Why is it I can always
read on the beach?
Pages enfolding me
in the sea-shell spiral
of infintesimal images
broad as the horizon
contained within
something
lighter than this rock in my hand?
Why is it I can always
feel memories returning?
each wave
a dizzying cascade of
nostalgia.
Presuppositions crashing apart
into a million foamy splinters.
Why is it, with nature's roar of
power in my ears
Her deafeaning
shushing, allaying my fears
I want nothing more
than each salty sputum
to carry me piece by piece
back to a time
which maybe didn't exist
of perfect belonging
of enfolding in scent and warmth
in your arms.
Stripey ginger tank-on-legs
cannot eat but hungry, begs
in amber eyes flicker
traces of feline grace
a spark of lion-spirit
in eyes agate.
First, you must have been a ball of fluff
tangerine sundrop rendered into matter
suckling at mother cat's warm side
until the door was flung open wide
and senses primed only for pampering
were forced to sharpen to survive.
Stoic sufferer, you huddled in the cold
in your tawdry orange coat, you grew youthfully old
as rain and snow fell without care
and distracted, disgusted humans left you there.
No longer cute,
to them you were just a nuisance
flea-beridden brute.
In your last year we brought you here
sheared you of matted fur and fear
with love and care you flourished
a marigold bloom
stretching petals open in the sun
you learned how to be a cat once more
and capture our hearts
and that blue bird toy you adored.
Old man lion and tangerine kitten
became one.
In your patch of golden light
you were a tiger
resplendant in the sun.
Your warmth and clockwork purr
accompanied me through days
joyful and arduous alike
a weight of warm existence
never judging, never in strife.
You interrupted my reveries
with your old-man smoker's deep miaow
You showed me how one goes on
when one doesn't know how.
With your strong headbut
you scent-marked me with your love
I shall miss hearing
your breathing
in the dark
as we shared warmth
and a sleeping place
I want you to know that
When you no longer
take up earthly space
I'll see you in my head
caught in a late-afternoon sunbeam
at the end of my bed.
and that I was always your human
if only you could know
that you were always mine
as you go back to rejoin
the feline-divine.
Tonight, I can read your poem
and then be kept awake
for the next few nights
tormented by disquiet
in my thoughts that betray me
unable to trust my feelings
why did it leave me reeling?
When I have the nicest sweet thing?
Like an alocohlic at 3am
as you walk through empty
moonlit rooms
and it's there
but it's not the vitamin juice you reach for
with it's promise of goodness
you crave to come undone
you want the temptation
the thrilling fall of giving in
you want the whiskey
that scorches your throat
It's not good for you
you know it
But it sets your heart racing
otherwise what is this life
but healthily pacing?
Why must I always associate
the beautiful
with something out of reach
If you gave me the garden of Eden
I'd want to smash the gates open
let in something darker
revel in the shadows I know well.
Why do we want to make our own hell?
Why isn't beauty enough?
Like plastic flowers,
No, I want the violence of nature
the bloom wilting
the hummingbird being devoured
to set fire to myself on a sacrifical pyre
for something I believe in.
Why don't I want kindness
laid like a gift at my feet?
If someone is too good
we treat them with contempt.
Is this how you felt?
Lying beside me at 2am
You don't want to settle for
an easy life, being tucked quiety in
Better to drain the cup
drink to our health
Then smash it up.
Maybe we should get on our knees in the dark
And beg God to save us from
ourself.
As the storm begins to
whip the metal beasts
we laugh at tumbling
careening human feats
livestreams of heathrow planes
barely landing on their feet
marvel at the chaos
nature can unleash
Now human activity
the wheels of history
does grease
how much chaos
is enough to make you laugh
enough to make you weep?
This has become ghastly
spectator sport
primed with cartoon archetypes
we watch Zelensky
stride, muscles taught.
They tune in for the next episode
dressed in a shawl of yellow and blue
the folly of the liberal fool.
Where is your outrage
for
Yemen, Palestine?
are the US-sanctions
starved
women and babies
in Afghansitan
not relateable
enough for your outrage?
Is the situation
too complex, so you care less?
But you say, one shouldn't engage
in whatabout
as the balance of world peace
dangles from a thread
though
the veiled civil war
is ever present
as Marx said
even in times of what you call
peace
there is murder inherant
in this capitalist machine
and what response, then?
to this current explosion of violence?
One must always act
with love for humanity
help all those suffering seeking refuge,
open wide the door
and shout
No War But Class War!
