Nineteen Eighty Five

Nineteen Eighty Five

Nineteen eighty five,

The year of the rich.

Tory parliamentary hive!

These dictators democracy fix.

Minority government

The peoples assets strip.

The poor lose the argument,

Their unions forced to trip,

Money speaks louder

Buys lawyers decrees.

Rich getting richer

Live in freedom and ease.

Homeless poor are harassed

Sleep in boxes and bedsits,

Losing their freedom

Their jobs are stolen

For shareholders profits.

Rich robbers plunder our country

Can you not see?

In this land of the free.

World arms dealers

Their profits increase

Speculating war will not cease.

Send weapons not water

For African drought,

Grain barons give no quarter

Saying “nought for nought”

So store wheat for ever

Until prices rise.

People starve in front of their eyes.

When will they wake up?

Put people first

So love and aid be “Live”

Always, not just in Nineteen Eighty Five.

Nineteen Eighty Six

Now it is Nineteen Eighty Six

The “International Year of Peace”

The year we hope all war will cease.

The year world leaders meet as friends

So that the nuclear nightmare ends.

With reconciliation and cooperation

Between people of every nation

Let us all begin to share, and care

For all people everywhere

In our one small world, in

Nineteen Eighty Six

April 1986

The Gulf            October 1990

Here we go again

Contention, quarrelling

Like children over toys,

Greedy governments and oil.

Weapons dished out to the boys

Transported then to foreign soil.

Prepare to die

Same old thing

Same old lie.

Western pressure Arabian abyss.

Rambo prescence on Arab land,

Indigenous population to control

Same old fallacious words,

Democracy, freedom,

Freedom for wealthy nations

To exploit and devide.

The Gulf a whirlpool of deceit

Where wealthy still the poor deride

War cannot adjudicate

War only proves, Might is Right

The theory perpetuated

By the weapon trade

The United Nations has a role

World arbitrator grade,

Disputes must be settled there

In conference not combat.

The Gulf then happiness shall give

A homeland for the Palestinians

A peaceful solution

So all may live.

Apathy

Thought and action,

Too much trouble.

Better not burst

Comforts bubble.

Let television soap

Mind and body dope.

A sinister ploy

For reality a decoy.

Yawn through life,

Never see strife.

Blinkered, easier blind

To the injustices of mankind.

With brain asleep

Evil status quo keep.

Don’t care and don’t knows,

So anything goes.

Line of least resistance,

Unruffled, smug existence.

December 1987

Technology

People machines

Computer controlled.

Programmed life

Autocratically cajoled.

Names on national data file

Authoritarian details compile.

Poll tax numbered

While citizens slumbered.

Why, when, where, who,

Census details, whole life through.

Government injunctions rife, all

Media opposition stifled

Taxes wasted on litigation

Robs the poor of the nation.

So compassion whittled away

By materialist greed today.

Selfish yuppies fail to see

Cardboard box homeless, in their vicinity.

Criteria, a profit at all cost,

Even though the nations soul is lost

Unlike computers, people can think,

Are dismayed to see worthwhile values shrink.

Oh! There is so much to change,

A caring, humane world to arrange.

 January 1988

Flotation

Flotation, steals from the nation.

Profit for the few.

Private monopolies gain.

But who owns the rain?

Shareholders in greed,

Forget others need.

Minerals God given.

So, who owns the rain?

Not only pollution

Runs down the drain,

But compassion and caring.

We all own the rain.

November 1988

Pub Poets

Just a little booze

Can inspire a bar muse.

Tankard of beer drinker

Becomes Rodins thinker.

   Pub poets,

Literary euphoria,

Happy and gloria.

Many a glass of ale

Could tell a fine tale,

Thoughts deep and fine

Philosophy in a glass of wine.

   Pub poets,

Literary euphoria,

Happy and gloria.

Plans for better days to come,

Sealed in glasses of gin and rum.

