18 Nov 2015

Grandmaster





Always think 2 steps ahead
Or more than that

Think to tomorrow
Think to sunset and sunrise

Over and over
Think towards drought and

Bombs dropping
Have every answer ready

To every single question
Every futile and brain-dead

Point
They try to make

That way
When you get into it

You will come out
Victorious

Not as a prize fighter
Standing over your quarry

But simply a man of words
Of streetwalking sense

And universal logic
Guard up

Shield up
Always ready

but
for the sake of your drunken soul
do not succumb

Continue to hustle and slip and
Slide into the gaps and cracks

It is a shameful reality that
We should be forced

To have to live our lives
This way

But there is no other way to
Survive.




13 Nov 2015

Jesus would be so disappointed





It is almost impossible these days to
Escape stupidity
The
Swarming masses are legion
Continually circling your carcass
Waiting for a bite
The tiniest strip of flesh

Where do you go to escape?
Closeted within the darkest corners
You can find some
Animal with a PhD
Scribbling on rocks
His mind so absolved of
Concrete and carbon monoxide
Screaming children
Chicken wings or death
That he barely exists
At all

Dig holes
Sweep streets
Write poetry
Build skyscrapers
Fight a war
Survey a million lives over a
Million days
And you cannot fail to
See you are surrounded

And here
Today
Now
It seems nullifying and true that
Nowhere on
God’s green earth will ever be
Free of
Them.



5 Nov 2015

Three down


I have
Thus far
Lost only
Three of the living
That impacted upon me
Any discernable change

Not bad going I suppose
For one of my age
In this town
In this time

We are not called to arms as
Our grandparents were

Or locked in small rooms
Holes drilled in our skull
At the slightest mention of
A second voice in our head

And people laugh when I say
That the 3rd body no longer present
Was a cat
But he was a beautiful thing
More so than most people
I’ve known before or since

People who so often 
Seem unable to remain silent and just
Be.