Changing weather
There was spring, flowers and green grass, leaves
on trees , the lot, and I thought of immortality.
God has thrown everything at me and I had been
prodded by doctors who all had eccentric opinions
about my illness and I had survived.
I looked heavenward inhaled without coughing
and saw darkening clouds coming from the north
an incoming wind had the icy breaths of Siberia
and the rain came like cold showers given to boys
at the home  who could not keep their penises
just innocently hanging there.
I came home, was sent to bed, not for my ******
prowess but to stop me getting a cold; I thought of
Stalin mother liked him he looked so cool, not that
she would have said that it is me picking up words
from Facebook and I know how to give five fingers
not one, I used to give passing motorists; we live
in an age of overdoing things.
Tomorrow the sun will shine again I can go for a walk
and pretend it shines just for me, the winter had tried
a com back and failed

Mare Nostrum
On the coast of Augusta, in Cecilia this wonderful sea,
the bluest of turquoise, transparent and I saw fish play.
Blood and bloated corpses have made the sea less pretty
and fish nibbles on cadavers of those who tried to cross
the sea to escape the lunacy we created in Libya.

A president short of stature but with inflated ego plus
philosopher idiot, two men were responsible this disaster
of a war just to get rid of a dictator one of them had lent
money of the other who should not be left out of his confine
of academia, he should have in hidden in a university writing
books only historians take a passing interest in.

As it is the impossible vain man get feted, all because he is
an intellectual and wears a velvet jacket and clean collars.
My old Mafia friend Thomas the knife, has invited me to
Augusta, I will go there but not swim the hazy sea, but we
will eat langouste, drink child wine and talk about the days
when philosophers and presidents left us alone to **** only
when needed and never the innocent.

The Christmas Present

I bought her silver filigree jewellery  
A modern design
It was expensive, but it was worth it
She wanted to see it before Christmas
I could see she didn't like it
I thought it was beautiful but had done
A fatal error it was for her
And not my taste in silver design
She changed it next day
For something she liked
It hurts me she did this, but what the hell
Next year I will buy her bijoutries
In a Chinese shop

Truism
An axiom is a sturdy plant
You can asphalt it with lies
But it will always be an axiom
And break to the surface in
Time for reckoning

Disregard  
  

My neighbour doesn’t till the land anymore he has sold
it to developers, thought he had got rid of his animals,
I was shocked and dismayed when he led a mule out of
the stable where it had stood, in the dark, for two years
Standing there in the courtyard it was clear that it had
lost interest in life, the winter sun that shone into its
eyes met no reflection, blind and dumb it could hardly
stand on unshorn hooves.
There was a long silence no one looked at the beast till
the truck came to take it away, up the plank it walked
offered no resistance, a being so utterly broken that it
could never be repaired
I looked at my neighbour in the hope of seeing regrets
or shame in his face, there were none, and it struck me
that if humanity has no compassion for all life what hope
have we got to find deliverance?

Rain falls on sea

The light from the porthole is quite clear today,
the garden I see is a memory of what it
used to be thirty years ago;
for all I know, they may give paved over and painted the lawn it green.
Styrofoam trees and plastic flowers, and there is no need for a gardener.

Do I hear raindrops falling? Is it getting darker or is it rats scratching to get at my inert flesh? I have been dreaming of rain for thirty years,
a tropical deluge foam on the sea, flashing lights, under; each man froze in a frame, no thoughts everyone only absorbed by the eye of the storm.
When the storm passed the deck was cold to walk on, a new clarity of ideas before routinely begins.
When we reach the shore, I will leave this ship to climb a mountain,  to experience everything anew. I’ve waited for rain and the eye of the storm to come and make me whole and young again.

