His women

All my life, I have done my best in avoiding to be a father
The reason was to avoid the drudgery of married life
That brings us to Elon Musk and his many children 
Some of them through the natural way others conceived 
artificially, as he believes in building a stronger who can 
tackle the future, I agree with EM there is much 
Tainted blood in the world
I think of his many women if they do not love him 
It must be of financial benefit for them to secure them
From poverty, Fair enough, but does this make them 
A more moral person than the woman I met in Jamaica
She loved me but needed someone to pay for the gas

The Lay of the Land
If my thoughts had wings
Or better still, had arrows and a bow
To pierce your heart
You will open your emerald eyes
As only seen in the sea of Greenland
Seek my embrace
We will be the sky and the earth
Filling the air with fog
Before we make love
Our Titanic love is too great for
Sluggish humanity to clasp
Kiss me slowly, caress me long
we will purify a putrefied world.

Humankind

In an article, the question was what is the meaning of life? Many answers were about personal fulfillment and what made a person happy, but no one could answer that question. This I think is because we in the West are not religious, we do not believe in a God we are alone and that is scary and has an echo of colossal loneliness and the universe is empty
Night and day, light and dark, the fundament of
In all religions, perhaps the question of the meaning of life was asked and not answered
How the man-animal came into being is academic  
But it was an animal that could think and become a human-dominating the living world
We can assume they were not friendly and had clans going around killing each other as we do today
The meaning of life is this, with a bit of love thrown for the sake of procreation, that it has no meaning, we live and die and are dead forever

The Titan

They say he is a callous narcissist, all great men in our civilizations were self-focused it is what made them hated by some and loved by others We are confronted with a person who only appears when history demands a change, who thinks the impossible can come through
People ask, is he evil or a demi-god? No, he is a man whose vision stretches into the future and beyond, while we think of what’s for lunch
The problem is he burns the candle at both ends should he burn out and disappear, he will leave us the power to think practically, but also to dream, which is the tool for the development of mankind, to the point, that we too can become masters of our destiny
His enemies are many they will try to thwart his moves, even try the law, to imprison him, send him to an island to silence him, or perhaps have
him silenced by a paid assassin's marksman ship They say he is rich like that was a sin his wealth is abstract as he uses his money for the good of us, money is a tool to reach his goals, that’s we the people who see his foresight must be vigilant and let him work his magic

The Jewish couple

I have written about this before, but somehow
didn't  get it right 
My perceived brusqueness made them think of Cracow,
they had fled, their relatives lost in the turbulence
of a war where they, as civilians, 
but Jews had their life made into nightmares. 
There was a small sweet shop near my café, 
selling my chocolate with nuts, so 
one day, I walked in there to buy a bar of chocolate
The man behind the counter bent down and changed his hat.
His wife reached out and tried to give me a sweet. 
The man wore a Panama hat 
I spoke English to them, which eased the situation, 
this tall ****-looking person was not a ghost from the past, 
just a person with a sweet tooth. 
I bought the chocolate, and we shook hands, told them I was in business to
had a café near them,
The sweet shop had visitors,
and the chocolate I bought had been in the shop too long; it was green. 
But when I left the shop, I felt they didn't want me to come back, 
I reminded them too much of the horror of Cracow.

The Wardrobe

I opened the wardrobe door
There they hang, suits and trousers
worn so long, looking pale
copies of my figure
This can't go on, in a fit of self-anger
I gave my old clothes to the Salvation Army
Too much textile is a burden  
In a suitable shop, I bought a pair of jeans
and a matching jacket
Feeling adventurous, I walked out looking
For a mule, horses are too tall, began
Exploring the landscape of dreams

I look at my old hands
Blotches of liver spots, slow-running blood vessels
Delivering old blood so I can fold my hands
Once they caressed a woman's body, who moaned
And my hands were firm
Women used to see me and smile, but now I walk
The earth unobserved and words become a long silence.
If I tell you how much I miss making love
to sit in the park with a girl and see the moon while
smoking cigarettes, inhaling its promise of love to come
The aroma of her hair, the smoothness of her thighs
to kiss her libido and drink her sweet water, her legs
Apart, she has given herself to me.
Asleep, enfolded we are, tomorrow is far away.
My old hands remember so much, I bow my head and try
to inhale from my hands what once was
It is all so hopeless, and soon enough I will be dead.

