TO ENGLISH POETS IN OUR TIMES OF CRISIS

Strophe

Where are ye now, Lord Byron, where is hope?
Thy pen is needed, Alexander Pope!
Come Maggie Cavendish to readdress
Society & all this strange excess,
The youth yet craves Sid Vicious to affront
The BBC & call the Queen a c**t –
It’s terrible, so terrible, these days,
As candles drain to wicklight in the maze
Of mind & all its inserenity,
Integrating darkness with vanity,
The satirists to aether dissipate,
So out it turns I’ll step up to the plate
& educate the land of moral right
Exposing all these dirtbags – as I write
Karma waves the flags of British empire,
Drags slaves of nations into Bill Gates’ mire
Condemn’d by Heaven as a friend of Sin
His poison swampbeast bubbling underskin
Ready to reset Humans back to apes
Unless the spirit of the World escapes
The media’s coercing, where it seems
Good branded evil as true evil schemes,
Britannia, tho’, disgusted at the turn
Of her beloved island, leaves the fern
& thistle beds to climb the barren glen,
& calls for honour thro’ the rolls of men –
For her, for truth, for law, for justice feel my pen!

Antistrophe

While the world yieldeth to wolves & vandals
Up in their seminars – socks & sandals –
Auld Gaelic Senachies, young trainee Bards
Among the Ogham letters mark the yards
That part two foes opposing, & in flux,
Eco-Albanic heroes versus crooks,
Who’ll try & launch an Ossianic age
Gone madly messianic in their rage,
Willing a metamorphosis on all
To scotch the sketch of destinies befall
Shove fat fattori into government
Who’ll do mezzadri bidding backwards bent
Dangling the dogs oer abyssal despair
The Earl of Chatham hiss’d his wont down there
A cry that echoed flowing oer the rocks
“Remember Boston’s folkstand at the docks
Who held an armageddon to men’s dreams
I tried to toss the stamp act in the streams!”
Now hear Unready Ethelred’s ain voice
“Like Georgian London I too had a choice
But chose my course upon St Brice’s Day
Filling St Fideswide’s church with Danes to slay
& burnt them all, young weanlings thro t’old men
My throne soon conquer’d by forkbearded Swen,
So to my song of reason, understand
No man can grasp a human soul by hand
When it, thro’ Common Laws, united with its land.

Epode

When leaders turn insane let us annoy,
Gadfly style, every Komodoumenoi
With words of honest logic, turns of phrase
To stamp on slugs & vermin, jail the Krays,
For masks have slipp’d upon a Kristallnacht
The very truth in nature is attack’d,
Dust down the ramparts, unweb the cannon
Rise up, rouse thy heart for Ras Makonnen
Shoshone sheepeaters turn from the hills
Don’t march on London, Luddites, burn the mills !
We are no Dynamitards Fenian
Nor Blatherskites across the Carrion
No, we are children of our blessed earth
Bound by umbilical lingams at birth
Let freedom ring thro’ lands of liberty
Flood over Smokies deep in Tennessee,
British Apennines, Gwynedd’s hoary heaps,
Te Mata, where chief Waimarama sleeps,
Oer New York Catskills, Arkansas’ Ozarks,
Wave, Bards, the Manifesto of Karl Marx
Down absinthe, Earl Grey, roll a thousand joints,
& sing its finest universal points
In verses well befitting this fair creed
Sing, English Poets, in Our Time of Need,
Attend to all the dark arts needing light
Upend snake-charming market carts with might
& with thy subtle roars we’ll set the laws aright!

RHAPSODY FOR OURKIND

By Whittinghame Water, from lint-soft bank,
Watching rain, could there have been just nothing?
Far better not to think a thing so deep,
Save focus for the stardust what we are,
Alighting stallions to brighter times –
Inside deadly marshes are we wander’d,
This existential crisis of an age,
These flailings of a fake democracy,
Sustaining manipulative systems
& corporate institutions hell-bent
On step-by-step destroying Human Rights
But hope remains – each fresh generation
Of conscientious, ecological
Citizens, holding singular aegis
Of putting Planet First, above all things,
Descry how votes for establish’d parties
Are signatures on the World’s death-warrant;
Let us reject the regret of hindsight,
The stakes have never been as high as this,
World! If we lose this one we lose it all!
& if enough of us believe in Change
Then Change must come, no roof shall stay these dreams,
When the next, new, novel evolution
Has never been been more vital for Ourkind.

