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on the train
It makes me sad that we have to do thisPick up a trayTake off our coatsPlace them with our bagsWatch them being watchedAs they go through a scannerWe’re just catching the 10:10hAcross the plainThrough orange and olive grovesPassing lemon trees glintingIn the low winter sun breaking over the sierrasOnce the only barrier between Murcia and →
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on his high horse
Here’s a man high on a horseA horse on a hillA hill over an estuaryAn estuary to the North SeaThe North Sea stretching to BelgiumBelgium’s Flanders FieldsTo Flanders Fields he sent the finest young menThe finest young men of a generationA generation decimatedDecimated in a mechanical warA mechanical war overseen by a man high on →
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It is not what it is
What is this cynical acceptanceOf injusticeof discrimnationof iniquityof downright wrong?Powerlessness? Complacency? World weariness?I’m all right, Jackness?Question. Challenge. Confront.It is not what it is.It does not have to be what it is.~n.b. “Music is the weapon” (Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti), or at least, not the least of them. CLP 24/11/2025 →
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on time
I’ve pondered the matter of lifeLimited as it must beIs there life on Saturn’s moons?How would we know?Evidence of life this far outComes not from twitching organismsNot from a pulseNo morse like messageG, A, F (low), F (high), CIt comes from the decaying remainsA trail of decompositionEmitted from the arse of EnceladusA constant outpouring of →
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on Earth
by force of armsthey rose above otherscleared the forestsdrained the fensenclosed the landtilled the soilharvested graintamed and propagated the freehunted down the wildroamed the planetcapitalised slaverywiped the surface for economyoceans became their sewerthe air filled with machineryevery inch of land fencedmarked out on mapsdefined their own legalityuntil their children turnedquestioned historywanted more than bread and →
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in Memphis (2022) / on Ukraine
We’re at a bus stopOn Elvis Presley BoulevardWe’ve been to checkThe King’s still deadAnd waiting thereIn Tennessee’s afternoon heatWe talk of EuropeWhat we’ve shared of itThe moral question?For a young Polish man from EnglandOn holiday with his fatherThere is no doubtI’d be going home to fightWith no thought of checking outHeroic resistanceRemember The AlamoThe Red →
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on Ukraine
It was a week after the Bataclan battleYoung people from Paris in EvreuxEscaping the shock waves of griefTalking of the end of the worldRealising the conversation was about the end of humanityIdentifying that nature will persistKeeping faith that this Blue Planet will keep spinningUnderstanding that it is us who will passLeaving our stainIn fossilised citiesRailway →
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on human rights
It is the first human rightVital, fragile, briefThe right to lifeWhich, quick or slow, must endIn a car crash, flood,Obscene bomb attack at a caféA dog bite, disease, famineOr in the night, when asleepPray that it might be soA happy deathShould be the second of our rights~ CLP 06/07/2025 →
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Ghazal for Gaza
Accursed gates forced open eighty years agoMy mother still a child, eighty years agoWhat happened there must not be forgottenEven fire could not cleanse the earth, eighty years agoListen to the gnashing and grinding of teethAt prising apart Hell’s jaws, eighty years agoOh Israel, how could a nation born from thisLet one man lead you →
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on Ukraine
it’s still a dreamof some young men to followto fight in a waron the side of rightto leave their homesetting off in hopethat they’ll add weightto counter evil’s mightI met one such young manseeking purposeful lifealthough he had a childwith his teenage wifeold England’s dulland work’s a borethere’s nothing on TVand the winter’s coldlong dark →
Journey of Words 