The Moon Sees All

I remember that Coaltown moon so well.

It hung low and creamy, with a yellow

hint of staleness.  Confined to his nights cell,

and forced to observe – with eyes of mallow –

a world stained with the actions of sad fools.

Youth marched in earnest; the old acted callow,

trying to govern with policies drooled

in a chamber of mad, rhetoric speech;

where foul wealth and evil began to pool.

The laws of thought, they seemed out with their reach

as they waste their days to garner cheap laughs.

When challenged over the harsh austere bleach,

mop-dipped and scrubbed hard by Tory quarterstaff,

vile monkeys typed day and night, bent chiefs

fuelled fires with daily rags and smashed polygraphs,

and upturned pure hatred onto the streets;

“blame who we’re bombing; they’re the cause of your grief.”

Tomas Bird - Cherry Coal 2017

The Daily Misery: Smartphone Voyeur

Swimming the streets late at night,

then the sharks come and threaten to bite.

The film makers there all gather and stare;

they're unable to tell wrong from right.

The night gleams with violence.

Loosely sprinkled across the cobbled stone

are teeth and blood tinged emeralds;

the adjacent rose-pink walls

will need scrubbed tomorrow;

the hair and streaks of cheek

will need peeled

off before the wire-brush and soap

go through the Sunday motions.

I walk past a police officer

fighting back tears of anger,

stifling the urge to vent fury

on the ten witnesses who provide

ten minutes of smartphone evidence,

all ten too ignorant to realise

that the paramedics were ten minutes

too late to save a life.

Tomas Bird - Cherry Coal 2017

The Daily Misery: Tomorrow’s Edition; Hope.

So bye-bye my friend there's no hope.

There's blood and tears in my kaleidoscope.

I've lost all that matters; my world is in tatters,

so I'm tying a noose with this rope.

There is always hope.

Regardless if this New World,

with all its power and might

has stepped forth to rescue

and liberate the old

and barbarous ways

of a redundant empire;

and even though large tracts

of our race have fallen

into the grip of warmongers

and odius apparatus

of dystopian rule,

there is always hope

and we shall not flag or fail;

we shall smile on to the end.

we shall smile on the seas and the oceans,

we shall smile with growing confidence

and growing happiness in the air,

we shall abandon the idiotic values of this island;

whatever the cost may be.

we shall smile on the beaches,

we shall smile on the dancing grounds,

we shall smile in the fields and in the streets,

we shall smile in the hills;

we shall never surrender these facts;

and anyone searching for hope;

there will always be handful of decent human beings

to welcome you.

Tomas Bird - Cherry Coal 2017