Winter Is Just Beginning

A subtle winter chill
Gives a kind of physical thrill,
But really not a pleasant one.
Is it only the beginning?
Will it run and run,
As it did last year?
So cold it brought me fear
Of hypothermia.
At least I'm not on the buses now.

Arab Spring

We've blown old Libya all to crap,
While media spout a lot of pap
About an Arab Spring.
This story has a falsehood ring,
As covertly they weapons pour
Into Syria's sea of gore.
The Arabs are having the kind of Spring
That feels like bitter Winter.

When Arab youth rebel and riot
Our leaders think that's fine;
When British youths do just the same,
They're called disloyal swine.

Why are we told we should be pleased
By an Arab world in flames?
The Tory bloodlust's not appeased,
They keep on shouting blame
And threatening intervention.

The Arab population's grown
So fast it takes away your breath.
Malignant neighbours study this,
And want to see mass death.

Old Ways

The bosses have no mercy
On old ways of feeling.
The changes they've imposed
Have left the people reeling.

They've got the younger people fooled
They think this crap's their own.
They'll be lucky to survive
Until they are full grown.

Season's Greetings

It's too late for "Merry Christmas",
Too early for "Happy New Year",
We're lost in a kind of limbo
Of conventional good cheer.
I don't know what to say to folk,
Tongue-tied by an exotic fear;
So I mumble and I stutter,
My greeting is unclear.
Then I just say "Hello".

This was written and posted between Christmas and New Year,

in case anyone is puzzled. 

A Soldier's Wish

Let's hope that we don't keep the peace
In lands where it does not exist;
Where battles are raging without cease
And generals rule with an iron fist;
Where bullets fly,
And peacekeepers die,
And the idea of peace is pie-in-the-sky.
Let's hope the pols don't throw our lives away,
Just so they can mendaciously say
They did what they could for peace.

This is unusual for me in that it is fictional. The reader is to imagine it 

spoken by a soldier, which I have never been, thank God. It was inspired 

partly by the UN Secretary General calling for more UN troops for 

South Sudan. It is also due to a set of military memoirs I read a long 

time ago, whose author complained about being sent to keep non-existent 

peace and getting shot at by both sides.

Pols is an abbreviation for politicians, popular in the US. 

On a similar topic: Joining Up 

The Ballad of the Leader

"So tell me now", the leader said,
"What lies shall I tell this week?
I think I need some brand new fib
To help me subdue the meek."

His advisers puzzled and scratched their heads,
As the nation's outlook was bleak.
"Perhaps you could say you're on their side?",
Said the first one to dare to speak.

"On their side?" asked the leader,
"You must think them utterly daft.
I'm kicking the shit right out of them,
That's my pleasure and my craft."

"The bigger the lie the better,"
The daring advisor said.
"People are truly credulous,
In fact, they're easily led."

"They'll believe any lie that's repeated,
If you just say it often enough.
The more far-fetched the better,
That's the art of the outrageous bluff."

"I must set them at each other's throats,"
The leader cunningly spoke.
"Whip hatred up to fever-pitch,
Give them a scapegoat they'd like to choke."

"I've said that I care for all of them,
But that tale doesn't work any more.
The people are seeing through my bs,
To the ruthlessness at my core."

"Perhaps," the advisor suggested,
"You could say you love those who work hard."
"That's a fine idea," the leader replied,
"Among liars you are the bard!"

"I'll be on the side of those who strive,
And I'll claim that the poor are lazy.
I can save quite a lot of money,
By blaming the sick and the crazy."

Of course, this is about Hitler and Goebbels. Anyone who thought

it was about contemporary leaders should be ashamed :-)

To the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

When asked why they had given payouts to people who had sued them without due cause, the Met spokesman said that it was cheaper just to settle. The idea is dubious; publicising it idiocy.

A policy of settling lawsuits
Will bear a harvest of bitter fruits.
To ignore the merits of the case
Leads only down into disgrace.
Claims should not be settled thus
Or, with time, things will get worse.
Greasy chancers will appear,
And fire in lawsuits far and near.
Nuisance suits will form a blizzard
Till paying them off sticks in your gizzard.

