Concrete

This is what happens to our concrete roses. After the lights are out and the stage furniture is pushed aside ready for the next act.

When the bulldozers are done with the broken petal dreams he dared to show us. When the gun smoke clears and the unashamed fade into the shadows.

We lament.

Because our hearts are broken but deep down we know this place is of steel and bone and sharp edges, a flower could have never survived not even one that pushed its way through the cracks in the street.

This is what happens when the young perish at the hands of heartless men, our memories remain but the dream dies forever.         

The Running of the Fools

One day Dave started running. He began in his home town and before he knew it he’d covered the whole county, he crossed boarders and ran up mountains and over lakes and streams, through forests and deserts and beyond the oceans.

He saw many beautiful things, all that nature and man had to offer, so much culture and art and great feats of engineering and he marvelled at the strength and complexity of the human spirit.

Eventually it occurred to him; he never quite knew why he was running. So he began to search the reason within himself. At the point of his deepest contemplation he realised that he was not alone.

There were others such as himself, thousands, so many that often he was being carried along by the crowd. These were the best and the brightest, educators and doctors, great men of religion and science, politicians, industrialists and entrepreneurs, all running in the same direction.

So he called out loud to them and asked; what are we running from?

‘Terrorism,’ screamed one.

‘Religious persecution,’ came another.

‘Disease,’ said a third.

‘Racism,’ cried some.

‘Sexism,’ another group.

‘Climate change,’

As such a great cacophony of fear filled the air, and arguments broke out on who’s was worse, each person producing stats and facts that hurt Dave’s brain.

And when all had had their say Dave realised something; it was evident they were all correct, they all made valid points, but the things they were talking about could not be outdone in a race, no matter how fast they ran these things would always be there in close pursuit.

Eventually it came to him, they were running from the people these atrocious things affected most. The poor and the afflicted. People whose crops had failed because of drought or floods, refugees from wars that had lost their homes, victims of persecution from some of the very people he was running with.

In despair he began question himself, Why him? Why could he run? Is it because he had top of the line sneakers, a fancy watch and a phone that told him where to go? 

There were no answers.

Running became fatiguing, his feet began to blister, sweat burnt his eyes and the realisation weighed heavily on him threatening to crush his soul. 

All he had to do was stop, turn around and face his own humanity, but instead he kept on running and so did they all.  

Strobe Light Hand Signals

I saw her dance, hands over her head; she never looked more of an angel. We’d all agreed to meet here at this run down warehouse at the edge of town because there was nowhere else to be.

The DJ turned the table like a pro but he was just some kid who’d spent to much time growing up alone while his parents threw money at him to compensate.

She swayed, such as a charmed snake, to the music and my heart thumped against my chest. So I asked to own one of those dances and she said sure, her friend had given the night up because someone else was wearing the same apparels and she didn’t want to be alone.

We danced more than once and drank cheap cider in the cigarette smoke cause back then everyone smoked and no one gave a shit.

The sun came up on a holy day before we’d had a chance, so I stole her to a quiet place and read poetry on her skin, she laughed, I knew then the magic had done its work.

Later that day our souls did meet in the middle of the town and with one effervescent kiss it was as if there was no one else around. 

The Brexit Vote

After the shock has dissipated people will realise these things:

There is no real advantage to leaving Europe, sovereignty in a connected world is only a word and that even the democracy we claim to live by is deeply flawed.

My vision for the future is one where people don't walk around with their hands in their pockets.

One of great realisation, that money and the lines on a map are simply lies told to us to hold us back and give us someone else to blame for the world’s problems, to make us feel better about the little we have.

It’s a world where we reach out to each other because we see each other not as citizens of divided countries but as a Human nation.

And why should we not be so ambitious? After all we tamed the oceans and the skies and even put a man on the moon. Yet we fail to conquer the beast inside of us all, the fear someone else will take what is ours.

And in its purest form this is what we see now by voting to leave Europe. The mistaken belief that you are special or privileged simply because of the happy accident that is the geographical area in which you were born.

This is a step back from a path that could deliver true glory for our species, a failure that our generation is now responsible for and that history will remember us by.

My hope is for a future where people reach out to each other, out of Love and compassion and live lives that are outwardly focused, on that day we will call ourselves civilised.

Then the Wild Cherries

I saw her reflection on a glass table, as I cut white stripes with a razor sharp credit card. She was a falling petal making way for the wild cherries and she moved among the young and the beautiful like she belonged.  

I handed her the rolled up ten I got on the island and said my name so she wouldn’t forget. She looked at me and I was rebuilt from the root. And when she spoke it felt good to be a man because I was her man.

She said she wanted good times and bad mistakes, I said she came to the right party.

In the strange mist of dancing smokers we got high. A dreamer’s high fueled by drugs and music and I imagined we were in Love, even wished it would never end. But I was wishing on a falling petal and she would hit the ground and break both our reckless souls with her momentary brilliance.       

Spring

It wasn't the smoothest ride but they were the happiest they’d ever been. 

The type of happy that’s tangible, real, a pronounced state of being. 

The tires crackled under the bright sunlight and the engine hummed along the coast. 

Spring had sprung with the undeniable beauty of rebirth. 

They had found love, the type of love that lasted a lifetime, here in this blossoming place and they would stop only to make love in the sand like it was their very first time.

Here and now nothing mattered; the dead-end jobs, the disappointments, the pain, the insecurities, drifted away in this place. They were free.   

There’s a pool where I grew up

There’s a pool where I grew up. No one knows how deep it is, the waters are so black you can’t see the bottom and the mud is so thick anything lost in it would never be found.

The kids there live in this pool their feet sinking in the mud, and they laugh and joke because they’re together and play silly games. But the mud, it keeps them in there, holding them down, and everything is in the mud. The neglecting parents, the poor education, the angry policemen, the corrupt officials, drugs, alcohol, promises, the potential employer who has no faith in them because they grew up in this mud. They’re all there holding them down, part of the mire.

And the kids they can see the good things all around them, they can see the fields of wildflowers that offer freedom, they look to the stars, try as they may they can never reach them.

Somehow this is their fault; this is their choice to be here, but they were born in this mud, they were born in this skin, they were born in this dark water.

And what do you think happens when one of these kids wades ashore, to join the civilised. There is no pat on the back, no “Well done,” because he’s still covered in mud, if anything “they” would do all in their power to push him back into those waters and hope he disappears never to be seen again.

There is a pool where I grew up and there are thousands of us yet still those are the loneliest waters you’ll ever find.