The nun teaching Sunday School was speaking to her class one morning and she asked the question,  - 'When you die and go to Heaven... which part of your body goes first?

Suzy raised her hand and said,  - 'I think it's your hands.'

-  'Why do you think it's your hands, Suzy?'

Suzy replied, -  'Because when you pray, you hold your hands together in front of you and God just takes your hands first.
-  'What a wonderful answer!'  the nun said.
Little Johnny raised his hand and said -  'Sister, I think it's your feet.

The nun looked at him with the strangest look on her face. -

   'Now Johnny, why do you think it would be your feet?'

Little Johnny said,  - 'Well, I walked into Mommy and Daddy's bedroom the other night.
Mommy had her legs straight up in the air and she was saying,
'Oh God, I'm coming'.    
I gotta tell you, if Dad hadn't pinned her down, we'd have lost her. '  

The Nun fainted...!!! .

Insanity watched by these eyes far away
Sees the tail wag the dog in a deathly, cruel way,
Sees the Gun Lobby wield such a formidable grip
Holding Nation to ransom and shoot from the hip,
Forcing public opinion to heel and rescind
Any right to renege on the madness infringed…
Orlando, Kileen Sandy Hook and Fort Hood
Killing randomly, callously….not understood!
Little children, students, shoppers and cops
Loud bark of the rimfire till emptied and stops!
A terrible silence, warm stench of the blood
Cold terror emanates out and above…
Madness accelerates, reaching a SCREAM….
While political acolytes adjust…to be seen.

M.
Auckland and the world watching a civilization burn.
13 June 2016

But wouldst thou child, defy thee time,
Wouldst thou cheat this man his way?
Wouldst thou rob his moments' flame
To purge thy loss... to dim his day?
Wouldst thou seek to wrong his right
To pacify the hurt you feel..
indemnify the magic spun
Within his message... you now steal?
M
16 June 2016

Though I age with bodys' warp
Malfeasance in its' ancient walk,
Yeah, though I sag to feel those pains
A spark within this conciousness remains...
Within a fizzing psych, enthrals...
Where birth and death's transition calls...
As I exult with joyous shout
Now having gleaned what it's about...
This BEING...with its' lemon tang
This laughter...as the blackbird sang

Beneath a magic sky of blue
My incandescence glows for you.
M.
16 June 2016

(For darling Janet)

There’s a strange cold, appraisal with a straight and steady stare
Which leads a man to wonder, exactly what is happening there,
Leads a man to ponder if it’s even now worthwhile
To persevere with contact with the rudeness and the guile?
It all leaves me apprehensive whilst examining askance
This peculiar reaction to my pleasant, frank advance?

What’s the ****** story here, right up and down the Coast,
Where initial stiff behaviour paints appallingly, the host?
Perhaps there’s cold distain for all the people of the North
Or inadequacy’s pink finger wagging guilty, back and forth?
Perhaps the ****** weather with its constant moody pall
Has afflicted them with gloominess, which could explain it all?

Geographic separation…that’s the answer, I suspect
With the hand of subjugation interfering, if correct?
And the constant ****** hardship and disaster at the mines
With suspicion they’ve been cast adrift to weather their hard times?
And the lack of any sympathy to coalesce at best
In a resultant indifference, now directed at the rest.

But…..
There’s a funny turn of fortune here for after a short while
Indifference turns quite pleasantly towards a welcome smile,
Communication warms to a chortelled stream of fun
And the beaming face indicates an acceptance has begun.
Just as soon as you acquiesce to a personable degree
And identify yourself as being one with them, you see….
The Coasters will embrace you with uncommon earthy grace,
And it’s Identified so easily, by the grin upon your face.

M.
Karamea
Wild West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
11 May 2016

Friend I beseech you now…. nothing lasts forever
You deal a hand and play the cards to hold your pile together,
Win a few or lose a few we’re all players in this game
But mark my words the outcome’s won by fear… and not the fame.
Just make the most of what you’ve got regardless of the mix,
Let fear of failure motivate your liberating fix…
So spin the dice boy, play the game, you’ll either win or lose
But with fear the overriding force, I know which way I’d choose.

