Suitcase (English Poems)

Performers Well, here I am in a little fishing village Resting in a room kindly provided Which I'll occupy for three days Guest of a traditional folk festival In which I happen to be performing Did I mention it's also The Queen's Platinum Jubilee? She, too, will be performing She's the star of the whole shebang The screechy pop singers The bunting, the fly overs The street parties, the wrinkly interviewees Everyone stuffing their faces With cake With trifle With tea and empire biscuits A weekend of corgies, horses and flags But here I am hiding between events Out of the way of people I am not a natural performer Perhaps the Queen is not a natural performer But there she is,96, Wheeled out to please the nation Out of the spotlight Does she flop on the bed, shoeless Wrapping her privacy to her Like a bat, cuddling its wings Like a toy with its batteries removed? She is held in the collective grasp She will never evacuate her throne Though the buglers are calling time For last orders How often have her family practised her funeral For when after her star goes out and the credits start to roll? Maytime Trees stand in their Maytime dresses Like debutantes at a ball The wind blows their jade green tresses Their ringlets rise and fall Their heads are bright with blossom Where brown birds doucely sing It's May, and the sap has risen When feather and leaf take wing Like T-Rex It felt as if it had rained for centuries Drips fell ding-dong remorseless, over the drowned fields As if summer had been deleted altogether Even a pope might lose his faith in prayer The Thinker up on his plinth Was pondering arks and floods And then, like T-Rex loose in a china shop The sun burst out Such a big thing In our tiny world of happenings. Epidemic Bacteria swim like torpedo depth charges Unseen predators Like minuscule planets circling a black hole Invisible invaders Death dealers Indiscriminate health wreckers Life takers Soul stalkers So many victims lie like stranded fish Meeting death, beached on a hospital bed Panting from lack of breath Alone Suitcase of dreams A Filipino mother left behind Her family, took her dream across the sea To ease their poverty she signed A contract, which unhappily consigned Her into virtual locked-in slavery Where she was bullied, starved, by the unkind Employers, who to all her pains were blind Exploiting her, they used her cruelly Removed her passport, phone, to tighter bind Her to them, there was no way to rewind Her steps, to escape back to her country Her workplace was her jail, so close confined To drudgery, the contract was designed To keep her homesick, toiling endlessly And never to find ease from labour's grind She crossed the seas, in hope. All she could find Was raw despair, of the most bitter kind Ukraine (2 How fast people lose their identity In the mangle of flesh and building! The dead are worlds apart from the living At the edge of the battlefield After death drops from the heavens First class delivery Hate brings the merciless hammer down The sickle of blood scythes old and young, uncaring Ivy weaves necklaces round childrens' teeth Limbs are trapped in the tumbling rubble of rot All, all melt down in destruction's evil pot People are shot in their gardens Who should have grown old with their roses War brutalises the spirit. Snaps the heart And what of the watching child who sucks his thumb Seeing his little world blown apart? A scene from a tv screen, a war comic Suddenly bursting into life; terror, off the chart The Houses Nobody Wants Welcome to Paradise House/flat/cottage It's set in an outstanding location Beautifully furnished. Two ensuite bedrooms Parking- Patio- a well dug garden Close to city centre with all mod.cons There are houses nobody wants to buy Notorious houses of horror, where killers lived Where many committed the crime of murdering children After the police activity, the hunt, the arrest, the trial After the headlines are forgotten, the murderers tried and jailed Who would want to stay in the home of a psychopath? Mark Bridger murdered schoolgirl April Jones In his cottage in 2012. She was 5 years old The local council destroyed the paedophile's house April's parents watched the demolition. Fred and Rose West stayed in Cromwell Street, in Gloucester They tortured and murdered 12 girls, their own included. That house of evil was levelled in the nineties. