• driven
• restless
• weary
• sleepless
• rest
• embrace
• watching
• stand fast
• dream at dusk
• unrest

• impetus
• insomnia

driven

Feel envy of the driven
Whose calm one claim disturbs
One cause, single and strong
Insists be wholly given
Up to its sole purpose
With frantic speed headlong
For these when they have striven
‘Though comfort it usurps
Then know where they belong

restless

I woke this morning
I felt a warning
Dark cloud’s are forming
Men uniforming
News is alarming
Ignorance arming


Our lives are gambled
Truth kicked and trampled
Headlines are dangled
Protest is strangled
The future trembles
Armies assemble


Tabloid analysis
Selfish callousness
Brainless malice gives
Thought paralysis
Nations jealous
Find weapon sellers


Earth mined for poison
Metal war toys and
Jobs for the boys the
Board room enjoys but
No! There are choices
Let’s raise our voices


Raise our voices strongly
'Though the way is long
We find relief in action
Shared belief and passion
We can do what we must
We will build love and trust


And our peaceful spirit
Will make murder fear it
All whom war endangers
Speak! And history changes
Let our strength be splendid
Until war is ended

weary

We're weary
We who protest
Who build unrest
Make this request
We need to rest
When will we rest?
When we're arrested
Let's share out the stress
Let our success
Make the load less
Let protesters rest
And let the ease of gentle peace
Every weary hero bless

sleepless

Our weariness still whispers yes
As in our bed pleasingly spread
With sighing silk we press
Sleepless

‘Though night now flows toward its close
Our senses wake and for their sake
The scented candle glows

Oh gods it’s beautiful!
Life’s purpose may be felt
With gliding ardent fingertips
In hands its hallowed warmth be held
Or drawn within to find
The awed and gasping innocence
Of Nature’s reverent minds

The hours we keep in our deep
Enchantment give us leave to live
Outside the need for sleep
Sleepless

Your languid touch awakens such
A lively thrill; it seems to fill
My own fatigue too much

Oh gods it’s wonderful!
And you’re so meshed with me
Our motion makes an incandescent
Mouth opening unity
In this ecstasy bliss
Promises to keep this
Night perfectly
Sleepless

rest

I gave to sleep a heavy hour
And every mental tissue bathed
Naked in its power
Surreal and drifting, rainbow black
Submerged in depthless lidded pools
Spiralling and slack

And when I stood again like crystal
Sharp clear and glittering
Reasoning, bright
Open to clarity
Sleep's rich colours faded in the light

embrace

Day's brilliant light has sunk beneath the sea
And intimate stars alone console the void
Beside night's oceanic edge walks she
Who had her daughterhood by waves destroyed
Replenished grief explodes on tearful rocks
And surges in her barefoot body's core
She stumbles, reckless of the threatening shocks
And drenching lonely violence of this shore
The gentle dark horizon, scarcely seen
Now pacifies  her sigh-exhausted breast
In blending floods, both clashing and serene
In sea and stars her being is expressed
And ‘though adrift on ocean and in space
She’s comforted in Nature’s wide embrace

watching

Alive, the air's moist, moving, immense and solemn, where feathered streakings fly
The breath of a towering pale and fluttering sky
Exhales the soothing change from barren dry

Wild with grateful assent the canopy's jubilant jostling
Gives giddy shelter to small brown squeaking darts of agile wing


The fading afternoon enfolds the windborne leaves
Its greying premature and driven restlessly
Until from above the treetops
Fall the first full raindrops


Sudden, sodden, spattering showers shapes obscure
Spreading softly shallow sheets of spray
Soaked cement shines slippery!
Pelting droplets pouring down
Splashing puddles and pools
People are propelled past, swiftly seeking shelter


The roof’s drumhead beats not for battle but for safe and wakeful peace
Inside, secure, alive, with mind and heart flung wide
Renewing rain will water thought and bring release


Protected calm in growing dark as glass is lashed
Wet-scented air refreshes face and flesh
And at the last, as night and storming mesh
Since Nature does not sleep in her distress
I also watch for her, I watch and will not rest

stand fast

Alone I feel each sense reveal a putrid world's decay
In print, on screen, the hack obscenely chooses words to say
Let wealth destroy all Nature's joy: the news is worse each day
My silence lets the greedy get their stupid worthless way

Open your hand and place it in ours,
Let impotent anger pass
And with your friends find comforting power
Together we'll stand fast!


However few, what we can do our courage will achieve
We cannot but stand up for what we ardently believe
The eleventh hour is struck but our resolve can yet retrieve
A sense of worth for planet earth its children may receive


Reach out your hand, take hold of the time
Leave despair in the past
The power for change is yours and mine
Together we'll stand fast!


We are alive. We will survive, and as Earth's peril grows
So shall our cause which overawes each honest heart that knows
And as we grow we'll overthrow corrupt destructive foes
The outrage of this insane age we will bring to a close!


