Bloody death and Betrayal

The blood sings,
while in a distant place
a drum calls forth it’s dead.
Out on the hillside - all is still.

“Upwind man, always up” the Ghillie cries.
The eagles soar to dizzy heights above us,
on the updraught, waiting for the drop.
eager for the kill.

Look! Pitted antlers, etching
throat exposed,caution like a mantle;
we crouch, guns primed, like fallen.
eagles, exultant in ‘the chase’.

The canvas of the moor turns red;
the brutal decadence of violent death
rears like bile spilled. Forces dark,
malevolent, sing out to greet his passing.

This glen has seen it all before as
kith and kin raised high the claymore;
swung it wide in brutal swings
to murder.....and for what?

The drum beats true and clear
while others spill the quafe
of blood’s betrayal in this place.
I ‘keen’ my loss for beauty rich and free;
for decadence and death are all I smell.

Songs of life and liberty float downward
to the lifeless eyes of the dead beneath.
Those who'd dreamed of honour
and glory in this cursed glen, Glencoe.

Dante's Glade

The dappled landscape dips - like a graceful teapot,
pouring logs down devastated hills;
sticks of licorice bound for hell.

This is no silent dignity of death!
Tortured limbs split, bruise,
and crack on surface rocks
while shrieking splinters
scatter like stormy bees.

Death glazed eyes of creatures here,
reflect a mindless, wantan desecration.
Habitat torn, where forest giants sway like
ladder -bridges to the sky while,
on the gorest floor,the night sky weeps

Decadence

madeinchina.com


Is this a word for decadence

where babies die a lingering death

fed poison in the food of nourishment?

Is this a word of decadence

where the vanity of bulldozer

eliminates the home of a lifetime

to show the dazzling glitter of a

culture in frenzied freefall

to unbrindled capitalism?



In the birdcage of captivity,
in the cube of Tienaman;
fresh from the sewers
like lemmings, they appear.
shuffling hopeless penguins.

A block away,the diamonds sparkle

in the Beijing Shopping Mall;

country peasants labourers scramble

on the bamboo scaffolding,

like the detrius - expendible

for life tomorrow starts afresh:

morality is absent:

long live Mao who feeds us.

us to economic remodelling

In the birdcage of captivity,
in the cube of Tienaman;
fresh from the sewers
like lemmings, they appear.
shuffling hopeless penguins.

Decadence

Before the florid portico
I watched the gamblers come and go,
While by me on a bench there sat
A female in a faded hat;
A shabby, shrinking, crumpled creature,
Of waxy casino-ward with eyes
Of lost soul seeking paradise.

Then from the Café de la Paix
There shambled forth a waiter fellow,
Clad dingily, down-stooped and grey,
With hollow face, careworn and yellow.
With furtive feet before our seat
He came to a respectful stand,
And bowed, my sorry crone to greet,
Saying: "Princess, I kiss your hand."

She gave him such a gracious smile,
And bade him linger by her side;
So there they talked a little while
Of kingly pomp and country pride;
Of Marquis This and Prince von That,
Of Old Vienna, glamour gay. . . .
Then sad he rose and raised his hat:
Saying: "My tables I must lay."

"Yea, you must go, dear Count," she said,
"For luncheon tables must be laid."
He sighed: from his alpaca jacket
He pressed into her hand a packet,
"Sorry, to-day it's all I'm rich in -
A chicken sandwich from the kitchen."
Then bowed and left her after she
Had thanked him with sweet dignity.

She pushed the package out of sight,
Within her bag and closed it tight;
But by and bye I saw her go
To where thick laurel bushes grow,
And there behind that leafy screen,
Thinking herself by all unseen,
That sandwich! How I saw her grab it,
And gulp it like a starving rabbit!

Thinks I: Is all that talk a bluff -
Their dukes and kings and courtly stuff:
The way she ate, why one would say
She hadn't broken fast all day.

by Robert W. Service - thanks to www.poemhunter.com

Happy days are here again

Poor Dorian. Left in the attic
to fester and decay, unrecognised.
An unlike likeness blistering away
in oils, not blood and bone, while
the flesh escaped downstairs
to toast the Queen.

Old Hieronymus Bosch got it right.
Torture, carnal desire and death
stuffed in a sickly landscape
oozing from the frame.
'The Garden of Earthly Delights'—
No way out. We are what we are.

That’s what he said when he left me:
‘We are what we are.’ Pompous prick.
It was sex and the sixties that bound us.
The good old days.

My portrait doesn’t work, doesn’t suck the flesh
and smooth the lines. I’m still the same
when I open my eyes,
still in the Garden.

It’s time. Wasn’t that what Whitlam said?
The pills are kicking in, I’m outta here.
We reap what we sow.
Bosch and booze.
I’ll drink to that.




Cathy McCallum