Dubai Days manuscript

Nothing Lasts But Love



27th Apr 19
Nothing lasts but love.

Not body, nor the raiment

That veiled its shame.

Not power nor the games

That gained it.

Not forts and walls nor bridges.

Not fame nor fortune.
Not glowing ivory towers,

Nor town houses,

Nor entire cities.

Not even sprawling empires,

Not still yet mountains and continents,

Nor even the stars.

Nothing lasts, nothing stays,
Everything fades, everything goes.

Only love lasts and the lingering afterglow

Of every act done out of love...







On Your Knees



Oct 17


And this once great land

Is ruled by a king who is a wisp now,

His face ashen grey, his hair hoary, his limbs a
ghostly white.


I don't have your gift

For glib rhetoric.

Your artillery-fire delivery

Of lies and facile answers

For the plight of the workers

That you enslave

And watch perishing with a smirk
From the fortress of hijacked power and self-
regard.

Occasionally, the ego expands

And the cracks in the veneer widen

Like the stripes on a tiger being inflated.


We all go home

And watch the world burn

On a screen.



On your knees,

There is panic and peace.

One Last Toss of the Dice



28th Aug 18


I came knocking on heaven’s door
Only to be let into hell.
The tell-tale signs
Of your disregard
Were hard to ignore.
You were my port in the storm
Once upon a long ago,
You heralded new hope
To heal the wounds of before
But hope washed away
As fast as it came,
Dashed upon the rocks
Of my stormy waters.
After all is said and done,
All comes to pass.
One last
Toss
Of the dice.

Orion



19th Nov 18


Even

Seasons.

Solstice.

Orion

Events.

Cement
Man’s

Heaven.

Seven

Kings.

Snakes,

Scorpions.

Sun.

Ort



Mar 17


Take me back to the earth

That gave birth

To all my ways and wonder.

Yonder

Was my beginning and my end.


Pennies upon eye lids

For my smoke-choked thoughts.

Emaciated hope survives on orts

Tossed at the banquet of style over substance.

Troubled minds weave strife

Into the tapestry of sombre life.

Paper Town



Jul 17


In this paper town,

Things are quick to fold
As old rope exchanges hands with new money.

Paper tigers snap at heels of those that were once
there and now are mere gossamer tissue and
shadows.
Widows grieve and work mourning to death,

Letting hope grow old and the hearth grow cold.

And sensitive hearts are bled dry by the paper cuts
of spurn

And diaries and memoires and those that wrote
them, upon the pyre burn

And dreams gather like paper mache pulp
On drains as the rain deluges the town.

Down in the bars,
There are tears sunk into pitchers of beer

As fears overwhelm the senses

And the near and dear
Are buried

And the solicitors and clerks file the paper work
To mark your having being here.

No one cares.

Birth certificates eclipse death ones
Just as the moon and the sun eclipse

And trigger the ancient habits of nature.

The cycles are recycled
And things fade.

And time forgets.
And history books are mere ink on propaganda
page.

Crushed and crumbled by age,
Little aids

Paper town.

A poem in Danish



Papirby


17 juli
I denne papirby,

Ting er hurtige at folde
Som gamle reb udveksler hænder med nye penge.

Papirtigere snap i hælene af dem der engang var
der, og nu er det bare gossamervæv og skygger.

Enker sørger og sørger for døden
Lad håbet blive gammelt, og hjertet bliver koldt.

Og følsomme hjerter blødes tørt af
papirskæringerne
Og dagbøger og memoirer og dem, der skrev dem,
på fyret brænde

Og drømme samles som papir mache pulp
På afløb som regnen sluger byen.

Ned i søjlerne,

Der er tårer nedsænket i ølkande
Som frygt overvældes sanserne

Og den nærmeste og kære

Er begravet

Og advokaterne og kontoristene arkiverer
papirarbejdet
At markere din at være her.

Alle er ligeglade.

Fødselsattester nedbryder døden
Som månens ansigter og solens formørkelse

Og udløse de gamle vaner af naturen.
Cyklerne genanvendes

Og tingene falmer.
Og tiden glemmer.

Og historiebøger er bare blæk på propagandasiden.

Knust og smuldret efter alder,
Lille hjælpemidler

Papirby.





This is a detail from a painting by the Nigerian
abstract expressionist artist Yusuf Seidu Okus.

To learn more about his exhibitions and to purchase
his work, please visit
http://artbyyusufokus.blogspot.com/



Pew

Dec 17


You can deny a man his livelihood and he survives;

But strip him of his hope and he dies

Slowly, soon, thereafter.

The congregation fill the church to the rafters.

Squirming in the pews

As the hypocrisy creeps and flies

From the lectern and something dies
When the facts are vehemently denied

And where the truth once stood

On the burnished wood of the altar.

In the grey weather

That blusters outside,

Kindling is packed

And the struck match is tossed
At the pyre.

We all die a little

As what was pillaged crackles in the fire.

Pills and Potions



Jun 18


A wet smile

Flickers.

A speckle of spice

Peppers the pastry.

This joyful death

By gluttony.
Muttony

Dressed up as lamb.

Addiction,

You are a playmate.

Fate strikes in psycho motions

Handing out ten pills and potions

For every one pain.

