keep you still

If I could keep you
still, in time,
a precious moment of connection
save
and lock it in the memory of my blood,
sometimes, I think I would.

let the light pour through

Progress ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Let there be many windows in your soul
That all the glory of the universe
May beautify it. Not the narrow pane
Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources. Tear away
The blinds of superstition; let the light
Pour through fair windows broad as truth itself
And high as God.

Why should the spirit peer
Through some priest-curtained orifice, and grope
Along dim corridors of doubt, when all
The splendour from unfathomed seas of space
Might bathe it with their golden waves of love?
Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths,
Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,
And throw your soul wide open to the light
Of reason and of knowledge. Tune your ear
To all the wordless music of the stars,
And to the voice of nature, and your heart
Shall turn to truth and goodness, as the plant
Turns to the sun. A thousand unseen hands
Reach down to help you from their peace-crowned heights,
And all the forces of the firmament
Shall fortify your strength. Be not afraid
To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

                                        *

Merry Solstice xXx 🌻

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check points

notion
motion why
emotion
think what
now make
how
got shape

[punctuate as you will]

Inburst

Voice bade unspeakable:
Inbursts of silent screams
Through psyche’s chambers.
All activity is here,
Void of course.

#BritishValues

[June, 2014 – Tragic pertinence needs must rework and repeat]

 

What would you have us value, then?
What passes for these British traits?

Is it the wilful diminution of democracy
That separates the people from the State?

Or maybe our incessantly insistent view
That what we do is “help” the world for its own sake?

Oh, wait!
I think I’ve got it: it’s that fair play code we think we own!
How righteously polite we are!
Perhaps we should commission us a global honour mission
Thus we won’t feel so perceptibly alone.

So, is it in our famous law and order you’ve translated into Money talks?
Our globe-anointed tolerance that shadow-stalks the local masses?
Could it be the age-old choreography between the economic classes?
Is it in our Blighty-quaint ability to wait in lines? The neoliberal culture of
I’ll only pay for mine?

Stiff upper lip, is it?
The non-complaining strategy that manifestly rhymes
Neurotic and sclerotic with our passive-born aggression?
Or perhaps it’s that amazing, self-congratulating way
We tend to trip out on our history’s big lessons?

No, wait! Don’t tell me! Let me guess:
You mean like how you cherish our belovèd NHS?

Hang on..!

Or could it even be our undeniable capacity
To finger-point with swinging lead and buried heads?
Or might it be our deep, rich, grass-root, time-was Cool Britannia,
Now, by Cowell’s ilk and cynical palaver, made an operatic lather?
Is it in the way we gush and gift a paltry nobody to unreserved celebrity
And rush to make pariahs of the stars beyond our knowing?
Is it how we gloat and glower over uncontested power?
Yes! It surely has to be the Press, with all its freedom to impress?

Or is it how we toe the line
When Lord America decides
We might be useful hand-tools, after all?
Is it our poodle disposition or our sniffy exhibition
That defines our island character?

Do Britain’s expositions make her values truly worthy
Or just pompously perfidious and small?

Well?
What the hell and where the heck
Are all these dandy ‘British values’?
Suffer me my ignorance but,
Is it in the way you favour those already able?
Is it how you keep your brother
Or the fear that looks for other
In the refugee and immigrant?
The prisoner? Disabled?
Is it how you treat the NEETs?
The homeless, sleeping on the streets?
The single parent? Needy elders?
Every worker like a serf?

Is it how you are transfixed by everybody’s patriotic worth?

Perhaps you’d like our babies stamped at birth, like eggs,
With redly roaring lions? Then, once they’re schooled and duly cloned,
Be branded with a standard – maybe tractors backed by Union Flags
To make their British value known –
For, what is value worth that can’t be shown?

Lest

Careful what you wish
For it very well might come
True for ev’ryone

rots from the head

Humans lose the plot
Hold on so tight
Their grip is lost

The World rots
From the head
And magma hearts
Burn every thread

But, stop?

Too late:
All scars
And binary stars oblige

Veils lift as curtains fall
In thrall to Will and Fate
And thresholds all
Capitulate.

 

Patriot schism

The heat of patriotism,
in self-deceit,
spills outright lies
upon the world;
so sins by symbolism.

Flag unfurled
in rapture
to false fealty and,
ever yielding,
wrapped in glamour,
makes alignment
under brittle banners
staked along
impassioned lines,
all hot and ready,
set to march against
all sensible expressions
of dissent.

Now come the acts
in missives, sounding
symphonies and sending
hounds of hardware,
bringing down offending
hearts and minds
until the Fatherland is primed.

 

[First posted: June 2013]

Born to…

Born to… what?
Between each small life and Eternity,
The treadmill of the soul.

Extreme

Out at the edges
A sense of humour bypass
To be avoided