A voyage to Greenland

Greenland is the largest island in the world, but it is not a continent
I looked up Nuuk the capital up on the YouTube; it is now a modern town
with supermarkets and even cafes.
I was there fifty years ago. Back then it was a rather primitive place
with a million barking dogs and drunk people on the dirt roads,
they used to hang dogs slowly so the hairs stood out and it was
exported as pelt one hopes this practice has been outlawed.
I remember the coastline it was bottle green and for once, still,
we went fishing in a clear stream so transparent and shallow
but when we waded over to the other side, it was so deep we could have drowned.
It was the coldest bath of my life.
Greenland was beautiful, but it was then not a place to remember with fondness,
except for the trout we caught.

Catherina Deveraux


It was a Sunday in August, late at night, there were many rats
                          eating left over from a chippy
when I met my informant, she said the revolution was imminent
they were going to take over the town of Faro.
I warned about it in an email, and it was ignored,
Catherine a famous French star warned about it a few days later,
while my email was ignored, hers became a runaway success
And that is the difference if you have named the public
listen, if you speak the truth as an average Joe you will
be utterly ignored, but then I'm quite used to have an opinion
more illustrious figure adopts that is pleasing.

Our Consensus
                                  
The moment when the cacophony of voices,
at the railway restaurant,
became one, no longer
dusty gibberish mixed with cigarette smoke,
but a real, clear human accent making an utterance;
alas, the voice spoke of mortgages,
the price of heating homes, electricity and food;
the only true
the issue in our civilised world.  
So should one be shocked,
isn’t that what we have worked towards too?
A life that is mundane that doesn’t tax you
with any political philosophy,
any ism of this and
that only leaves you to worry
about the ordinary things like
the ice cream parlour in Vilamoura that  sells 21 flavours of ice cream,
now isn’t that nice to know and giggle about?

As the time of spring beckons
                        

We all have this moment of clear-sightedness
when we see we are of little importance other to the world
and clear-eyed grasp our smallness.
We can in our tiny ways push the world forward an inch
perhaps to a fairer society where children do not die under
the rubble of concrete.
We can do nothing to stop these people who will push
us into an Armageddon, and will they somehow think
they can avoid the calamity when there is no one to blame.
There was a time when one could travel unmolested
in the Arabic world, then the smell of petroleum and
the white man came and destroyed the peace for greed.
No, not us the lesser people, we are victims too of their
hunger to dominate and enslave us in mortgages and loans
that can never be paid; so we watch and wait and when
the day of disaster comes shall I help the ruffians to my lifeboat.

Not hearing

The old Canadian poet of Jewish ancestry
tall and elegant, wore his hat in a jaunty slant
reminded me of Alfred, my imagined father
the poet had a winning personality.

Remember the comma, they told me and write
about love, beautiful women and wine.

I used to wear a six-pence; Alfred made fun of me
learn to play the harmonica, he said
and leave your depressing poems; that was long
time ago before the Canadian was famous.

Tanka
He died alone
what an amazing expression
we all do
your friend lets go of your hand
alone you enter Hades

The Merchant seafarers' war

When world war two started Norway was
neutral but unsure which side to stay on.
The English thought occupying Norway
but they were too late the German army had
done the occupation.
The British sent a ragtag military force to Norway
trying to cut the country in half to stop further
advances but were told to pull out.
Norway had at this point a big merchant fleet
It was sequestrated and used bring good and weapon
for the allies.
This left thousands of ****** nowhere
to go those go tried to flee was arrested and sent
back as crew members of any merchant ship.
They the crew lived under a constant pressure
(one out of ten) never made it home can you imagine
how they year after year lived in constant fear
a tank ship full high octane for planes with the enemy
U-boats lurking about. When the war ended and
they could go home they were treated with indifference
like shirkers who had avoided the war.
These seafarers where heroes of the highest order
but the government ignored them, they let down the pride
of Norway, one can say without them the war might
have lasted much longer

The lunch café
I'm not dying to die, but I like to weigh less
To be free of this old body this harness of humanity
It was not always so I was young once
And made a drama out of politics and ***
In a way, I simmered down when reaching middle-aged
Then a wanted a daughter by didn't find a woman
Suitable, they were ti stupid, and I wanted my child to
Be a genius be, say a brain surgeon at 15
I met a doctor once we had much to drink I nearly made it
but she woke up and refused.
Then suddenly I was old had no future no higher grade
from the old people's home nearby they came and bath me
change wet sheets, tough women and that is ok,
they give me lunch not what I like; politely I throw the food
into the loo and flush than I drive to my café
where they know what I like.
Big table cloth down to the floor if Flora slips under there
and give me a blow-job ten minutes before lunch
it will be a perfect day