Melancholy

he had been feeling miserable for weeks, his fiancé had left him and taken their dogs along she went home to live with her elderly father every day was a bother, going to town to open the café, serving kids burgers and coke until five o’clock, cleaning the place as he had no staff walking home watching TV and drinking beer until he fell asleep waking up a hundred times
One morning he didn’t open his café took a train out of town and wanted to go to a farm where he had lived for a few years and been happy, the farm had shifted hands the owner said his widow and her sister up a hill they were glad to see him but asked if he was well
later on, he walked to another farm to visit two
brothers he had gone to school with, one of them had moved out, and the youngest one had taken over the farm they too asked if he was feeling ok since it was planting time, they were busy but would visit him in the evening at the widow’s house and they watched him when he walked across the landscape following a path he knew so, sensed he was not welcomed
behind boulders out of sight, he drank from a flask and suddenly he cried his loneliness was acute, he had failed somehow now he only had himself, and no one was going to help him out of his self-inflicted quagmire of self-hate, at the widow's house, his sister was waiting, she took his bottle away and said, no more of this and drove him home

Misty Day
Glancing out of the window, I see the potted plant
on the sill and the house on the other side of
the road, the light is fading, and the plant looks as
sad as a whitewashed wall in the rain whiteness
is an illusion caused by the sun.
Mist of grief encircles olive trees, are blank
tears on my almond tree´s spindly twigs, yet inside
each droplet sees a tiny world reflecting my own,
only with greater incorruptibility of the untested.
And far away, as a whisper, a mother sings a lullaby.

« O

The Valley and Hunters
It was by chance that I stumbled into this valley, protected as it was
by thorny bushes, poisonous snakes, and scorpions, a sting from them
And you had five minutes to scan the sky looking for an answer
Intrepid is my name, and my dog's name is Fearless.
tired and battle-scarred, we came down to the well and drank till
We needed water no more.
We met a 60-year-old camel, a survivor of a circus. I put my dog
between the camel's humps to scan the landscape.
I swam in the pond among amorous crocodiles till the dog barked
and morally reminded me I was a human.
How happy we were back then, thought we had found blessedness
until a shot was fired and they collapsed, blood coming out of
Its nostril ran into the lake, and forever it was polluted
This was the last explored place for hunters that had been breached by a tractor
The Portuguese hunters hated us. I picked up the dog and us
found our way back to the main roads, finding another valley was
not easy, but we had to try… perhaps Spain is not like Portugal
with ****** people who love killing things.
But my dog was not well. I carried it home, gave it water, and it
did not want to eat. In the morning, it was dead in my arms. I think
looking for bliss became too much for her tender heart-

The Cake Shop
There was a small cake shop near the bath-house
If I had money, I would go in there for a coffee and a cake
the girl behind the counter smiled; I fell under her spell
and my heart beating too fast made me dizzy
Her name was Berta, the loveliest thing on earth
I must invite her out for a walk in the park.
She closed her shop at five, borrowed my brother's tie, and used his aftershave. Alas, outside the shop stood
a man tall and handsome
I walked by and into a deep shadow.
When she came out, they kissed and walked hand in hand
down the road, she said something, and he laughed.
Devastated, I sank to the ground and bitterly cried
how stupid, the burning shame, I couldn't go into her shop again,  told him about me when she laughed
I found another place where an old lady of thirty served
I felt at ease with her; we laughed and often kissed
But life is not sweet chocolate, as I had to work with no education
I joined the merchant navy, a place for poor boys who didn't want to work in factories and left dreams behind. Or did I?

