Cold hearted calls
Behind cold stone walls
Directed at a late great clown
Filled with such hate
And vitriol great
Delivered with thunderous frown
But they do not see
That we are free
From what they term belief
But hatred and fear
Will never come near
To dimming the laughter and grief
So go back to your knave
To the submission you crave
Kneel with the weight of your hate
Lower your head
Grovel with dread
But you will never ever create
There’s a voice I know
From way down deep
Fuelled by wars
That never sleep
It’s warm but still will be
Ever lonely
It sings of thoughts
And curses old
Soothes the weak
And beats the bold
Finds us in our weeping
And our fury
It moves our walls
And wayward paths
Offends our truths
With staggered hearts
Weaves its way into our
Very grieving
I wonder now
At all the cost
And when at last
No wars are lost
Will the voice still find its way
Towards us
Or will it fall
In silence then
The broken harp
The dried up pen
Or will we hear the whispered
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Six flashes of gold beneath the mirrored air.
Ripples reach out to my feet.
Blurred images pass here and there.
Their intrusion indiscreet.
The casters of these images,
against their prison rail.
Disgust contorts their visages.
Behind a lacy veil.
What is true they scorn and spurn.
Blurred figures in a shaky land.
To look up! They will never learn.
And see the clear truth at hand.
The flesh-eating Piranha fish
Is not as rare as you think
Much more common than one would wish
The flesh-eating piranha fish
Beware, you may be their next dish
If into the water you sink
The flesh-eating piranha fish
Is not as rare as you think
The day follows night
Repeating the witching hour
Except, the mayfly
#haiku
When was the last time
You really felt
The weave of a really
Good fabric
Wool or tweed?
Or the tickling temptation
Of lace
Over smooth, warm skin.
Or shivered in the dark
Back against the rough
Hard bark of a trunk?
The screen steals our eyes
And the other senses
Wither
The timid beasties scatter
With tiny racing hearts
The scent of blood approaches
The herd all ways it parts
For here
The red fox roams
The scent of fear it rises
And fans the fox’s fire
Into enslaving passion
To raise the killer higher
Thus
The red fox roams
Filled with hate and ire of
Where the white wolves dance
The dance the fox desires
Denied its golden chance
Everywhere
The red fox roams
The world has grown accustomed
To fear of tooth and claw
The world has grown so weary
Of lives lived short and raw
Still
The red fox roams
The timid beasties scatter
Will never make a stand
They’ll not accept the secret
To gain the upper hand
So proud
The red fox roams
No one knows the course
Where the fox’s road is heading
All they see is darkness
The cast of all the spreading
Death
Where the red fox roams
On a barren plain
Where food and joy are sparse
The desolate packs wander
Watching slow time pass
Here
The grey wolves grieve
With rose stained eyes
Patrolling their border wide
Preserving what is left
Of what they hold inside
It’s why
The grey wolves grieve
They gaze across the delta
To far off distant times
Where game and ease were plenty
Than in these austere climes
And so
The grey wolves grieve
Disgusted by the carnage
Where the red fox roams
On guard for rebel spirits
Keeping safe their homes
Where
The grey wolves grieve
Yet what they seek in earnest
Deep within their hearts
They know is far beyond them
Beyond their stilted arts
Endless
The grey wolves grieve
The packs struggle onwards
Huddled in their gloom
Their hearts so full of anguish
For hope there is no room
In this land
Where the grey wolves grieve
These areas
Our neighbourhoods
Will become districts
Classified by wealth
Worth
Class
And faceless systems
Will place us
Where they see fit
Red the blood
That flooded the plains
Of the green valleys and hills
Where children still lay
White the bleached bones
Of warriors old
Who died for their lords
Defending high homes
Blue is the blood
Of those who command
With wires of constraint
And tradition’s grey chains
Yellow is the sand
That slips and tumbles in the glass
Sifting through our fingers
Yellowed is the ancient paper
Where ancient text resides
And the finger that glides
Tracing shaky wisdom
Priests
Determining the will
Of their god
Deciding
Which lives will be sacrificed
To keep it from failing
And flailing its limbs in a frenzy
That will crash and smash
The mighty of the land
So the weak are thrown
To its lack of mercy
To spend their blood
At the will of the priests
Known as
Economists
Dusty grey pigeon
Battered by the wind
Ruffled feathers, frantic wings
To stay true to course
A struggle
A tall ship sitting silent
In the harbour on
Still calm seas
Regal, proud and ancient
Going nowhere now
A queen strutting her stuff
Colours on parade
While those who earned the medals
Into memory
Slowly fade
From the slime, we came
To the slime
We seem to defer
A black and white film
About black and white issues
With grey morals on display
In our multicoloured 3D world
What has really changed
Injustice still looks the same
What’s behind the story
What is the reason for that news
Who gets the benefit, the prize
The envelope with the bread
The law successfully passed
The company tracked greased
Somebody’s life made easier
At the cost of somebody else
Cables tie us
Hold us tight
To one spot
Even invisible ones
Chains
Keeping us busy
Keeping us attentive
Keeping us productive
and consuming
So when they are cut
We are lost
Unable to produce
As we once did
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The world in a book
For my son
To show him the places
Across the seas
That he dreams of.