The Endless Road

I'm free today- my mind is on Christmas-
look at a map of Europe and Portugal
it is an old map I used when travel about, before
motorways made it difficult to navigate.
Once I drove from Portugal to Norway with this map,
It took a week but I got there
now one small error on a toll road and we have to
drive for miles to get off and pay for it too.
And there is no one around to ask for help
a café that sells cigarettes and beer and has a ******.
Only endless roads that have no story to tell
it is like driving in a tunnel without a roof.
Get me back on the old country road where
there is a chance to see a flock of sheep or a horse
grazing on a knoll in the afternoon sun.
Or perhaps I'm talking about my youth everything
was easier than even when life was difficult.

The unknown couple
Lunch hour a woman was coming out of a bookshop
dressed in a white blouse and a long black skirt.
She met a man outside he wore brown striped suit too big
for him and together not holding hands they walked down
a street that was dusty and had waste papers on a road that
had not seen rain for a long time perhaps never.
I wanted to know who they were and followed them
they hastened their steps rounded a corner and went into
a cheap looking Chinese restaurant.
They ate rice and curry
Washed down with coca cola
She held his hand for a moment
Was it love?
Or did she reassure him about an impending breakup?
I wanted to know their story
how they ended up here in third rate restaurant
spending the hour of freedom from work there and
walking in a shoddy street enveloped by sadness
and lost the opportunity or was I in an Edward hopper painting
I said to myself: I could write a novel about this but
as a poet, I'm too lazy to write one

The rain that fell on the night was of the type *** plants like,
it has stopped the air is mild, and the flowers smiles except the lemon tree
that is born grumpy and bears bitter fruit, which incidentally is good
with fried fish and it refreshes otherwise lame dishes, say fish cakes with
boiled potatoes, a meal crying out for something bitter to hide
the Norwegian boredom food like seeing Oslo's municipal building
ten times a day. My wife has watered the indoor plants that were green
with envy not being allowed to go outside.
For lunch we are having soup, it has too much pepper in it and again
I have to ask the lemon tree for help as roses are pretty but useless.

Domestic Landscape


There used to be many small farms or homesteads around
Here where I live, they are abandoned now,
Except for some wretched relics unable to move, acres so
Small earth could easily be ploughed by a mule.

Nostalgia is the name of poetry.

Carob and olive trees grow unseemly branches
Looking like a film set in a horror movie.

The neglected has mystery by itself.

Nature is moving back in, animals the kept a respectful
Distance from man, like shy deer
, and wild boars have been seen crossing the road at night.
Housebound flowers too has felt the freedom
Leaving ceramically confined, to the delight of goats.
The hares that people thought had been eradicated,
are competing with the blue rabbit in some clearing.
Beauty beholds, there is the talk of a golf course so players can be close to nature.

Epigram
I don't want to wait long patience is not my virtue
But when it does happens it will happen too fast
Just as I want time to slow down.

Continuity
Inside the greenhouse
I laid out dead roses
And the smell of spent
nature made it clear
no waste of tears
as the sun bore down
on sterile beds.
Only the beauty of dust
sparkling
in a shaft of light
danced a promise
of continuity.