Good Luck!

M.
Foxglove farm
6 May 2016

So hard for me to try to be
The man I should, if only could
I pledge my hand to understand
That what I say is how I play
And what I do reflects in you
The truth, my friend, until the end
Shall be, eternally, shall be.

M.
May 1 2016

Benedictus my brothers for plummet you shall
As the Gods and the Demons collude in Hell,
Collude as to leadership choices betrayed
In the Land of the Free and portrayed as the Brave,
By the fat guy who rambles bombastic hot air
To the prance of disciples who worship his hair,
To the tune of collapse in spectacular way
An implosion of promise, (as that of doomsday).

Republicans howl to the moon, to the moon
For tomorrow is now in the claws of a lune.

M.
Aghast from afar.
28 April 2016

Ancient are the wrinkled lines embedded deeply on the face
As ancient as the sands of time adrift across the shadowed dunes,
As ancient as a deep abyss which spirals sand to windblown grace
A hidden place of time eternals' grace where texture looms.

Those looms of fibre, richly hued, in textures from forgotten time
Where hawkers clad in dusty robes in alleys shrilly called their trade
Of fabrics woven, coarse and tight, in sepia’s arresting rhyme,
To angled shards of golden light spearing evening’s satin shade.

As lantern light of haloed glow throws comfort small to dying day,
While nearby camels amble by, aloof to all but masters call,
Now chewing cuds of nonchalance, oblivious, which is their way,
Shadows grow to velvet night where diamond starlight distils all.

Ancient are the wrinkled lines embed deeply on this face
Of time eternal’s passage here imbued with passing ageless grace.

M.
17 April 2016

Portraiture of previous lives lie beneath my feet
And forward spans a future that I know must stay discreet
For I’ve learnt through harsh experience to take care for what I quest
That *** of gold at rainbows end I’ve found…a mixed bequest.
As mythical to contemplate as money grown on trees
In truth the carnage gaining it has near brought me to my knees.
Millions brought security, offshore banking locked within
But also brought suspicion born relationships, now languishing.
The billions are a burden and a loneliness is born
For new friendships are hollow and old ones now forlorn,
The parasites surrounding you, all bicker to compete
And empathy flows out the door where values are replete.
Vicissitudes grow day by day, it’s harder to relate
As underlings smile woodenly knowing deep within, they hate.
A disconnect is now complete the burdened weight too much
But worse befalls regression, just impossible to touch.
For what is now, is meant to be… from here I wear the Crown
And woe betides that snivelling sod who tries to take me down.

M.
16 April 2016
Auckland city

You are the breeze, the gale
You're the forces I inhale
The spume, the flying spume
From the flank of mighty whale,
You're the roar of pounding surf
On a mile of empty sand
And the hand that guides the albatross
From deep abyss to land.
You are the scent of sodium
In the still of ocean dawn
And the feather of the white seagull
Discarded on my lawn.
You bring a tear of sanctity
When I'm alone on stormy cliff
Through a thousand notes of harmony
In your howling seaward riff.*

M.

For Mark C. who kept the pride.*

What we've been is seldom seen
Through circumspection's view,
More's the like the broad's a ****
Before we seek anew.
Tunnel vision's sought derision's
Always hard to take,
Providing you too, seek anew
To give this guy a break!
For to dwell in negativity
On confrontation's rim,
May well court condemnation
From both noble and the grim.
So bite the grit n' cut the ****
And climb aboard, my friend
For one and all respect this call's
Rough justice in the end.
M.

Home – This warm familiar place
An ****** of every day to me
Where cooking smells and laughter dwell
The cat curled up on grey settee.
Noisy kids run in the hall
Sun beams hang in shafts of light
But dust motes in suspended drift
Reflect that something isn’t right.

Agitation twists her thought
He said he would…but didn’t then
Which led to heated, wounding words
That killed the mood and distanced them.
Home, where no one lies and cheats,
No one says those hurtful things
Unravelling the textured trust
Dispersing peaceful tranquilings.

