This is a poem
made by her hand
a poem of marks
you can read
left to right

right to left
any which way
an ascemic script
it tells a tale
late in the day

beside a river still
sunlit clouds vast
in a Maytime sky
down on the mud
and shingled shore

these found things
arrived at her feet
as they do when
waiting for her
dear hand’s touch

upon their metalled
forms rusted and
rivered by the daily
tides the diurnal
wash and dry of

weather and watered
river mud-coloured
beside boats bedded
in the river bank each
plaqued to remember

thirty wooden boats in all
that plied a river’s journey
there and back once
to and fro now
charged up high

on Pulton shore
a motorized trow
a top-sail schooner
Edith and the
New Despatch

steel and concrete
barges Severn Collier
and Mighty Monarch
lying hard into the silt
a yard at rest

a grave of vessels

Let us celebrate a day of history
When the separation of a single people
Was a willing act of treason
And an act of chasing freedom
Let us not forget history as it was
Not as how they want it passed down
The blood and stain of shame
Is still buried deep down in the soil
Of a troubled nations ghost
Both past and present
The last empire to commit the near complete genocide of a proud and fierce true native
Then built up a monsterous industrial complex plantation
With workers bound by chain of ignorance and hatred
Men and women and children treated less than animal
Remind me again what am I to be proud of
And some will say we've come so far
Then why are lines still being drawn
Why does the world continue to separate
Why are children still dying in the streets
Why are soldiers coming home without their feet
Why are our mothers still plaqued with grief
Nations still using bullets and bombs
To argue that we are always in threat of harm
From the unknown
And like children afraid of the dark
Everone is trembling under sheets
Afraid of an invisible beast
But fear is still fear
And fear is what betrays us
Keeps us from unity
Keeps us fighting each other
Instead of fighting for each other
You can keep your pride of nation
I will keep my fight
Pushing towards
The union
Of all people

I've heard these words sung
in every life
I've ever touched
and this
quarrelsome
touch
of the love we need
of the warmth we crave
shunned
shivered
pruned, and carved, and withered
a skull made in my own name
staring to
this pearl of dreams
this orb of truth
I see my face
and I,
happy-shrunk
hung from
tethers
I'd never name
to long for the touch of
a hungry man's wish
and I curl my fists
the words etched in stone
plaqued on my wall
dirges of a future haul
and my mind flicks back
and screams in blood
because there is
numbers written
on my grave
and I fear
the day
that I forget
my name

“Shine their shoes, boy.” Of ancient Ulm,
Or was it Hanover, or Vietnam news?

Whatever lives in a coptering leaves breeze flail
Burns, maybe, wrinkles over evening-orange contrails.

From ‘75, with backpack, an American teen.
You lay in a blanket that’s jungle green.

Born of tension, your luggage weared
Containing the last, probably-more, hundred years.

Pressured under coupled oceans that wash
Pepper, in the coasts, of gunpowder shells.

Every bit, godless, and landless there tread
Which is historically typical of a golden head.

You wait, with a significant loss in sheen
While much younger shoes uncover you from the rain.

“My, what a piece of ancient Ulm! It sits
Only in mud! Yet, what of the rest?

Whatever hasn’t yet lost its old meaning
That shining truth which, before, kept it going!”

Glossy, in all youth, in all sorts of sweat,
Heeded a call to consult with a death.

This set-on, and scattered, and ducked into flight
Mind unconsidered so decades might march out of sight.

Lo, quiet perforce a deep trench, or its field
Moving, not across that diptych unperturbed

Every hole through the air punctuates, shreds
The almost-last scream of a now golden head.

You run, run, run, run. Count how many feet touch the mound.
You envision how best you could look underground-

“Now, see: pressed up against its own shoes,
This thing of gold, it’s deformed and bruised!

Wherever we bore— past some trees, down a road;
Far from Ulm— we made a hole which, in it, erodes.”

Grisly, but plaqued, and so, covered up
The very remnants that resulted its death

From long ago, “This- It’s ancient!” some people say
Shipped back with laurel shawl now as its display

“Perhaps you are ageless wrapped in the old war.
Yes, tatters coming back are worth all the more.

Maybe, yes it was sent through so much wreck.
Before, far back it was born of some thread.”

“Shine its throne, man.” Of ancient blood.
That, on his deathbed is a golden head.