A Kind of Christmas

Screaming voices a decorated tree flew
though the open French window.
In the bedroom, a woman cried, in the basement den a man
sat with a bottle of whisky, the children
sat in the living room eating sweets and waited
for the storm to blow over.
It was like this every Christmas, it was so much better
when they both went to work when the parents had a few days free
they went on each other’s nerves.
Soon the booth would come out of their rooms, shower the children
with love, the man took the tree in from the garden
and the Eve would continue

The huddled masses

They came here
from war and starvation
to seek
freedom from religion
and  ethnic
disharmony.
But some came
to sow
unrest
turn time back
to the
period of war
******
and
no freedom of speech

Vera
Death is everywhere this Sunday morning many dead trees where
I walk renewal everything has to go, but a dead baby rabbit blocks
my way the night had been too cold and her mother killed by a fox.
A steep track I stumble over an exposed root or was it death that
had a bit of fun, the sky and earth swivel I have to get up before big
earth ants carry me away there are millions of them ten thousand of
then dragging me underground starting with my gums then my tongue
fleshy ***** and reluctant ***** are reserved for the queen she will be
displeased and give my genitals for her slaves to chew on.
I have to bend down again to retrieve my camera full of ants I *** on
them and the scurry away I have to buy a new camera but why should
I record what no one will ever see, a reluctance to accept morality.
The track is too steep another defeat only nature witness my tears of
frustration, back home I watch a TV program called “Vera” this mad
woman police inspector wish I had her obsession to find the truth
I still struggle to find out what it means.

In her world

She’s old her eyes have
the faded shade
of stone washed denim,
dressed in black,
“since my husband died,” she says,
sits in my café and drink
a cup of hot chocolate  
every afternoon.

Not married,
she has been alone too long
has invented her children,
sits and talk to
them on the mobile phone;
awful children
her mobile never rings,
tells me that one daughter is a lawyer

Old man looking back in time


He remembers it well when the Mediterranean was
rich grassland had many lakes and the people
living there never starved.
A mountain ridge between Spain and Africa kept
the Atlantic Ocean away, but a seer had been on top
of the ridge and seen the mighty ocean, and felt the strain
of the mountain and took to warning people to move
upland; only a few listened and moved to Cadiz.
Earthquake, big fissure in the mountain keeping the ocean
at bay; it took forty days and forty nights, only a few people
with their chattel escaped.
The new ocean was now called: “Between Land Sea.” and people took up sailing,
trading and warring, later tourists came who
had no interest in the passing of time, and that is ok, I understand
that most goats ended up in Spain and the donkeys in Tripoli.

Industrial decline

There were few oak trees left in the valley
they had been chopped down and used in the clog industry,
ash trees were tried to make clogs, but it gave
people foot disease, which manifested itself by causing
webbed feet; excellent for swimming but not for walking.
The Birch was tried, but workers refused to work with this type
of the tree, the clog industry went bankrupt as more and more
people preferred tennis shoes with a posh label.
The valley declined they went to Lisbon to find work and some
studied, became doctors and politicians, one can be both.
It was a Paradise for the donkeys that roamed free from the harness
and the pulling of a plough.

Birthday reflections


I have not written anything today because
it was my birthday yesterday, and that is rather depressing.
It goes like this when you are seven, and they give you a cake,
you can’t wait  to be eight, or in my case 80 and that thought
brings no joy other than marking the track to my demise with
fairy lights; and should someone give you a cake you can't eat
it because you have diabetes.
Enough about me!!! My dog died eight years ago she was
sorely missed a friend who always got in the last bark.
I once tried to commit suicide threw a rope across a beam
stood on my desk, for hours I stood there till someone knocked
on the door, it was the meter reader I was glad to see him
after standing on the desk for 5 hours I was beginning to feel a bit
ridiculous and the dog was sleeping on the sofa, not the slightest
concerned; so I go on living then that all I can do.

Ageing dictator

The dictator is entering old age
his face is taken the appearance of a shrunken apple
but he still likes to look masculine.
Sitting wide-legged in a suit that is too tight.
He is not able to hide the beginning of a girth
he finds this annoying and swims several times a day.
He reads a lot but often draws the wrong conclusion
his anger toward the west is understandable
the broken promises of NATO and the USA
fills him with wroth he regards this as a lack of respect
for his beloved Russia.
The war in Ukraine is to say, will you respect me now?