No one storms into the night
With slamming doors and loud abuse,
Wracking sobs at kitchen sink
Unravelling to no good use.
Fearful, wide eyed, silent kids
Crept away to sanctuary
To furthest bedroom down the hall
Where silence helped the peace to be.

Home – that warm familiar place
That ****** of everything to me,
Where once, that ghost of happiness
Would dissipate from us to flee.

M.

Hovering in the shadow of an undisputed retinue
Loitering intentfully despite our dearth of luck,
Pursuant of dreams now diluted by reality
So diffused amidst corruption that we just don’t give a ****.

What could have been, but wasn’t, in a wash of crude contrition
Being torn between addressing all or chucking it to hell,
I ask you where, in lifetime, was compromise an issue
Particularly if confronted by the tolling of truths’ bell?

Perhaps we should or shouldn’t in the light of an admission
Confessionals so painful in the starkness of the day,
And cowardice worn covertly is not our choice of garnish
So darling heart, this suicide’s the penalty we pay.

M.
5 March 2016
Auckland NZ

Thought you had a thicker hide my succulent, enticing friend
Thought you may have grit your teeth to bring this to a sweeter end,
It’s just the way you frame your words, so eloquent and mystical
Plus sanity’s touch heavy hand in what was writ, logistical?
One would have thought a bigger girth, broader shoulders, squarer chin
Than to resort to hot retort of pressing BLOCK…thus cancelling?
Disappointing how it ran, how it voided all before
When, then, you might have easily... avoided showing me the door?
Still, I guess, what’s done is done. We both shall live another day
Where, hopefully, the sun shall shine allowing us both, out to play?

M.
13 February 2016

Americans live with fear.

Fear of being found out for what they are….an incredibly insecure people populating the most powerful nation on earth.

The power of Wall St. feeds their fear in the belief that the nation’s leaders and political machine have been bought and sold by big money.
In fact the only candidates registering positively in the current Primary elections are those who feed the fear. Trump feeds the fear every time he opens his big mouth.
Hillary engenders fear because she is a WOMAN who can, most probably, win the votes which will give her the Presidency in November next.

Americans fear the resurgence of Asia in China’s burgeoning thermonuclear militarist stance, the utter unpredictability of the simmering, India, Pakistan standoff
And the instability of the plump, demonic, demagogue armed with the atomic weaponry in the bleak wasteland that is North Korea.

Islam’s mobilisation scares Americans witless. The savagery of the Isis personifies all that is promised by an expanding worldwide Islamic threat.

And then there is Putin's Russia.

The encapsulation of American fear though, is painted graphically, starkly, by the nation’s absurd fascination, obsession, with the hand gun.
Everyone has a hand gun, in the car, in the office, in the mall, in the bedroom…..some even strap a hand gun on the hip to go to church.

Americans, first and foremost, fear each other.

Fear of the fear exacerbated by more fear.
Americans live with fear.

M.
Auckland NZ
13 February 2016

I don’t give a **** who runs the world
Just so long as they keep their anonymous women out of the picture
And don’t knowingly, crash cymbals on Sundays.

Whilst I’m ominously left of centre and kinda’ right of everywhere else,
I can’t help but watch the political circus perform.
Polititians everywhere, particularly, currently in the USA, are flexing their muscle, using the tools of their trade to the best advantage:
Coercion, persuasion, exaggeration, the blantant use of unsubstantiated facts, manipulation, outright lies and even overbearing bullying.
I hear them rant, I see them strut.
Their egos blooming like peach blossom,
Projecting themselves on the populace.
Preening their image with self serving eyes, loving themselves shining brightly on the podium in the morning sun.

But here today, gone tomorrow.
Their words hang, resonantly, like loud vapour suspended…then vanish.
The believing crowd gathers, sways, roars, disperses…and promptly forgets.

