STORMED

Layered across serene cashmere blue sky -

Clouds the colour of sweet aniseed sticks
I used to lick when I was only six -
Floating like fairy floss all gone awry.

I sensed the polar wind before it blew
Across the bold cobalt and yellow bay
And watched the sea turn a sad oyster grey,
Its waves rolled back into the fluid view.

Then blackness boiled over the southern hills,
Bulges surging like bows of great warships.
Squalls lashed me like the cruellest horsemen's whips
And sheets of icy rain drenched me with chills.

EXECUTIONER

It’s gone five years since the onset of tears.

My heart bleeds pain and I can’t treat the stain

Of lies and jeers, paranoia and fears,

Almost at times insane, beset by strain.

Accused, betrayed, pierced deep by splintered facts,

Cross examined by dilettantes and rakes,

Summoned to courts to see a sharpened ax,

While proxies hissed and spat like lethal snakes.

The faultfinders shaped sins of omission

And failed to prove even that shabby case.

But they bullied to coerce contrition,

Offered up their cover-up to save face.

At night I hear the chanting of the crowd

They will taunt me until I wear my shroud.

BY THE HARBOURS OF BABYLON

It starts the day as a sleepy realm

Of dawn mists

Nuzzling like purring cats

Into the corners of the port,

Vapours sheltering in the coves

As if gatherings of ghosts

Had sought half-hidden havens

In the sun on the watery gateway

To an embezzled land

Where the thieves are served

By prisoners prised from purgatory.

Soon the searing heat of the day

Burns off the morning's blurs.

Infinite variations of blue

Bewitch and baffle shaded eyes.

Only the distant thin lips

Of the far western horizon

Breathe bad air -

Sky scarred into an ugly sepia,

Becoming a stressed stain

Streaked muddy brown

By the pollution

Belched by a wretched work force -

Another stolen generation -

Dispossessed captives enslaved

Or surviving in welfare’s graves.

The towers of the city flaunt

Their facades, made of fake emeralds,

Bogus gems changing from green to grey

As the sweltering day’s lustre

Tumbles towards twilight and then the darkness.

Sandstone walled shores stand wet from wakes

Of ferries and fleets of affluence,

While the lower levels

Of high-rise apartment blocks

Bristle with iron bars and grates

Like ancient castles prone to assault.

Narrow city streets and suburban rat-runs

Curl and curve like underfed snakes,

Suffocating forsaken forlorn histories

And threatening to thwart modern mysteries.

Terraced hills grow concrete and steel

As if the foundations belonged there.

But so few are the remnants of the real

That harsh truth will never be heard again

And the legends are all being rewritten

To suit a newer, more palatable mythology,

In which today’s crooks can never be convicted.

CHEMICALS

I know it’s the chemicals in my brain

That compound and combine to trick my mind

And I’ve heard all the real experts explain

As well as all the rogues who cheat the blind.

I took the drugs and tried the upbeat talk

But the facts remained true just as before.

In my madness I ran and seldom walked

And never saw the wealth I failed to score.

I slipped each time I climbed a new mountain -

Either pushed down or robbed of my foothold.

Bad thoughts would spring and rise like a fountain

And now they tell me that I’m far too old.

For me good days have gone, violent crumbled,

And I edge on towards the next disgrace

Amongst the rejects who, like me, stumbled

Because they grabbed at stars in farthest space.

PATTAYA

Is this really a home of frauds and their believers -

An escape from the realms of fickle justice

And bureaucrats with hands on flimsy levers?

It seems so – with its ashen eyes-down gents -

And it offends my senses.

It prods my prejudices,

And it stimulates my craving for vengeance.

Is that you?

Why do you worry about my riveted eyes?

It actually looks like you.

Are they your cover – daughter and wife?

Or are you an innocent?

Then why do you look so guilty

And did you profit from my scabbed life?

But on to the street made for walking -

Chinese tourists marching behind flags

And Arab men are smoking and watching,

Their hookahs bubbling and their eyes bouncing

From bottom to bottom and breast to breast.

The ballerinas across the asphalt gap are barely clad

And the reasons they’re there are mainly sad.

But all the men sit and gaze amazed

As if they’re waiting for cherubim –

Perhaps they’ve read the scriptures

And they know there are angels in hell.

The lady boys loiter and sip coke and rum,

So big they'd be handy in a rugby scrum.

Russian tourists abound in the city -

Tee shirts stretched across obesity,

And the women with their flaxen hair

Restraining their children’s fitful flair.

They push and elbow their way

To board the tuk-tuks first and last,

Reminding me that the last time I saw them

They were champions at the buffet breakfast.

But there are sights of glad delight

And beaches made for strolls and paddles.

The sun sets each day to display godly provenances

And shadows stretch across each hot street’s dances.

The beer is cold and the food is spicy and crisp –

Shellfish cracked fresh and laced with bracing zest -

My heart throbbing happy as drums in my old chest.