God as parent
God is worried about his son Jesus
Since he was crucified he is not his jolly self
There were no Psychiatrists back then
The profession was not yet invented now New York is full of them  
Jesus sits on a swing a harp player nearby
Tries to soothe his nerves
Sometimes god gets annoyed feeling as taking his son by the scruff
Of his neck and shake sense into him
The scars on his foot and heels have healed and his beard is black
God sighs, looks through a book by Hemingway he is so easy to read.
It takes time to forget and of that he has got oceans
He dreams of being with Earnest fishing for Marlins

The applause

I had a drink before to a poetry reading and since I was nervous
drank a few whiskeys and spoke dramatically about the plight of the Palestinians
I needed help to get down from the stage since my glasses were at the hotel.
Next day we went to a meeting where the top of
The educated class go, I thought they were idiots they had erudition but no
learning, So I got up and spoke for fifteen minutes.
The silence was colossal, think of a needle falling from the galaxy
and landing on Himalaya I had committed the sin of saying
the global warming was a natural disaster and had nothing to do
with global warming.
The meeting was not reported in the local paper but what do
I know, I do not speak this Roman soldier’ language.

The Talent

He often wonders where it comes from this need to tell stories;
there is nothing in his upbringing or schooling
to give a hint, he can hardly write it is a struggle to find
the grammatically right word.
He thinks of water trickling up from the ground running
along the stony earth on a mountainside, falling on a lemon tree,
beautifully yellow fruit, not for the roses.
Sometimes the well dries, little rain has fallen, the groundwater
is hidden in a deep cave and he accepts that,
the world changes, but he has always got the almond tree
while waiting for the sound of trickling water.

From The News

The Italian Banking system is in a good shape
At the recent earthquake, churches fell into dust of history
But the banks stood firm
Catholicism is a relic bankers are the new cardinals but
The pope of capitalism lives in the USA, and rules firmly
The one in Rome is for nuns and tourists.
If God wants to win his flock back, he has to stop floods,
Tsunamis and other disasters, make the world cleaner
I think God has been caught napping
In the Wall-Street which now is the new Vatican there
Is a church showing off the wealth of the glorious past
Often paid for by the poorest among us.

I knew of a woman

Who wrote a novel that sold 30 thousand copies,
there was a talk of making her novel into a film,
she bought a house.
She wrote several manuscripts they were rejected
and she had to move out of the house.
Her previous occupation was as a cleaner
but who wants a famous char as a house-help?
She changed her name, bought a bike coloured her hair
Auburn and got a job as a cocktail waitress at a dive,
fat sweaty hands were stuffing cash down her bra.
She wrote a novel about it, like going back to
her roots the street life she knew and tried to escape
She was famous again her photo in the paper and in
literary supplements.
She could not run away from her past
moved to a cabin in the deep rural, milking cows
sheep and idyll and wrote a book about betrayal,
it sold well; the intellectuals didn't know it was about them
and she knew well it was her sordid past
that attracted the jaded middle-class taste
and she had to write, and survive on a diet of disgust
the life she had struggled to break out of

Diptera and Writers
I was thinking of flies Wikipedia was no help
I wanted to understand why they existed, I remembered
a yellow fly not a good colour for an insect,
when I was disrupted by the thought of a famous writer
in Norway who at 75 decided to commit suicide.
He bought sleeping pills plenty of expensive champagne
and invited friends to witness his death.

For each mouthful of the stuff, he swallowed a pill, friends
just drank; finally, he fell asleep among empty bottles and
the smell of stale cigarette smokes his mates had gone home.
It despair he jumped out of the window land on an awning
and lived ten more years. As for the yellow fly it took to walking
across the screen I threw it out, but still don't know what
flies are for other than annoying a writer.

Just another Sunday

On my travel along country lanes
this Sunday afternoon I saw a tree
on yellow sun burnt field, that had
its limb cut off by a crazed axe man
A surgeon named John, had put
a bandage on the stump, but sap
or white blood, had seeped through
the bandage and I could sense its
agony and there are no hospitals for
wounded three.