Ideas that sparkle with champagne,

Often fizzle out homewards in the rain.

   Pub poets,

Literary euphoria,

Happy and gloria.

Profoundest of all a glass of stout,

Injustice, poverty, homelessness out.

Many teetotallers drink Kaliber,

These imbibers world harmony prefer.

   Pub poets,

Literary euphoria,

Happy and gloria.

                 March 1989

JANUARY MORNING

The sea is calm,

Not a breath of wind,

Grey mist everywhere.

In the channel

Ghostly ships pass by

With woeful sounds.

Shrimp gatherers and lugworm diggers

Are vaguely seen, like spirits,

On the damp, misty shore.

Sounds drift in the air,

Muffled, as if with cotton wool.

On the cliff, hazy figures

With dogs walk by.

Everything is dreamlike,

And oh, so peaceful.

Come out of the mist into reality.

The world is not peaceful,

Unless we, the people, make it so.

There is shopping to do,

And it is nearly lunchtime.

QUALITY OF LIFE

Sunrise and birdsong

Quiet starlit night

Laughter, with friends along

Meditation, birds in flight

Fresh sweet air to breathe

Smell of new mown hay

Woodland, blossoms, butterflies wreathe

Warm sunshine, colours gay

Early morning dew on grass

Scent of garden flowers in bloom

Mountains and lakes still like glass

Books to read in silent room

Gentle murmur of honey bees

Winding footpath, country lane

Ancient grandeur of forest trees

Flora and fauna habitat contain

Rain on parched earth

Natures green revolution,

Beautiful music, classical rebirth

Love and peace in profusion

No profit here, non sought

The quality of life cannot be bought

September 1989

THE FALL

Autumn of capitalism

Materialism, greed

Mans inhumanity to man

Fall brown leaves

Obscene nightmare violence

Nuclear weapon threat

In ghostly autumn mist

Multi million arms dealers

Need create an enemy spectre

Skeleton trees, starkly bare

Hung with frosty spiders webs

Plots to catch more than a fly

Burn leaves, destroy

Misunderstanding, Misconception

Hatred deliberately spread

Smoke rising, spirits too

Looking forward to spring

Love and co-operation

A green word

A World without war

November 1984

THE POLITICIAN

What are you doing to our World

You with the power  to corrupt

You have poisoned men’s minds

With mass sedition so cunning

They do not even know they are traitors to humanity

Television and radio at your beck and call

You spread unending lies and propaganda

Manipulating newspapers to spawn hatred

And contempt for life

You got your power through devious ways and some men’s votes, this small percentage

This undemocratic “democracy”

Does not give you the right to play “God”

Yet you usurp by coercion, the power of life and death

For billions of people, the quality of their life

The destruction of the World

This is not your mandate, your orbit is not “celestial”

Seeking not the ways of peace, but spreading enmity and strife

Your judgement is marred by greed and avarice

By hatred and revenge, Take heed

As with all men, your decisions are imperfect, not

Divine.

June 1980

Freedom

You Talk of freedom, a “slogan”, without thinking

You, with your small minds

And large bank balances.

What can you possibly know about the poor?

Their freedom! Third-world, third class life,

Freedom to starve without your aid.

Where is this freedom?

In mansions away from the crowd, for you,

What do you know about the masses?

Their second-class freedom in an affluent society!

How can you judge what is best for them?

People, to make money for your freedom,

In an industrial wilderness,

Living in a concrete jungle.

Profits made to be hoarded away in distant lands, for you!

Freedom for the few, while the many have freedom denied trade unions, unless they are toothless lions, government tamed sheep.

You everlastingly talk of “freedom”

Where is the freedom for the slum-dwellers?

How much freedom has the man on the dole?

What freedom of spirit for people

Condemned to spend their lives

Creating death-weapons in order to live?

The real freedom is sharing,

With people everywhere,

The natural wealth and beauty of the world,

Caring for all men, for the welfare of all people,

With joy and peace and love.