A New Year ?

I cannot sing the lords song,

Not now in this strange land,

Where laws are just for changing,

And traditions cannot stand.

I grew with certain values,

Those values now so changed,

The sacred brought to nothingness,

Our morals rearranged.

We spare the rod incessantly,

We give the feckless space,

We can’t promote religion,

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December Musings

The Santa was fat and lugubrious, his beard was nylon spun,

He stood beside the grotto gate his duties nearly done,

The light had faded from the sky and dappled it into night,

And icy drops of chilling rain were putting the crowds to flight.

The credit cards had done their worst and the shelves were nearly bare,

The rich had loaded the four b...

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WINTER GIVING

It’s a funny old world,

In the way that it’s turned,

With the truths that we own,

And the lies that we learned

We believed in creation,

That story just fine,

Then along came Charles Darwin,

Just spinning his line?

There’s god in his heaven,

That’s somewhere above,

And we’re showered with mercy

Unparalleled love.

...

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Old Pathways

I went one last time into Venice,

I rode there on mystical dreams,

By the deepest lagoon of my aging,

I was ripping my life at its seams.

It’s not now that things really matter,

What matter I’ll see this no more,

What matter one last crimson sunset,

What matter this hard bolted door.

I looked without envy or malice,

I held n...

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PILGRIMAGE

We need to walk a pilgrims way,

Hard firing for we men of clay,

A palmers cross and scallop shell,

To close and clasp the gates of hell.

Celestial towers beyond each cloud,

The trumpets sounding clear and loud,

The golden footpath leading on,

Bright dreams eternal, all doubts gone.

But pilgrims roads have chasms deep,

Th...

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AUTOCRACY

I liked tobacco far too much,

The coffin nail, the weak mans crutch,

I gave it up I’m pleased to say,

And chased those Passing Clouds away.

Cream cakes were once another vice,

A single one would not suffice,

I guzzled pastries by the score ,

But now would want for not one more.

I tried barbiturates in the day,

They chased the ...

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The Substance of Angels

I have surely walked with angels,

Through my deepest darkest night,

Called to comfort they have held me,

Brought me safely to the light.

At my heels the prince of devils,

Demon herds like screaming swine,

All they promised was my glory,

Sweet contentment, heady wine.

See within this pale reflection,

Mirrored by the blac...

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For My Brothers.

There are days in your life when you need to be still,

No need for excitement you don’t need that thrill,

When the quiet is everything, silence and calm,

No want for disruption, no want for alarm.

There are days in your life when that need is profound,

When your feet are both seeking the sanctified ground,

Where lips full and rounded are ...

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No Coin For The Ferryman

It should have been a flaming June,
But the deluge was never still,
The days were waiting the summer sun,
The hours for a way to kill.

We carried no coin for the ferryman,
As we went to visit her there,
She was lost and we were losing,
In a world that didn't care.

She asked us "am I dying",
We told her a needless lie,
She bade us love e...

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WASP

Do you ever wake up thinking why am I here,

Those seconds of doubt with that tingle of fear,

That realisation that for all that your worth,

You’re simply a drain on this wondrous earth.

A wasp you might say has no purpose at all,

Annoying and stripy, pathetically small,

But always our reasons and rationings fail,

For life like the wasp ha...

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UNCTION

You live your life, you take the blows,
Its deepest wound the blackened bruise
Where sometime roads would trail desire,
And lead down ways we would not choose.

God knows I’ve sought the sheltered glade,
Where summer breezes always blow,
But oft I walked the rock strewn path,
And found that place we should not go.

I find with age some restful cal...

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Carrion Spring

I saw amid the lambs at play,

One sleeping in the haze,

But something in that still repose,

Caused me to stop and gaze.

I looked down at the silent form,

And saw the stain of death,

Vitality had ebbed away,

No life, no spark, no breath.

Here early spring was carrion,

Here promise all was done,

And nothing could be set ...

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The noise, the smell, the blood, the flies,

And in this reek I walked and woke,

To see where all compassion dies.