So much death on a peaceful day I saw an
old oak that had died from an enormous
tumour on its trunk, leaves had fallen off and
gray branches were seeking heavenward,
a gesture of futility. A car ran across the lane
and I spat twelve times for luck

Elderly tourists
  In Alte, today buses were full of elderly people
  enjoying the fine weather, some wore shorts which they
  for the sake of good taste, I wish they wouldn't.
  Alte has higher up the hill a posh hotel with swimming pool,
but they weren't going there like me they had a modest
pension and preferred the cafes that sells tea and cakes,
taking pictures of the church and admiring the charm of
a small town tucked away in the hills before Alentejo begins
and away from the tourist traps by the coast.
I enjoyed the tourists’ gladness I used to be impressed by
by the same, but now that I live here the allure has become
an everyday occurrence that at times, bore me, because
with so few young people here, they mostly find work abroad,
the town may be petrified into a postcard.

At the surgery

Here we are at the clinic's
waiting room,
a fat lady with bandaged big toe,
and an old man leans on his walking stick
he lives alone.

An ancient couple from the upland,
dressed in their Sunday best,
hold hands and look endearing,
a youngish woman who keeps rummaging
through her bag, and me.


Six pairs of feet in a slow shuffle,
Electrocardiography doesn’t
mend tired heart, only tells
us we are mortal

Nature wonders

The morning was ice blue
Cold
Wild animals
Freeze
Whish, they had
A human overcoat
The sun thawed
Raindrops
Big as balloons
Exploded on impact
Damaged cars
Drowned cats
The sun
Dried its tears
Dogs barked
Came out of barns
The day
Continued
As nothing had happened.

A Sonnet to Women
I woke up one morning and was free of my intrusive sexuality
for years this was a problem when viewing glorious paintings
of women and not thinking about having them, the wonderful
statue of Venus didn't escape armless and helpless she was still
ogled upon by my eyes of unbecoming covetousness. Freedom
at last, I can now talk to women without  feeling a hankering to
see them naked committing immoral acts in my bed.


I love women I have a friend who paints women as they are not like
the dumb blond some want them to look. But beware they can be perilous
if thwarted and cheated in love, they can tell a man what he wants to
hear they are great in acting having been subjugated by men for too long,
they even got the blame when Adam and Eve had to leave the Paradise

Idle Thoughts


When I write of a rose should
I add the adjective beautiful
I have never seen an ugly rose. Therefore, all roses are stunning
But we can argue about whether we like red or white ones.
When I kissed her tender lips was
It since she had kissed a lot before?
I held around her waist tenderly- a new adjective- and she gazed
At me likewise well I'm not a Russian given to bear hugs.
Her ***** was like a fairy- tale
I ask you, not a moist ulcer then.
Fairy tales is about *** starved princess's with long hair in a tower
A prisoner of her father's idea of chastity and no knitting needle  
The curvature of her lower back
Struts out like ski-jump in the Alps
Petals falls of roses one by one and blinded by irrational by love
We see again after an operation cataract and daylight seeps in.
The road surface too potholed
No one asphalts my road anymore.

Hyenas
Hyenas are untameable they are the Bannon of the evolution
plotting their own course on how to sow destruction and enjoy
the consequences. If you are a fisherman and throw a hand grenade
into the  sea, you get plenty dead fish, but  fishermen who follow
rules will hate him for it; the world belongs to the one that kills
the most but you end up eating the mutilated and waste.

In Africa, I suspect Ethiopia; a village accepted a group of hyenas living
near them a working relation the animals come into the village at night
and eat the leftovers in the roads, job done they go back and rest in
the tall grass outside the village, one can say man and beast practice
toleration, why can't we do the so instead of threatening other nations
nuclear hell that will also, in the long run, **** them.

Fleece a dream

The man with thin shoulders and a sack
slung on one of them, used to stop outside my house
open the bag and strew a handful of feather light dreams,
and some dreams landed on the window ledge.
I remember she said, be careful don't fall out when
trying to grasp a flake of a dream so easily forgotten.

