The bells

The ship of night
in the small hours of the new year
has struck rocks in the dark
and carried all last year's love away
while warning bells that mark this hazard
swing in the breeze and sound in vain.

A ring of silver, betokening love, sings
in the pocket of a drowned man
and gifts ungiven wait for morning
and the tide's sorry bequest
upon the sands of Holm.

Those who survive are filled
with an unbearable ballast of grief
with only the ground
in which their dead are buried
to hold them up,
and angels have wings of ash
lost to the world's winds.

A dumbstruck, paralysed century
has passed since that day,
and a year has passed since last we raised
our glasses in this way,
and now we find our voice again
as we wait on other bells
to tell us of the passing of another year.

As they announce the finality of all that's passed
what do they really tell us?
That memory is more important than fantasy;
that the old year's lingering embrace
will last longer in our minds
than all the new year's promises
and resolutions unfulfilled.

We are all the ghosts of love we felt.
If all the years collapsed, concertina like
into a sudden simultaneity
the shimmering chime of all those bells
the mesmeric peal of overlapped millennia
would be a tribute to the love we felt,
to every atom whose course was once steered by life,
every pulse ever quickened, no matter how briefly,
by love, and every second, no matter how fleeting,
that made the rest worthwhile.

In death we become less than what we are,
and more, because, as we look at fading pictures
of those that drowned one hundred years ago
we see that all that eventually remains of us
is our beauty, which teaches those left behind
that there is no end, only a shift in perspective,
a parallax of the heart as it swings in its orbit
to reveal the constellations we cherish
were always illusions, but stars and atoms
will always congregate to inspire us.

They say everything is ultimately forgotten,
but memory will never be vanquished
as long as it is tethered to the turning of the year,
and even if it takes no other form,
we still find it in stems stiffening in spring,
pressing up through snow and renewing the world
according to the pattern of life
we gather to remember here tonight.

So in these bells hear the chime of all bells ever rung,
that tolled both in sadness and in joy,
and raise your glass and to the world declare
"Happy New Year".

(Written on the 100th anniversary of the Iolaire Disaster)

Cuneiform

Everything lies in ruins. This Glasgow
is an ancient ruined city by the Euphrates
after some rival, or barbarian invasion,
or simply the passage of time has had its way,
gap sites where ziggurats once stood, shards
scattered across the brownfield yesteryear
whose damp tubercular breath
condenses on the back of my neck,

but this is the Clyde, not the Euphrates.
This shattered and scattered clay
whose pieces you pick up and hold
is not some Mesopotamian jigsaw
of the sort archaeologists like to solve.
These marks are not cuneiform pressed
upon the cold hard fragments in your hand
that you try to fit together and decipher.

It is you. It is your own living tongue
after it has been turned to stone,
and after the sledge hammer and wrecking ball
have had their way, and broken you,
and dumped all your words in a midden
and left you able to meet your mute self
only behind glass, in a glass case, in a museum,
reading how others have captioned you in labels:
their interpretations, educated guesswork,
accidental errors, deliberate falsehoods, lies,

in some nostalgia palace
where the passage of time is frozen
to hold the living captive,
saying, "this is how things were
so this is how they will always be.
This is all in the past. It cannot save you.
You are only what we say you are now."
The word "no" lies untranslated
on a cuneiform tablet out of reach, hidden
behind something lurid and embarrassing,

but there was a man who turned it back
and raised your words from bones and ash,
lifted them from this disintegrating clay,
breathing life into them with poetry,
restoring their voice and making them laugh,
and bulldozing museums with basic facts.

Though all that's left of any life, once gone,
is an unfinished jigsaw, its missing pieces
now forever lost, we'll fill the gaps
with pieces of our own rescued from obscurity
and the impertinence of casual oppression.

Beannachd uarach ìsle na gréine / A winter solstice blessing

Uair ìsle na gréine sunndach dhuibh uile gu léir.
Dèan gàirdeachas 's aoibhneas 's sòlas 'son solas.
Th' a' h-Oidhche nan Seachd Suipearan seachad,
agus tòisichidh a' ghrian a dh'fhàs reamhar
le samhradh a-rithist, is dh'abaicheas maodalach
le a h-uile latha earraich gamhraidh e. A-réiste,
làithean bhliadhna dòigheil gu léir oirbh uile.