A Middle-class Newspaper

Marina Hyde is a journalist at a newspaper
I officially do not read, but since I had read
That paper has been around for over 60 years.
a habit;  a good or bad habit, I don't know 
but the paper could honor me with a prize
Regarding MH, I have a slight dislike of her
The surname Hyde conjures up evil ******
In a back alley, nevertheless, I sometimes 
agree with her, although she is very social
aware middle-class person, of the strident 
Kind, one tries to avoid at a party
For no reason whatsoever, I read an article
by Jonathan Freedland, of America Today
He used a word I find impossible to spell, but
I agreed with that, based on his words
I wrote a short piece about it for X

In the name of peace

I will put you against a wall, shoot you blue
green and yellow with my paint until you
a white flag of surrender
I will paint blood dripping red paint on your
for hire a plane, the one that dropped a bomb
In a café in Gaza
We know where the plane's pilot lives.
If that doesn't stop you, I will obliterate you
My arsenal of drones that shot a man off
His wheelchair, pulverize your house with all
It's chattel, if that fails too, I will use nuclear
Our bombs are for peace, but yours
are for evil
Do as we tell you, or we will **** you in the
In the name of peace

Social media
The X-twitter this morning was disappointing it consisted of 60% Musk and 40% Trump bragging about how great they are at winning the battle of saving America from the disaster of paying the poor too much and reducing medical aid to the old who must learn to fend for themselves  It is tiresome to see the same triumphant smiles and one wonders if they ever sit down asking if their presence in the oceans of opinions matters do they doubt themselves, are they ever unsure if they might be wrong, is their preening too powerful an impregnable wall hindering them to have souls, drowning in the glare of self-love I pity them should they see themselves for what they are utterly pathetic humans a failure of creation by a god of wroth

demise of my horses

I had been away for a few days
visiting an aunt in Cascais
on returning home
my three stone horses are gone
a cheerless hole where they 
had been tethered
Widening the  road, they said
for this beauty must go
the enlarged road can carry
more and more cars
until the enlarged road is
too small, they decide to
build a motorway 
with toll booth
The other side of this new
the road will be impossible 
to cross on foot
Neighbors often visited
becomes strangers 
Sun or rain, spectacular
my horses were
before turning into grit

The walking stick and Elon Musk

I was a galley-boy on an old tankship 
that docked in Liverpool for repair 
I think it was in May, and I was sixteen 
at a second-hand shop, near the docks
I bought a walking stick and happily used it
the stick going ashore to the pub or 
to buy fish and chips, unaware of how odd
I must have looked, no one said a word
Coming back on board, it was the second
The officer who said I looked ridiculous, no one
uses walking sticks anymore, you are not
a ******* lord
Enter, into my self-contained world, what
other people thought of me
I became self-conscious, and it worried me 
What did other people think of me personally
His words brought on a shyness that stopped
My plans for the future
Who knows, I might have become the first
Elon Musk
He has freed himself of what other people
think, or so we believe, but deep down, he
likes to be loved

for a little slander
The new president of America has told Europe to look after its own defense which means NATO without the USA’s help becomes a boy’s club for retired politicians pretending, they are a fighting force eager to defend Ukraine which can’t be done without dragging without risking a serious world war, they hands are tied since Ukraine s not in NATO, an easy excuse because we know it is not true, but it has not stopped leaders in Europe to hammer their support of Ukraine to get at the Russians although knowing the war could have been avoided but for idiotic policies
Oh, how Europe’s leaders hugged Ukraine to their hearts delivering money and weapons to what was and is a corrupt regime
How quickly they changed tunes when the USA told the truth, mates you are on your own we will not defend you anymore you are masters in your land and responsible for your own security How sweet it was to my ears spoken by a man we vilify because he wears a tie too long for the snobs in Brussels who has a leader that wears her hair as fashioned like a helmet
After a shocked silence voices were heard but the man was right, we are responsible for our security -silly sods- Suddenly -Ukraine was no longer Europe and must find peace with Russia Spring thawed in February, on Valentine's Day on a day when Macron’s and Obama’s wives exchanged glances
For us, we were humbled and ignored it was a great day too finally the war is not imminent but we must not forget the clever people in Tel Aviv will find a way to upset the Apple chart

the accident

When crossing the street, cars had stopped 
to let him cross in respect for his age
He was thinking of death; he hoped it would be
sudden, no sentimental last farewell,
no lies
about seeing you on the other side
Should there be another side, he wouldn't
He liked to meet people he had met in life side
A piece of a Russian satellite that has fallen to the ground
days, hit him with utmost precision
And he watched as the ambulance people 
scrapped him off the street, the witnesses 
We were in awe, thinking it could have been 
We have to be nicer to our nearest
Now he was a soul drifting about, trying to
Find an opening back to life
At the hospital nearby, a woman struggled
to give birth, she was 38 years old, and
Therefore considered elderly for giving birth
The soul saw its chance to become a soul
for the unborn, well aware he would not be
able to know about his former life
Great jubilation, he didn't share as he was too young to know

