Panic on a Global Scale (2020)

They say the birds fly South in Winter

To prosperous greens that lay beyond

That stretch of land.

Grass like fingertips to hold their feathers.

Like hands of mothers,

to cradle their young

And protect them from that brittle breeze

That scratches at their peach-fuzz skin.

The birds that fly South in Winter.

Away from hunger; cold; neglect.

Will know nothing but the sweetness of intimacy

As they peck and crow in their flocks.

Creating and nesting in that flourishment of growth.

But how wrong these birds, that fly South in Winter,

Guessed of their salvation.

As the stretch of land had grown vacant.

Bare of all its crops and gold,

With no Summer sun to bask in

And the absence of

Mother Nature

to nurse them to health.

And soon that sunlight had scattered into night,

The remnants of that glorious blue

A thickened black.

And that warming blow of

Mother Nature’s breath

Had turned to whispers.

And screams.

And final words of death.

As the poor little birds

Could not pay their vital debt

In the deserted stretch.

As Monday grew to Thursday

The gaggle had weakened

To all a little more than a dozen.

Once plucked-up hens;

vibrant peacocks;

lilywhite doves;

finches and woodpeckers;

swallows and herons;

glorious eagles;

masterful storks;

hornbills and geese and parrots.

Farmhouse owls  

And seaside seagulls,

and dainty cuckoos

And considerable cranes

Had merely become

Drawn out skin and feathers

Over bones and beaks.

No longer lifted their wings

To slumber in feathered-blankets.

But burrowed heads in plumes.

​

Days had now moulded to weeks;

Hit and battered like metal

In furnaces to change time’s very frame.

Food was no longer plentiful.

Seeds that had once rained down

Were now in drought.

Rations were thinning out

In perfect reflection

Of the greying feathers

That moulted like dying snow.

All the mother-hens had gathered to feed their young

With all that was left

and birds that fly South in Winter

Flocked to the chicks

And pecked out their eyes

(the seeds still untouched laid out on the bereft of life).

As weeks had poured by

That fatal flock had thinned to one.

A small blue Kingfisher,

That had plumped out to a

Roughly the size of a tennis ball.

Fat with the crops of his brothers.

Engorged in their flesh and feathers.

Bulky with the bread of their beaks.

He was rich and cumbersome

In gluttony.

His eyes bigger than his belly.

But

That pluck, little Kingfisher

Was rife with loneliness.

Polluted with solitude.

Plentiful in hysterical fear

Of the empty fields and unrecognisable shadows

That granted him no familiarity,

Or friendship.

Craving the caws and crows of his brothers

And the swift chime of their wings against the wind

As they fly home in Winter.

Do not fear me (2019)

​

As if life could be less about breathing

than living.

A shell of a human being

Exceeded with emotions and ticking memories

playing back on an old camera.

A snapshot of precious moments

Chaotically thrown over and dusted

Like particles breaking in the light.

​

Perhaps a heartbeat lasts a lifetime

Or a second.

Blinked away with spectators

taking centre stage.

Bow for the masses

Or have your talent foiled.

​

Plan ahead each movement

before your death.

Yet still fear the passing

As if you have ended.

But you will take your life until

the sweet  finish,

The bitter  line.

The heavy-handed clocks of time

Will keep you chiming.

​

As if your soul will fade out

Like Spring into a brisk

That will last for eternity.

​

In the midst,

Time will keep you folded

In the crevices, cracks, catacombs

Of nature’s flesh.

​

Hold onto hope as your ribs

envelope your heart.

Caress promise like eyelashes

flutter against the wind.

Drink up destiny like

The ground does the sunlight.

​

Do not think for a second

That your desecration

Means obliteration.

Bleed into the moonlight;

The dancing stars across a milky stretch.

Take thunder and send it through

trees and rivers and mountains;

The neurons and wires

Webbed in your brain

Can do more than death.

​

Turn your skin into embers;

Your bones to timber.

​

Go beyond the beyond.

​

Let the world take you

and it will gift you infinity.

Reach out to the horizon

And touch the everlasting,

And watch as your vitality

flows into the Earth.

​

Be that it may seem

forever

is a corner

But it is a circle

in which you must

take shape.

Little Ship (2019)

Little ship that sails off from shore

To splendid waves, that with buoyancy

set the wooden panels to the air.

Eroded and saturated in salt,

Find stars cast in high shadows.

Little ship that carries secrets;

Treasures stowed away in steepness

fill empty crates to the brim,

Only lit by thin stretches of sunlight

And blanketed in decay.

Little ship riding ribbons of emerald;

Cuts through melted glass

which splinters that timber body.

