Refuge
I’m offering relief from the rain, the inclement blusters,
offering shelter, here, although temporary as breath.
Sure, the roof needs fixing, and a good hammering at that.
I’ve no answers, but the coffee’s good, and the beds are
mostly dry, while the ravens are fed at the door. It keeps
them out of the house. So, we make a fire and stare into
the flames, expecting no answers, taking
shelter from a storm that knows no end, that defies an end.
Looking Back
It’s been a while now, how the years
slip by ignited by fury.
Fury is the order of the day, a century or
more, defined by terror.
When I left Vietnam, I couldn’t conceive
of another war. Who’d want it with all the
angst on display, and the vile divisions in
the community?
Noble warriors, there’s no charisma
gained from killing, following the corrupt,
the craven, the endlessly self-obsessed.
How do snipers feel on their deathbeds?
Looking back, picking off civilian targets
one by one, double tap, triple tap, as many
taps as it takes to decimate the soul of man.
Double Tap
Ballistic missiles rain down in Iran,
rain down in Gaza,
rain down in Lebanon,
missiles made in the USA,
double tap, double tap, holy crap.
Ballistic missiles target Ukraine,
women and children not to blame,
missiles made worldwide,
missiles made in South Australia,
double tap, double tap, holy crap.
A tyrant orders a million drones,
faceless men work the phones,
double tap, double tap, holy crap.
The defiled earth is littered in bones.
The defiled earth is littered in bones.
This Easter Sunday
It’s pointless running like a car looking
for a bowser; no bowser will give you
the energy, nothing external,
but succoured from marrow, within, life is
more than a whirligig of random prizes.
Life is prised from being, and this is
self-driven, self-suffered, no bowser
exists, no awards, no saviour, nothing
exterior, only the desert within to be
negotiated, stemming from the tree of
kindness.
Once, the bell tolled on Rafferty’s Hill.
The building is broken now, its bell,
stolen years ago, fallen into silence,
fallen into the wrong hands, it tolls in
memory, but a memory that is fading.
The desert mind wanders free, the
ground sparse, tumbleweed
stop-starting, the saw-tooth ranges,
the well-painted hills, a kaleidoscope
of ochres, and digging tools lying
around the base of the pit, history is
sacred, preserved, and the mind that
receives such is also sacred, a mind
pre-calmed, resolved, craving nothing.
The outward journey creates an inner
path, and vice versa, thought is lovingly
rendered, a phrase, meticulous, a purity
of word breaking into an utterance of love.
Exodus
The column moved slowly, an endless line
funnelled between rock walls. It was an exodus,
oblivious of its reason to be, no leader, or
philosophy, unexplained, and each just one of
many thousands, carried along by a ponderous,
inexorable momentum, to where?
It resembled reckoning, inevitability, but no
clear judgement, or sense of pilgrimage to
some final apotheosis, just this unending
movement, a tidal surge, without hunger or
thirst, and no sign of resistance, just mute,
doleful acceptance, shuffling along, without a
glance or the slightest reassurance, each staring
ahead, expressionless.
It was impossible to maintain a position. The
forces within the column pressured individuals
into drifting from one side to the other, and any
attempt to recognise a face was dashed, each a
stranger, despite an overarching familiarity and
collective resignation that it was always going to
be, and yet there was no conclusion; everyone just
kept trudging along, obedient, resigned to their fate.