OF BARDS  & DRUIDS

Pendragon sword, Lord Ollamh of the North,
Returns in testing times, the Arts demand
Embroidering six colours into words
While contemplating Hoo’s expanding wings,
Variegated unto royalty;
Whenever signs & omens overwear
Across the mossy-dappl’d turf we rise,
Heaving our hearts up raggy heathermoors
Sat before the very vaults of Heaven
Above the kerbside hopes of Human youth
Upended as if brawlers roll’d a cart
Upon itself, & scatter’d dreams like fruit
Whose are the hands which bend the axle’s truth
Whose are the boots which crush the fruits to pulp?
These answers are brave truths to understand,
Tho’ some ken scatter’d portions well enough,
To place each piece together from the pile,
& make the puzzle whole is how I’ll go
& how I’ll sing my song, no tender lay
Of love this is, but heed my Druid Call;
The mistletoe is paling on the oak,
But if our caring hearts fold in one bind,
There’s nothing on this Earth we cannot do,
To save our home from ruin’s rough demand!

VISUALIZING TRUTH

As Gallileo’s ears were sent twitching,
By Flemish invention, but understood
‘Twas founded on science of perspective,
Making a magnificent instrument
With magnification of one times ten,
When, from the top of the Campanile,
Spying lamps hung on ships two hours away,
He turn’d his magic eyeglass to the moon
Saw comet-splatter’d surface uneven,
Deep chasms & vast protuberances,
So swung his piece to pierce the trailing stars,
O what a beautiful sight to behold!
The first on Earth to feel persuasive truth;
Galaxy myriads, Jupiter’s moons,
Portraiting proof Coepernicus correct,
The Third Reality replaced by truth
But churchmen, fearing for their merchandise,
Defamed the pair blasphemers, fled the face
Of God, belying understanding;
Let us self-int’rested agendas
Identify, when with a global sweep,
We’ll turn our apparatus on the skies
Penetrate universal deceptions
Find moons of cool integrity & truth.

FROM LOFTY VANTAGE

If we gaze on the Earth from high Heaven,
None would ever see pensweeps, dipp’d in blood,
Delineate imperial carve-ups,
Only nautral patchworks of terrain,
But Humans conjure borders in our minds,
The Us & Them mentality still thrives,
Implemented by richer nation states
Creating ghetto countries to exploit,
Exacerbate demeritocracy!
Flagellants, seeking opportunities,
Seen via TeeVee’s kapital trappings,
Try mortgaging age-old family farms,
Raising unfair funds to sit in freezers
Attach’d to trucks’ containers at Calais,
Sending family group-texts before ice
Seizes lungs, hardening heartpulse bloodflow;
While elsewhere in this global apartheid,
Others overload in Libyan dinghies,
Rapidly sinking to the bawl of tears,
It is the poor who maturate the rich,
Enabling children in the Western malls
To choose the choicest chain-chomps in t-shirts,
While gaggles of gargoyles, downtown Mumbai,
Drool cold hunger into well-lit windows.

MASS MEDIA MANIPULATION

Possession of the truth no longer stands
In the people’s hands, but with liars’ lies
Big business distorts perceptions of truth
To undermine democracy, disgrace
Which dreams up ever more terrible schemes
To influence our thoughts & behaviours
Propaganda’s daily inculcations
Evil infiltrating populations
With falsehoods, creating utter chaos
Assaulting every aspect of our lives
Normalizing the worsening of lives!
Planting hate-triggers into angry guts
Whose dull, fat maggots, burrow into hearts,
Restrict individual faculties
Dividing unbreakable families
Moulds spiritless, enervated beings
Even the so-call’d intelligentsia
Lousy with indoctrinated lurgy
Tows government lines, never objecting
Policies accepts unquestioningly
Forgetting or just choosing to ignore
That unless reality rooted
Beliefs & opinions never truths,
For truth is eternal, immutable!