Icy Rain

Icy rain slaps on my thighs,
As from a tap that's opened.
It thunders down with sudden force,
It's freezing chill a potent
Sign of nature's waywardness.

We hope that nature will behave,
And yet its poise is delicate;
Stability is what we crave,
But all hangs by a thread,
In point of fact.

On a similar topic: October Rain 

Heart's Desire

We can't escape our heart's desire,
Even when we dream of sacrifice;
We're ineluctably compelled
To do exactly our own will.
If we try not to be self-serving,
It is because that is what pleases us.
The self-image that we hold in mind,
Owns allegiance unswerving.

We can't escape our heart's desire.
To say we can is to be a liar
Even unto our secret self.
What we do is what we want,
Even when we placate fear.
We're caught in the grip of passion's fire,
So we can't escape our heart's desire.

The only way to change our fate
Is to cultivate a different dream,
See ourselves a different way,
Adhere a little less to hate,
Enslave ourselves to a different scheme
Of more subtle aspiration;
And yet we often reinstate
Feelings we have long cast off.
We're burning still in passion's grate,
Trapped by lust's relentless fire:
Thus we can't escape our heart's desire.

dedicated to Ian M Banks, Scottish SF author,who kicked the bucket not long ago.

I wrote this in response to a rather odd preamble in one of his books, on the topic

of selfishness. I thought his discussion interesting, but a little naive, due to a lack of 

knowledge of yoga psychology. 

Race Hate Killer

Joe Franklin left no word behind
When he was executed.
Withheld the last thoughts in his mind,
His sentence not commuted.
They stuck the needle in his arm,
With intent to do him harm,
And sent him on his way.

Did he just not want to share?
Or had he finally ceased to care?
When held awaiting execution,
He made a thorough recantation,
Of all his race hate murder views.
Yet somehow that didn't make the news,
The way his final silence did.

He'd been in jail for thirty-three years,
When they finally killed him off;
Prosecutors boasted of justice done:
Please excuse me while I scoff.
The wizened old man they put to death,
Was different from the hard young thug
Who stole his victims breath.

They used a cunning sexual lure
To draw forth fatal confessions.
Hard to see a motive pure
When they mingle the professions 
Of prosecutor and prostitute.
The Supreme Court failed to refute
A very unsafe conviction.

He'd been in jail for sixteen years
When the Missouri siren came.
He unwisely had no fears,
Boasted he was to blame.
He thought he'd be in jail for life,
Wasn't warned he was in danger;
Shot off his mouth, to impress a beautiful stranger.

His doctor said that he was crazy,
Confessing to crimes he didn't commit.
Were the prosecutors lazy
Or did they just not give a shit?
In either case, they didn't solve the case.
Their devious and lethal acts are base;
They're much the same as him.

His victim Larry Flynt spoke out,
Against his fatal sentence.
But Larry's views didn't carry clout.
His ranting didn't make much sense,
As he raved of crippling Franklin instead
Of the State's idea to strike him dead.
So Missouri killed him as they wanted.

Franklin killed both Jews and blacks,
In a series of deadly attacks.
It seems he tried to start race war,
Unleashed a mini wave of gore.
Yet in the end his acts were futile:
No man alone could corpses pile
High enough to make a difference.

Like Breivik he was willing to act,
While others merely warmed the air;
But his killings proved useless in fact,
As no-one really seemed to care.
These one-man wars are truly quixotic,
Though they aren't always psychotic.
Political strife means nothing without results.

The world is full of tough guy talkers,
Boasting of all the killings they'll do.
Most are only keyboard warriors,
Or blowhards babbling over beer.
Breivik and Franklin are a kind of victim,
The only ones who were too dim
To know the others didn't mean it.

They thought they were striking a match
In a gunpowder magazine.
But there was a fatal catch:
A problem they had not foreseen.
The others were like empty barrels,
So the violence did not go viral:
The rest were only play-acting.


This story first caught my attention when I saw the headline 'Executed man leaves no final word'.

