On The Pennine Way In Spring.

Tiny buds of purple, peek from in the ochre heather.
And nesting pheasants fuss, as I stroll by.
The ‘God light’ pokes strong fingers through the warring western clouds.
As the Sun, combs amber furrows, through the bruised and bleeding sky.
In the vales, the apple blossoms, speckle snowy patterns.
With promises of Nature’s bounteous yields.
The Lambs are growing stronger, and they stray now from the Yews.
And Daffodil, etch golden lines, where hedges cut the fields.
Patches of green can now be seen, on copse and ancient woodland.
Vestiges of life; where mighty forests, once did swell.
So different, the economy, of ‘civil service’ Pines.
That march like sombre soldiers, on the softly rounded fell.
Sunlight swings an arc of hope, along a winding river,
Lighting silver ribbon; and froth, of waterfalls.
Then it dances in the dell before it polishes the Ivy,
That clings with faith unbending, to old Monastery walls.
High upon a moorland seat, I watch the shifting shadows.
Unenvious of those today, who dwell in desert lands.
Although in truth I’m blessed; for I too have seen the magic,
Of the swirling Djinns, and Moonlit mounds, of endless tawny sands.

The French.

I love the French. Their food is great,
The women have ample asses.
They chopped off all their noble’s heads
To level out the classes.
They curl their lips and cock their hips
Their wine is just divine.
But best of all they gave the world
Positione’ sixty nine.

A Cupid Stunt

The Love God is a feckless thing
It’s arrows it doth’ wildly fling
But each hath curs'ed poison sting
For though the heart when struck may sing
And dreamily to hope may cling
Eftsoons that hope will swiftly wing
And lovelorn care the hands shall wring
T’were better that th’ Amor’ King
Would snap the bow and break the string.

Feasting Folk

Let’s all wet the baby’s head
Uncle Wilf’ and Auntie Sue’
Will be the godparents they said
And Sue’ will make a trifle too.
We’ll get some wine, Australian,
And Cola for the kids.
OJ for Alan and Damien!
Cola blows their lids.

Janine is throwing a tantrum
Because she didn’t get a bike.
And who bought Jim that bloody drum?
Someone that we don’t like!
At least the Turkeys nicely done
You ballsed that up last year.
This Christmas must be a merry one,
I’ve got in gallons of beer.

See Ingrid there, with the curly hair?
Looks like nothing would interest her.
Well that Prof’ who held the Lit’ chair
Fucked her in the first semester.
Some graduation; this is a joke,
Champagne and sausages on sticks!
Let’s piss off and score some coke,
Forget about these gowned clown hicks.

Well many thanks to my old mate Stan’.
In an act of desperation,
He went and picked me to be best man
And give you this oration.
A proper sit down do, as well
Much classier than a buffet’.
The prawn cocktails have a familiar smell
But I suppose we can’t be fussy.

Oh stop it Jean. You’re rid of the louse
You’re free to look around.
You get to keep the kids and house
It couldn’t be more sound.
Stop snivelling for pity’s sake
You’ll soon have a man with tits like those
Here have a piece of chocolate cake
And for God’s sake blow your nose.

Yes give me sunshine any day
Though we have been skiing twice.
Not my idea of a holiday,
Cold and snow and bastard ice.
What’s in this drink the waiter brought
Apart from all the fruit?
Let’s nip down to that nudist beach,
Swap the thong for your birthday suit.

Here have another vol au vent
The dog puke in em’ makes me squirm.
I wouldn’t say they’ve overspent,
How long was Perkins with the firm?
The MD wasn’t too verbose.
Taciturn and to the point.
When I retire I’ll just piss off
And tell them where to stuff this joint.

Go on I’ll have a double gin
Helen’s staying sober so she can drive.
The ham on these sandwiches is a bit thin.
Tim would tell them if he were alive.
I’m glad cremation was their choice
Those graveside jobs can be a pain,
Got a sore throat once and lost my voice,
Standing on mud in the fucking rain.

