Fed Up and Far from Home

 

Dear God,

               It’s hard down here. I often find

it difficult to know what’s in your mind

when you say, “Live,” and, “Be.” It seems you keep

your purpose to yourself, for life is sleep

to us, and, being, in your absence, blind

to all your greater ways, the world’s unkind

in what it can reveal – the twist and bind

round every stacked-up pain that we two reap.

                Dear God!

We quarrel so. It’s certain we’re designed

to hurt; the fault lies there and you’re behind

it. Why? It makes no sense that we’re to leap

towards you, crash and scatter in a heap

of husks. So, which of us is more maligned,

               Dear God?

Evermore

Raeburn’s  Rev. Dr Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, c. 1789

Eyes directed

beyond the frame,

paint forced gliding

where winter froze,

no world his ground

but a state of snow.

Thin steel scarring

sheared the groove;

clamped to the loch,

he interprets the ice

at the blade's edge,

only the ice.

Take your Pick

 

Lupercalia was a hit

before St V. got hold of it.

Drunks and wolves and lots of lashing

helped elevate a ritual bashing.

It’s better than being a cooing dove

canoodling in the trees above,

missing vicious Cupid’s darts

aimed at your internal parts.

Make your choice. Why be a victim?

If an oppressor out to lick him

into chocolate-hearted shape,

first seal his mouth with sticky tape.

History and Myth

 

Names fall down the years

and a long march

continues past your eye.

Listen. Listen.

Are all words clear, tales firm,

or do they waver over

the shifting hills

beyond your exact window,

beyond the shriek of a queen

raving at her daughter’s death,

throat slit by a god-struck father,

beyond your room cuddled

in books that limit the notes

in your cramped hand?

History’s out

at the echo of moaning,

the gushing death,

the long outrage of alien works.