The circus is global, playing out its’ performance with expediency, bombast, and utter disregard for consequence, collateral damage incurred in achieving their immediate imperatives…to Hell with the tomorrow ahead.…
Occurring simultaneously everywhere…you can watch the circus performing daily in Amsterdam, Washington, Beijing, Kolcutta, Canberra, Munich, London, Capetown, St. Petersburgh, etc.etc.

Watching this, with a sense of disbelieving astonishment, I’m amazed that anyone actually bothers to take any notice anymore?

M.
11 February 2016
Foxglove farm, Taranaki NZ

A curling green tendril climbs from its’ birthing nest of rotting bird ****
The creeper wends its’ way up round and around the stalk of its’ slender tree host. Leading vigorously ever upward, it climbs toward the light of day. Upon bursting through to the sunshine, it explodes into a huge and suffocating dominance. Wrapping its’ leaders tightly together, writhing skyward, smothering all else. Blotting out the sun. Inhibiting its’ host tree, ultimately killing it ...and every other living plant located below it.

In late summer the creeper produces bunched, masses of frothy, green, seeded florets. Clouds of green plumed waxeyes flock en mass, to flutter, competing ravenously to feast on the banks of seed heads.
Once replete, with full crops, the tiny birds fly off to distant shaded woods there to indiscriminately drop their ****, unknowingly further spreading the insidious creeper pestilence.

I trudge through my wooded glades,
Indignantly I sever taproot after taproot with my trusty sharp blade
….and watch that creeper limply sag and die
With a glint of satisfaction in my grim and vengeful eye.

M.
6 February 2016
Foxglove farm, Taranaki, NZ

Thinking of the how and why, the wherefore and the who
Returns me inexorably to the serenity of you,
returns me to the values you hold there in your hand
When you smile your gentle smile and say you understand.
When you calm the stormy waters and sooth away the tears
And take my craggy face in hand to kiss away the years,
When you sit and share a moments time to sip a cup of tea
Reflecting on those little things that mean so much to me
...And when you smile into my whiskered face with those honest eyes I love
My world becomes as tranquil as that peerless sky above.

M.
Foxglove farm, Taranaki NZ
8 February2016

What do you see nurses? . . .. . .What do you see?
What are you thinking .. . when you're looking at me?
A cranky old man, . . . . . .not very wise,
Uncertain of habit .. . . . . . . .. with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food .. . ... . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . .'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice . . .the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . .. . . A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not . . . ... lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . .The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking?. .Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse .you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am . . . . .. As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .. . . . as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . .with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters .. . . .. . who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen . . . .. with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now . . .. . . a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . ..my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows .. .. .that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now . . . . .I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . .. . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . .. With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons .. .have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me . . to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, .. ...Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me . . . . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future ... . . . . I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing .. . . young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . And the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man . . . . . . .. and nature is cruel.
It's jest to make old age . . . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles .. .. . grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone . . . where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass . A young man still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells
I remember the joys . . . . .. . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . . . life over again.
I think of the years, all too few . . .. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people .. . . . .. . . open and see.
Not a cranky old man .
Look closer . . . . see .. .. . .. .... . ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within. We will all, one day, be there, too!

I’m blowing the whistle on they, those morally compromised fey
Who prey on the crowd all complaining aloud as collapsed mortgage fritters away.
Whilst the fat bankers dance a jig all the rip offs are ******* the pig
And at the end of the day, these protagonists say, “The Controllers here don’t give a fig!”
It’s the Federal Reserve that’s to blame and old Greenspan is floating in shame
‘Cos the system’s a sham and they don’t give a **** and nobody here’s naming a name.
Now the greed and the arrogance flows, how extensively, nobody knows
They all cover their bums and they snigger to chums as the de-frauded now come to blows.
For today’s finance, Government, sport and the God factory’s… all just a rort
On the verge of collapse or at least in prolapse, leaving truth and integrity…..BOUGHT!

