Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

The bleak hope

Old Night still holds sway

Dominating the heavens

Clouds keep light at bay

And the coldest months await.

Yet the tide turns here

Not one more day

Does the darkness triumph

Its slow retreat assured.

Step by step

Day by day

Archangels of light

Push against dark forces

Who slowly yield

In Nature’s eternal,

Celestial,

Dance of balance.

The war for the heavens

Has ended not

Battle after battle

Awaits the forces of nature

And many of mankind

Will still tremble and cling

In the mists of Old Night.

But for those left standing

Spring’s sweet dawn awaits

Thrice in mirth

For the embattled and the worn,

And I will be at the van

Bright standard in one hand

And sword of sunfury in the other

Saying; ‘Darkness,

Though your place

Be not ever truly vanquished

In the balance of all-things

And my deep respect you have,

Your time has come this year

And you must take your place

In the depths of eternity!’

At last, the dark days

Are ending!

Come transcendent light

And do for our souls

What we may not ourselves do!

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Refugee

Seven hundred thousand refugee

Sail across the distant sea

I want dem come for company

For my own land, me refugee

No passport many years

No job twenty years

No home a lifetime

Come and join me refugee

In my own country.

Dis your country too

What done to you, by colony

Accept dis apology

Come settle, make me glad with glee

My new friend, no more a refugee.

London Syndrome

London you have torn me in two

An abusive lover, indifferent to my pain

But I still want you.

I hate the pace you set on life

The rushing, anonymous crowds

But I want their recognition.

You lock me out of your plazas

And price me out of the culture I helped create

But I still come knockin’.

 

What are you promising, exactly?

Anything at all? Or nothing.

For I never found my way

Along your busy streets

You never sheltered me or held me

In your deep bosom.

 

Our traumatic bond, London

It is all I have known, London

I am afraid to go, London

But I am more afraid to stay.

 

So fuck you, London. We’re finished!

 

(But you’ll take me back if I wanna come home right?)

To the depths

To the depths I went

Always brand in fist

To find what made these paths

I thought I freely trod

 

What illusions waited there

To upturn the ship of tranquillity

What machine within worked

To hide the shadows

What lies came in dreams

To veil the truth

 

And the soul’s guardian, to protect me

Stayed loyal to false master

When it should to my ambition alone cleave

And my song venerate

 

An ocean lays at my heart

It is still or stormy

Of its own wild freedom

But now I can sail it

For I am bound

To the friends of true depth

Who understand what I truly am

 

The illusions in me, games of the mind

Shocked for years, shaken in fear

Of harsh words, of the street, of night

The evidence now piles against it

I have earned my honours

In the heart of the woods

And was always of bliss

And was always of bliss

Gentleness is I, peace is I

Merriness is I, truthseeker am I

The Dreamland

We all ran away to the verdant dreamland

To put the grey juggernaut to our backs

And pitched up our yurts in the pleasant spring wind

Away from the sick sea of cars and people.

We gathered in unity around the may-pole

To forget the days trapped in comfortable boxes

And spoke of the future we would forge

Away from the dreamless, cynical, money machine
 

Something followed us along the path of our quest

Walking with slow, deliberate strides

Many months, weeks and days behind

Faceless and without beauty it came.

One night, as we slept, it slipped beside us

Like a terrible incubus, and when we woke

It was rattling there again, inside.
 

We all ran away to the verdant dreamland

But the concrete blocks followed us there

And the howls of abuse followed us there

And the scars in our souls followed us there.