THE CURRENT CRISIS

Blasted by banal consumerism
An ignorant & uncultured public
Enters its darkest hour, we are embroil’d
In destructions unprecedented, see
Ecosystems collapsing, seas poison’d,
Biodiversity annhialate;
Wildfires, superstorms, famine, drought & dust
Fresh water disappearing overnight
The Amazon is burning every night!
Humanity addicted to vaccines
That renders their humanity void!
Too overwork’d to even think a thought
Outwith narrated mainstream agendas –
They wish to make us animals, to strip
Our human rights, thro’ crises justified
By lies, to rearrange reality,
Such are those unfathomable evils
That sail the flooding oceans of fake news
When social media’s viral instance
Makes first impressions in the vital flash,
Poisoning national conversations
Assulting truth like mad, castrated bulls,
But like the matadors against the beast
When tyrants charge the world, stand firm & strong!

TERRA MATER

The next time you pass blossoming peach trees,
Pause, & wonder on the significance
Of beauty, let her thy deity be,
Terra Mater of the di selecti,
Her hair the elementum that is Earth,
Her ringlets cornucopias of fruit,
Canteloupe gorgeousness, this gemmy sphere
Invites the eyes to stray yonder corners
Of all we know, or rather told to know,
Like… electric cars are too expensive
& other such guff – let us count the ways
To save ourselves; first step, animation,
Next, appreciation of Mother Earth,
To cultivate her leads a pious life,
Sole survivors of the lines of Saturn,
We walk through forests to sing her praises
She kisses us when we start recycling!
Commencing our days with cereal rites
Beyond the enervation let us stand,
As if fire alarms all across the World
Went off in cacophonies together!
Rewilding ravaged nature we can forge,
Without her we are sterile, infertile,
Existless in a listless dirge of dust.

COURTING APOCALYPSE

Woven carpet sweats on a cold-stone floor
In Ecuador, once famous with colour,
Today only its threadbare fade display’d,
To the mantle trampl’d by manky feet,
Such objects are Our Planet’s grave warning,
Observe Calypso’s temple on Gozo
Eroded more in seventy summers
Than four thousand previous; sea-rims rise,
Threatening Venice & the ancient Fens,
Gorgeous Cape Flora by ogres depos’d,
The poor Great Barrier Reef falls asleep –
Meanwhile industry keeps turning, turning;
Deforestation, fossil fuels burning,
Churning in toxic cauldrons in the skies
Prodigious floods, intensifying droughts,
Devastating wildfires, withering storms,
Are like a malign tumor’s first sharp slap –
High-level international discourse
Agrees to only lower emissions
But World! These must be halted for to save
Ourselves from damage unprecedented,
Permanent, irrevocable changes,
We won this world as we deserv’d this world,
Being noble beings, but not to fight
For this world, earns us the world we deserve…

SOYBEAN SUICIDE

I saw two frogs a-mating on the track,
Frozen like ice, & then I heard the revs
Of moving car, I stood as still as stone
& watch’d them splatter’d upwards by the wheels
Goo-flesh upflashing, fry-pans spitting oil,
In those sad deaths I found a metaphor
Of how we rumbles down destructive roads,
When nihilism wastes ancyent fauna,
The shrivelling of planetary lungs;
Shame on McDonalds’ bulldozers & chains,
Of holocaustic carnage, while the tribes
Who’d spoke to Mayan gods shantytown flung,
Whose brutally appropriated lands
Grow so much soy & corn under a cloud
Of gluten intol’rance, celiac plagues
Spreading the glyphosate carcinogen
Residued in grain, sugar, other crops
Which animals feed, on these we feast in turn
Ignoring slaughter ‘cos it tastes sooooo good,
Glyphosate weed-killers poison bloodstreams
With feotuses bleeding to death in tears
‘But beautiful’ farmers of bumper crops
Reply, admiring fields where supraweeds
Ensure next year’s increas’d toxicity
& so the ship of poisoners sail on
Slow docking on isles of chronic illness!