring that moment of truth to the part,
shrug it off and never worry where it may