The colours,
The creatures,
The cultures and the clashes.
The world in a book in his hands
As one day
The world will be in his hands.
Background contempt
Background fear
Background doubt
Background shame
It’s there
Undetected
Subtle
In the everyday babble
Insidious
Designed
To keep us down
So
Find the right song
To drown it out
And live
A better
Life
Swirling in the mists of history
Mystic figures whirl
Dark silhouettes of dangerous men
Stride along with pride.
A flash of a sword, the chord of a song
the clash of a shield, the beat of a drum.
The roar of a fire in a welcome hearth.
The hearty sound of the comrades’ laugh.
The scent of a feast, the warmth of the soup.
The strength of the beams over the hall
The smoke rising up into the straw
All of this and still there’s more.
A cold wind blows, the mist rolls back,
To show the cold hard facts.
In response to my daily prompt Archive
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Master of words
By words mastered
Many a politician can claim
Those that abuse the power
By which they rose
Will be bitten by the beast they tamed
Such is the reality
We choose to believe
But the truth we know is worse
Where corruption rules
It protects its own
Mostly, the corrupt rule
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
With his faithful tartan cap, its bobble flicking black dust into the air.
Holding in that tousled and already greying hair.
With half hundred weight of coal to deliver down the street.
With his smiling green lorry, tiny windows at his feet.
Walking up the narrow path, a smile upon his face.
Care worn lines deep with dust, crisscrossed like living lace.
Bringing warmth to many homes and our own.
Now the coal has gone but the lines remain beneath silver hair.
Hands hard and black with oil and years of toil and loyal care.
Has no wealth and all wealth one could want within his soft brick walls.
Always ready to respond to our lost and stranded calls.
Tall as a tree and as strong against every withering storm.
A mere spanner in his hands his wonders to perform.
Humble, with every reason to be mighty proud.
With pride these words should be read to all aloud.
The beginning
And the end
Where we start
Into the web
Where we end
A story
If you are stuck for ideas – here are a few. They are original and different – plus being ebooks they have the advantage of not being hindered by delivery issues 🙂
Marc trudged on with life, marching in line with his fellow workers. Weighed down by the everyday burdens of life, the pressure to conform, to succeed or face destitution.
Yet he knew, in his heart that it was all wrong, the questions squirmed like fiery dragons in the pit of his heart, beneath his deepest darkest doubts.
Until they grew and burst his sanity, set him on a path of defiance and rebellion. A path that would cross three others – all like him seeking answers.
A path of danger and adventure that would see him marked as a terrorist and fleeing for his life. It would see him find love and heartbreak, hope and despair, Most of all, it would open his eye to the possibility of an ancient and powerful secret that might answer all his doubts and fears.
If he survived.
As the title says – thirteen tales about ghosts. Yet, while ghosts feature in them all – not all are traditional ghost stories.
You will find the vengeful spirit but also the plaintiff one. The haunting message from the past and the playful spirits capturing the joy of their past lives.
Some of these visitors from beyond lead the haunted to peace and joy – others take them on much darker paths to places with no return.
Enjoy them – just don’t get too comfortable.
Three hundred and sixty-five poems in all shapes and sizes, sprung from dreams and emotion. Published day after day for a year. There are haiku, sonnets, katauta, lanturnes and many other forms – including free form. The moods are as varied as the forms and often reflect my mood on the day. There is sadness and grief, joy and love.
If nothing else – these can provide a small moment in everyone’s stressful lives to stop and contemplate the world in a different way.
In these times of quick gratification and short attention spans, I decided to try and buck the trend and present something not only with greater length but also depth.
The poems in this collection were written over a long period and for different purposes. They are varied but they are all long. And they all represent challenges. Each was a challenge to myself, to sustain a quality of writing for a long period and within tight constraints of form while still telling a story. They also represent and challenge to the reader. The challenge to throw off the pressure of everyday life, the pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry to take the time to read something, absorb it over time.
Such effort needs reward, these poems should not be a one-time quick fix. If the reader is going to put that effort in then there should be a payoff, they should be able to continue to get something from it afterwards. Whether that be from contemplation of what they have digested or from revisiting, rereading and seeing things they missed the first time around. So the final challenge to me was to provide this depth of content – not just quantity.