M.
Auckland, 16 January 2016

This night a rich brocade of colour in the sky
Doth overwhelm all misery, so fetching to the eye,
Breathless in the scope of everlasting piling cloud
Embroidered in a golden cloaking, riotously aloud.
Abruptly surrendered to the racing pall of night
Where colour tones extinguish, now, to diamond points of light,
Where chill envelopes warmth with a shiver to the back
And the night consumes the majesty with a shrouding inky black.
Angrily I challenge the abruptness of the change
Where my spectacle of wonder died to darkly rearrange,
It's so typical of nature’s way to give and then to take….

****! …. Wake up fool…this attitude?..just give the world a break!

M.
13 January 2016

Spun on a thread, a gossamer thread
Hung on a dream in a watershed,
Shadows suspended in effortless time
Regretting those words left unsaid.
Regretting omissions, those hesitant thoughts,
Words bitten back by the tongue,
When clear expression could lighten the load
To sing every song left unsung.
So dimly, through deficits' dust laden air
In a shaft of brittle white sun
My confession remiss for omissions amiss
Paint bereft-ness before it’s begun.

M.
11 January 2016

"In peace our nations unite"
...to do exactly what?

Wring our hands in horror?
Write to the Gazette?
Retreat to the safety of our invisibility?
The sanctuary of our silence?
Quiver, hidden in the doubtful safety of the masses?

Most people will do this,
lament the tragedy and let it slide with a shake of the head and a frightened, pious silence...

When in actual fact.....
what we all should do is take up the drum and beat it deafeningly, furiously...and together, roar our fury to the powers that be....

That they take up the sickle and pursue these creatures to the end of the earth and deal to them once and for all!

Amen
M.

Ordinary people
Doing ordinary things
On an ordinary day
Slaughtered,
Suddenly.
Violently.
Causlessly.
Irrationally.
B­rutally.
So that
Jihadists
May salve their lust
For Power
And
Caste havoc
In their own
Misguided image,
...In the name
of their own
Perverted cause.

Allah the Almighty
Surely quails in horror
That they do thus
To the innocent,
In His name?*

M.
15 Nov 2015

Sparse grass adorns the hillside
Thinly green against the grey,
Where lurking bull ant wolf packs
Hunt where chirping crickets play.
Way too thin to waft in breezes
Way too thin to really count
Like bad dealerships in Chevrolet
Mostly struggle to surmount.
Like thin pacifists in fist fights
Race, back peddaling for the door,
When, in fact, the convenience
Is a bullet through the floor.
And hot starlets jiggle **** jobs
Strutting carpet, red as rose,
Imitating, superficially here,
Whoredom wishing to impose.
Those roaring Russians, in denial
As their cheating athlete’s pale,
All denied their right of entry
To Olympia’s Holy Grail.
And insipidly they all collapse
In fracking’s blatant wake,
Leaving gloating, fat Americans
Gorging merrily on steak.
Whilst the oceans are advancing
As the ice floes dissipate,
And the clamour is ignored
Though Island nations inundate.
Fractious currencies do vacillate
In global bouts of greed,
Where the rich are fatly richer
And the rest in desperate need.
Where all truth is but a fantasy
Which everyone ignores,
Where expediency is the answer
And future proofing snores.
Black distrusts the whiteness
Islam hates the Jew,
East and West at loggerheads
What hope now…. for you?
Oh sparse grass adorns the hillside
Thin green against the grey,
Where the morrow is a vaugary
And worrisome it’s way.

M.
Friday 13th November 2015

Tangents fly
As serpents die
Life ends as it begins,
The ups and downs
Terrain of clowns
Commits it all to sins,
So, go for broke
It's just a joke.....
'Cos he who loses...Wins!
M.

But....Wouldst thou see
Thy perjury
In pondering my
Soliloquy?
And should thou wear
Thy penury
If truth should prize
Thy concience free?

Then, writhing thus
For all to see....
Wouldst thou blush
A smile to me?
M.

The little towns near Egmont
That nestle on the plains
To gather close the winding roads
The homing trails and lanes,
The little towns near Egmont
That sleep the whole night long
Cooled by the scent of mountain breeze
Lulled by the sea wind’s song.