What am I talking about (because I see some claiming to be on the left cheering Russia on and I think this is incredibly misguided and wrong.): If we define imperalism is the highest stage of capital that emerges in and through capitalism- where a country moves towards developing finance capital and competing for spheres of influence globally in terms of financial exports, then you could say that this conflict has some aspects of an inter-imperialist conflict. (which would in any case mean that this conflict certainly has everything to do with capitalism)
However, that would be reductive too, as we must also recognise that Russia has been excluded from the global imperialist order as the enemy of the leading imperialist power (and as a result has sometimes been forced to side with anti-imperialist forces) and though its development has been substantial in the last ten years it still hasn't developed all the advanced capitalist strengths to meet the definition of imperialism, largely due to its economy having been devastated by the collapse of the soviet union. Russia, as an right wing oligarch dominated state would happily partake in imperialism if it had the economic prerequisites- and it even asked when it could become part of NATO in the 90s but was rejected (this was news to me)
This conflict is therefore not so much about two imperialist powers trying to dominate the world, but has everything to do with NATO expansion and non-compromise (NATO promised Ukraine admission in 2008)- Russia is trying to stop Ukraine falling into the enemy's hands. Therefore, Russia's motivations can be seen as defensive rather than offensive, which is not at all to justify what they are doing, just to understand it. Of course if the U.S. was pushed in the same way, they would respond in the same way or worse. In fact, this conflict gives the U.S. a perfect opportunity to crush Russia with sanctions while claiming moral superiority- despite recently having frozen and the stolen funds from the Afghan central bank causing a famine that is killing civilians right now on a massive scale which is going completely unremarked upon in the media (civilians who it also bombed as it withdrew from Afghanistan in September)
What a world. Thank you to Breht O Sheat from Revolutionary Left Radio for helping me to understand this and all the excellent work you do. https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/
I never thought
I could be enough
for anyone
always a faded outline
too shy to be distinct
a subtle violet who shrinks
the sun passing through her
sparkling glacial blur
but not with you
who can conjure things
to appear
between your calloused fingers
where the cards of fate
can slip and slide
and you open
the whole colour pallette wide
of vermillion red
amythyst
daring aventurine
green
and we sketch together
our new life with one another
perhaps one shouldn't
open that pandora's jar?
no, do it
let it spill out
never to be reconstrained
it's an art
fill in the outlines
then colour in the heart.
How are you today?
I'm so fucking fine
now that I know you.
My heart is a seagull
soaring
never mind it's above
the rubbish dump
everything is glinting
frozen in snow today.
Ice crystals split open
reflection so piercing
it's like a child striking a triangle
and when you kiss with no preamble
it glints off my insides
and my heart's open wide.
Maybe this sharp hope
will melt
and I'll be with tattered boots
and torn dreams
in a muddy mire
bereft of desire
but no...
when I know I'll see you later
and you smell like the
safest warm blanket corner
and outside it rains
and you pull me in
maybe this is where it all begins?
Libra
Tell us, how do you balance
beneath the weight of a hill-sized
avalanche?
Constellations in the doming, dripping roof
of abandoned
freight line tunnel
slime spitting
onto our cranial orbs
glow at the end
gives me the urge
to speed to the end
not anticipating the bend
slipping from the verge
but little star-chart anomaly
though we share
no lights in our birth sky
you're tied to me through life
as on a tandem bike
and if I go spinning
you come down too
unwilling.
My fall is your fall
and she is too confident on her feet
to put hands out
Injured, concussed
my baby will not be rebuffed
though her soul is
anchored to matter
and in stabbing lights
of hospital room
as autumn leaf colour changes her cheek
bruising the only body
she will ever have
she smiles as I weep
stop crying mama
it's not that bad.
Lust for wealth
sucking out human
dignity
as these flat-pack
Ikea flats
rise their unseeing
window façades
to be rented out
life rented out
money created from
sucking us dry
endless toil
and the financial gain
syphoned to faceless
landlord vulture
corporations
for shame
and these mega-rich
bursting with the lifeblood
extracted with
venemous fangs
from those they stifle below
where do they go?
not here
in my city of grey
winged
grey faced people
they don't walk
amongst us
thought they wouldn't exist
without us
and we wouldn't exist
despite this shedding of blood
if we didn't retain
some fire of hope
burning within
dreams of a better life
for what we know to be right
if we can only
continue the fight.
Summer solstice
days stretch together
intertwine
elongage time
another year
but we're on the flip side
of change.
We learned
calamity wasn't
a thrilling movie-apocalypse ride
it was pacing out time
finding, or not finding,
meaning in lives
denied a meaningful form.
What is safety?
without a place in the world
to call home
no family roots to keep us
bonded to community,
nothing really
resembling unity
when we drift,
cut adrift from responsibility
I'd grasp and cherish
the wooded certainty of a tree
Free but in freedom unfree.
I found a lake
and plunged myself in
forgot my cold, lithe body
released mental chains
let go of disdain
I won't become
resentment's daughter
I'm a part of the water.
This book smells
of old incence dust
and pages of old books
in which I ensconced myself
in the school lending library
and here I am still
lent out for a period
of a few weeks
of escapism
hush your skepticism
leave me clutched
in the bindings
of unberinged fingers
and did I ask for your input?
Perhaps I wanted nothing but...
For someone like you
to dip their quill
in my unctuous ink
and write a few chapters
of my story
for me.
And now I'm here again
writing in the cemetery.
Me, a less permanent
momument
testiment to the times
you were in my life
now you've absconded
from everywhere but my mind
to more scorching blue skies
while Etna blesses you
with the earth's
sweet confetti dust.
Your body's scent
was of every acute
aldehyde in your perfume
into which I was subsumed
of soap and laundry
musk of sweat and skin
of something alive
in that olfactory story.
And now what remains but
to take that scent memory
clear a space for it
on the shelf in my mind
glass vial containing
an essence of time
let's call this
olfactory delight
summer romance
twenty twenty one, july.
Artemis and the Moon 