Pond



13th Nov 18


You wear those beggars’ rags well,

They quell

Your need to absolve

Your crippling 1st world problems.

You solemnly resolve

To remain
Irrevocably you.

So too the snapping gutter rats.

Suits and hats

And hearts of darkness.

Starkness

Is a very potent truth to tell

And you tell it with gaping mouth
Flapping gums exposed.

It shows your valorous

Nihilism.

Realism was just romanticism

Made a fool of,

And you were shrewd enough
To rule them all.

Big or small in no pond,

You reject all pond life.

Postcards



Mar 17


We send reality a postcard from the dark forests of
our dreams,



People believe what they wish and disregard the
rest, it seems.




Upon our dreams, time encroaches



Upon our flesh, eventually, maggots and
cockroaches.


Our youth unravels and bends.



We all lose our charms in the end.

Purr



Apr 18


Your velitations

Don't phase me.

You're no princess

And you've been in bed with bigger things than a
pea.
Your iniquitous brazen ways

Don't faze me.

Let me be the antipode

To every low standard that you uphold.

Your land is barren.

Nothing there grows.

Your land is dark and distant.
No one to its borders goes.

You can grouse like the mouse you are.

Go pick the cheese from the grate

And make it snappy,

Said the happy cat curled by the fireside.

Eudemonia run your fingers through my fur.

Purr.

I have no care for the curs
In the night

Barking at their own shadows

In distant grubby yards.















Raymond Drake Knows the Truth that the
Truth Speakers are Silenced and the Learned
are Ignorant


May 18



Today we tend to belittle the past

And cast our age as the pinnacle

Of human achievement,

Despite its obvious lackings
And the notion of greater lost civilisations

Hidden in plain view under the oceans

And in megalithic marvels on every continent;

The common man in the West

Complacently lives more princely than many a King
centuries ago.
He foregoes

The brutality and labours of his forefathers and
whatsmore

He enjoys wonders of technology which would
have dazzled the magicians of yore,

Yet the dusty tablets and fusty scripts of Eastern
peoples

Show for those who care to know,

That the Ancients sometimes surpassed us in the
very things which we are prone to boast about.

The Indians lost to the sands of time,

Fantastically lyricise of spaceships faster than the
speed of light

And missiles which are the mother of Hiroshima.

Eldritch Sanskrit scribblings speak

Of aircraft laden with radar and cameras;

The mysterious ‘Mahabharata’ mothered the ‘Iliad’
and fathered the ‘Odyssey’, and it, the ‘Aeneid,’

And they the profound plays of Shakespeare.

The Empress of India

Not only had no stake in this title,

But was barely a British monarch

Her ancestors having come from Prussia.
India

Over many a millennia,

Withstood many a tyrant and watched many an
empire fade

While it quietly married mysticism to the mundane,

Carving into stone and eternity, Man’s umbilic cord
to the Universe incarnating ever upwards,
The soul's transmigration

To perfection,

To nirvana,

To equilibrium

Between Man and his Maker.

These civilizations long vanished

Leaving brandished in stone and script
All that we lost,

All that we knew

And all that we forgot.

And in our erasure,

We are condemned to repeat

The history we know not.

Rejigged



25th Sep 18


Your heart breaks like a dry twig.

Your world order is suddenly rejigged.



Release

Nov 17

Urine trickles.
Overgrown nails.
Soap. Despair.
Success. Epic unfails.
Today ok.
Fond memories.
Sun pours.
Pour tea.
Poor me. Rich me.
It's me.
What is, is is.
Butchered paintings.
Ranting. Raving.
Laughing.
Joy division.
Time for revisions.
Smile, blink, breath.
Butter croissant.
Insouciant.
Door bolt.
Keys need returning.
Stubble. Lock.
I gain, little pain.
Grape and grain.
Bread and wine.
Twisted spine.
Peaceful sleep,

Last night.
Like it is.
Like it was.
Like it's a blessing.
Dressing.
Tortoise shell shades.
Not undermine,
Not upbraid.
Dreams and riddles.
Suddenly, last summer.
Comfortably number.
Slumber
Awake.
The best.
Caressed against a warm breast.
Roads.
Open door.
Light shaft.
Abstracted art.
Chains off.
Gentle peace.
Relief.
Release.











Robots Killing Time on a Sunday Afternoon


Jun 18


We don't know.

Inertia grows.

In the nucleus
Of our being

And the blue speck of dust
In the whirling swirling galaxy

We call Earth,
Seems more than enough.

The emotional disaster

In the restless queues
At the bank

And rage upon the roads

Is accepted
Hell.

Ice ages
From now

When man is extinct,

Our robot overlord successors

Will gawp
At our burger cartons

And selfie sticks

Wandering through the museum of mankind
With a wry smile

As they while away a gloomy Sunday afternoon.

Ruinous



Apr 18


You can reach out and touch my hand

Or try to look me in the face,

But I'm not there.

There's nothing in me moving.

Their war of attrition was proving

Too much to abide.
There's a stillness inside

That can never be reversed.

All the faces and victories you rehearsed

Have burst

Into puffs and plumes of smoke

Dispersed over the dunes

And the ruins of time.




Inspired by Bob Dylan