I read of his death, and found his lack of a 'dying declaration' tantalising. Was his repentance 

genuine? It had been published in a Mid-Western newspaper a scant week before his death. I 

wanted him to leave a final word, either confirming it, or admitting he had been needle-ducking, and

was still an unrepentant Nazi. But he didn't. I could think of a myriad reasons for his silence, and it 

got under my skin. Perhaps he thought his newspaper interview was an adequate final word? If so 

he was wrong. Not for the first time.
      I was also struck by Larry Flynt's principled opposition to his execution. Franklin had shot 

him for publishing pictures of inter-racial sex in Hustler magazine, leaving him wheel-chair bound. 

Flynt said: “a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of 

killing people itself.” This made a deep impression on me. If only he could have confined himself to 

that without ranting about crippling Franklin, he might have had more influence.
      It was only when I started fact-checking, after completing the poem, that I found out 

about the dodgy conviction. He was sitting in jail in Utah, serving life without parole, when a 

Missouri prosecutor, Melissa Powers, wrote and asked to see him. At the time, she moonlighted as 

a glamour model, and was a bit of a blonde bombshell. He asked her to send a photo, then agreed 

to see her. She was probably the first woman he had seen in 16 years. He boasted of various crimes

to her, as she wanted. He was not warned she was planning to kill him. He already had, as far as I 

can tell, a reputation as an unreliable confessor, and been diagnosed as mentally ill.
      If he was, in fact, a paranoid schizophrenic, he may well have had psychotic delusions of 

having committed crimes which he had not. He had, as a child, been violently abused by his 

drunkard father, and may have had concussion sequelae as well. A lot of serial killers have major 

brain abnormalities. Not a few confess to crimes they didn't commit. The Crossbow Cannibal made 

up tales of invented murders. Myra Hindley confessed to killing someone who was still alive. We will

never know if he killed the man he was executed for.
      He had confessed to another crime for which someone else, a man named Beard, had 

already been convicted. Beard was eventually released, with great reluctance. It's clear that law 

enforcement didn't accept Franklin's confession in that case. They accepted them when it suited.
      What the Missouri prosecutors show no insight into, is their similarity to him. They both:
1) Decided that someone else's conduct was unacceptable;
2) Determined to kill those persons for it;
3) Carried out the killing in a way which required absolute dedication;
4) Used deceit to obtain the goal.
      The main difference is that he has made a show of repentance, and they have not.

      The complexity of this topic makes it problematic for poetry. I did not know this when I 

started out. The poem grew and grew as I learned more. It could easily be twice the length.

Big Society

People seem cheerful in spite of it all,
They shrug aside the cup of gall
Served them by authority.

Children in the Cathedral sing in a choir,
Effortlessly tuneful little girls.
They seem happy and free of ire,
Oblivious to being betrayed
By those in charge of their future.

The Government loves those who work hard,
Even more if they don't demand to be paid.
In the Big Society, those with money are fewer.
Charity's become the rich man's best card.

A New Erection

Grey plastic phallus rises,
Erect and dully gleaming;
Looms over the canal,
Fraught with hidden meaning.

It's full of student bedrooms.
But why is it so tall?
This city's rising higher,
No-one now builds small.

The city's older buildings
Are dwarfed by this new edifice.
Walls of plastic cladding
Now are thought to suffice.

It's near the Statue of  Liberty (yes, Leicester has one, though it's smaller than the one

in New York). It's discordantly tall,a narrow tower of oval cross-section. The plastic walls 

suggest a reduction in standards to me. Tall buildings are expensive, yet it has cheap walls?

The high strength needed at the lower floors to support the weight of the upper ones,

puts the cost up. 

     This city has seen an enormous boom in construction of student dormitories,

owned by private business rather than the universities. Most of them, at least 

in the canal area,  are designed to blend in with their surroundings, which are

mostly Victorian factories. This one clashes.

     There must be some planning decision, some change in basic values, behind its

construction. 