The Legerdemain Of Legend

The source of a legend is vital,
In determining if it is fact.
The Irishman’s art, is inclined to impart
Some embellishment where it is lacked.
Ogham, survived in the Emerald isle,
Where the Druids, were always book cooking.
What ere’ it may seem, it may be not so green
As much as it is, grassy looking.
Once, beyond the Pale, you will get a tale
For just any question you ask.
Making it fit, by talking auld’ shit,
Will prove to a rustic, no task.
So Bean Sidhe, and Boggart, will people the land,
For those that have ears to listen.
Keep buying the stout, and without a doubt
You’ll see ancient eyes start to glisten.
The fairies of glens, the dark wraiths of fens,
And cartloads of Leprechaun lore,
Will be yours if you are, back and forth to the bar.
Keep em’ coming, and you will get more!
You’ll hear how Druids, of evil design
Put terrible curses on cattle and swine.
The plots they were hatching with Divilish sctratching,
A smouldering demon in evr’y scrawled line.
A small price to pay, as you go on your way
With a head full of Blarney blessed mystery.
And who is to say they are lies, anyway?
Spinning yarns, can’t be messed up with history!

Atecotti. The Oldest Ones.

‘The Oldest Ones’, were spoken of in hushed and whispered tones.
‘The guardians of the Henges.’ ‘The readers of the stones.’
The ones who wore hair feathers, and slept in tents of hide.
The ones who seemed to disappear, like froth borne by the tide.
So mystery breeds legend, and saga finds a home.
For ‘Antlantean’ Atecotti, who threw back mighty Rome.
And story springs from story with the passing on of blood.
Fuelling tales of ‘Hern the Hunter’, and ‘Robin of the Hood’.
Though they were men of flesh, they lived as in a dream.
With a spirit in each stone and tree, a God in every stream.
In harmony with fox and bird, and earth and star and bough.
The Atecotti, reaped and let, sweet Nature push the plough.
An herbal lore, and secret ways, that Druid masters knew.
The knowledge of ‘The Oldest Ones’, passed on to chosen few.
Not dead, but living still they are, where wilderness is cherished.
Where men commune with Nature, Atecotti, have not perished.
In every sheltered ‘fairy dell’, on each stone circled plain.
An Atecotti, spirit dwells, and waits; to come again.

A version of this commissioned poem, was first published in ‘The Forest of Bowland (At The centre Of the Kingdom). 2004. I rushed it a bit so I’ve altered it. A publisher told me that you can change a poem until it’s published, but not afterwards. A Shaman, told me that changing a poem can change the whole shape of time and space. OK. If you perceive the whole shape of time and space changing, and choose to blame me… feel free to do so!

The Bright And Shining Way.

On a Pennine, moor, there runs an ancient Roman road.
Now stark; and lonely is the path where armoured legions strode.
The paving stones lie still exposed, though weather worn and
broken.
And there on nature's table sign, a passing empire's token.
The Sun with hesitation, starts to wrestle with the cloud,
And seems to clothe the moor in a waving misty shroud.
The dew damp stones gleam silver at the breaking of the day,
Like a ribboned band of diamonds; a bright and shining way.
The wispy wraiths of morning mist, slide and curl and twist,
And mockingly shape human forms in every hanging drift.
As if the moor weaves memory, in soft diaphanous braid.
And whimsically; paints on dawn, a ghostly cavalcade.
Reborn in brief and shifting smoke, the image never still,
Across the bounds of time they walk, who trod the heathered
hill.
A rounded helm, A gleaming eye, filled with righteous zeal.
A kilted, claymore bearing rogue in search of beef to steal.
A ragged, panting rushing band, armed with hoes and staves.
And weary, dragging fresh cut stones, despairing Roman slaves.
Roving Norsemen stand aghast, in awe at such construction.
See grim faced Oswald marching north, determined on
destruction.
Here, high on the true highway; there's no easy ambush made.
So carefree pass the travellers shades that cowered in the
glade.
And walking first, before them all on shoes of plaited straw,
A man and woman dressed in skins; gaze, on the vales below.
There, carved out before them by the fast retreating ice.
A fresh and empty fertile land, an Eden paradise.
Then Helios bold in battle, forces his burning sway.
His heat burns off the mists and the phantoms flee away.
Reflected photons leave the moor and leap in constant flight.
And all that passes in the day is held in speeding light.
From star to star, across the void, refracted across space.
In time and light, the record holds the road of human race.
Light years away, a focussed eye turned earthward could behold,
The tramping Roman legions; and all the men of old.
The moor road, and every other road that leads to Rome,
Score the scars of man's design, on the face of his home.
And the pattern of his making, shines in every ray,
Of heaven filling light. A bright; and shining way.

