From time to time a poem

The Owl, by Joan Crate

When our baby was just a few days old,
earth-grounded, screaming, his cranberry legs pitching,
stomach an oven of fire and stone

we took him for a drive. Wheels unwound the knot
of his new flesh. I stroked a feathery cheek
and watched as his fists loosened the world of sleep.

We parked at the bird sanctuary, eased him into a stroller
and walked under moonlight and branches,
stars like cooled tears. Then
an owl
ripped out of midnight, swooped down—
I grabbed my baby, clutched him to me.

You just laughed, said a bird couldn’t snatch
a human child, talked of proportionate weights and wingspan,
your hand hooking my shoulder.

So I didn’t tell you that owls are spirits of the unhappy dead.
Thirsty for rivers of life, another shot of mortality,
desperate refugees they strike, reaching

for that invisible cord that connects
the great blue egg of the universe
to him, to you
to me

Something I wrote a couple of months ago... And found very recently with very little remembrance of having written it.
A bit dark,

"What a fucked up world we live in
It makes me switch from laughing to crying
Financial Terrorism with the Conmen living high
Morality Poisoned with the Poor living low

The law doesn’t stop the worst
The law doesn’t protect the best
The worst work within the law
The best work with their own law

A slave obeys, a man chooses..
Where’s our choice? Where is even the question of your own freedom?
Do you really think this life that we share is what is right and just?
You are a slave of finance-
Tyranny of a subtler degree
You are a slave of education-
Hypnotism without consent

The change does not start or end
The change is now
You are the taboo
You are the awesome and terrifying- “I am”

By trying to remain the same- You stagnate
Holding onto who you are, what the world “is”
How can you see the lovely image of life if you’re gripping it so hard?
How can you be Now if you’re only paying attention to the past and fatal future?

Has the Hypothetical of what if killed us?
Rather than accepting financial and moral terrorism
I fight.
CAN YOU SCREW THE MONEY?
Ask the country to save itself
Pay for itself
All these numbers are flying over.

What is the price of a bag of shit?
How would you value it?
The price of life?
How would you value it?
We have an amazing ability to create more and less value? We value…
All this life is constantly transforming, always moving from one point of life to another!



Ruined "

The Silver Moon

The silver moon is set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Half the long night is spent, and yet
I lie alone.

-Sappho

I am a Jedi
A virtuous knight
I stand in the gap
Between darkness and light
A voice of comfort
To those who have need
And of caution to those
Who are evil in deed
A sword always ready
A pool, calm and still
I am all, I am nothing
I am Force, I am will
A shield and a balance
A servant to all
I am Jedi and One
I will stand 'til I fall.

-Jason Wilkins

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

--Sara Teasdale

Golden Gate

Tidy up
And leave the lock
To turn against it all

Return flight
You spend the night
A porter holds the door

The six-lane roar
A sign implores:
"THERE IS HOPE
MAKE THE CALL"

The Golden Gate opens,
As hopeless
We fall.


For my friend Olivia .

There is light
As there is dark
There is the bat
As lives the lark
Each with their horror
Each with their charm
Every moonrise a wonder
As each sunrise alarm
In the mystery of balance
Dwells the spirit of bliss
In the Force lay the oneness
That opens to this.

-Jason Wilkins

Something I wrote today on the train back to England...

23/01/14

I saw a tree in the shape of a chicken.
Looking closer upon said tree
I found that it was not the tree
that had caught my eye
but rather the green mistletoe
upon the main trunk of the tree
and its two large boughs
that had made it look so…
chicken-like.

Looking closer still
I found that there were several
other branches I had not taken account of.
The more I looked,
the less a chicken I saw.

Perhaps it was from my stopped train
in the country-side looking out
over the fields that shone
under the sunlight that I saw the ‘chicken’
for where do chicken’s usually abide?
On farms nearby the fields?
Perhaps I would not have seen
the chicken without the sky
fighting the earth for dominance
of colour or without my passing glance
before returning my eyes to the sight…

So what does this mean?
I see chickens in trees?
I see trees in chickens?
Could I extrapolate
deep and spiritual meaning
out of this event?
There is no chictree without the treeken?
The mind enjoys its games
of hide and seek
and pretending…

Like ‘now’… Am I trying to write a poem? A sermon? A script? A libretto? Is there any meaning to this? Is this beauty when I roam my mind onto the letters of a screen without effort? I had no rhyme nor purpose to writing. Or… did I unknowingly write with reason to come to this ever changing ever changing point? Just as you now are reading to reach this.
One.

Word? Reading to reach the end? Reaching to read the end? How much reason and choice is there in what you do?

So? What does this mean?
I see chickens in trees?
I see trees in chickens?
Should I extrapolate
deep and spiritual meaning
out of this event?
That there is no chictree without the treeken?
That the mind enjoys its games
of hide and seek
and pretending?

Probably not my dear sirs and ladies.

It’s a tree.
It reminded me of a chicken.

It's been raining.

Silver

Silver sheet slides silent
Shadow of the drummed-out rain
Spider-creeping, to touch tall trees
And drape the dewy winter's web

Silent fell the sky, at once
The rumbling, rolling waves
Now crash some other blue-black shoreline
Far distant, out past all horizons

And here keep lookout, cabined
In our little portholed patch
Wet and wept and empty

Glassed the grass and gray flood-drains
A fast last glint of day
Reflects, reacts, refracts

On tops of bins and flower pots,
Every pool a prism.

And if I still remain
Lost to this empty sea
A sea without return of wave
No foaming rush of release
I sink deeper still
Into the blackness
Of sandy tombs
Far beneath where life roams
And I hold my breath
And then release it
Letting the sea fill my lungs
And struggle for only a moment
And then float to the air
But now without the need to breathe.