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley Lived in Wardle Brook Avenue, Manchester They killed five children at that house, Buried the bodies on Saddleworth Moor No one occupied that home for over 20 years At last it was demolished by the council. Paedophile Ian Huntley lived in College Close, Soham He killed schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman Within those walls. His home has been demolished. Sometimes no matter how wonderful the place How beautiful the location, infamy sticks Horror seeps into the fittings. It's better to wipe the traces off the face of the earth Richard the Hunchback Monarch Richard the hunchback monarch Was the last Plantagenet king. He was deformed, a devil's disciple His spine was twisted with scoliosis. When his brother Edward died He was appointed protector of his nephews Assuming the reins of power. Two little boys, the Princes in the Tower, Disappeared soon after, spirited into the air Challenged by Henry Tudor, Richard was killed at Bosworth in 1485. Two of the wounds on the skull would have been fatal. There were slashes to the face and the side of the head. There were 'humiliation' injuries, A pelvic wound from an upward thrust of a weapon, Through the buttock. He was given a hurried burial Under the church of Greyfriars in the middle of Leicester. His arms were crossed on his body He was buried with his wrists still tied Greyfriars church was wrecked by the Reformation And after, for centuries, the King Lay in the earth, like any old pile of bones Till resurrected by excited archaeologists His diet was high status Freshwater fish, swan, crane Heron, wine and roundworm parasites His bones were placed in a lead lined ossuary Within a coffin made from English oak, And moved to Leicester Cathedral The great and the good attended his funeral mass In Norway twentyfive medieval kings Are buried in unmarked graves around the country. Harald Hardrada, was buried anonymously Under what is today a public road. Archaeologist at St Nicholas East Kirk in Aberdeen Found the skeletons of 2,000 Aberdonians They were stored in cardboard boxes Syphilis was discovered with TB and osteoarthritis. Blunt force trauma to the head was found In at least four cases. They'll be housed below the floor of the renovated kirk In a mass grave, of course No fancy funeral and masses will be said for them Is it a Bare -Faced Lie? A blind fish hangs in the scales Its catcher is wearing a mask from a Greek tragedy He is standing in front of an IKEA flat pack house With a blood red window Who dreamed him? What lies behind the Mask? Why does the eyeless fish have a split tongue? The Arctic Fox Sea shanty tales told on a sailor's fiddle Of an old adventure, seeking the vanished men Of the Franklin expedition, by bold jack tars For two years caught in the Arctic ice The hull of the boat was gript by frozen pincers Later, thawed out, the tiny ship swept south, Found traces of the missing Franklin expedition. And all the while, rigging was strung with icicles The crew sat carving scrimshaw on seal skulls And like the creature of the small ship's name They fed on birds, seal pups, and carcasses Left behind by the deep furred polar bear Three men were left in the cold embrace of the ice The engineer, his assistant, and the steward In that harsh land, where pity has no place Traditional Sea Shanty: It's a damn tough life full of toil and strife We seamen undergo. And we don't give a damn when the day is done How hard the winds did blow. We're homeward bound from the Arctic ground With a good ship, taut and free And we won't give a damn when we drink our rum When we step to land from sea Skeletons Threatening coral reefs is ocean acidification It is harder now for corals to build their skeletons. Which stretch through fathoms up towards the light, Acidifaction weakens their density Makes them brittle as elderly human bones Now they are vulnerable from storms, currents, waves The bite and bore of parasites all harming Carbon dioxide rising in the air From fossil fuels, causing ocean warming, The corals bleach, like ghostly presences In Scottish deep sea waters Those vital habitats of sharks, crabs, eels A thousand years a coral bush can live They thrive on oil and gas platforms offshore But will prosperity enjoy these fragile reefs Their deep sea mysteries, their citizens That shelter in their feathery, secret selves? I am Singing a Song to the Moon I am singing a song to the moon The mistress of tide and ocean The ruler of night and owl She moves with a stately motion I am singing a song to the moon The goddess of Druid devotion The healer of sleep and death Who amplifies lovers' emotion I am singing a song to the moon High priestess of spell and potion Lady Luna, the werewolves' guide The lunatics' stellar portion I am singing a song to the moon The mistress of tide and ocean Ghost ship of the silver light Who glides with a stately motion