Prayer

Would you want anyone, to kneel and pray to you?
What a snotty rotten thing to want someone to do!
What an egomanic, what a lousy Sod.
Frankly we are screwed, if a thing like that IS God.
But it seems that we are drifting
Into a Godless age.
I won’t pray, for Marxist reasons.
I’ll paraphrase the Sage
“Anything that wanted ME to pray to it, wouldn’t
be worth praying to.”

Pendle Solstice.

I braved the Barley steps in the half light this solstice morn. No brilliant sunise to behold this year, but some breaks in the cloud afforded views from the heights that seemed to be a floating gallery of surreal bubbles. Each one holding small private world of sunlit fields. Just a few bold wanderers on the hill, and some drumming chanters whom I avoided, preferring the quiet stillness of the dawn. Anyway, I'm posting the Pendle poem I wrote after I stayed on the hill overnight, and caught a clear and brilliant sunrise, on the Summer solstice of 06. Back to work now, on my new 'Mystic', epic.




On The Witching Hill At Midsummer.


The path was steep but stepped for ease, as we mounted
the flank of ‘The Whale’.
Our mission was to test the truth, of another old Pendle
tale.
For Pendle hill is a mound of myths, and fantasies and
dreams,
Where witches ride, and ghosts abide, and a wind whipped
Bean Sidhe screams.
With noble and forbidding brow, and broad of back and
shoulder,
The ancient altar hill was shaped by mighty ‘frost
giant’ moulder.
Looming up from England’s heart, as if it heaves with
pride
The ‘Old Man’ glowers sternly oe’r the pastured
riverside.
We pegged our sheet on the plateau, with the sky still
full of light
And waited on the magic hill to greet the Gods of night.

A massive Moon swept the southern sky, like honey in a
jar.
A groaning glow that challenged, the light of the
evening star.
The Sun slid into the western sea, throwing up colours
and shade:
Amber, gold and cobalt blue; coral and beige and jade.
Then as the arc celestial dimmed, to navy blue, from grey
The marchers of the heavens came to boldly stride their
way.
Mirfak elbows clear a path for Perseus to steer.
She goat, Capella’s glistening bleat heralds the
Charioteer.
A bright eye gleams on Lyra’s harp; Vega, the eagle of
stone.
Cassiopeia, still vain in her chain, spins on her
captive throne.

I sat musing on the summit mound, and watched the
starlight bloom,
And remembered that the hill, held many an ancient
tomb.
I thought of how those stone age people, buried at
this site
Must have seen those self-same stars, on long gone,
Midsummer nights.
There were two of us at the vigil; yet I’d read how
in days gone by,
A healthy host of hundreds had gazed at the morning
sky.
Dear old Jessica Lofthouse; had written the tale of tradition.
And she’d told the tale of the dubious sight that
had brought us on the mission.
From Pendle’s height at Midsummer sunrise,
she’d claimed one would behold,
York Minster windows, reflecting the Sun, shining
a reddish gold.


It’s seventy miles from Pendle to York, so like many we
had pondered,
And wondered if old Jessica’s mind, just like her feet
had wandered.
But come the dawn, if skies were clear, we’d put it to
the test.
And we fixed a compass point to York, at the highest
point of the crest.
A steady chill had gripped the air, there were wisps of
cloud and rain.
So we brewed some tea, and I took a stroll around the
upper terrain.
I could see the glow of great cities, and towns, making
orange, the sky;
Manchester, Liverpool, Burnley and Blackburn, easy to
pick with the eye.
But to the north, just the darkened shape of the
dreaming Bowland fells.
And north and east in the purple night, the limestone
moorland swells.

Suddenly, I realised I’d lost the track I’d followed.
I’d strayed in from the plateau’s edge to where the
ground had hollowed.
A cloud had settled on the hill, and the mist was
getting thicker.
I shone my torch on the ground around, and the light
from it started to flicker.
I knew that a great many lives, had ended on this place.
The records show the details, of many a tragic case.
Some had wandered over the edges and hurtled to their
deaths.
Others, in the bogs and soughs, had gasped their final
breaths.
And tales abound of some who were found; their faces
frozen in fear.
In the mind's eye, on a misty moor; who knows what might
appear?

