Sunflowers

 

Sunflowers

As Yemen school busses are blown to bits,

By arms-fair missiles, to tyrannies sold,

As children in Gaza rummage trash-pits,

Midst bulldozed houses and corpses untold,

As Kurdish families, drowning at sea,

Die a cold death, in the depths of despair,

As Kabul women, abandoned, unfree,

Are left in care of misogynists there,

As conflicts, by-proxy, pounding the poor,

Are fought by puppets, for distant powers,

As wealth is reaped from the fortunes of war,

Gardens are scorched, bereft of sunflowers,

And old ladies scream at soldiers in vain,

All over the world, including Ukraine.

Paint The Windows

 Paint The Windows

 

Over in Ukraine last night

There was bombs and shootin’,

And the threat of nuclear might

Was aired to all by Putin.

 

Sanctions failed to make him stop,

But darling, don’t despair,

Let’s drive to the paint shop,

And buy some whitewash there.

 

For whitewash painted glazing,

Deflects a blast they say;

There’ll be less chance of blazing,

If one such comes our way.

 

Unless a nuke falls too near,

Committing us to hell,

In which case, never mind dear,

At least I loved you well.

 

Meantime, grab a shovel;

Before the war begins,

We’ll dig a cosy hovel,

Well stocked with food in tins.

 

And then we’ll paint the windows,

Quaff alcohol with meds,

See which way the wind blows;

And prep for Hine’s “Threads”.

 

 

 

 

Mammon

 

Mammon

In the bigger scheme of things,

Queens and presidents and kings,

Are merely microbes born of lust,

Inhabiting a speck of dust

That spins and orbits, year on year,

A hot and so much larger sphere;

Three hundred thousand times, or more,

And yet that too is but a spore,

Inhabiting a galaxy;

Which galaxy is possibly

Among two hundred billion,

And multiplied a trillion,

The stars and planets’ count is worth

Ten times each grain of sand on Earth.

Hence Earth appears, upon return

A microdot of no concern

To anyone except ourselves;

Our neighbours merely empty shelves:

Now imagine, if you can;

Before all life on Earth began,

On every near and distant ball,

There dwelt not any life at all,

And presently, as man persists,

The only sphere where life exists

Is here, upon this minute speck

Of dust which we are prone to wreck,

With evermore unsated need;

A sad and lonely place indeed.

A Wave Of Pain

 

A wave of pain

 

I rode a wave of pain one night

It came upon me quick

Gripped me with relentless spite

Made me feel quite sick

 

I came ashore with hips and teeth

In agony most vile

Some Ibuprofen gave relief

But only for a while

 

I telephoned a tired GP

Queued an hour no less

Then called a dental surgery

No longer NHS

 

The outcome was a waiting-list

Of two years maybe more

A Bupa orthodontist

Who left my coffers poor

 

And an on repeat prescription

For pills three times a day

To ease the pain infliction  

And keep the wave at bay