Category: Poetry

Where are they, Beorma’s people?
On the mounds, on the mounds,
Watching

Who are they, Beorma’s people?
Descendants, iust descendants
Looking to the East.

They came from the East, Beorma’s people.
Short generations ago they came.
They fought, they moved in the night
They laid waste, with the taste of battle in their mouths.

Now they wait, Beorma’s people
On the mounds, fearing sounds
In the East.

Fearing names, Beorma’s people,
Aldgyth and Grimr
Marching on the fens.

GRC ix 77

Got a social-meeja handle – gets retweeted such a lot
Got a 20-megapixel automatic multi-shot
Got a real-time virtual avatar that makes a decent cake
Got a 3D printed girlfriend I can take out on a date

So praise the inter-chat-face-net-twit-book-gram-alizon
Our instant interactions will go on and on and on
Without them we would be bereft, our souls alone and lost
So give me Apps and gigabytes and never mind the cost

My intelligent apartment’s got a 62 inch screen
With a streaming vijjo hook-up to the global gaming stream
I’m equipped with exo-skeletal exotic super-powers
I can shoot a thousand victims in a coupla quiet hours

So praise …

I sometimes take some time out to do home-based office chores
I talk on Skype and WhatsApp with a load of corp’rate bores
I charm them with my techno-speak – I think it’s really funny
They understand like zero but they still send lots of money

So praise …

I’m king of grunge-tech enterprise, of mega interfacing
I don’t have time to think about the eco-system wasting
I’ve got a Filipino maid that washes, cooks and cleans
She’s something like my mother and is hardly ever mean.

So praise …

GRC vii 2018

Springtime on the Mesogeion plain.
‘cross puddles left by intermittent rain
the broken stonework half concealed is strewn
beneath the baking sun of Attic noon.

Coloured blooms peek round the waving grass
as through the broken sanctuary I pass
a lone apostle from a future race
who tries to guess the meaning of this place.

What mystic ritual was taught just here
between the temple’s stone and waters clear.
small virgins brought to dance before the bears
proud parents seated watching on the stairs ?

Or was it terror, sacrifice and pain
inhuman suffering for godly gain ?
poor bodies ripped apart by vicious claws
to satisfy the ignorance of laws.

We cannot know what mysteries were planned
by wise or cruel, perverse or saintly hand
to please twin tyrannies – effect and cause
to win good harvest or success in wars.

So let us not in our enlightened times
be hypocritical in reading history’s signs
for we too trade our offspring for a blessing
in ancient instinct’s tangled intercessing.

GRC v 13
Original event 2001

A grain of truth, armoured with pure science
Takes wings and leaps unhindered from the cliff.
She soars aloft. The watchers gasp – defiance
Of the planet’s pull. Marv’lous – but if
The sources of vain wisdom laugh out loud
Demanding you believe our blog so smart
Damns “Theory” – refutation for the crowd
That follows us and our Priestesses heart.

It beats in tune with minds of un-named powers
Who gain their speculations from the air.
Prognosticating carefree ivory towers,
Whose knowledge seeks its thrills at fraudster fairs.
Those facts, when proven lies, transmogrify
Into next weekend’s social media blast
While quiet truth just tests, grows, falsifies
Building on inaccuracies past.

“What is truth” said Pilate; washed his hands,
The bias of our minds, though, does the same
Conspiracies abound, spread wide by plans
Of techno-billionaires who share no blame.
Too much data; little information
Breeding fear in unempowered souls
Not enough and too much speculation
Undermines beliefs, like witch-brewed bowls.

Rulers try to gauge which wind is fair
Judging who to please, to court, to burn
And grain of truth, without an updraft there,
Crashes to the ground, her value spurned.

GRC ii 2021

The games are two years away.
He has been chosen.
He works out every day
for the body must be toned to perfection.
He practices his skill- day in, day out
until every movement is burnt
into the cerebellum
backed up in the mysterious wiring.
His coach berates his every missed beat
His wife knows what she has taken on
but cannot always control her frustration
As summer approaches he prepares to travel
but his mind is focused.
He is ready for one chance to shine.

The concert is next year
She practices.
Every note must be perfect.
The difference between good and great
is a millisecond; a tenth of a tone;
subtleties of sound and touch
heard only as vibrations
in a listening brain.
She takes advice from teachers
She goes on a diet
She gets a better hair colour.
Every nuance will count;
for the audience and for her own confidence.

The harvest was going to be next month
But a storm is coming
So it has to be this weekend.
She races round the villages
In a desperate competition to sign up workers.
Family, neighbours, friends, friends of friends of friends.
Idle youth to hobbling geriatric.
All can bend in the scorching heat of June
to force the soil to release its captive gold.
At 5.30 they begin; 3 carts full by lunchtime;
10 by Sunday noon.
But it is not enough.
The storm breaks over the slope
and rain torrents across the broken land.
What is left is washed into a useless mush.
Months of her livelihood gone in a cloudburst.

The athlete ?
He wins the bronze.
It is disappointing, but more than Ok
He has a deal with a shoe company
And he can start practising for next time.

The musician ?
The reviews are good.
She gets a contract with a label;
tied in with 65 pages of terms and conditions.
It is enough to live on, for now.

The farmer ?
She sits in her kitchen and cries.
Cries with joy for the harvest saved
and with agony for what is lost.
All that she could do was not enough
in the face of nature.

At distance, mirrored pane of oiled glass.
But close to shore the rhythmic wavelets pass
And break, a gently rolling, foaming band,
Onto a weed-specked stretch of crimson sand
As weary bodies flop onto a bed
And hands drop clasped and still behind the head.

Strange colours that seem only real in dreams.
A cinematic overfade of scenes
From blue and white, to deep, unearthly reds,
A hint of green ; a mauve storm cloud embeds
Itself on back-dropped orange glow.
And is that what they mean by “indigo” ?

Silhouetted tamarisk, a stony arm
Projecting, keeping fishing boats from harm
Black painted by a bacchic fiery sky
With purple galleons adrift on high
Wind-whipped to metaform as imaged shades
In quiet darkness as the moment fades.

My photographic vigil forced to end
As, stumbling in the gloom, I now ascend
To hear the voices of the linnet sellers
And taste on humid air the market smells.
White-veiled schoolgirls take their bags of fish
To peaceful evening at home, and dream their wish.