Uncle Nick

This poem is in response to a glorious article: A school in Portland, Oregon, has granted approval to a local Satanic Temple’s request to set up an after-school programme for pupils.
Children at Sacramento Elementary School, which educates pupils aged between 5 and 10, will have the opportunity to attend the Satanic club’s inaugural meeting on October 19.
Satanic Temple spokesman Finn Rezz told Oregon Live the club would focus on “on science and rational thinking,” promoting “benevolence and empathy for everybody” – while providing an alternative voice to the Bible-centred “Good News Club”.
“Across the nation, parents are concerned about encroachments by proselytizing evangelicals in their public schools, and are eager to establish the presence of a contrasting voice that helps children to understand that one doesn’t need to submit to superstition in order to be a good person.’ Apart from believing in Satan, that is.

Uncle Nick

Hello children,

Come right in..

There’s no need to be shy.

Here’s  your new buddy, Uncle Nick

He’s here to tell you why

we need a new America

that’s rid of lies and stories

so we can tell it as it is;

just like those English Tories.

 

What is it, Myleen? What is wrong?

You’re scared of how he looks?

Is it his face? I know it’s red..

When weather’s hot he cooks!

 

Is it his hair? I know it’s strange, but..

Oh. You don’t like horns?

Well, listen Myleen, in this club,

We live in our own way..

whatever shape or shade we are..

it’s cool with us, ok?

 

Just because a guy has horns,

it doesn’t mean he’s bad.

Yes, I’m sure it’s what your parents said,

but you go tell your Dad,

That he is just plumb crazy

if he really does believe

in all that Good and Badness stuff.

We’ll teach you to be free!

 

His hands are small, I do agree,

But have you seen his claws?

They’re long and gold and sharp and cruel

They’ll teach you how to deal with life..

Much better than your school.

 

We’re on your side, you little guys,

We’ll see you get your due.

Just come and sit

by Uncle Nick

and he will see you through.

 

 

 

Written on Water

The first set of Lyrics for the Footprint project, the story of Bath Abbey, written! A good day! (Thank you, Keats, for the inspiration as to how to tell the story of an Abbey that rose and fell so many times)

Written on water
Our life is …
Streaming
Away
As we write..

Written on water
Our life is …
Streaming
Away
As we write..

Written on water
Our life is …
Streaming
Away
As we write..

All that we do
That we are
Lost as
The bubbles
Take flight..

Written on water
Our life is …
Streaming
Away
As we write..

As time
Flows onward
All traces
Seem lost,
Seem washed
Away….

But all we love
All
we long for
Believe in
Day by day..

Colours
The water
For ever,
Never
To vanish
Away..

The Monk’s Song

At least this is to some extent cheerful! Luckily for me, writing the lyrics for the Footprint project, now called Written on Water, there was a point in time when the monks in the Abbey fell into dissolute and lewd behaviour..this song wrote itself!

MONKS’ SONG

I am a jolly monk
and I live in a monastery
I have a fine belly
I live a fine life
and no one is holier than me!

I eat the fattest meat

and I drink all the reddest wine
while out in the street
they have nothing to eat
but no one is holier than I!

I sleep in a feather bed
and I sit by a roaring fire
while the children freeze
in the icy breeze
but no one is holier than I!

I am a jolly monk
and I live in a monastery
I have a fine belly
I live a fine life
and no one is holier than me!

De Profundis

Is this the end of it all?
Is the darkness encroaching on the light,
seeping into the warm corners of the room,
drowning the bright
woven colours of the rug
in ink?
Lapping at the sturdy feet of the bed,
Pooling around the empty cradle?

Are we done, Homo Sapiens?
Do we think?

I wake in the middle of the night
my mind full of war and pain
and the ceaseless movement of innumerable feet,
Of anger and corruption and greed
Of the March of the Cyborgs
Of sliding icebergs and drowning cities
And I wondered why Gaia hasn’t shrugged us off sooner.

What to do?

I don’t think the answer is heroic at all ..
I think I have already written it without realising.

Look up
Above your head
In that black sky
Can you see light?
Small points of light
Up in the sky?
You’ll see
That darkness isn’t dark at all
But full of light
All full of light..

I think it is dark. Very dark.
But what suddenly seems certain to me is that all we can do
is to switch up the light within our selves
no matter how dim and shaky it is,
Create the beauty we create
Love the people we love.

And let the world go its way.

Species Extinction

I have been in a pretty bleak place for some time now, and I haven’t been putting poems up on the blog, partly because I was tired of the sound of my own voice, and thought everyone else might be too, and partly because what I was writing was so dark. But.. here are a few of them..

You see it every time you switch on the box.
A whole species;
Evolution’s jewel in the crown,
in meltdown

Vast herds, wheeling and dodging this way and that
Compass lost,trying to force a way to freedom as their habitat
shrinks
into a noose.

Scrabbling, fighting, hoarding what little sustenance there is..

The strongest members of the tribe trampling the old, the young, the sick.

No longer saving anyone but themselves.

The Great Extinction.

What will he think,
The last Homo Sapiens,
As he gazes out over the healing flood?