Translated Verse

What then is this translate verse?
Bereft of all its cadence,
Rhymes and rhythms ruined or mocked,
Reduced to a kind of faded stutter,
Faint echo of an alien text
I cannot comprehend,
Which only tantalises,
Forever beyond my grasp.

1914 and All That

Had they all read Malthus
Those who sent men off to war?
Trying to keep the numbers down,
To lose the surplus in the glaur
Of Flanders fields,
In attack after futile attack?
Smiling as they waved them off,
Knowing they would not come back?
Charging horses onto barbed wire,
Or marching men into machine-gun fire
Dressed in fancy clothes?
Had they foreseen unemployment,
Revolution and disorder,
And chosen instead a mass interment?
Marched them off in battle order,
To their nice new cemeteries?

See the faces of royal cousins,
Like as peas in inbred pods,
Sitting in their palaces,
Untroubled by the dreadful odds
The hapless proles faced at the front.

In ancient times kings led their armies,
Ventured onto bloody fields,
Swung the battle-axe themselves,
Relied upon their strength to yield
The fruits of victory.
By 1914 that was over,
They lived their lives in fields of clover,
Rather than in mud and blood.
Those were left to lesser mortals.

I've been reading a collection of poetry created to commemorate the centenary of

the Great War, and felt moved to write one myself.

'glaur' is a Scotch word for 'very thick mud'. 

London Road Girl

Thin brown girl sails up to me,
A look, and 'Business?' enquires she.
On London Road she's working hard,
In front of fancy restaurants
Who've spent so much on fine pretension;
She doesn't seem to see the tension.

I'm taken aback,
Haven't got the knack
Of fending off the likes of her,
In such a posh surrounding.
I mutter 'No',
She makes a show
Of heartfelt disappointment.
Could it be real?
What does she feel?
What's in her water bottle?

I buy a snack,
Start walking back,
Munching on a cheese stick.
She comes alongside,
Matching my stride,
Asking her unending question.
Ten minutes ago
I told her no,
It seems she has forgotten.
 

Remembrance Sunday

On Sunday morning I was walking across the Victoria Park as people were assembling 

for the service of remembrance which takes place annually at the war memorial on the

edge of the park.
 I found myself walking counter to the stream, and so had a good look at the 

people who were attending. Many were middle-aged. There were a lot of family groups. 

Some looked haggard. One man was weeping. There were a few I took to be 

recently discharged from some armed service, younger men who looked down on their 

luck.
 I wondered who they were coming to remember. I doubted it was the dead of 

WWI, or even WWII, the names on the memorial.
 I know of no monument to the recent dead, killed in the oil wars against 

Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps the public are not meant to remember them, the unworthy

dead. Orphan boys who were expended in wars which were fought at the behest of 

foreign powers, or big business. I suspect the people at the memorial cared about 

some of them, presumably mostly officer types who were less likely to be alone in the world 

than the hapless squaddies.
 Will anyone ever build a monument for them? If it were built now, they would 

have to keep adding names, an embarrassment to authority.

October Rain

It fuckin' rains.
It fuckin' rains some more.
I'm under a shop canopy,
Watching it down pour.

I hope that it will ease,
Instead it hammers harder,
Turns pavement into river.
My feet are cold and wet,
I indulge in a small shiver.

Young women rush in next to me,
Stand talking to each other,
Taking care to show their backs.
No camaraderie of strangers,
To warm this wet October.

I hear rumbling in the distance,
The sky's glowing a pale amber.
I face a long walk home with soaking feet,
Through streets that have poor camber. 

On a similar topic:Bus Shelter Blues 

In Defence of Verse

Why not pay heed?
Why not indeed!
To the topic of rhythm and rhyme;
For it pleases the ear,
And pleases the mind,
And takes up little time.

Shopping Snobbery

The middle class are a snobbish lot,
Who'll pay too much for what they've bought,
If they think they look posh doing it.
You might imagine that they ought
To notice no-one's watching.

If you go to a cheap supermarket,
They sneer in a way that's just heartless;
They mock you and your shopping basket,
In a fashion which is really quite artless;
Their fear that they've been fooled's rather obvious. 

