Faith

  Faith sighed,

and in that

whisper, drew

sodden drapes

aside.

Shedding

 

Peeling through to pure flesh,

the old gum sighs in strips,

scattering its skin, shedding

through its past. So the 

season drops its scales,

rippled bark slow breaks,

spreading broken promises

on soil which ever waits. 

Welcome grief

 

Welcome grief, stay awhile.

Let me wipe the dust from

your shoes and the tears

from your salted cheeks.

PALESTINE ACHES

 

 

The dead have silent teeth and empty throats,
they have no voice with which to speak, to cry
of all the horrors they have seen and been and
known; to call for justice, freedom from the

power of those who kill to claim what is not
theirs, the land of others, who suffocate children
in waves of dust and shredded metal moments,
where blood and tears and destiny are driven

deep into the waiting earth; dressing broken
fragments of their lives, their souls, their
hearts, that costuming of evil which war does
primp and posture into place, for those who

are the victims, for those who cannot speak,
and for whom the only hope can be for others,
that their throats are not empty, their teeth
are not silent, their words are not crushed

beneath the boot of evil and injustice and
military might, and that in the darkened
quietness of this awful, suppurating wound,
their only hope is that the voices of the living

will be speaking out for those who lie strewn,
fleshed like scattered crops, in that harvest
which bleeds and grieves and slowly seeds
the fields of future justice in aching Palestine.

Poetics – War Poetry | dVerse (dversepoets.com)

Final solution

 

Raised across the parapet of mind,
words frowned in distant gathering,
horizon-huddled holding to the edge
of possibility defined, waiting for

release upon the brooding ledge of
endless misunderstandings, restless
as they honed edges to deadly shine,
ready to cut without mercy; wielded

in a winnowing of mechanical fear,
compressing dry, cracked stalks of
hope into bales, tied for distant, ever
imagined Winters where life could

chew listlessly at  dried remnants
of what had once been lush, ebullient
green salvation, thrust from fallow
earth, reaching always for the distant

anxious sky where sullen blues held
court for scattered sunbeams, tripping
through realities which danced slowly
at the bidding of bestial breeze, and

delicate, whispering winds which
rattled hollow husks, bereft of fertile
grains, abandoned, sterile, grieving
in those fields of futures known,

and unknown, where Occam thoughts
spread like scythes, laying waste,
rendering, reducing potential harvest
in death knells of dusty, dirty dying;

so did the paddocks sigh piteously,
deprived of all which had been
promised, before the war within
demanded one last, final solution.

On getting old

 

What is this getting old? We feel no different

 in ourselves but the world sees us differently

and as skin relaxes into wrinkled submission, 

we begin to write new stories for who we are 

and what life holds. Because it has been told,

that six score years and ten, is an allotted life

even though, many live beyond and have done

always, from the age of seventy, we fall into

the trap of believing in something called 'old,'

when all we ever are, is 'being,' regardless of

age, or years, or softened skin and so much 

experience, that we see the world now in a

different way to how we saw it in youth - 

even though the world itself has not changed

so much, and we feel no different inside, but

life demands we pay attention in new and 

more flexible ways; that we soften and fold

in on ourselves, as our skin does in humble

submission to the reality of time and years.

When life hurts

 When life hurts, which it so often

does, how do we find meaning and

purpose to go on? Is there not some

thing twisted in believing or needing

to believe, that pain can be positive,

that hurting can heal, that suffering

can be not just necessary but good?

In this dance of reason, rage and 

grief, for all walk hand in hand

with pain, can we remember the

steps and remain faithful to their 

execution, telling ourselves that

it is all, in its own way, beautiful?

And is there anything else to do,

or which can be done, to soften 

the hard edges of life, to smooth

the jagged jaws of reality, so that

we can, just for a moment, breathe?