The sheet that flutters like wings

Takes the vessel through the sheen

And the wind in its mouth.

Little ship kisses soft sea foam

As it dances on the blue,

but will never reach the land

With its breaking banks

That will send it surely

To the bottom of the deep.

Little ship once a bold voyager

With battle bridges and mysteries.

Cascaded vibrant waters;

Fought storms with thunderous intent.

But was weighted down;

Sunk and surrendered to an eternal ruin.

Little ship bound your sailor

To stand with stature like a pole,

hands settled to steer

And send the Seven-Seas ship,

And all its jewels,

To a new world.

Little ship, the arms that pulled ropes

And in a cabin slumbered.

Readied East, West, North, South,

Now lies dormant and broken.

Flesh torn and gnawed by fish

And entrapped in shell and seaweed.

With the treasures lost and found

Polluting the underwater with greed.

There lies two gold coins

Hiding milky-silent eyes in death.

A fist-sized ruby on fleshy tendrils

Where a tongue once lay.

One-hundred consecutive pearls

Delicately denting into cold skin

To leave purple-green rosettes.

​

A Sovereign’s sceptre and rod

Gloriously reflected in daylight

protrudes upwardly.

Shimmering in the scarlet river

A murky cloud arises

from life’s single cavity.

Spirit, and the Cosmos (2018)

Night time awakening.

Where have you left your soul?

Away from the crowds of people

Shifting,

drifting through the streets

Like fish in currents.

Blessed be your lonely heart

Which has found lonesomeness

To be a bitter comfort.

Under the stars where you

Lay to rest

alone again but naturally inspired to dream.

Weep, if needed,

But sleep guaranteed to soften

Your aching bones.

Sway in slumber to the blow

Of nature's breath

So sweet on your weary head and limbs.

Maybe in solitude you'll find a rock

Turned over to hide the world.

But with its face away the tears do

Race into the soil, and there is life.

Life so gentle and calm it has never known

anger or pain,

Even in darkness.

Heartbreak but a distant quake

In the volcanoes under ribs.

Cages to protect and guard

ripening hearts

Not a necessity, but an obscurity.

Sadness a sea never sailed,

The horizon of uncertainty never reached.

The pleasures of such journeys some do need

But others fail to keep,

set underneath the waves by over pulls

dragging and capsizing them beneath.

But rest a shore,

your one body in sand and sky,

Rocks and shells.

So happy to be counting sheep

As you drift into

another land,

Your state of liminality

A gift for

Prosperity and imagination.

​

No matter how alone they say you are

There are petals and leaves,

Evergreen and growing

By your side.

Mountains and cliffs standing tall,

Soldiers of soil and chalk

More friends than the ones that walk.

Lines of trees, their whispers more a sound

Than the ones that talk.

Where is your soul but in the world.

Its circle of vibrancy your whole,

your need,

your all.

Maybe you leave footsteps

that both never follow and

never lead.

But some haven't the need

When the Earth is the gold.

The prosperous love hardly told.

Ever yet more bold than that of human.

Maybe some prefer to stand

hand in hand

With rain and sun

Rather than in the arms of another.

Loneliness is just a chain to some,

But the wings of great flight for the few.

And in that flight you soar and glide,

Glimmering between the sapphire sheen

and radiance.

Dancing in droplets and cascading clouds,

Evermore so proud of that living air

That takes us effortlessly through our lives.

Quickness and beauty.

Elegance and divinity.

In that iridescence

your red energy flows

with all that is the world.

How to Wake a Sleeping Lion (2018)

When dozing in the sunlight,

grass quiet with blowing soft a lion sleeps,

there on that earth so still.

Its mighty chest gently rising,

with beats of heart tuned to slumber,

boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom

-will echo the plains that stretch for eternity.

If you watch that there creature,

so still

so quiet,

Alone in peaceful serenity

You will see no signs of stalking; preying; hunting.

Just beauty in its calmest state alive with unconsciousness,

Golden sheen of sand-coloured fur,

strands of light shimmering and shifting

In the honest breeze.

To wonder How to Wake a Sleeping Lion,

arouse the beast from waking harmony.

You scheme; you devise; you conjure up plans of

battle,

violence

and gore,

So you can delight in slaying the ruler of the natural world.

Like the Queen of the Desert, tearing her from her throne

So no more that chair of gold

To crumbled stone and rubble.

Or fire metal from a loaded limb,

stench of oil and heat,

Like you did to the King of Dreams

because he dreamt of peace.

​

You delight in sinister motives

to Wake that Sleeping Lion

By slicing open its chest,

Ripping tissue and muscle and bone,

Collecting that liquid value in your paper-coffee cup.