On the same topic: Big Spender 

Related: Fashionistas 

The Prurience Paradox

Welcome to the world
Of the frankly unappealing,
Where nosiness is king,
Unrestrained by proper feeling.

We're repelled by curiosity
And yet we still engage in it.
Our fornicating royalty,
Continue thus to fascinate.

Important news escapes attention,
Even when media give it mention.
Instead we read of the adventures
Of celebs who're uncouth boors.

Miley flashes her own knockers,
Then complains about her knockers;
Claims her heart and soul have told her
To twerk and thrust with body bare.

No matter how this stuff appalls us,
We find it hard to look away;
We're allured by all the fuss,
Ogle images while we may.

It's Not My Fault

How much time do people spend
Saying 'It's not my fault?'.
I hear them on their mobile phones,
Locked in rows they cannot halt.
Why don't they switch the damn thing off?

The Human Condition - Part V

The human race 
Is far from grace;
Minds clouded by unreason.

Warmed by our illusions,
We thrive upon confusion;
Cold truth would leave us freezing.

We tell ourselves that it's OK, 
No matter what the sceptics say;
Our nervousness needs easing.

We place our trust in ruthless folk, 
Who round our necks would place a yoke;
The alternative's too fearsome.
 

Previously: The Human Condition - Part III 

Part IV remains unpublished. 

The Hidden Hand of the Media Moguls

An iron hand that's well-concealed,
Guides Britain's scribblers in their work.
Blind hatred's the intended yield,
An ignorant passion they'll uncork
With unrelenting zeal.

A judgment that can't be appealed,
Is reached in lofty hidden places.
The target's fate has then been sealed.
Tame hacks deploy their arts and graces
To blacken the victim's name.

Using bogus objectivity,
And fraudulent dispassion,
They hide their true proclivity,
As in scheming ruthless fashion
They manipulate our hate.

Fashionistas

Fashion is a way to keep us poor;
Its acolytes will posture like a hure;
They'll take us for a sucker,
And kick us in the gutter,
After we've given our money like some fool;
Over our eyes is where they put the wool.

If our clothing doesn't bear a famous name,
We're supposed to shudder with a burning shame;
We're really not possessed of any cool,
Unless we fork out money like a fool,
And pay five times the value of our stuff.
Even that is really not enough.

There's no limit to their greed,
As they try to use our need
To be someone who really, really counts.
So they con us out of very large amounts,
For things that are in fact a bunch of junk.
To them we're just a naive kind of punk.

They're not just bent they're twisted,
As well as being tight-fisted;
So why not sell us something that is trash,
And ask for very large amounts of cash?
We'll pay so long's it bears a well-known name,
Of someone who's achieved some kind of fame.

Debunking

The debunkers love debunking.
They are in love, and love is blind.
So they debunk things that aren't bunk.

Well, it's sort of a poem. 

MP's Lies

Lying to the Commons 
Has become the MP's sport.
If they're caught they smirk and laugh,
They give it little thought.

They care for honour not at all,
But suck up to rich toffs.
On their belly they would crawl
To get some fat pay-off.

It's not enough to tell us lies,
They'll sell us down the river.
Some take cash from foreign spies,
Conscience troubles them never.

Unwelcome Entropy I

My new trackie bottoms
Are becoming old ones,
In front of my eyes,
And without permission.

Fulmination

I fulminate against the power,
And scribble angry rhymes.
It's all I seem to manage now,
To resist these evil times.

What purpose do such verses hold?
Words have power but are not read.
The world is ruled by guns and gold,
The innocent are bombed till dead.

Perhaps it helps me, thus to vent my rage,
Against the hoodlum scum who rule our age,
Through secret spies and lies and bribes:
Helps free my mind for calmer vibes.

For after all, I must admit,
The powerful pay no heed to me,
Or millions of like-minded souls.
From sea to shining polluted sea,
They pursue, unchecked, their vicious goals.

Plus ça change

Human folly changes,
But does it wax or wane?
In each decade we find new ways
To cause each other pain.
Do we move toward the sane?