Tha lùchairtean deàrrsanta anns a' Thìr Eile
agus tha reul-eòlasan is matamataig againne uile
dìreach fathann 's farbhas 's fios sgeulaichean a' bhaile
mu dhéidhinn móralachd acasan, ach an-diugh
tha leigeil le a' ghrian a thilleadh dhuinn a-rithist
gus dh'fhaodamaid a choiseachd san mac-meanmna,
a dh'aithris na sgeulachdan seo a-rithist. Uime sin
dèan gàirdeachas, is thoir seachad sgeulachdan gaisgich
ás déidh a' chaitheamh na h-oidhche air falbh. 

May the sun's lowest hour find you all in good health.

Rejoice. Be filled with delight, bliss and contentment 

for the light. The Night of the Seven Suppers has passed

and the Sun will begin to grow fat with summer again,

and shall ripen and become corpulent 

with all the days of the winter part of spring. Therefore

may you all have a year complete with happy, orderly days.

There are shining palaces in the Otherworld

and all our astronomies and mathematics

are town gossip, tall tales, mere rumours 

of their magnificence, but today

the sun has been allowed to return to us again

so that we might walk in our imagination 

to tell these tales again. So rejoice

and share tales of heroes in the dwindling night.

The hypocrite

Every apology given for some perceived insult
merely repeats all those similar insults
for which no apology has ever been offered.
Every bandage with which one wound is bound
is salt in others left open and unattended. Hypocrisy
robs the most strenuous confession of its sincerity,
thwarts all atonement, devalues every reparation,
impedes all redress, and twists extenuation
into a straight-jacket in which remorse gibbers
empty words with which only fools are satisfied.

Fledging cats

Saw a video online
of a pigeon sitting
on top of a kitten
cooryin doon in its nest,
the big mummy pigeon
fledging it like a pro
pecking at anyone
that came too close,
and we all know
the whole thing is futile
- though they fall on their feet
and have nine lives, cats can't fly -
but if the pigeon could speak
I think she'd point out
we are all ultimately doomed
but temporarily beautiful,
we're all fledging cats
in our own way, so
just make the most of it.

(Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFfE2HrDJx0)

The twelve days of Brexit

On the first day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all
On the second day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all and fuck all
On the third day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the fourth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the fifth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the sixth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the seventh day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the eighth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the ninth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the tenth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the eleventh day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all
On the twelvth day of Brexit my true love gave to me fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all, fuck all and fuck all

Fairy tale

The rain upon the window
turns glass to velvet.
A stubble of lichen grows
upon an adolescent rock
among filaments of silver birch.
Sky-swimming hearts
carry our wishes
out of love's reach,
while men below
become the monsters
they were once told they are.

I am surrounded by water
or light, definitely one
or the other, and I swim,
or am I the water
in which you swim,
the light that turns dark,
thickening night within me,
around you, within you, around me,
first ink, next tar, first viscous,
then stiff, to stops your heart,

or is it my heart, here in the earth,
beneath the clouds,
beside the whispering stone
that tells me the tale
of the life I lived,
once upon a time,
far far away and long ago. 

Alphabet

A is for all the added advantages of access absent from ambiguous arrangements advised as acceptable

B is for bendy bananas, backstop, BBC bias, borders, bribes, Boris and Banks being buffoons but believed about Brexit

C is for cheap careerist charlatans, petulant children, running down the clock, Corbyn and cakeism, but not for confidence, no, there's no confidence under C.

D is for disaster capitalism, decades of dumbing down and disinformation debasing discourse and destroying democracy

E is for editors electing to eviscerate Europe and exculpate England for empire

F is for fucking Farage foisting fake news about faraway foreigners

First they came ...

First they came for those who wrote pastiches of Martin Niemoeller's poem "First they came ..." and I did nothing because, frankly, I had it coming. 

Honestly

I'm not interested in emotional honesty.
I'm only interested in the truth. When
I write a poem: familiar situations
resonating with your experiences, etc.,
it is no better than titillation. Limiting.
"Isn't that just like that time when ..."
"Doesn't it just feel like how you ..."
"Don't you just know that it will ..."
Just. Just. Just. Just. Just. Fuck. Off.
Fuck your relatable content.
I'm not interested in your emotional honesty.
I'm not interested in your truth.
I'm not interested in MY truth.
I'm only interested in THE TRUTH.

And if you tell me it doesn't exist
and everything is personal and relative
then I'll tell you my personal truth is
it does exist, and there is nothing,
absolutely nothing in the world
you can do about it. So fuck you.

So you're a survivor? This is your testimony?
You're a liar: none of us will survive this.
Learn to love the world that will exist
when you are not here anymore, the world
that existed long before the brief spasm,
the passing grimace and convulsion,
in whose deranged over-elaborate choreography
you imagine you have a role to play,
the world that eludes the embrace of strangers,
and doesn't care about your lies and sighs,
that isn't lured, that meets your stare
until you aren't there. Write about that.