The little towns near Egmont
Will ever seem to me
Like stars that deck the evening sky
Or isles that dot the sea,
Like beads that sprinkle here and there
On Taranaki’s gown
Like figures in a rich brocade
Of yellow, green and brown.

The little towns near Egmont
Seen through a summer haze
How fair and fresh and free they lie
Beneath the golden days,
Not crowded in deep valley’s,
Not buried in tall trees
But open to the sun, the rain
The starlight and the breeze.

The little towns near Egmont
What busy lives they hold
With happiness and health to keep
Secure from heat and cold,
The comfortable homesteads,
The park like lands so fair
God keep them restful, clean and pure
As Egmont’s snow peak there.

Hanna Hair
Dawson Falls Lodge
Mount Egmont, Taranaki.
January 1926

This poem, hand written and forgotten, was written by a guest of the house, in a thick, ancient tome of comments and articles, secreted in a dusty corner of the beautiful and quaint Dawson Falls Alpine Lodge, nestled comfortably in the dense, high podocarp forest, far up the snow clad slopes of volcanic Mt. Egmont in Taranaki, New Zealand.

From its high vantage point on the mountain looking out toward the curving coastline of the vast Tasman sea, the lodge affords magnificent views of the sparse settlements and farmlands spread widely on the lowland plains before it. By day the smoke rises from farm house chimneys, by night the warm honeyed glow from scattered windows dot like an expanse of fire-flies amidst the velvet blackness extending out to the luminosity of the line of breakers pounding the distant coast.

This delicate work captures the sparse beauty of this magnificent rural place, it further affords a snapshot of that particular era and of the pioneer spirit and rugged endurance of the settlers who made this isolated land home.

Marshalg
Dawson Falls Lodge
26 October 2015

Loneliness walks hand in hand
With he who strides the long way forth,
With he who walks the path alone
Through solitary’s East and North.
Firm his sinewed hand so strong
That steers the compassed vessel back
Bridging pitfall’s chasm wrong
Through deft manipulation’s track.
Guiding they who pledge good faith
To fall then, by the wayside, weak,
Then in bridging disappointment’s song
Instead, he helps them to their feet.
So long that night of solitude
With stark decision’s crucial stack
When none would share that brutal loading
Weighing solely on his back.
Lonely is my leader’s song
Lonely as his dying day,
Would that he could share a word
Who would understand his way?

M.
17 October 2015

Touching the moment, this delicate moment
Touching the face with its’ sad falling tear,
Softly aware that strange feelings surround us
Cloyingly close with their aura of fear.
Fear of a mantle of misunderstanding
Fear of uncertainty choked in forlorn,
Cloaked in thick prejudice clad by constriction
All drowned in a sea of wet ignorance borne.

Where stand the rational reaching for reason?
How seek the humble in searching for more?
****** not the javelin of angers’ contrition
In weighing this moment, I humbly implore.

For thus sits the fabric of deep understanding
Thus lies the tantric of feelings unspoke,
Thus the true substance of one to another
Uttered in wisdom through words best unwrote.

M.
30 September 2015

Arbitrarily flung to instants of moment
Scattered free in the gleam of the eye,
Cast with abandon to scattergun’s chances
The wondrous pearls, I’ve occasioned to fly.
Together with detritus maudlin to moribund,
Together robustness’s wrongness in rouge,
This crimson lusting with anger’s green jealousy
In scattered intemperance now fawning to rude.
Spindrifts of coarse-ness in calico fabric
Flooding of richness and redness in heat,
Shadings of blue in palaegic intemperance
Now flung to eruptions of laughter complete.

Marshalg
28th September 2015

Jasmine flows in lemon scented tendrils
Wafting on breeze in honeysuckle air,
Drifting in promise of delicacy hovering
Caressing pubescent delights from despair.
Delicate flavours of spearmint and juniper
Tilt in a torment of honeyed delight,
Garlanded avenues sweet and deliciously
Titivate nostrils till sensuous night.

Amorous airs in the warm summer evening
Poignantly poised in the lingering scent,
Romantically touching the tremble of senses
Released in a sigh of exquisite content.