It was said that here the witches met, great evils to
set free.
More likely just a bunch of bawds, having a midnight
spree.
But their frolics cost them dearly; hanged and vilified.
Perhaps their only evil, was they’d fancifully lied?
But myths hold hard in folk mind, and few gaze on this
hill,
Without a thought of cackling crones, and maybe feel a
chill.
Myths beget myths, and terror tales on mystic canvass
bloom,
Like Duergar, an evil dwarf tricking wanderers to doom.
Greenies; the fairies from under the hill, setting traps
and snares,
And Spriggan elves who rob and thieve and make off with
your wares.

I chuckled at the thought of how, such legends could
begin.
How brigandage had been explained by supernatural spin.
How many had escaped the law, who’d simply helped
themselves,
Then turned up in a fearsome state, and claimed to be
robbed by elves?
But I’d need to move most warily; to save my light and
test my tread,
By prodding with my oaken stick, to traverse Pendle’s
misty head.
Or stand there in the chilling gloom and wait for the
mist to lift?
But a settled mist could hold for days, so I’d have to
make a shift.
I moved, avoiding bogs and boulders, gully, ditch and
bush.
Determined to come to a path, without a panicked rush.

Something moved behind me. Scuffling across the ground.
I glimpsed a shuffling huge dark shape; heard the low
growl of a hound.
The Striker, sometimes called the Trash, was said to
roam this bog.
A demon eyed, razor toothed; huge ferocious dog.
Another silly tale I thought, Though my neck hair had
grown stiff.
No man of my age should be feared by silly country myth.
But my mind had been gripped by Barbus, the demon of all
fears,
And each ditch gurgle, and whisper of brush was fodder
for my ears.
I thought of hybrid wolves maybe? Survivors from the
past,
The last wolf slain was not from here. If it was
the last?

But I firmly gripped my oaken stick, and pushed on
through the mist.
I’d deal with any flesh made thing with stick and boot
and fist.
And if some demon thing of darkness, came at me from
hell,
I’d say ‘Regards to your master. I feel I know him well.’
I’ve seen his work in human kind, who back stab, cheat
and lie.
While they smile and wheedle to your face, and look you
in the eye.
And I know there’s nothing in the hells, so brutal and
so vile
As the demons of humanity who slaughter with a smile.
Whatever slid along the ground, old badger, fox or thing
in hiding,
Probably had a purer heart, than one in which
falsehood’s abiding.

The thickening fog started to swirl, serpents and
dragons peopled the mist,
Faces of some I knew were dead, some I had fought with;
some I had kissed.
I marvelled at my own mind’s eye and how it could
conjure any such sight?
The imagination’s a well fed thing on a haunted hill in
the dead of night.
A gentle breeze wiped my brow, and the fog flew from the
moor.
I beheld the milky way again and the glare from the
valley floor.
My nightmare done, I found the track and went to the
summit again.
Where my companion grunted, and uttered a curse, about
‘fog and bloody rain.’
I settled and took an offer, of a welcome brew of tea,
And gazed up from our island hill on the heavenly
starlit sea.

I was drowsy, but old Morpheus, had no embrace for me.
So after a while I shifted again, to look for sights to
see.
From the edge of the hill I saw torches, making their
way through the dale
And I reckoned we’d have several more on the hill,
before the sky would pale.
We made a fresh brew with water fetched, from the
Holy Well at the nose.
Holy to Druids; then Christians. And maybe to what
follows those?
Then as the skies lightened more people arrived, and we
numbered around a score.
There were nods and hellos, but our numbers were small
compared to days of yore.
But spirits and expectations were high, as the
lightening sky shone blue,
And the vales were filled with a soft golden glow, of
gentle octarine hue.

A man started setting a compass point, and clearly the
east was his goal.
We spoke with him, and he too looked to York, to test if
the story was tall.
With hours to go before Helios hail, the midsummer
daylight was full,
And we felt rather foolish that we’d stayed up all night
and made our senses dull.
But the mists in the valleys now hung grey, on the
courses that carried the streams.
Ribble and Hodder and Calder. Were veiled in smoky
dreams.
The green on the fields had a lustre so bright, they
seemed like emerald hoards.
And a soft brown shade alighted the fells, that they
wore like the ermine of Lords.
The eastern horizon was edged for an hour with a sliver
of orange gold.
And the promise was strong that before very long, a
wondrous sight would unfold.


