My fake despair

is the shame I’m unable to move

myself to work.

Is the lack of sleep I’m getting in

four walls perched on a hill

that would mock rains.

And for a time.

While I shake dry, combed hair.

shamefully so do I.

My fake despair

doesn’t bother you.

And it shouldn’t.

I am disconnected.

I am an observer.

Useless worrier.

Anxious about my purse

Rather than the balance of survival.

My despair does not deserve the name.

It is born bone idle and fretting.

And my wasted will upsetting

those who have no chances.

My fake despair

should not exist.

But it does.

And I’m sorry.

But I’m aware of it

and that’s something.

My fake despair,

My enemy.

Concerned by the absence of trivial things.

I hope to write you off.

They asked me not to break things, first.

After I deconstructed their careful blockade.

They asked me not to eat them.

And I wouldn’t.

They asked me to have mercy.

Not that they needed to.

Whispers of ‘that man’.

Rang in negative ears.

Him, the naysayer.

Him, the irrepressible.

They pointed at me.

They asked me not to change them.

But I had at least to even the odds.

Break the bonds and

untie Potential.

Invite Belief

back to the fold.

Have a word with Power

just make sure he was on both sides.

When I, Inspiration, struck.

Boredom cowered.

Distraction frowned.

And the playthings of

Idle were sent to their corner.

‘There’s a time and a place’

I said. And, ‘you’ve had your fair share’.

And they asked Inspiration to be gentle.

And he just winked a smile.

The Guardian website today (it was yesterday when I wrote this), covered the story of the Poet Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy, writing a poem about David Beckham. The poem follows:

Achilles, by Carol Ann Duffy

Myth’s river — where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesised, they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls’ sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs…

But when Odysseus came, with an athlete’s build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd’s roar,

And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball…

But then his heel, his heel, his heel…

‘All well and good’, I thought, but it’s a bit unwieldy for me. All those parentheses and mismatched lines. What we need, I thought (and poets can disagree with the Poet Laureate, by the way) is a simple rhyme scheme with more straight forward meaning. So, in the comments of the Guardian post and (now) here, is my poem for David Beckham. I daren’t suggest it will achieve as much notoriety but well…in truth I prefer it:

Our Beckham, not a saint or god
But common man of common birth

Kicked balls on many sodden fields
With such skill none dared doubt his worth

But these thing happen, never cease.
Good fortune or a tragic blow

At home or on fields overseas
Can tackle harshly all heroes

And fringe or not, integral, bound
To squads of like-mind sporting types

His mind sincere, his focus found
On maybe realised dreams of pipes

He’ll not know now, nor strut his boots
On foreign lands where chancers play

A lucky few will score and shoot
Throughout to World Cup final day

But not our Becks, tackled with pain
(Achilles feels it through the years)

Instead he’ll roar support in games
And maybe shed the common tears.

Today a reporter died.

On the front line.

And I know soldiers do,

well it was a journo this time.

Does that make me despicable?

That it grabbed my attention?

See his honourable intention

was to break safe convention.

Report from the front and risk the

fatal shunts of bombs and bullets.

It’s almost too much for me to consider.

And I know that soldiers’ hearts quiver to stop more often,

than that of Rupert’s, which softened my ears.

But it brought it home once again.

The conflict, the wars that never disappear.

The complete waste of it all.

Kids with no two parents to call.

Just the one lucky enough to

be left, not killed, not cleft from

lives with the knives, guns,

small explosive suns that rise to die so quickly

that the day isn’t slow enough

to see the stuff of lives flash past.

To see the shadow it casts on those affected.

A single blast dissecting so many stifled shouts.

When loved ones hear ‘dear Rupert’ is no longer about.

But solace is taken

making what peace there ever can be.

He…did what he thought had to be done.

He. His parent’s son, with children of his own.

He disowned the danger.

Ranged further than my pen dares

In search of news from ground zero.

And to some, that might make him a hero.

But upon me, just a sadness falls.

Because Rupert, spelt anyway you like,

And called in any of the world’s languages.

Into any name that fell the same way.

Speaks to me about horrors,

and asks if we can stop.

Can we…

Make IED: Improvised Explosive Device

Mean IED: It Ended Definitely.

And for once be talking about

the death of a concept.

Than the death of life meaning more people,

without people.

Heard news and wept.

The space between chimes draws me in

The black keys.

That once I thought all was symphonic,

Without subtlety.

Pasting over minor cracks.

If divinity dare exist in this scientists’ playground

of a mind, it does it in melodies.

Cutely poised treble, and

vibrato troubling little but

the air lulled to soothe.

When ascending scales

descend the males spines

and dining femme fatales

Mounting clamour finds,

‘Oh my words’.

It’s the space between the words that

hold these thoughts

caught spider-like.

Dancing on a thread without anchor.

That I only saw once.

It is the gap of peace between troubed

Spikes

In daily lives.

And I’d never noticed before.

That it’s the space between chimes that draws me in.

The Black Keys.

I can’t hear a whale song.

I can’t hear sea tides ride a high tempesta.

I can’t see skies, but for fake wallpaper.

Pasted at an aspect ratio of 4:3 through a disingenuous window.

I hear the repeating of the delete key in flurries.

Worrying the letters that came before with the risk

of their hurrying annulment.

I can hear befuddlement racked in my own grey matter.

Natter of grumbles wanting to write about this and that.

About how I should be sleeping.

And how an alarm beeping would one day be welcomed.

I can hear how I would be beating fleeting woes back

with act after act of fluid linguistic impresario.

And I can hear critics lambasting polysyllabic sprees.

I see nothing, but the words appear ahead of me.

And occasional glances to the fingers just to make

sure of respectable behaviour.

I’m not trusting them enough just yet to allow full reign.

I fall words to space in patches.

Like a test is won with the sum of catches.

A product finalised through batches.

Letters form in-mind to create words

And hear a mind herd them semantically.

Though quite randomly they attract and form phrases.

Some of which may one day make it to pages

worth reading.

While for now this skill just needs seeding.

A little fluidity.

And a  few spare rays of Autumns day’s until fully begun.

Because I can’t hear a whale song.

I can’t hear sea tides ride a high tempesta.

I can’t see skies, but for fake wallpaper.

Pasted at an aspect ratio of 4:3….