The bucket list always grows,
for what else is the point of being alive?
From the insane to the rationale, the desire
to the humble and all via the avenue
of memory and atonement,
I wish to tick every single thing off my list.
I have kissed a thousand women
and loved a few thousand more,
I have scored a solitary league goal,
right foot volley, very lower league,
I keep the press cutting as a souvenir, August
1989 against the Salisbury Deaf,
I have no memento
There must be a way
to hold the world to ransom
through the medium of peace
rather than allowing the distance
between us,
between ideology,
between deeply engrained and terrible dogmatic belief;
which allows the spread of fear and suspicion
in all things in the name of national blanket
security
and the wrath of your god.
I dreamed once, half asleep, caravan dust in my eye
the bed clothes strewn
to all corners of the narrow bed and leaving me
cold and naked,
The worship of the gun, the religious zeal
of caressing the weapon and praying
over its deliverance is just as wicked
as holding a Bible or holy text up
and proclaiming that you take a life
because your god told you to.
Yet we do nothing, the death toll keeps rising
year on year on year on year,
like a man addicted to powders
that boost his sagging virility, his prowess
in the bedroom assured with a fully loaded
and cocked ladies pearl handled gun
He brought out the best in you
and the courage you displayed at the end
I wish I could see in me too
impossible companion, a saviour, a friend.
The finest of companions, you dared to believe…
you dared to make me believe beyond your physician
and now you leave
the stars dying light, a glorious mission.
Yet what if you have not died, what if I find
I can still kiss you for evermore,
hold the best in my solitary single ravaged heart,
My own meaning of life:
I promised to try and never do harm,
occasionally unsuccessful, botched even
or even been the disaster, the black sheep
I was always told I would be…
but as a whole
I have to believe I have been more respectable
than wicked and yes like anybody else
I regret bitterly the times when failure has been
the only option, for even in deep sad failure
must come hopeful good.
My own meaning of life:
To try and never be swayed by popular opinion,
She is beautiful,
for when she shook my hand
I saw nothing but grace
in her eyes and never mind
the face she wore
once before
now she was brave
and away from the sneering looks
of those to whom she would never
be completely free of,
she stood tall and with true
personality no longer hidden
in shadows,
she is the woman that captures
a heart, the stocking, sheer and black
holding up her innocence,
for she at least
in choosing to live,
I lock myself in
my solitary medicated confinement,
grieving Jekyll, erudite and calm Hyde,
and allow the room to close
around me, swirling like thunder
clouds, blackened and angry
but with the tinge of optimism
that the confinement will not last,
it will not allow the meekness of surrender
to bitter my experience,
for after all, the prison, the bonded jail,
is my own to suffer and nobody else
paid with their lives to see me sweat
out the pain of individual isolation.
Hollow incarceration,
What is there to do but whisper your name,
for to say it loud is like asking the Devil
to sit down with me and sup on tea and dine
on roasted flesh
of fatted calf and potatoes,
empty but for their skins
blighted by your ignorance.
I find I care not where you are
and yet out of the corner of my eye
I see your leftover remains
and I know you will be forever close by
despite my best efforts to ignore you now,
We are all alone on life support
with only the wires of modern life
keeping us company,
the small ticks of reassurance that someone else
is out there thinking of us
as they hope
we are daydreaming about them,
the only time the wires buzz with any sign of
life is when existence is made to pulse
rapidly, when survival is paramount
and when the wires countdown to possible extinction.
I switch off my life support during the day
but at night, when the darkness is clearer
The noise that springs from the excitable crowd
gathered for the evening performance
is shattered as the glass baton
comes crashing down
upon the lectern and the stern faced conductor,
well past his prime but ready to give
one last Winter serenade,
asks the free form Jazz Band to take their mark
and the collision of cultures
begins in earnest.
The whisper of aged musicians,
is stopped in its tracks as the rising force
of a solitary sax maniac
rises above the temper of glowing terms