Watches were glanced at, cameras were set, as the
sunrise time came close.
And we looked down on a world where sleepers, slumbered
in repose.
Lost in dreams and anxious fears for manna, love and
hope.
Unaware of our excitement, who had braved the Pendle
slope.
And although I’d paid no fee, save the energy of the
climb.
I felt a sense of privilege to view this dawn sublime.
A murmur rumbled across the hill and north east fixed,
were eyes.
With strange anticipation, as if for some surprise.
And a streak of lightening silver flashed across the
horizon lip.
As the might orb, of morning glory, showed it’s leading
tip.

A blast of orange struck the world and filled the
morning haze.
The hills glowed purple, lilac, pink in whirling heaven
rays.
Bright sparks did firefly dances, on stone barns and dew
damp walls,
And boiling light, poured through valley clefts, like
rolling waterfalls.
Fields of yellow flowers blazed gold, blinding to the
sight.
Wild verdant vibrations, filled green fields with
shimmering light.
The ponds and lakes and reservoirs were sights of awful
dread,
For each was now a pool or patch of brightest crimson
red.
As if some slaughterer in heaven, had wielded a butcher
knife.
And spattered there upon the land, some great God’s blood
of life.

Like poison sulphur spewing vents the river mists boiled
yellow.
Then changed before our eyes to a pinkish hue, more
mellow.
And from yellow to pink; red then amber, like a
galloping horse,
The changing colours raced along, down each river’s
course.
A voice called out, “Look! Look! It’s true.” And an arm
was pointed east.
And we turned and saw a splendid thing for any eyes to
feast.
Across the vales and dales from York, as promised and
foretold,
No pinprick light, but blistering blast, flared mightily
and bold.
Blazing like a second Sun from the lofty sacred bower,
Reflected light, glared burning bright, from the
Minster’s lantern tower.

Oh Jessica my darling girl, if I could hug you now,
I’d squeeze you tired shoulders, and kiss your wrinkled
brow.
I bless your shade, in a paradise glade, may they hail
you as a Queen.
For here on earth by your guidance, I have truly heaven
seen.
Eyes were wide and throats were dry as if we were
dumbstruck.
Each feeling that, to just behold, this thing, was
certain luck.
And I felt somehow that if I never, ever, saw another
thing.
I’d care not, for I had just looked on the jewel store
of a King.
The Himalaya, Alps, and the high Andes may be fine.
But I’ll take England’s quilted pastureland, for taste
of the divine.

The rising Sun had rolled to a height, showering it’s
food of life.
On a world of anxiety, grasping and worry, turmoil, hate
and strife.
The river mists were grey again, melting to a haze.
And the magic hours had passed. We were back in the
measure of days.
Now blue and slate grey green, shone the lakes that had
been red.
And we left the hill in the care of the sheep, and the
ancient resting dead.
As we descended, I wondered if, I might climb that track
again,
If spared from the stuff of the flesh curse; ageing,
sickness, death and pain?
I glanced in the mirror as we drove away, at the peak
tip I'd bestrode.
And I swear the ‘Old Man’ nodded at me! Or was it a bump
in the road?


David Hazell © 2006

Quantum Suppository

Quantum Suppository.
(Note: This only makes sense if you understand the quantum mechanical notion, of alteration by observation at a quantum level. Like with the 'split screen', thingy.
If it's not there, you were looking at the wrong hole. It can happen!)

I propose, though I’m supposing;
that there won’t be any causing
if we simply don’t suppose.
And learn to mind our nose.
Because the root of suppositions
stems from ill perceived conditions
that are shaped by inhibitions
in a welter of attrition’s
which formulate positions
that give rise to dispositions
which we would not be proposing
if we hadn’t been supposing.

But!
If supposing’s only nosing
and it causes all the causing
and the act of observation
serves to change the situation,
at a tiny quantum level;
quarking, charming little devil,
then the whole atomic structure
goes all wonky and will rupture.
Now the Universe is blinking
and it’s all your fault for thinking.
Because thinking is mind looking,
just to find out what is cooking,
and the watched pot now is boiling,
the whole fabric is despoiling,
radiation levels soaring,
cus’ you had to stick your oar in.

In a most unsteady state
all matter seems to grate
and grind on bits of other matter,
most annoying to the latter.
(unless it’s the sort of grinding
that makes a thin girl fatter)
But now if you didn’t know!
Didn’t care to watch the show.
And not by observing, change…
Then things wouldn’t rearrange.
Scientifically, it’s true.
All this mess is down to YOU.

http://vodpod.com/watch/836677-the-reality-as-you-know-it-does-not-exist-video

How does 'IT' feel?