The man with the thin shoulders has disappeared from
the street no one knew where he had gone, so I went
out looking for him all I found in an empty pond with
a rusty tin of castor oil a product long since in use.
I left the can in the garden in the hope enticing the man
to return with his sack of visions.

I sat on a rocking chair
On the veranda
The stone in the garden was
Covered in moss
The cicada sang fireflies lit up
The night as pilgrims in Mecca
Slaughtered lambs

A story of a Mountain
                      


                      The mountain on the other side of the bay was born
before colours were introduced to make the world a jollier place for humanity,
mind it has three hues, black, grey and white, without these
shades the mountain would have been unseen, a shimmer of the morning light,
to avoid an accident, it would have to be spray painted every four years.
The mountain is not a place for a Sunday stroll; they say it is slippery and
if a bird overflies, it drops dead; and no plants grow in cracks.
But where the mountain meets the sea are crustaceans the size of dolphins,
and one lobster can feed a family of five, so in its sterile exterior the mountain has a hidden richness and looks glorious at sunset.

The president of
USA
Spoke in the UN
Assembly
How boring
Later the show
Was enlivened
By a famous actor
For a time I thought
Obama could change
The world
Alas he was swallowed by
Washington
And spat out as a talking
Machine
I had hoped he would help
Palestine but kissed
Israel's *** instead
Drones are his forte
Killing at a distance
To think he was given
The peace price for peace
The truth is they gave
It to him
For being a black president
Inverted racism
If you ask me

October

Dark, low hanging sky
October and rain
Not a good time to be born
Sunlight is what shines
Too sharply
When drizzle takes a break
Doomed to see
A fragile world
When peace on earth
Is the milliseconds
Between wars
When the powerful
Meets around a table
And tell lies
When churches are full
Of people giving thanks
To an abstraction
Thanking it for the peace
The world is totally
******
You know it as I do too
I dream of a world
Free of umbrellas

The summer Island
On the island in the fjord where we use to go bathing
there is now a bridge over, a parking lot and you have to pay.
There are toilets- no peeing behind a bush- and kiosk selling
soft drinks and cigarettes, asphalted lanes to walk on and
signs, plenty of them, telling you what you cannot do
Last time I was here with my aunt and her lover the island
had bunkers and rusty iron bits from a long bitterly cold war.

A marina had been built and had a restaurant but you needed
to be a member and wear a blazer with golden buttons and
a white sailor cap; they resented local bathers it was no longer
a place for us workers, they strive to make life better but end
up privatising what used to be free

The football dream

Jesus, the famous trainer for Benefica
football club came to me in a dream
said: I didn't stop drinking beer he
Would not endorse me to be the club's
next goalkeeper.
After a week not drinking sitting on
my training bike in my den, Jesus
Appeared again: said I was too old
for a goalkeeper, thought to play
in the midfield would suit me better.

The terror
I had just finished my new collection “007 licenced to write”
And I was going to write a sunshine poem about peace when a bomb
Exploded in London killing 22 children.
The sky darkened I could think of nothing but their poor parents
Whose dread came true, to wait through the corners report who
Had to find out which limb belonged to whom.
The atrocity was so colossal that I have not been able to write
A tribute for the young life lost.
But in the back of my mind a question remains; how could it come
For this? I feel as we created an ogre a lump of cancer created by our
Interference in the Middle- East now it has exploded
And we the people bear the prices caused by exploitative capitalism.
In this, we must take a side and eradicate this headless violence.
Perhaps it was wrong of me to write this as the last poem but we
Must not avoid the truth that sometimes summary execution is
the last defence against evil.

The Rose

I was born a beautiful flower
Up my stem a mouse climbed
To inhale my scent and sleep
In the centre of my rose bud
Alas, the raven knows of no
Beauty I was an innocent ruse
Stealing the beauty of sleep
And in my feeling of freshness
Self-indulgent caressing words
I saw nothing untoward
I should have seen.    
We roses are too beautiful
To be political revolutionary
A rose uproar in Portugal
But it was quickly strangled
By social democracy