Nuns on the run

God and roulette,
casinos and cathedrals:
an odd symmetry.
Palms joined in prayer,
fingers crossed in hope.
They say God doesn't play dice,
but an inscrutable divine will
is indistinguishable from chance
but for blind faith, and either way
the house always wins,
the poor pay the price,
and there's free sandwiches.

(Inspired by the nuns who embezzled funds to go gambling in Vegas)

The end

Do not fear death. Beauty
is a premonition of death.
It shows us the world without us,
and teaches us there is no end,
just a different point of view.

The two masters

There once were two masters,
one whose teachings were universally understood,
and one who made no sense to anyone.

The first was praised as a genius.
His imperishable words illuminated the age.
People fell to their knees when he spoke
as though he had read their minds.

The other was ignored by all but one
who devotedly wrote down his teachings
even though he didn't understand them.

The age ended in turmoil.
The palace burned. The people starved.
Invaders ruled for generations
until the old language was forgotten.

One day a fragment was found.
Scholars studied it meticulously,
convened meetings to compare findings,
established entire disciplines to interpret it,

but try as they might,
they could not determine
to which master the teaching belonged.

Low winter sun

I visit the New Guardhouse at night.
The monument moves me unexpectedly.
The black haphazard tessellation of its floor
seems to shift in my peripheral vision
like a lake of ink, or tar, rippled by a breeze,
so that I hesitate before I set foot on it,
to discover, as I walk upon soil gathered
from battlefields and death camps,
and over the anonymous bones it contains,
it is the calm surface of a deep well of grief
and I enter the silence of the place at last.

Morning. I turn left out Unter den Linden,
pass the Holocaust Memorial on my way to work,
late among the last dregs of rush hour,
but today the low winter sun rests on the stelae,
turns them into bright slabs of light,
and I must pause
to consider the different kind of monument
the sun has made of them. We know enough
to know we are not all that we should be.
Never let that make us less than what we are.

Fallen angel

How can I be beautiful
in a world this ugly?

How can I offer my body
and receive my lover's in return
to celebrate miracles and mysteries
in secret stolen intimacy
with the pleasure we give and take,

when the world compares
the body I have to offer
to airbrushed fantasies,
inflated here, shrunk there,
flattened, posed, plucked,
shaved and photoshopped,

traps my lover in cycles of desire
and disgust, oscillating
between shame and resentment,
tells him his only way of touching
is transgressive, and therefore
he must be a monster,

and he becomes that monster,
ashamed of his desire
and eradicating its object
with the solipsistic violence
of a masturbatory gesticulation,
a flick of the wrist
with which I am dismissed.

There is no intimacy
in the offering of bodies anymore,
just a carnival of rape that wears a smile,
and is bought and sold to stroke the ego
and everything that was once unique
is now disposable. 

The coup

Strange times,
when I find common cause
with you now,
who found common cause
with my opponents hitherto,
but these are the times we live in,
and the things we now must do.
Let's finish this obscenity together
so that we might politely disagree
about trifles hereafter.

Advent

Syrian refugees, Idomeni Refugee Camp, Greece

No room at the inn. 

No shepherds.

Neither wise men nor angels.
No new star to follow.
No glory to announce.

No peace on Earth or goodwill,
but definitely a Christmas message,
or, rather, a question, for all of us:
why do we allow a child
to be touched by poverty,
loved by her refugee mother
but neglected by society?

"Lord of the Landfill,
Junkyard Jesus," she implores,
"let our cardboard manger,
our disposable baby box
scavenged from discarded trash
for my baby
whom this world treats as disposable
not fall apart in slack drenched tatters
to collapse limp in this muddy trench
beneath cold, hard November rain,"

while prematurely festive crowds gather,

distracted by discounts in distant shopping malls, 

to consume the box's erstwhile contents

at bargain basement prices beneath the neon star 

of another Black Friday, celebrating

their unremarkable miracle.

Or do you announce Yourself, God,
only to those who watch laptops by night?
Are You a viral message now?
I always wondered why
someone who's immortal
would amuse Himself
with people who's entire morality
is predicated on awareness of death.
Is that why we had to kill You, God,
disguising our indifference to others
in our rejection of You?

Unless to You we're still

nothing more than animals

- a reasonable conclusion

given the daily proof we offer - 

no better than those slack jawed beasts

chewing winter fodder, oblivious 

to what was happening right in front of them

in a stable one night long ago.