Guarding The Garden

This is a tale of another futile fight
When the memories fade and the glorious days
Seem bleaker, darker portraits in grey
We will never let go and never forget this

In distant days, capricious ways
Will hold you to every tenement, testament
Yet we move through struggle
And stand by convictions

You’re dancing now, under empty skies
Drinking gin in the kitchen and idly tracing the
Outline of your arm
With the bluntest of knives
Just thinking, wondering
When and what would happen
And who would care

So carry on guarding the garden
And keep the secrets safe
Hidden away from me, you
And anyone else as first light
Cascades through the foliage
Revealing true nature for the first and
Last time

This is all there is
You’re not the first or the last to hurt
To hold yourself in your arms
Aching, retching and sobbing
You wretched little thing

Drop the knife, draw the sword
Stand firm against the system
See it for what it is and will always be;
Another way to keep what is down, down

Regardless of what you and I
Say, see, do and create
Innovation will always be in ovation and enraptured
To those who wrote of rapture
And your prolificity is meaningless when
Nobody gives a shit

Thrones

Part celebration
Part separation of church and state
And what a state you’re in
Yet you’re in urine again, drenched
Playing one more role

And rock back and forth
Fifth fist raised in her honour
Yet grace is too far gone to be saved
Any more
Takers, callers, claimants

For this rusted old throne
Decaying and declining like all the long
Forgotten empires, not Rome, not Byzantium
But all those places

That crumbled and collapsed into dust
Long before they could write a legacy
A mere footnote in some left handed
Scrawl, loose, lost and faded
Like beauty, like hope

Pinned up, perfect on the wall
Perhaps existence makes perfection
Or tarnishes it with all the silt and shit
That this life has to offer

So fall down to your knees and wash
Yourself clean, subservient, obedient
As the crown and the gown are passed along
And you’re passed by once again

If petty is as petty does then
Pretty soon you’ll find all of us
Watching, poking, idly provoking
With a short, sharp stick to prod

Part celebration, part mutilation
Learn your place in this state of flux
The body politic and the mind made for war
Leviticus, leviathan, learn your lessons

Bleach your blood blue and bow until
Your knees wear through those thin clothes
You’ll fit in once it is fitting and
Not a day sooner, son

Positive

Stay positive, stay strong
Unyielding, unflinching
Or neutral, an even keel
Even slightly despondent but never negative
Down, despairing and distraught

Your chest barely moves as you sleep
I turned over and stopped
Paused, checked to hear you breathe
We’ll say it’s the nicotine

Withdrawal, the cleanse
The cold hard look in once bright
Eyes, fixed on you and reading right through
Every word, line, chapter, verse

To the core, seeing nothing more than
A stiff stone where a flame once burnt
Brighter than a thousand analogies
And shining like a tired metaphor

Breathe, stop, calm, control
Repeat, breathe, stop
Stock still, hand on heart
On hip, on the hilt of your sword

Wearing words as weapons
Without a shield of faith, fortune
Confidence or self belief
Attack is the best form of defence

Lean in, put your best foot first
And hope you don’t catch a glancing
Blow, little dancer
Cute as a cat yet far less fast

Intake, pause and open your mouth
Then realise that real eyes see real lies
And you really have nothing
Worth saying, that hasn’t been heard before
Wrote before, conveyed before

In far finer style than anything you could compose
Succinct, snappy sound bites
And quotes you could see
In calligraphy on a stone slate

Four hundred years from now
Yet your words will never be
Anything more than small spaces
On small bookshelves

Shown off by an aunt when she welcomes
A friend, for cake
Coffee and comforting words
About the latest little problems
In all our little lives

So breathe, stop, calm, control
Repeat, breathe
Stop

The Merfoxiad Prelude: Foreword, Four Words, Creator

Mutilation, the blood rushing from every vein
They’re toying with nature
Twisting, tweaking, abominating
Water fills its lungs as it chokes into life
A flash of soaked fur and sharp claws

This should never be, but that never stopped them before
And we can only run when it reaches shore
Mangled, twisted, rotten fur, spliced and convulsing
The scales, the gills, wrapped around and diffusing the mammalian blood

The birth, the creation, of a species intent on destruction
Pushed the limits of genetics and death is your reward
Unholy macabre and solely devastating
This laboratory will become our tomb
An underwater killing field, the glass will break
The beast is loose and escape is merely formality preceding our demise
Death from above, the sides, below the surface of this aquatic hell

It was mathematically Impossible they said
This brings me no comfort now
Unrelenting, it stalks the deep, this harpoon
Is my only friend in the world
It breaches

Death in the beginning, predicted, elected, sorted and
Settled, she is all that can stop him now
I lead the beast to the deep
Thank god the sea god can
Hold it at bay as it bays
Barks and calls

Science and omniscience
Neither can save or prevent
Plug, stall the prophecy
But her
One girl
Seraca

Transformers 4 Age Of Extinction review

If you’re a fan of explosions, cliches, brooding and tropes then Transformers 4 Age Of Extinction is for you.
If you are neither a twelve year old boy nor a supportive friend of a cast member then I would probably give it a miss. If the production team hadn’t blown their entire budget on special effects then they could have paid for someone to actually write dialogue, which was in this case presumably penned by a drunk Michael Bay under a pseudonym.
I’m a big fan of Mark Wahlberg and I could believe in him as a Marine style gun slinger, an embattled single father to a far too hot daughter, a parkour expert or perhaps even, in the right circumstances, an impoverished genius engineer but all four is a stretch.
I confess that I haven’t seen the previous films so perhaps I am losing out on a big part of the exposition and the motives behind the multiple battling factions but frankly, after three hours; who gives a shit?