Frank Sinatra

In front of you, a cocktail glass with
melted ice and a pink straw, she wants you to come 
You are going home, but on your way out 
You meet an old friend 
So you have another drink
Before you know
other friends arrive, great fun, and we sing
It is four before you get home and crash on the couch 
And you know when you wake up at noon 
She will not be mad, you  will be sad; say it with flowers
and a promise to be home every night 
Before the Ed Sylvain show
The phone rings, and an old crooner is having his last show
You can't miss that
His wife can come along, it will be fun, but we can't 
We have to behave around Nancy

Writer's block
Today, while trying to write I noticed an ant crossing the opposite wall, for it was a vast expanse watching the ant’s progress, I noticed it stopped circling back like it had found something edible I thought it was disappointed resuming the walk until it disappeared in a crack between wall and ceiling to a hidden society we would never join
Are ants aware of our existence we are there like the day, spilling a drop of beer on the kitchen floor that teenage ants drink, get ****** and told off by their parents never to drink if they do they will be too fat to hide in cracks, by know I have lost interest I will write about Elon Musk, the biggest ant in the world

The man who fell to earth

He embraced the conservative dogma, but he was also
like Tucker Carlson, a committed Christian, believing in 
The gospel and God's son, Jesus.
He embraced the duality of Judaism and Christianity
Israel had given him money for his views and loved
by the likes of Netanyahu, and Trump was his friend
Then it went wrong, the suffering of Palestine bothered
His Christian soul that protested
He moved away from his certainties and spoke of his dread
All hell broke out, and it was pointed out to him that taking 
The shilling had to follow a path they had pointed out for
him, he baulked at this and became more convinced
They were wrong
For his unwavering faith, he was shot dead, a martyr who
stood his ground, when he, like many others, did, could
have looked away.
Charlie Kirk was a hero who will be remembered for
a long time to come

Nostalgia 

there is nothing in my past
I like to re-live 

I remember my childhood
in every painful detail

I have no nostalgia for 
a mythical time that never was 
 
Living with scars that
will never heal 

Exploited at every level
feeling every sting

I'm glad that time is gone
welcome maturity

The Failure

It is about vanity, a need to see one's name in print
The shortest of glory, five seconds, ten?
Switch off at that point of glory, and the fame can last
until someone else demands to use the tablet 
A book of poetry, published in a small town in India 
61 pages, and the editor and owner of the press 
tells us the poems are great, not panegyrical, but ok
Sitting down to read one's thoughts only to discover 
misspelling and less elegant sentences, what 
The eyes had not seen before glared up with a smirk
Oh, the shame of this must keep it a secret, not tell
Should anyone ask,  say the book was not published 
this year and turn the talk to something  else, like
the high electricity prices

A temporary obstruction 

A quiet despair, in a few weeks, I will be very
old, do I tell lies to myself, saying, I dance well
When no one looks, but why do I remember
the Buenos Aires tango in a nightclub in
In 1957, she was in her forties, but with a sleek 
body, I was seventeen, so beat that Macron
Then, in the morning, shots were fired, soldiers
thronged the deck of the ship and running about
in the streets, looking for traitors, the name
The dictator gave those who disagreed with
His fascist ideology
To think that much water has run into the ocean
Yet it happens again, a new authoritarian
regime in Washington
a dark time for America
but I know the Americans will rise and be
free again

Baku and the Swedish cook

It sounds impossible, but 72 years ago, I was
a galley-boy on an old tank ship loading
oil for Iceland, a country with watery beer 
Baku, I remember the long avenue, empty
of people and poorly lit.

The cook and I had gone ashore, and we were 
the only one who dared me, because I had
not been brainwashed, and the cook who 
was Swedish, Stige Hellander, his name, and
a communist

There was a party somewhere near the men
Who wore a double-breasted suit to grow in
and padded shoulder, making them look odd
Oh, yes, they were party functionaries
Stige, the cook, enjoyed himself with free *****.