I was perusing my poetry collection with the intention of putting together a collection of new, largely unpublished poems. This collection is not that. As I was going through all my poems I noticed that I have a tendency to use colours in the titles, and even when I do not the poem is often rooted in the idea of colour.
So, I decided to do a second collection while I was at it. A collection of poems bound together by the theme of colour. A spectrum of thoughts and moments reflecting the infinite colour and variety of the universe in which we dwell.
This collection is presented here.
Being a middle-aged aged man – I do middle-aged man things. Sometimes. One is meeting with my middle-aged friend and getting nostalgic over a pint or two of beer.
Like many others.
We contemplate how things were better, how the youth of today are missing out on what he had.
Out of these conversations came a realisation, one that we found was articulated with frightening clarity by Mark Fisher in “Capitalist Realism, Is there No Alternative”. He makes the observation that we are of a generation that was sold a dream, a dream that did not come true. We were told that if we worked hard, and dedicated ourselves we would do well.
Well we did, work hard, for many years. Blood sweat and tears making our employees successful, generating profit and success.
But not for us. We still struggle in the day to day reality. We fight the rising cost of living and the shadow that were a few bad weeks away from homelessness or worse.
The dreams was a lie. And there is nothing left we can do about it.
This collection of poems is a reflection of my thoughts about this and other darker aspects of modern life. In my other collections I like to balance this side of my ruminations with more optimistic explorations. This did not seem appropriate here. This is my equivalent of a grunge phase.
It also contains largely previously unpublished works that have not appeared anywhere else.
So, stick on those goth tunes and wallow in the well of sunken dreams.
Is it too late for
Tears and grief to rise again
I can’t hold them back
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Sit
And write
In response
To the prompt
Sit
If only
I could find the time
To just sit
And think
And write
Instead of fighting
Life
I enjoy revisiting old favourites. Especially music. Bands, songs, albums that have lain dormant for ages – years sometimes. Neglected and forgotten about. Legends!
For the car recently I created a new playlist – a bit more mellow that normal. Instead of picking songs I just added all the songs I have from four different artists. These were Clannad, Enya, Pink Floyd and Leonard Cohen.
As I listened there was a song that I have probably heard many many times before Leonard Cohen’s The Window. It passed me by, in the background – I liked it but didn’t really notice. This time it was different. This time it was one of those occasions when suddenly – for inexplicable reasons the lyric reached out and plucked at me, played me, struck me as beautiful, strange and haunting – just how they are sung. They were.
Oh chosen love, Oh frozen love
Oh tangle of matter and ghost
Oh darling of angels, demons and saints
And the whole broken-hearted host
Gentle this soul
I wonder why. I wonder what it is that made me hear those lyrics properly for the first time after I don’t know how many times before.
One of the mysteries and wonders of really good music.
Handicap
A word defunct
As we remember
Difference
Is strength
Not
Inferiority
In an unremarkable flat
Next to a noisy tapas bar
Is where, perhaps, Hawkins might die
Folded in his chair
It will not be remembered
Unlike his remarkable mind
Such are the vagaries of life and death
Both ridiculous and sublime
Read more in A Spring of Dreams
In these times of quick gratification and short attention spans, I decided to try and buck the trend and present something not only with greater length but also depth.
The poems in this collection were written over a long period and for different purposes. They are varied but they are all long. And they all represent challenges. Each was a challenge to myself, to sustain a quality of writing for a long period and within tight constraints of form while still telling a story. They also represent and challenge to the reader. To throw off the pressure of everyday life, the pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry to take the time to read something, absorb it over time.
Such effort needs reward, these poems should not be a one-time quick fix. If the reader is going to put that effort in then there should be a payoff, they should be able to continue to get something from it afterwards. Whether that be from contemplation of what they have digested or from revisiting, rereading and seeing things they missed the first time around. So the final challenge to me was to provide this depth of content – not just quantity.
That kind of sums up my approach to 2020, particularly to writing.
2019 was not overly productive for me. I curated and edited some old work into a new collection – Andervayne’s Dream. I also continued to try and market my existing books, Mankind Limited, A Spring of Dreams and Thirteen Tales of Ghosts. Not to much success.
All this has mean that along with the demands of life, many family illness and dealing with a son with Autism, I have not had much time to actually write anything new. I have kept my blog alive by reposting old work daily.
I tried NaNoWriMo, but again, due to life commitments and stress, did not complete it – though I did come out of it with five drafts of short stories.
So. New years resolutions!
Firstly, it should be noted I have 100% failure rate on these. I can make goals and get there, just not new years resolutions. I think this is because I tend to try and make big life changing ones.