And in a pen, alone aloof,

A great old bull a mighty mound,

Who stood and watched and waited death,

But offered not a single sound.

This once proud heap, this thing of flesh,

...

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Chain Ringing

They say in old Byzantium there hung a bell of gold,

It swung beneath the library dome to summon young and old,

A burnished thing both mighty wrought and stunning to the eye,

Whose sonorous note caressed the tower and echoed out the sky.

But golden bells are gilded waste their glory little worth,

Too precious and too soft at heart to clamour on ...

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Automobelia

The cars I had bring memories,

They mark each month and year,

To aged fool from callow youth,

They mapped the road I steer.

I fed them with the very best,

To every need complied,

A very metal essence,

That could never be denied.

It was in the nineteen sixties,

That I bought my very first,

Be certain not the best car,

...

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In The Shadow Of Wings

No longer held no longer bound,

No longer fettered by the chains,

In grace released upon wind,

When naught but sea and sky remains.

Where chains are forged by earthbound souls,

Though free from malice hard like stone,

The cording knot shall steal the breath,

And non but angels may atone.

So in the closing of my eyes,

...

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Kind Hearts

If you live in the country by meadow and hill,

You watch how the animals rarely are still,

The hoofed and the horned things have quaint little ways,

To fill out the hours and pad out the days.

A cow is a creature with little to want,

No need for the college or baptismal font,

A stately progression from byre to the block,

McDonalds just wai...

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Shambles

It was early in the morning on a rain swept city road,

That I saw an old and older man hard burdened by his load,

His hair was tousled wired grey beneath a shapeless cap,

And all this world for all his life had held him like a trap.

Surprised at my reaction, the contempt that flooded in,

This thing of flesh, humanity, one human race to win,

Was I...

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A Time For Snowdrops.

The snow spoke words of winter and it sang of passing time,

The mundane and the mystic of the sullen and sublime,

It whispered untold wonders and it shouted stunted verse,

It bade the time of brilliance and it welcomed in the curse.

We walked with youthful pleasure as we stumbled into age,

We prattled out our simple lines upon a wondrous...

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Ragged Beauty

I worked in the poorer quarter,

I saw much but knew little more,

I watched like the watchman waiting,

At the closed and the hard bolted door.

I suppose she had not turned forty,

But a century bore her down,

Beset by her truanting children,

In the slums of the shadowing town.

Perhaps she had been a beauty,

Perhaps she had da...

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Eyes On A Winter Page

Your eyes are on my winter page,

Each word like breath and fallen flowers,

While I have rhymes for many needs,

And treasures for the passing hours.

And did you read Gerontius,

Where Newman spoke of raging dreams,

Where hands offend to common prayer,

And Cranmer penned the precious reams.

I ponder and I quicken wit,

...

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The Seven Deadliest And All That

And do you have that dreadful place,

Where comforts care can find no trace,

When dreamless nights are nightmare cold,

And runes are cast where tales are told.

The cloven feet that trot behind,

And beat their pace into your mind,

Where stygian demons laud your fame,

And heap their praise upon your name.

The si...

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IMPISH

There’s an imp on my shoulder a child of the beast,

He’s been there for ages six decades at least.

He edges my keyboard, directs what I write,

He’s there every morning and travels my night.

He coaxes my appetites, flatters my pride,

He bends every truth so I never have lied.

Of course he’s a friend a companion of care,

And I know that I’d miss ...

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Dancing.

I never have taken her dancing,

Though the music is sensual sweet,

I never have taken her dancing,

Though we move to a mystical beat.

It’s like holding hands in the moonlight,

On a beach where the sand shimmers gold,

When you know there is nothing tomorrow,

And you’re sure you will never grow old.

There’s a softer caress than the ki...

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This Year of Grace.

Alone I walked the darkening lane,

The wintered tees were bleeding rain,

The lightened windows beckoned home,

Why then should I have cause to roam?

Did duty call, what duty could,

The wandering was in my blood,

The searching out, the need to stray,

The endless roads that lead away.

A sun-kissed Caribbean beach,

So oft...

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