You hope to tame that mighty roar

With chains and ropes and striking whips.

Render it to forget its kingdom

To become a mockery in your own.

Convince yourself with sadistic merit

That you might be King of 'foreign ground'.

The land you call infertile, dry and lifeless

Because you don't understand its worth

In cultivation, artistry and uniqueness,

only viewing it in numbers and banknotes.

You call yourself a Prophet;

Believe you can turn water into wine,

turn eternity into a locked-gated prison.

Barbed walls of unforgiving, relentless imprisonment,

barricades of metal and wire

keeping that there lion amongst the noble grass

Now forgotten ash.

With pliers and pluckers pull out

teeth and claws.

Condemn that creature powerless

With its feline gems, diamonds and silvers

of bravery and wisdom

worn upon your neck;

calcium and brutal victory.

Shave fur to forge a carpet for your all-white castle.

Turn its mane into a ruff for your hideous gown,

its head a into a mantelpiece

For your hundred-seat table

where you will forever dine alone.

Would you go into a children's playground

With a grenade and let it splinter-off

Into their small frames?

Skin your mother, father, brother, sister alive;

smother them while they sleep

Resting on clouds to turn dreams into smokes.

Would you snap a baby's neck,

To eat from its flesh?

So why go into a lion's den armed with

knives,

binds and guns

when it rests like cherubs in a manger's hold.

Why take its roar, its fur,  its pride

To govern the grasslands of yonder delicacy,

to make a replica of your artificial castle;

already spotted across the globe.

For greed, for power, for joy

To capture those you view below,

weaker than your own.

Do not come to me when you are wounded

For stirring peace into massacre.

For waking such there beauty

where it slumbered in its bed.

To expect to go into a lion's den unharmed

When you've taken its cubs; its home; its livelihood.

Lions are stronger in a pride,

faster as one.

A strength, a whole of wonder, gold, wisdom.

Man is weak together and alone with nothing

But greed at the costs of other lives.

Do not Wake a Sleeping Lion-

be gentle, protective, kind

and treat there beast with all it deserves-

with grace, admiration, with mind.

Do not walk into a lion's den

to tear it from its throne.

That lion's Kingdom is its own.

Do not steal, take, break, destroy

What earth has declared a home.

Space (2013)

​

Among the black lined sky

Twinkly stars are forever shining,

Their light is so elegant and radiant

And endlessly hypnotising.

There amoung the enticing sparkles

A cold ablaze crescent lights the sky,

Standing out among the other dazzling auroras

Its eerie glow seems almost warming.

Blackened silk entwined with constellations

Holds a secret of yonder entities,

Their identities still secluded

So seen as our illusions.

The spaces between the galaxies

Possess defined planets of contrasting characteristics;

Some hot, some brisk and some too small to exist

But with one we can call our home.

Robin Red Breast - 'Robin Gorria Bularreko'  (2020)

Robin Red Breast

your chirpy sound

Bursting from your

Scarlet-Chest,

At the end of your garden

Lined with Lavenders,

Geraniums, Sunflowers.

Your bird houses

Filled with seeds

Where you go to rest.

I shall follow you,

Shortly,

But first I shall breathe.

Shall fly.

Shall live as you did;

Melodically,

With flourish,

With music,

With love.

Robin Red Breast

In that sky I shall follow suit;

With you in mind.

But first I must perch on branches

And hide in rose bushes

With buds as sweet in sap

As your rosy cheeks.

Shall visit forests and fields,

Rivers, lakes and ponds

Letting the tips of my feather wings

Reach those pools of glass;

Water-droplets that spray off

In that beautiful Spanish sun.

The touch of Pamplona heat

on my buff-brown feathers;

the crystal sunlight of Artajona

in those rich emerald mountains

and chalky Castles set in cliffs.

And although many may fear that

I am far from home

Estoy en casa.

Nuestra casa.

Where we shall always be.

Robin Red Breast

I will you watch over

By the oak tree

In that Garden of sleep.

I feel you at the olive tree

Where beautiful new roots grow,

Just as you built Wendy houses

And Windmills.

I catch you chirp and peep and sing

On the window ledge of your

Little Brown Shed,

And hear the words to Danny Boy

And the Gypsy Kings.

I will remember campfires

And dancing. Those Summers

In red and white

Covered in a coat of Rioja red wine

and feeling free as a bird.

And I will remember,

My Robin Red Breast

Senarra, aita, aitona

That no matter where you fly,

No matter where I go

We will always be together

En las pajareras de nuestros corazones.