So this year I am going to do two things. One, I am making them public, here and now. Hopefully that will give me kick up the backside to actually complete them. Secondly, I am making them a bit more modest.
So this is my plan for 2020.
One poem a week.
One short story a month
Enter one competition or submit to one publication per month.
These are reasonable and well within my capabilities. 52 poems and 12 short stories. I have done far more that that in a shorter time before.
The other big difference will be that I will not be posting them on my blog. I am keeping them unpublished so I can use them to submit to competitions and publications.
Which means, this blog will be a lot quieter this year.
Less noise, more action.
Unknown search terms – ten
Wonder what they were after
That brought them to me
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
In golden age where steel was king
Rich voices of great bards there ring
The rising pride of knights there swells
Around the ring where justice dwells
Behind the throne where power lies
The dark intent deep in his eyes
The ancient druid gathers spells
Around the ring where justice dwells
The jealous son holds his dark ire
Until it rises to a fire
Bells of doom ring their deathly knells
Around the ring where justice dwells
And so the cracks came from within
Mens’ convictions so very thin
Shattered by those doom laden bells
Around the ring where justice dwells
Another spirit lost
Awash in the swell and foam
Anguished over lost love
Anger dealt him the blow
Arising from the sea
Alighting on the air
A bright bird arises
Snoring on my chest
Warmth and love resting at peace
An early night in
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
A single mote
of stardust
sparkles bright
in endless black
drifting
No goal,
no direction
for time
that feels
eternity
Nothing
Cold, cold
Nothing
And then
Attracted to another
Bright shining mote
Joined together
Bound in twisting dance
round and round
and down
What seems forever
togetherness
never apart
again
The other comes
with more attachments
gathering around
A family, a clan
a get together that has no end
a bouncy, rowdy party
as things heat up
And the happening attracts more
and the numbers swell
the dances speed and the steps
multiply with complexity
The place is hotting up
as events coalesce
Then the point of no return
This is the place to be
the single mote has pulled
more that could be dreamed
and the crowds rush in and in
and down
the crowds become a crush
And the heat gives rise to new forms of dance
and new energy as the crowds arise
And then the circle is complete
as the fire starts to burn and the lonely mote
is now the heart
of brand new burning star
Image from Pixabay
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Giving people health
Appears low priority
Set against profits
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Corrupt. Wealthy. Safe.
Wallowing in filthy loot
And laughing at us
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Lost to us, never forgotten
Unusual tides took him away
Carried to peace and to sleep
And even as the dark will swell
Sad, but sad will not prevail
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
My eyes are sensitive to the light
They are filtered
Protected by shades
What about my heart?
My feelings?
No filter please
I am sensitive
I need all the light let in.
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Porcelain tiles
Cold on my cheek
How did I get here?
When did I fall asleep?
The hatchet in my head
Overpowers the hatchet in my heart
For now
And then it begins again
Golden liquid calls
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Lines and words and lines
On one screen they mean this
Elsewhere something else
On paper strangely old
Before my eyes
Flashing by
Doing magic
But why
For the small ends
Of small goals
Chipping away at mountains
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Is it enough?
These words
We gather here
From across the globe
Our thoughts thrumming
Over strands of the web
They gather and agree
Mostly
And we know
What is wrong with the world
What is right
How to behave
And with well picked word
We condemn
Or cajole
the effective ones.
But is it enough?
Just the words.
Yet once upon a time
There was a spell
A magical combination
That set me on this course
Of reason and reason-ability
Maybe it is enough
If someone somewhere
Is moved by our spells
To do the right thing.
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Swirling, whirling milky clouds of stars
Spiralling down to the black hole
Supermassive hungry dark
Swallowing all it can
Axle of the wheel
Sparkling star arms
Shining cloud
Holds our
Home
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Worn wooden floor
Distant, ancient scent
Tobacco long gone
Beer, deep red in thick glass
Salt and vinegar crisps
Pickled eggs
Pickled patrons
Warmth and welcome
Long gone like the smoke
One missed
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Mistakes seep into
Our minds through repetition
Habitual truth’s born
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
What’s behind the story
What is the reason for that news
Who gets the benefit, the prize
The envelope with the bread
The law successfully passed
The company tracked greased
Somebody’s life made easier
At the cost of somebody else
Taking my son to my old school
Following the bus I used to take
Still the same number
Basically the same model
The same smell of classrooms
And I wonder
Is this it?
Are we destined
To repeat lives?
It is not enough
I want more
More for my children
Than was there for me
No fear
More doors
No prejudice
More joy in knowledge
Is that too much to ask?
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Clouds piling up dark
Lightning flashing – sky to ground
Rumbling all around
Originally published in A Spring of Dreams
Scott Andrew Bailey - Author 