M.
22 August 2015

Shadowed in the deepest trench
Four good men stand and stare
At my white face now reflected,
As if I wasn’t there.
Through a barrier of ethnicity,
Down walls of wooden eyes,
To pass through halls of prejudice
That none of us disguise.
They see me through a spectre,
Depicted by a ruse,
Of elemental difference
Which neither party choose.
A product of upbringing
Incumbent in each race,
Between us lies discomfort
When we search each other’s face.

They are black and I am white
Our blood shares crimson red
We all love our wives and family
And we struggle till we’re dead.
Why we amplify this difference
Why we bear this manic cost….
Where a hue of pigmentation
Means all reasoned thought is lost?

There’s a sadness in the offing
There’s an air of quiet remorse,
For mankind to come to terms with this….
The beast must run its’ course.

Marshalg
In the deep northern trench
27 July 2015

“Whilst smiling to my face thou
Hast plucked the ****** from thy boneless gums”
Thus spake the venomous she,
When querying the quandary
Of “The Milk of Human Kindness.”

That altruism,
Proffered by many as sincerity
In a charity bequeathed
To the disposessed and less fortunate.
Is an act which may be, in fact,
Obliquely or brazenly,
A lure to enhancement
Of personal nobility sought.

“But the quality of mercy is not strained
It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven.
Twice blest… It blesses he that gives and he that takes.”

Thus so, is ****** upon the truly altruistic…
An interminable questioning
Of the Impetus Behind the Act ??
In order to mitigate
THE JUSTICE OF THE PLEA.

How stands Thee?

Marshalg
25 July 2015

Bent beneath this candle’s flame in shadowed cavern lost to light
I wrestle with my rationale to question what I seek is right.
To bend my beetled, battered brow, bent fist beneath my whiskered chin,
To worry, nay to question why…my daughter’s hand is right for him.

Complex are the reasons why he strives to seek her hand,
His dubious inflexion in the way he likes to stand…
Looming and superior he condescends to give
Long lectures of complicity in how wrong, mere mortals live.

There are fractures in the porcelain, thin cracking of the glass
And a chill wind blows within me should I let these questions pass.
For I doubt the man’s sincerity, distrust his very stance
And I’m loath to giving daylight to exposing this to chance.

I’ve come to a decision, hard, to snare his spiders web
With deceptions of complexity with potions, black and red.
Tomorrow as the daylight dawns I’ll paint the mountain's frown
In sowing seeds of conflict to bring this union down….
Endureth she of curve and grace, repaireth she who cries…
I’d rather this, than see her bleed, a lifetime wed to lies.

Marshalg
24 July 2015

All nations beat their own drum.

The US, China, Britain, Russia, Europe, Israel, India, Turkey, Pakistan, Syria, France, Germany and a whole host of others, have been beating their own drum in deafening cacophony since realisation dawned of their individual sovereign potentiality.

Every nation is manouvering for their own best self interest…and in this volatile environment of the Middle east plus the factor of the complete savagery and unpredictability of the rampaging ISIS Calithate….any outcome, anything is now possible.

Iran is the meat in the sandwich.

She squirms this way and that, buying favour here sacrificing loyalties there, switching, adjusting. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends at the drop of a hat. Writhing within herself attempting to find the path to the future in an incredibly difficult minefield of pressure from the onslaught from the East and the West….A crushing miasma of pressure from friend and foe alike.

Who can say which way she will jump? The only sane predictability is that Iran will leap to her own salvation, her own survival….and to Hell with the rest of the barging, braying self-obsessed world.

Marshalg 23 July 2015

Pandering to platitudes am I….
Running riotously adrift
To spice my day with pleasures.
Pleasures caste in portraiture so stark
Of thee my love, of thee.

In curvature of smooth refrain
And delving vortex of unimaginably fine dark fur.
Reclined in attitude of ease…
With mischief dancing about thy porcelain, painted lips.

Oh that I could die with this indelible art?
Slip away to this shrill cacophony of sweet,sensate spree?

M.