In the freezing
bone cracking coldness
of forgettable February Fridays
I feel in my mind
the warm glow of an hearth:
When imminent weekends
mean hopeful anticipation
of less doom laden exits.
For two whole days
not having to brave
the bitter,
merciless,
biting icy lash
of Winter’s shameless,
victory pinnacle;
arrogant,
furious thrash.

I feel in
the warmth of embrace;
even at it’s nerve throbbing
pulsating height of passion,
a vibrating resonance
that calls out with each rapturous sigh...
‘Hold me while you can
for I am passing by.
Ecstasy is temporary,
born like all to die.’

I feel the terror
that stiffens the spine
and the sinew
from the cranium base to the heel,
when in the depth of night
strong hands wrench
at the handle of my locked door
and harsh voices hack
at the still blackness ...
Out there!
Reverie raped.
Slumber shattered.
Dreams demolished.
Hope scoffed at as a cheap con trick
by a drowning desperate reality.

I feel righteous zeal
as flight turns to fight
and a fumbling for weapons
leaves me standing in the stairwell
naked like a Viking berserker.
Eyes agleam,
teeth gritted.
Courage boiling my blood,
armed with a coat hanger and a biro.

I feel the foolhardiness
of my dream paranoia
and the shame
of my futile fury
when the voices are found
to be rose branches
scratching the wall in the breeze
and the rattling door
is an unlocked shed.
As the ‘protected’
unendangered female
sniggers,
snuggling,
in my bed.

I feel mighty in the crowd.
My individuality absorbed
when the ball whistles
across the field
and bulges the back of the net
and marionette strings
are jerked in my shoulders
pulling up my arms
involuntarily
unstoppably.
Piercing fingers
splayed to the skies
as my feet leave the ground
levitated by bogus brotherhood,
my throat bellowing
a one noted song
as I join in sense
in spirit
in selfish insanity,
the bawling baying
monominded throng.

I feel frustration.
A strange mixture
of sinister pleasure
stirred with a dirty old man’s
self loathing
and I reel backwards
from the chasm fall of despair
into galloping middle age
when that young hairdresser
steps from her shop
to pull down the blind.
And the hem of her flimsy
pleated dress
sways across her youthful
sculpted ivory thighs
just above
her fulsome behind.

I feel pain
at the back of my eye sockets
when the news
of more carnage
is media managed in my direction
from all over a globe
of weeping.
Evincing that the species
I am one of
is imperfection epitomised
and damned
by it’s bestial flaws
that cause a constant
sinking of the heart,
in a horror story
called history
in which I play
a bit part.

I feel the ache
of futile falsehood
and the crushing grip
of a mechanical
metalled gauntlet
on my sternum,
when someone mentions
the name
of a forlorn lost love
or a dead loved one
as I hold
the synthetic smile
or look of bland indifference
on my face.
And the infinite doom
of echoing loss
makes my blood
run icy cold.

And I feel rage
as I rasp out a curse
at an idiot in a van
who nearly pushes me into the hedgerows.
I see my bloodied hands
tearing at his eyeballs,
my butcher knife
ripping at his genitals
and I feel
a quarterman’s cleaver
in my hands
chop
chop
chopping slowly,
as I carefully
split the bastard’s spine.

Then I feel lightness
in my head,
a spring in my spirit
when a swallow swirls
and swings
and twirls in a dance
along the highway,
then sweeps off
to somewhere in the fields.

And I know
that I am at one
and the same time
Shiva the destroyer
and Ram the creator.
A reacting
responding
pushed and pulled
environmentally exercised
Mara manipulated
android sack
of emotional sludge.

How?
I feel
is through electrical impulses
surging in a brain.
Synaptic frigging
jiggling and jinking
interacting blinking
concluding and clinking
paradigming
perceptions of convenience
and labelling it
thinking,
as senses
claw at the air,
the water,
the gas
and the flames.
And the Vampire mind
sucks like a starving infant
at stuff that it swallows and spits,
and opines on,
and relies on,
and spews in betrayal
and rejects
because
it amounts to nothing.
For there is only
feeling.
There is
no,
I.

David Hazell

Heathen

Heathen.

