Words

I sought with lilting lyrics and fragile verse,
A meter to dissolve eternal rocks and granite,
A rhyme to shake and tremble,
Warm life to dead marrows bones.

I sought a song to loosen ancient colours,
A weeping melody to bleed from boundaries,
New courses from crumbling banks,
And oils to seep and drip new worlds.

I hoped with a dusty dancing jig,
Under dim lit dipping southern skies,
To find a florescent dream by my side,
With room enough to breathe

But words are not meant for fighting,
In khaki uniforms, and scientist white,
They are quickly hollowed and filled with lead,
And sink to rest with ashes' grace.

Words are here to tickle and tease,
Not be marched under argument's banners,
But to beguile and confuse and twin us together,
Until silence becomes not night but heaven's bright sun.

Political Poverty

Not being a huge fan of Tony Blair, I was quite looking forward to him going and brown taking over. he seems to have done a good job with the economy (so people say, not knowing the slightest about economics myself) and made some good noises about third world debt etc. but what most attracted me was that he didn't seem to be caught up in blair's endless spin and image control.

but after last week's labour meltdown i think he is perhaps worse even that blair. for instance, he denied being behind the attempted coup on blair when the junior minister whose resignation sparked the madness admitted to seeing brown the night before. apparently they just exchanged gifts and talked about the family. c'mon we not stupid. then he after he gets photographed smiling on leacing downing street and is dubbed the smiling assassin, he gives an interview for sky in which he talks about the death of his daughter and chokes with emotion.

surely this is politics that can't get any lower. using the death of your own daughter to repair your image is a shockingly low trick. i'm sure he did cry and i'm sure he did grieve but is it a coincedence that he has only talked about it this week????

i just hope the public see through him and vote for someone with a bit of integrity, if that is not an oxymoron for a politician.

Firewords

O God, my words are cold:
The frosted frond of fern or feathery palm
Wrought on the whitened pane --
They are as near to fire as these my words,
Oh that they were as flames!" Thus did I cry,
And thus God answered me; "Thou shalt have words,
But at this cost, that thou must first be burnt --
Burnt by red embers from a secret fire,


Scorched by fierce hearts and withering winds that sweep.
Through all thy being, carrying thee afar
From old delights. Doth not the ardent fire,
Consume the mountains heart before the flow
Of fervent lava? Woulds thou easefully,
As from cool, pleasant fountains, flow in fire?
Say, can thy heart endure or can thy hands be strong?
In the day that I shall deal with thee?


First the iron must enter thine own soul,
And wound and brand it, scarring awful lives
Indelibly upon it, and a hand
Restless in tender terribleness
Must thoroughly purge it, fashioning its pain
To power that leaps in fire.
Not otherwise, and by no lighter touch,
Are fire-words wrought.
Amy Carmichael

Amnesia Clouds

On fullsome stomaches, amnesia clouds descend,
With costa cups and lipsticked glass lying
Forgetfully strewn, we drift off unconsciously full,
From gifts of open hands and martyred hearts.

Smooth asphalt roads and purring engines,
Soothe us to dementia of things not yet hardly past,
We ride the breaking waves of televisual ambition,
And advertisers cast their bewitching potions.

Below all this lies grace full gifts,
But no poppy fields remember this,
Under cleansing rains from amnesia clouds,
We rush to forget today, bring on tomorrow.
Ungrateful of him, nailed hands still scarred.