the bird has told all

there's nothing here that matters but the sun
the morning's cold but the sky is blue and clear
with a good effort i'll get the whole job done

ahead i know there's a long course to run
we've reached the turning point of this new year
there's nothing here that matters but the sun

still a battle's to be fought but lost or won
we're attending now to all that's in our care
with a good effort i'll get the whole job done

the eye's been tricked but it's all in good plain fun
we know that we're not marked by what we wear
there's nothing here that matters but the sun

the deal's been finished now we're under the gun
this is quite common but for each it's rare
with a good effort i'll get the whole job done

we've passed the obstacles now there are none
a new taste seems to flow throughout the air
there's nothing here that matters but the sun
with a good effort i'll get the whole job done

the barbarians have arrived

so this is what it's like to face the night
with back bent nearly double and sad face
to march so long and then to stand in place
as behind the mountain slowly dies the light
ahead of us looms darkly to our sight
grim marker of the century's disgrace
the one thing not considered in our case
that shows the limits raw power and might
what in the end must matter is the choice
to stand and wait or else to break and run
knowing that either way we confront fate
one way requires that we subdue each voice
and make our way without the hope of sun
the other leaves us panicked at the gate

I know what I like

There's nothing gives bad dreams at night
as seeing the detailed, excessively bright,
crimes against taste
produced in great haste
by Kinkade, the painter of shite.

With gobs and gobs of fluorescent paint
he gives us a world with no taint
so bright and so twee
it's painful to see,
and would infuriate any saint.

Now, I've got nothing against light
nor cottages glowing at night,
but laid on so thick
it makes the heart sick
and the soul quails under the blight.

Kincade's work no product of luck,
he produces them all by the truck-
loads of crap
sent all over the map,
and real artists groan and say "fuck!"

To call this sugary stuff "art"
gives painters and sculptors a start;
they know it is bad
and what is so sad
is that Kincade just doesn't give a fart.

(no subject)

dim or bright they seem like stars the lights
in houses and by roads on the western plain
we see them even through this light rain
the twinkly harbingers of our warm nights
the ever-present memory never just requites
the struggles of that time but calms the strain
of dreams about the distant spanish main
and yet we have that moment dead to rights
for all its beauty i never loved that place
but from the height observing land and sea
by day or evening it was a site of dreams
and now as i through recollection trace
those things that were and can no longer be
i think of all those shiny little gleams

adult and youth

fragments of memory rise and disappear
colour of places dominates and the signs
of coming headache we've felt the lines
appear and vanish in the sodden air
so much weight falls on my fourteenth year
the memory of people and locations where
the changes that affect young life inclines
me to recall the many teenage whines
that remind me of just how unaware
i was back then but now with adult gaze
i smile and i remember and then i take
the memories and render them in verse
so now i have a way to understand those days
abstracted in the poems that i make
and grateful now that they were not far worse

the wheel turns as it moves

in the cold quiet dark each motion magnifies
into a threatening force each step seems
filled with obscure meaning what one deems
right and proper for some other signifies
nothing at all the truth is that who reifies
all actions into things who constructs memes
that travel mind to mind like waking dreams
the are the ones who confuse truth and lies
now we turn the page and read nothing new
nothing that we did not know long years ago
arranged in ways that numb the weary brain
each generation thinks that its own view
is better than the last ones that it will show
we've learned at last to come in from the rain