So close your fist and raise it with ours!
Integrity unsurpassed
Gives us the essence of our power
Together we'll stand fast!

dream at dusk

Like a favourite coat, elderly
Frayed from winters past
His dream is worn:
However, it, ‘though gradually
Greyed (and yet too fast)
Seems reborn
The threads have come apart
And there is none to mend
But although torn
No shred will he discard
But wear until the end
Its warmth forlorn

If everything that is had Beauty's essence
Were this, as once she asked, my perfect world
Dissolved, the ugly struggle with injustice
Duty lulled in victory's omnipresence
Racism extinct, its cruelty hurled
From each infected mind. Its sick disgust its
Fear destroyed . Could Trust all weapons sheathe
Were War a word with no modernity
What would I do, delivered from this strife?
Within her arms acceptance would I breathe
Again the perfume of eternity
And forever kiss the glory of her life


My thoughts have strayed on alien paths to heaven
And sipped Impossibility's thin nectar:
For slow terrestrial steps, afraid to stumble
Without the spring that youth and friends had given
Now convey a sour crumbling spectre
Stalking uneternal realms and humble
The way I follow leads to lengthening shade:
‘Though memory of her sunlight gilds my sky's
Immense heart-lifting sunset; how can it
Not fail and fade? Night will not be delayed
For at the last it’s Death that never dies
Love's beauty but imagined infinite


Before it can annihilate
This sparkling flash of time, efface
The billion colours of existence
Both joy and pain eradicate
Before it stills this restless pace
Death must conquer my resistance
But not a lonely screamed protest
(At least not ‘til the very last)
Allies have I, all alive
Who also strive, and will not rest
Our voices, when the chanting’s passed
Can leave some hope in Time’s archive


We need, and have courageous songs
And laughter past the point of tears
Age can only slow the dance
Of hope that human need prolongs
As with the gathering speed of years
Decay and beauty both advance

unrest

Terra nullius *
Lao Gai
Desapareción 
Etnicko cisenyi 
Umuganda
Endlösung 
Naqba
War of terror on terror

No more! We wont accept this pain. Not ever again!
No more! The injustice is obscene and insane!
Born into hardship or rebels from privilege
As women and men we demand, in every people's language
The liberty of all enslaved, the end of fear, the trust of friends
A world of compassion where peace never ends!


Dissent is the duty of all whose generous heart
Whose love of sharing, and of truth is dismayed
All those who witness aggression and cruelty
Intolerant and blind belief, the violence of poverty
Stand up with courage! Organise!
'Though justice may suffer its cause cannot die!


Praise for the activists ablaze with selfless consuming flames
Burning brighter than the banners they raise!
All whose awareness has taught them to grieve
Know the need to take action for what they believe
Let us be generous, honest and strong
Patient and calm, for the conflict is long


Even the humblest of actions we take
Contributes its good to the future we make
Cruelty's victories will viciously breed
Where silence gives licence to violence and greed


Friend if you choke, too fatigued by the horror of
The hatred that's broken the lives of countless ones we love
Our arm is always here to help you to stand
To take strength and comfort from the clasping of hands
Hands that by sharing their labour extend
Protection and hope to the lives they defend
Until atrocity is only a memory
It’s then, only then that our struggle can end!

* Terra nullius: ‘Empty land’ the white colonisers of Australia didn’t recognise Aborigines as people, an attitude that still resonates in social attitudes and government policies today.

Lao Gai: ‘Reform through labour’ China’s vast system of slave labour camps where millions of people, many of them political prisoners, are forced to work under brutal conditions and endure political indoctrination.

Desapareción: ‘Disappearance’ the abduction, torture and murder of anyone perceived as an opponent of military dictatorship in Latin America.

Etnicko cisenyi: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ during the war in the former Yugoslavia approximately 200,000 civilians were murdered by uniformed racists.

Umuganda: ‘Public Service’ originally this was forced labour on communal projects required by the Belgian overlords of Rwanda. Obscenely, it was used to mobilise Hutu civilians to join in massacring their Tutsi neighbours in 1994.

Endlösung: ‘The Final Solution’ Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate Jewish people casts a long dark shadow through history.  Nakba: ‘Cataclysm’ the occupation of Palestine and the exile of its people.

War On Terror: The United States government, having armed and sponsored brutal regimes and terrorist groups to serve its commercial and geopolitical interests, sought to convince us that war abroad and fascism at home would end rather than extend the carnage it created.

impetus

Existence gifts us with its splendid stimulus
Don’t resist its swift, immense and awe-inspiring impetus
Immeasurably emotive
For magnificence a motive
Or a marvellous injunction
To enact without compunction
The zealousness in all of us!

Vigorous, accelerated, vital, frantic
A hurricane: so not pacific (nor atlantic)
Undestructive all the same
Building beauty brings no blame
Torpidity ’s a stupid shame
Get it done, get in the game
Make the joy gigantic!

In this afternoon of all that is
Who’d stand an idle witness
Shrug mundane catastrophe
Say “it’s too much to ask of me”
And claim some lack of fitness
For the duty to save beauty?

Imbued with honest sense, intensely unreposing
All poisonous and plutocratic power opposing
Surrounded by a sickening
Sad and savage stricken thing
Amplify activity
Contest with creativity
The time is short for dozing!

insomnia

Vivid visions fill the closed eyesight
Thinking's twitches witness night
Endure and drag
Long it lags
But sort of feels alright

The current crawls but strangely swirls unsmooth     
Its minute flow my fever fails to soothe
Alertly lying
Dreams defying
With relentless truth

Making restless sense
Ideas dart. They're quick
Refuse to sink
In abstract seas
And skirting all defense
Like reptile tail flick
Thinking blinks
In blindness sees

Gradual grey: a harbinger of harm   
 Hardly had dark held its charm
But with night crossed
Its softness 's lost
In morning's sharp alarm

Herald of the heat and threat of day 
Dawn's dull insistent gray  
Promises
That, breathless
All will pass away