Is progress real or just illusion?
The optimists proclaim,
Amongst all turmoil and confusion,
They hold aloft advancement's flame.
Others give a weary shrug,
To say it's much the same.

If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him.

Are Buddhists prone to violent crime?
One of them has run amok,
In the DC Navy Yard this time.
At harmlessness they talk the talk,
But do not always walk the walk.

In the Tokyo subway Buddhist neds
Released a deadly gas.
I don't know why they wanted 
To kill folk off en masse.
It all seems rather crass.

The title is a famous Zen koan. Only a Zen master can understand what it means, apparently.

Forced Labour Britain

I see a young man working hard,
So I pause to wonder:
What offence has he committed,
What anti-social blunder?

It's called Community Service,
Which sounds better than slavery.
They work unpaid for private profit,
Are victims of cool knavery.

Young unemployed, too, must work for nowt,
Stacking shelves or vehicle lading.
A very thin pretence is made,
That it constitutes some kind of training.

"The young don't want to work today."
That's what all the bosses say.
They spout off on the radio,
Omit to mention the low pay.

Since I wrote this, the Government have announced plans to force the long-term unemployed into 

slavery as well. When the Soviet Union used to treat the unemployed as criminals, the Tories used

to criticise them. It seems they have changed their minds about the matter. 

Offices of State

The offices of State
Mean little to the great.
They sweep them right away,
As though they were at play;
Or rearrange with ease
to whatever form they please,
Rebuilding round some grand new plan,
Just because they can.

Centuries of tradition
Are consigned to swift perdition.
To have regard for merit,
Is not the ruling spirit.
What matters is to make one's mark,
Even when groping in the dark
Of ignorant incomprehension.
Knowledge rarely rates a mention.

Egos reign triumphant,
Ideology's only cant.
When power men pick their side,
Their real views slink and hide.
Ambition is their one true passion,
Their loyalty is based on fashion.
Truth's dispensed in a slim ration,
To a frequently misled nation.

On a similar theme: Sanity and Insanity

Bus Shelter Blues

I feel like pacing up and down,
But it's too pissing wet.
I shuffle my feet and frown;
How restless I can get!

It's ages till the bloody bus,
No room to pace,
But feel I must
Stay in this sheltered place.

Fleeting Thoughts

A fleeting thought,
It's here then gone:
Was it an important one?
In any case it flits away;
Perchance returns another day,
Dressed in another guise.

See also: Recall 

Distinguished Alumnus

The crossbow cannibal enrolled,
At Bradford University.
In spite of his violent history,
They let him try for a PhD
In murder criminology.

He wallowed in his lethal obsession,
Then without reluctance made confession.
The way he'd scoffed his victims down,
Incurred an academic frown.
"That's not the thing to do, old chap,"
They tried to explain to him,
"We're supposed to help to catch these men,
Not emulate their sin."

The cannibal did not repent,
Just gave an evil grin.
"I'm a diligent student,"
He gave his excuse so thin,
"What better way is there to study
The serial killer mentality.
You want to learn but won't get bloody,
You haven't the guts, unlike me."

The coppers whisked him swift away,
And threw him into jail,
Where he tried to take his life;
He'd had enough of trouble and strife.
"I've lost all hope," said he.
"They'll never set me free.
Even though all I wanted
Was to earn a good degree."

On a similar topic-ish:Murder Tales 

Butterfly Summer

They swarm around the buddleia
In numbers I've not seen before.
Peacock eyes on fluttering wings:
Each bush is home to at least a score.

They wander inside through the door,
And flap around our ears.
We find them dead upon the floor.
It's sad enough for tears.

People complain the pavement's blocked,
So the landlord's man goes in;
The bushes are quite harshly cropped,
And the butterflies grow thin.

The weather turns to gray and cool.
The insects are all gone.
With summer's end I feel their loss,
As Autumn's chill draws on.

Brief Respite

While I sleep
My problems keep.
When I wake
They trouble make.

The respite's short,
Then memories flood.
Troubling thoughts
Speed up my blood.