They put it in a corner with a bottle of  milk
and bars of chocolate, until it was time to go
back onboard, Stige, the cook, sang rude songs
Now, seventy-two years later, I learn that Baku
is not in Russia

They came saw and conquered
and plundered other nations heritage as trophies
voices of dissent drowned.
The elite saw themselves as the educated elite
wrote learned books about statues they had purloined
also told of what significance it had.
For the people robbed of their symbols.
The pilferers became ennobled.
Sometimes theft pays.
Most of the stolen culture ended up
in a museum, so the people could wonder
and be proud, although some had an afterthought.
Now that we live an enlightened time
the British Museum is no longer proud of their
possessions keep sending some cultural icons back
to the countries, they were taken from.

Hurt Europe
Starmer and Macron dislike leaving the scene of a crime, not yet concluded, they will meet for lunch to discuss how they can prolong the Ukraine war and help Zelinsky win over Putin’s Russia, they have been sidelined by Trump who wants peace and gets his praise, a Nobel Medal
Trump, the man doesn't want them meddling it is his alone, needs not a humiliated Europe to snag get their foot in with left-winged nonsense Rutte, the new NATO boss has read the ruins he talks about China to please the USA and thinks of sending troops to defend Indonesia.
After lunch, Starmer had lamb chops, Macron had oysters they walked to the Louvre and spoke about European culture, forgetting Europe is not a state but a landmass of many countries that might not share their knowledge of Rodin, later they went to Cabaret in Montmartre

Secrets in a box

I have a box on the shelf in the spare bedroom
The box has blue and white stripes, I think
It was a shoebox, perhaps bought for a child that
I was not born; my youth is in that box
Sometimes, when alone, I open the box, and it has
many photos of life lived in the seventies
Many friends are smiling for the camera
My ex-wife, too. What they have in common is
that they are all dead
I received a delayed letter from Alex, a friend  
By then, I knew he had died, the letter in the box
unopened 
I look at the photos like a visitor from a past life
I do not feel sorrow or guilt. I was a difficult 
person to live with, even though I had friends
that loved me
I put the lid back on the box. The visit is over
I must go on living in the now.

A new future

To wake up in the night and sense the awe of life is
light from street lights tells of other sides, as does
a car driving by at two in the morning 

Living forever is a punishment, but some people 
write a self-biography in the hope that when they
Die, they will be remembered 

To be blessed in the night, feeling the soul has
been free of the body and become everything 
that has a meaning

No, there is no flying away; the pain of life is
What makes one whole, to understand others
to give our earnest gifts 

We have absorbed into our hearts that there
It is a beautiful future, a rebirth, if not conscious 
That will bring harmony

A nation'rainbow

It rained and rained, fine rain but persistent 
mountains dissolved, and rocks turned into sand 
When the rain stopped, a smooth landscape 
of peace and camel dung
Before the deluge, people who had sinned were
****** to death since this was no longer
Possibly the sinner had to eat a kilo of carrots
until they turned orange and
were not invited to dinner
or supervised at the supermarket
The authorities thought this was a good idea and 
made a color program,
to better classify
left-wingers
and radicals, making them eat cabbage till they 
turned green and could not hide their socialism 
tendency and forbidden to enter posh restaurants
The government liked this so much that they decided to
Classify all classes, beetroots for the royals 
deep yellow for the middle class, and potato peel
for the working class and pink for artists
Alas, people fall in love across the color barrier
Their children looked like rainbows and were impossible to classify
Therefore, the government declared everyone's
equals, but instead build bigger prisons

True animal story

One-legged seagull
sat on the roof near the chimney
it was a male gull, its feather
worn like he had been
in a battle and needed a rest
when my dog  noticed the bird,
she barked the gull
shrieked, hate at first sight,
but for a truce
When the dog ignored
its presence and
the bird stopped  teasing her
the kitchen had a flat roof
in the morning, the bird had flown
the dog picked at her food
on Sunday, she listened to the sermon  
when the dog heard the priest say
something about angels
the dog knowingly wagged her tail

