Smiling like the beaming sun
Singeing my skin
With every word,
with every chance
Lying like the rainbow arch
Soaking my soul
with every word,
with every chance:
Crocodile rain.

My life possessed by faith
For green as emerald jewels,
Not jealousy nor rivalry
For red as love,
Not lust nor blood
For blue as freedom,
Not drowning nor distressing
An optimism
In faith possessed by few.

But they’ve got their Voodoo dolls
And their pentagrams
And I’ve only got my heart
Poor,
I don’t possess their language
I can’t justify their laws
Unwanted here, there or anywhere
For they’ve all got policies and dogmas,
doctrines and procedures,
privations and declarations,
divinities and priorities,
They are poison and they are darts:
Voodoo dolls and pentagrams.

You and I were nursery friends.
Playground promises
Woven as daisy chains round my neck
Round and round and round again,
The wheels on the bus
And climbing trees on winter eves
You were like a serpent waiting:
The branch’s diamond blade.
So you and I went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water.
I fell down and broke my crown,
And you came laughing after.
Diseased and sick and palely loitering
Around the Rosie, a pocketful of posies.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Falling down the decades
It’s all we’ve ever known
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
And now…
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down,
Without an empire,
My friend,
You’re fallen like the rest.

The age of chivalry is dead
They say it is démodé,
But the barbarism
Of the blade
Is far from out of date,
Rather it defines
And seems a symbol of the age.
Defence perhaps,
But if we’re all defending,
Who’s on the attack?

And they told me it would be better here,
They have values here they said
(and gowns)
But it seems ivory towers
Are derived from ivory tusks
And the plaque above the enclave door
Was written by the exploited and enslaved,
In blood:
Possessed am I by the means to succeed and triumph
(by any means) uninhibited, unrestrained, undenied
With every “conflict-free” diamond on my side.

Now I’m writing different words
To the ones they wrote before
But it’s just a diary really to tell you how I feel:
Deceived, excluded, hanging
By your jealousy, your lust; you’re drowning
Devoid of please and thank you,
Possessed by blade and blinded motto:
Your prophetic calling,
Decoded apocalypse, the fall
The imperial triumph to rise above the tree,
To walk upon the sea,
A world inverted
Now,
I suppose I’ll worship you,
Creator,
Orator
Because you’ve got a mighty Trident
You could obliterate the sea
Of human flesh
And human misery,
For it seems that everyone would press the button,
Everyone but me.

Featured image by Carl. Available on Flickr under Creative Commons 2.0 licence.