Imagine a blue world.

One grey day in the future
Little Jim ran to his ma
Saying, “tell me the story
Of the dust from the stars.”
“Liquid it was – ” she said,
“Smoke that was pure.
Prussian oceans
Blue skies – strong and sure.

“The earth was all water
On dust – now my words,
Only they remember –
Imagine a blue world.

“Then somehow someone
Fell in love with grey.
Forgot what blue meant
And we went astray.
We sold what was given
And we killed the rain
And in place of the oceans
Scattered ashes of pain.

“Once the earth was all water
On dust – now my words
Will have to remember –
Imagine a blue world.”

Little Jim, he cried back
To the ghosts of the past.
And we stand here listening –
Do we hear him? Will this last?
Do we still love the blue
Much more than the grey?
‘Cause that grey day in the future
Is not so far away.

The water is dying
To dust – and our words
Are all that is left
To save our blue world.

A Fable of Fools, Part 1.

This is a story of five people
On the highest branch of a palmyra palm
(Who were obviously lighter than normal)
On a five foot diameter island
In the middle of the Pacific.
One was a plumber
Who didn’t have any work to do
And got bored.
Another was a racehorse rider
Who had lost his memory
And kept asking people the time at first
When no one had a watch.
The third was an intellectual
Who got tired of replying
That time was only relative
And worked out from the position of the sun
That it was around three o’ clock in the morning
But he couldn’t figure out
What time it was back home
Because he didn’t know a lot of geography.
The forth was a piper
Whose pipe had got soaked in seawater
And the C sounded on the D#
But all else was fine.
And the fifth was me.
And I was only experimenting –
Counting the number of seconds
Till one of us got mad
Not counting the racehorse rider
Who was mad already
As also the intellectual
Because my grammar isn’t very good.
I think it was the plumber
Who asked for a cigarette
And I had one on me
Although it was soggy.
And the intellectual laughed at us both,
Asking where the match would come from.
I stared at him and said
It didn’t matter because the plumber didn’t want to smoke.
He just wanted to hold the cigarette
Between his lips like he always did.
And the intellectual echoed, “like he always did.”
And sighed.

Fantasy

Do you close your eyes
To a dying storm
In rolling green wildgrass
Beneath shades of grey
And smoke mountains beyond
The glittering endless sea
From a magic window
On a spiraling tower
Of a fairy castle
Between the high rocks
Where tears have fallen
Of some long lost dreams
Sometimes at night
When the wind is still
You can hear the dragons
Beyond the northern wall
And remember their gold
And their frightening eyes
And the rumble of their wings
Under the midday sun
A day in a year
A trumpet sounds
To the clatter of steel
In the courtyard below
And out in the harbour
The sails are unfurled
And the coat of arms
Dazzles in the sun
On a high mast
Where the seagulls swoop
To stare and then
They fly away
And by noon
The ships are gone
And handkerchiefs lost
From tired fingers
Now and then at dawn
You wake to hear
Your horse neigh loud
From the stables below
And you grab your sword
And ride bareback out
Without thinking
Where to go
The mountains call
And the green shadow pines
The old lost path
Up the forested slope
Where if you’re still
You might just spy
An elven head
By a whispering brook
You remember once
You never went back
One starry evening
Against a moss covered trunk
And the unicorns
Came out to bask
In the silvery light
From the crescent moon
And the toadstools glowed
Phosphorescent and love
Before you just fell asleep
A ring of dancing lights
On Fairy’s Nook
A treasured dream
Beneath a granite dolmen
On a carpet of grass.
There’d been a time
When the wicked queen
From over the mountains
Had sent a horde
Of swarming evils
To take over the land
And the fairies had disappeared
For a long long time.
You remember the steel
Clashing overhead
And the arrow whizzing
Through the stinking air
The woods on fire
And for a moment there
You didn’t care
But for the lust of blood
The dying cries
Wouldn’t leave your dreams
For years and years
And time went on
The fairies returned
And the forest grew
Again anew
Out of the ashes of war.
Beyond the magic wood
Up the path and on
To a soft wild meadow
Where the wind is strong.
It slaps against you.
Outside and inside.
Like flute music
From a shepherd’s song
The eagles soar
And from down below
It’s still so high up
That you can see
All your world
And much much more
To the shady horizons
Of your eternity.
Here you wait
For the thundering rains
To flatten the grass
And obscure the sky
Blending black and white
With a touch of blue
Blue for freedom
That lasts awhile.

Dust.

This is the old hall where we sang our old prayers
In timid quartets, our fingers smudged with ink.
And the old wind blew through the creaking shutters
Singing along in a tune we once knew.
The rows of empty seats where we imagined our fantasies
And velvet curtains where the walls were damp
The grand old organ we didn’t dare to touch
And the ghost of the past hiding between the pipes.
Old was new and our worlds were coloured dim
With glistening fantasies of a history read and heard
The colours of antiquity – much of it imagined
Where the dust had gathered from the passing storms.
The windows have been thrown open
Since then, by some unseen hand of betrayed eternity
And the wind, in some gory daze of triumph
Barges in unheeded – where it was once barred.
And flusters the dust – some misplaced remnant
Forgotten and complacent, left behind by time.
The shutters aren’t there to creak to the song
Of the wind anymore, or our forgotten tune.
But there is the dust forever and on…
The dust of yesterday. The dust of memories
Layers of new merging into the old
Silent songs of overlapping destinies.

Dreams.

There’s a path behind the sunflowers
That leads down a steep little slope
Winding around jagged pieces of rock
That belong, beneath each of which
Brazen weeds lift their heads to the treetops
More real than the sky-reaching dreams.
Of some ordinary haphazard commonness
Making more sense than ideals
They seem so real to me now.
When I never noticed them before.
There’s some sort of law about upward turned gazes
Which lower as the ages lengthen
Not because ideals are lost
But because they are renewed.
Less beautiful than before, to be sure.
But so much more real, so much more endearing.
And if truth is beauty, more beautiful
Than dreams can ever be.

a bushy tree?

i hate my mouse. it gets stuck at the wrong times.