They started a war - a war in my name

the truth - they had to bend it;

they tore out the heart of integrity’s soul

now who will come to mend it?

Attackers came forth from the land of the sand

with a plot that the West vowed to foil.

They went to off war in freedom’s name

but the sand was not free from the oil.

The men in the suits in the sleek Cadillacs

looked out to the men...

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The Euro-Millions Draw - on Christmas Day

Tells all of Christendom’s effete decay

And loud proclaims the Saviour’s Holy Birth

Stands thirteen million silver pieces worth.

And those who know us as Great Satan’s lackey

Annihilating Afghan and Iraqi

Find naught accrues that mitigates contempt,

To Christians who do evil - to pre-empt.

Meanwhile, our Christian leader, piously

Dis...

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What bends the squaddy’s mind, that on return

Mates nightly sunder, as now, he in turn?

Perhaps it is munitions’ modern might

To shred, truncate, dismember, burn, or crush

That, set against  the Home Land’s lack of plight

Turns minds of finest fighting men to mush.

They serve him not who only sit and wait

Till mercenary survivor clicks the gate.

For though a fight is ...

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The wind blows wild as Rooks explode

In buffeted delight.

Spreading their wings into the squall

In roistering, reckless flight.

Their swirling tangled dance of joy

Proclaims a mastery

Of three dimensional excess

And death to Gravity.

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HELL MANNED

Technology - topography

Night-sights and indigenes.

Testosterone - an unmanned drone

And mutilation’s screams.

When Right fights Right - all wrong condoned

Munitious might defiles;

A flash to startle Celsius

As blasted blind blood boils.

No songs are sung to hero-bits

Named-parts no tilling share;

The Earth lies sterile, littered, lost

With hearts - eternal - rare.

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There's a better class of shopper up at Waitrose

(the 'shibboleth' of haute cuisine's 'quisites.)

Parking bulbous battle-wagons all akimbo;

Their trolleying, my poor oik-brain, defeats.

Gentility demands delicatessen,

My cheese-encounter verifies the rule:

She beat me as a Bwana beats a native

Shouting: "Serving girl - serve me, and not that fool!"

So I waited, out of turn, and sorts...

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Life's river, it would seem, has flowed too far

And on the bar, thrown up in wild excess

A mess that, once 'a life', now moribund,

Contrived a fund of folly unrestrained,

That earthly rivers, drained of fulsome flow,

Brought fertile lands to dust, where naught will grow.

It fell to man, this archetype to maim;

To claim the rivers his, to have and hold;

To make so bold that life...

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·         Tutu has a prolapsed disc;
God's made him the shorter!
Though creation He got right
He's rubbish as a wroughter.
So Lord lay off the little chap
Let Tu-tu dance once more.
Re-work him to his former height
And mightier than before.

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PLAYING OLD HARRY

(A counter charge to Andrew Motion's.

poem on Harry Patch)

A road-mender might well be 'Patch'

But cruel joke on a Squaddie,

Sent forward yet, still leaking life

From scarcely patched-up body.

Despatched on politician's whim

To corner foreign patch;

Earning mention in despatches

Or meeting swift despatch. 

It's Tommy this and Tommy that

But stark truth came from H...

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LOSS LEADER

See the barrels all aslope,

catch the bayonet gleam;

parade that advertising ploy,

snare the young man's dream.

Gun and knife - testosterone;

let death come slow or fast;

on our streets anathema,

over there - a blast.

And when the blast kills heroes,

we bring them back, adrape.

Home-grown they are just zeroes,

Asboes with collared nape.

One grave shall hear the...

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CHOICE OF VEGETABLES

  (Peter's old pocket watch.)

A watched turnip gathers no time

A buttered parsnip no words.

A pint-pot gives no quarter

And parallel loins - no one girds.

For the stopped watch sees nothing more,

And the blind watchmaker's tick

Ensures his time is wasted

By a misplaced inapposite nick.

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STROKE

Mad falsehoods fill the fallen hero's head

as ghosts advance apace at reason's yield.

They trample 'cross his muddied neurone map

where synapse-stumps bestalk a battlefield.

Born into life's affray, scarce half equipped,

his strategies too few for victory;

with elegant redoubt of mind's finesse;

Babel at bay, he shunned cacophony.

But now comes ignominious collapse;

hi...

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TAKEN AT THE FLOOD

 (Written November 2007)

With party politics played out on Mars

the populace in betting shops and bars;

where plastic bags take plastic shopping home

safe ‘neath democracy’s great plastic Dome

and somehow credit’s bought where none is due

as carbon belches from yet more Heathrow;

proclaimed Kyoto targets are all bull

and planting one small shrub pays dues in full.

T...

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                 IRAQ WAR ENQUIRY

(The frank and fearless Barrie Singleton Report)

Bush or Obama

Cowboy or charmer

The American way is no mystery.

If you're not 'with us'

With terror you mess

And you're plumb on the Wrong Side of History.

Anthony Blair

With deceitfulness flair

In omnipotence felt his divinity.

His efforts in war

Left a gangrenous sore

That will heal - the wrong...

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NOBLESSE OBLIGE

That projectile velocipede

The cyclist's silent steely steed

With sharp projections - myriad

And ridden by a wild eyed lad

Now hunts among the halt and lame

Where tots and tott'rers are fair game

To bring a wind of change, and fear

To folk once free to back and veer.

Dame Esther Rantzen raised the cry:

"Be helmeted or you might die"

But fervour fades - and no...

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FILM NOIR

(The Seven Smiles of Legacy.)

Fresh from nowhere he entered our lives

charismatic it seemed – with that smile.

In some mystical way his dentition revealed

the root of his being with nothing concealed

and he swore that no truth he’d defile.

The next smile seemed darker - or was it his friends?

Not anything you could define.

As he smiled from high places at home and abroad

...

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"In this revolt, the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie,"   Vaclav Havel.

FRUITLESS TOILE

(The fifth Quartet)

Time present lies!

That lie within; I live within the lie.

Time past, is a foreigner within a mac

pressing my back in effrontery

as I strap-hang from conception to inconceivable

on a train of experimental thought and light-pedantry.

Before me lies no after-life: ...

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Barrie would a-blogging go

Whether he knew what he’s doing or no

Francine and Isobel said he must – so:

Soon he’ll press ‘Enter’ – but where will it go?

A TRILOGY OF CARING

                                         What is this life if, full of care,                                           

 We have no time to stand and stare?

                                 No time to stand...

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