quote
| - “Oh how I’ve suffered” – listen to yer man
So has every mother’s son;
So does every manjack of us
Hour into hour.
Your vale of tears is an endless boil
Eating from life’s blind sore.
Shuddering grief on the pillow-fright,
Lonely woe.
Remorse is a mastiff bared to bite,
“Get him boy!”
His master, the keeper of sleepless nights
Makes torture slow.
Boredom wears out the motorway,
Cruising slow,
Chalking up miles of murdered day
Pursuing joy.
The dried-up brain is going grey
And nothing grows.
Nobody cries in the narrow grave –
The grief’s behind.
And surgeons armed with their degrees
Relieve with knives.
But who can carry flowers to the mind? (en)
- And the children that are in thee –
Splash VAMPIRES on your banners to re-shock us.
Thalidomides of childhood.
Shout it from the house-tops daily,
Bansheeing nightmares end.
Lead the weak from out the murdering maze
Into the sun of all-forgiving love.
Jerusalem’s daughters rise from stricken bedsides,
From gravesides, in a daze of calm resolve,
With unaccusing light in phoenix eyes –
The children that are in thee.
But “Peace” itself lacks punch like watery prayers.
Try “Tolerance,” “Humanity,” say “Pity,”
Say “Wholesome,” “Big,” “Courageous” –
Just demand it!
No looking back except to strengthen fervour.
The future’s only forward,
Don’t stop now!
Warning note to murder’s sick machine –
We give no warning. (en)
- Someone lifted the tar barrel top
Slowly, nervously.
There it curled, thick as our wrists.
We, vulnerably barefoot in the river.
It glided quickly away,
McElroy went murdering in with the graip –
Stabbed, it kept going, wounds red.
Seemed to face its attackers,
Fight back.
The graip was doing its work;
Bridge, brae watching.
Would the creature never give up?
Would nausea get us first?
Was it so thrilling?
Mercy told us to finish the job;
Battered its head against the bridge,
The longest eel we’d ever seen –
Finally stretched dead. (en)
|