When Alfred left me

It was not my fault, I had no shoes, and the police stopped
asking why  I had no shoes
since it was none of their business
I naturally told them to *******.
I was handcuffed and put in a police car,
which was more cooling than the asphalt
It was October in Albufeira, which can be warm
I thought this was a perfect movement, a father defends his son
But Alfred, who refuses to be my father, had gone home
I was left to explain this ridiculous case,
luckily the Portuguese
The police force felt sorry for me and let me go.
The next day, I bought a pair of sneakers in a Chinese shop
Alfred was wearing my costly  upper leather

A day like other days

She, leaving the bus, had forgotten the umbrella
Strolls, her face is more African now
She has a walking stick, says it is for her balance
My love for her has grown over the years
I cannot think of the time we were apart before
We met twenty-two years ago.
We have Christmas Day here, but the next day we travel
a hospital in Lisbon that specializes in hip replacement
We will stay the night in the metropole and have a good meal.
look at things- for my part,  like the grumpy North Korean leader
Then back to the Algarve with trees and big boulders
Tomorrow we are eating at a hotel that serves cabrito
sauté potatoes and a lot of sweets
since I'm driving only water for the journey 
or tomato juice.
It is an ordeal for me to be among people, I don't know
I will take 5 ml of ******,
It will keep me calm until I simmer down and laugh at bad jokes
as told by an exhibitionist.
We can't stay long since we are living in the morning
On a short walk outdoors, I saw my dog, who walked beside me
I bent down to pat her head, but she saw something
and ran into the bushes, I called her
name; Bambi came here when it dawned on me she had been dead for ten
years, and it made me think of my own mortality
but not in a gloomy way.
Sun, blue sky, and stillness, the hunters have gone
drinking in a cafe,  but the visit from Bambi perked me up
So did a cup of coffee when coming home
nothing out of the ordinary yet, I persist in dreaming of tomorrow

The bordello camp 

Morning in Aruba, the ****  has crowed three times
Men get out of beds that hundreds have slept in 
of other men, they are silent, waiting for taxis
to take them back to their ship
Sad men, there is no jubilation here, cigarette smoke
A cold morning beer while waiting for the transport
A ******, overcome by the tardiness, tries to run away
There is nowhere to run; the ***** camp is in the desert
on a desert, sand, bushes, and snakes.
The madman, plied with alcohol, is sleeping.
The other carried him onboard.
In the courtyard, a woman swipes the dance 
floor, doesn't bother to look up, when this day ends 
They will be back again, or someone like them
will come, here, drink, dance, and pay for ***

How it came about

It is impossible to imagine an endless Room
and no planets, and that one of them had
the possibility of life, planet Earth
A friendly planet not given to extremity, it
also had a temperate climate, sometimes it
could have been millions of years later, but
Since time didn't exist, that is academic 
Green plants grew in soft soil, our planet
was that green fruit in the trees a livable place
without animal life, an abiogenetic period 
That gave the beginning of what we call life
Finally, the emergence of the humanoid
that had a thinking brain that could solve
the problems of daily life and hunting 
It is worth noticing that a creator was absent
But that and its many wars it caused were
endless war between races and their odd
faiths, based on an abstract Paradise 
Not seeing our Paradise is also our planet

Who Knocks

"Who knocks so quietly on the cloister's
port a poor girl from a land afar."
We sang that song at school and always
made me emotional, I could picture this
poor waif seeking shelter 

Now we know what happens to  the poor
and pregnant women seeking shelter at
at a convent run by brainwashed nuns 
The woman from Donegal told us when
She came here at 17   and was pregnant

How was she to know this nunnery of
sexually frustrated who had taken a vow
who, in hatred, had turned this a sin worse 
than death

When the time comes for our girl from Donegal,
to give birth, she was ill, and they gave her a sedative 
Then, as a child was born, she heard a scream
of one drawing of air for the first time

They told her the baby had died; had she 
dreamt, no, but there was nothing she could
Christianity is a good religion, but why is it
When it becomes an institution, evil enters
through the front door, while saintliness is
out of the back door like a shroud

A poet at the supermarket

At the supermarket, yes, we have one near Faro. I met a poet.

The mall is nicely built and has two bell towers.

From time to time, they chime to remind us why we are

Here, not sit on a bench in its courtyard looking up to

The sky is seeing mind-blowing cumulus configurations.

The poet I met had a white beard, wore an old black suit,

a tie with red wine spots on, a black beret that whiffed

Of garlic, I think. You could see that it wasn’t really there.

His eyes scanning the ground, he bent down, picking up.

Half-smoked butts of cigarettes. Ok, not so rich

So what? Haven’t you heard of a poor poet before?

They are not all idle sons of the rich, and with a university.

Degrees in literature. A notebook in the side pocket and

Two pencils in his breast pocket; so he was a poet, ok.

monday morning

woke up at eight, it was a splendid morning
cool before the day becomes serious and
demanding attention 
belonging to the 1% of people born before
the second world war, I'm often awake 
in the night before falling asleep again 
my first thought was not profound, but
about coffee, I had to drink it black since 
I had forgotten to buy milk
switched on the computer, reading the news
scanned an article about the lack of sleep that
only spoke to the middle classes
to those who sit in nice offices filling in
forms and are unspecified planners of
something they think is  important
not about building workers, or about those
who begin their day at six, shift workers
were overlooked, ditto the army of cleaners 
a psychologist from Leeds had a word in 
he had nothing relevant to say other than
he had a doctoral degree in sleep
not to be undone, an article about X that
was tendentious with no understanding
how important is it for our future
Dismayed, I went back to bed thinking
how idiotic the world is, full on self
important people and their tiny world

Digging Deep

My dreams are bigger than my talent
The mission warned us against females
Women should be sure 
It was understood that the withdrawal 
from the competition, it is overlooked
It is morning on a gray day, and mist clings
to our old bodies that smell of time
spent in the underbelly of society 
We lost the cruel war to be the master in
The battle of words of truth
I have stopped digging the deep well
It was dry and had the dust of dead air

God's Acre

In a field, not far from here, I see millions of lit candles 
But only at night, during the day, it is a potato patch
A man, you can call him God if you like, walks along 
The candles and, every so often, snubs out with his
thumb and index finger, a lit candle, with fingers
sore from this arduous work
He is heading for the part of the field where
The candle wax has burnt out, but the wick flickers
like grey smoke in still air
When dawn appears on the eastern mountain
The field turns into a potato patch
Where a man is harvesting spuds

Unhappy lunch

I could sense as soon as we entered
the restaurant that was a family run business
there had been a turmoil in the kitchen
the servers were father and daughter who
normally worked well together, but to day he
was in the kitchen, his daughter said, when
I asked
There were still many costumers, but they
kept a low profile and spoke subdual when
eating, we had entered a war zone
when our food came it was served on a dish
where my meat was grey like it had been
boiled, fries were uneven remanded of sailor
who had jut made ashore from a sinking ship
falling exhausted to the ground, and the
fried egg had been killed into a hard shell
However the salat, possible made before the
civil war, was good
Needless to say I refused to eat the served
my wife more skilled in diplomatic niceness
told the girl server to pack the food to take home
that I for some reason was not hungry
the lesson is, do not upset chefs in their kitchen

Woody sonnet


I tried to be a carpenter, soft wood
and a screwdriver to make shelves for
I have many manuscripts that I have not
the heart to throw into the flames
In case what I'm looking for is there
The girl in the shop said I could not
carve a name on the shelves, she 
handed me sandpaper to erase
The titles I had given the shelves
Failure one and failure fifty-four
She, the girl in the shop, gave me
a plastic hammer for free

A sonnet to a friend

Lately, every evening, I listen to music on
short clips on the internet
I have not been taking this art seriously
busy as I have been composing unwilling words
trying to create art
How wrong I  was not to hear
It is all there, beautiful humanity
in classical form or popular
Suddenly, as my world is coming to an end 
the beauty I have missed by not listening to
the love expressed in an instrument or in
A human voice makes me long for more years

Patrice Chaves, the scammer

Worried about my wife's declining health
I looked for ways to make some money
to be able to hire home help
I got an email through a person who, as it turned out
didn't exist
Investing in gift cards was a good thing to do
I sent Patrice Shaves the cards he needed, but
On the day of payout, the postman didn't knock
He needs 500 euros more, but on the day of payout
No FedExs arrived, as Patrice Shaves needed them.
more to pay me for sure, I knew he was a scammer
and broke contact with him 
Weeks later, he wrote me again and offered friendship
The nerve of the man, he told me, had bought stamps
400 euros, all I needed to do was to pay 100 euros
and  everything would be squared
I didn't send him money, but I was curious how a man like
He spends his time telling lies upon lies
When I asked him about himself, he became furious
His life was none of my business; I had hit his sore points
He broke the contact.
Doing business on the internet is fraught.
I tried to send my final manuscript, Intense Memory, to a publisher
and came in contact with Hillshire Medium, who took the job for
400 euros upfront, I sent the money
But lately, that publisher has stopped answering my emails
I can only conclude that this, too, is another scam
I no longer care to be published. I have several sites that take
who take itake in my work, after all, being published or not
It's about vanity

Now that we are totally automatized
can hail a driverless taxi that stops if someone lit a ***
A time when thousands of driver-less cars are stuck
in traffic on the motor way in the morning
That is when all automatized breaks down caused by
designer flaw or sabotage from cars itself
that are able to think and will not serve mankind
or decide on paid holidays in Southern France
When Elon Musk, refuses to return from Mars
the cry is, where can you find a donkey when
you need one?

The first attempt

This is the first poem I try not to think about.
It is like crossing the plateau of Alentejo
I see the tarmac road that stretches miles ahead
must follow the lines of the road
or, fall off and sink into oblivion
Poetry is not unlike arithmetic; using words instead
of numbers
The hope is that the writing has an inner logic 
That defies jumbled words  
The instrument has a hidden note that tells us
That two is not four
I try  telling you what I  hear, it is easy, our obligation
to love our fellow beings 
This request can be obtained by honest feelings

The Valley of the Forbidden

Sat under an oak in the valley of the naked woman
admiring her rounded *******, a malevolent oak
took offence, not that I minded, after all, it had been
at the same spot for a hundred years, long before the valley had a name.
Suddenly, the tree slapped me
a leathery branch
Oh, pain makes me strong
I forgave the oak and
thought of the pope who, every Thursday evening 
flagellated himself, in remembrance
of the day
When he was training for the priesthood, he nearly lost 
His manhood to the cleaning lady
The Valley of the Naked Woman has a hidden fountain
is guarded by thorny thistles and impotent apple trees 
Those who have drunk her loveliness will never be
sane again, loll in the sunlight of lost ambition
The wicked eye of the oak kept glaring when I hugged 
An olive tree, the oak knew I was a lover of the ethical.

The Carrousel of ***

My sister held a party. She lived across the road from us
My wife wouldn’t go; she was not on speaking terms with
my sister, as they often did.
There were many women there, and one was especially and
charming laughed at my feeble jokes, and when it got late
I agreed to follow her home as it was dark and autumnal
We had *** on a park bench, but it struck me as sordid and
I pulled away, said sorry, and walked home.
I was riven by guilt and also anger. This was a trap I, a man,
had walked headlong into. I cursed my stupidity.
Back home, my wife was fast asleep. She had been at the gin
We had breakfast at ten, it was a Sunday, and I was sad
I was still tired and waited for her to berate me, but she didn't.
In the affairs of the heart, it is better to tell an untruth
because women will only believe what they have decided
to be the verity
Years later, after we divorced- for another reason- she said
She told me she had been sleeping with the man who collected *******
every week, and I thought of the woman in the park and my
sister who had a reason for disliking my wife

Living forever

I read in a Newspaper, was it the Guardian
that some world leaders like to live forever 
I wonder what Trump has to say about that
I think he has a moment when I think about
This problem, or is he sure of his longevity
It doesn't matter what other leaders think
Putin and the Chinese leader like to live for
All the time, we understand, they have the power
and all the plans, the thought that someone
could come along is intolerable
They must be hollow inside, soulless inside
like a tree in the forest that is hollow inside

What music can do 

Last night, all night, I listened to music
and my heart cried not in sorrow but
It flew away and soared in the beauty
of the human voice
No. I was not there in person, but that
Didn't matter; it was about the beauty
of us, yes, we are a great race, so
Why the hatred that is on those
who hate to hear our jubilant voice
I'm a poet dreaming that I once could
Write a poem bringing humanity into
a circle of love