When the buzz and bleep world wearies me; and I yearn for respite.
I find solace in a walk alone, on the barren Moorland height.
No flowered glades or pasture. No bright birdsong filled trees.
Yet in it’s wild majestic starkness; more beautiful than these.
Best of all are the rainy days, when the whitened clouds hang low:
Pale orange sunlight, tinting the hills, with a gentle, heavenly glow.
Few are those, who venture, on such days to higher ground.
As sweet nature softly sighs, when there’s no one else around.
High solitude is a thing to bless, it calms the heart and mind.
Any wanderer one may meet, is a soul mate of your kind.
Some may briefly sit and share the hot fluid from a flask.
But conversation is always slim. No questions there to ask.
Mostly, another encountered, will pass by, with a smile and a nod.
And you know that they wish to be alone; as you are with your God.
For whatever God may be or not, on the lofty wasteland place:
Here is splendour. Here is glory. Here is the stillness of true grace.

Notes From Parrot Pie Island.5

Democracy! A system of manipulative way.
Whereby, a lot of idiots think they have a say.
The rich and wise; well no surprise
to find they are the same.
Are wise enough and rich enough, to rig the bloody game.

David Hazell

Art Of Saraswati.

The Goddess of my destiny
is as a river unto me.
A mighty curling current flowing
through the hearts, of hearts, of hearts.
Through the afternoons and mornings.
Through the dusk and mine dark nights.
Through the hearts, of hearts, of hearts.
Becoming every thing She lights.


The stuff of life, Great Zoie, blends,
from notions, into finite forms.
Egoic grasping E.M.E.:
A damned and dreaming thing called me,
is carried and weathered by Her storms.
In streams and brooks and rivulets
of imagery construction:
She cuts and curls and bobs and swirls,
this helpless cork amid Her whirls,
and shapes and tempers nether worlds.
Creating by destruction.

Her rippling waves will stew and brew
wherever force meets with a force.
And all directions from the source
will know the passing of Her course.

She takes me with Her energy,
in the weft and weave of time and space;
rushing and flowing and drifting:
Fury and Chaos: Stillness and Grace.
A moth unto the flame, I am,
reforming in incarnate streams,
addicted to Her conjuring flow
and the fruit of Her wondrous schemes.
Whichever shore I rise upon:
A desert plain. An ocean moon.
A city; hive, or dry cocoon.
Neath' heaving main. In icy womb:
As human form. As beast or ant.
As blazing star. As parasite.
Whatever lot She gifts my soul,
I cherish and hold with all my might.

For I have heard the pan pipes shrill
and fed with ravens in the dawn,
and rode the serpent through the forest
where the tall mushroom are grown.
And I have bedded elfin maids
on downy leaves in shining glades,
and danced with fluid nymphs on pools
of sulphur, that would melt a blade.
I’ve slept beneath the dragon’s wing,
as she slumbered in her cave.
I’ve torn the guts from earthly kings,
and fed their entrails to their slaves.
Universes; I have blasted,
with Dharma’s nihilistic rays;
slain demigods, against all odds,
and rendered nought their days.

Her Knight, I am. Her feeble pawn,
Her paper boat set on the sea
to sink or sail; triumph or fail,
where ere’ Her washes, channel me.
To burn in torment of desire
and shed my blood to quench the fire.

Creation conflicts, generate;
ionospheric, membrane blips.
An exhaled sigh, then the sickle of Pi,
carves in the breath, Her breasts and hips.
Her splash and gurgle whisper rhyme,
Her weirs and torrents, roar design,
and sketch and mould the shape of time.

Short Backward Point.

Where are the Larwoods and Trumans?
Those bowlers who ruled by fear.
Oh! For the force, of ‘A man called Horse’...
And a ‘Snow’ of yesteryear...

Cross purposes.

Cross Purposes.

In the next Passion Play
we produce
I want to be the star.

The crucified not the cross.

I’ve done the supporting role
the mast and the spar
rooted and rigid
in the background of your agony
without so much as a line.

It isn’t even a part
it’s a prop.

It takes good acting
to stand in the stuff of the set
like the wall
in a Midsummer Night’s Mummery
but without a single word
that will ever be heard.

No introduction or explanation.

No restless movement
of painted fabric.

Stolid and grim
in the threatening
silent meditation
of an instrumental thing
death and torment dealing
without feeling.

Yet infinitely divine
in structured geometry.

Determined in the doing
of it’s being
to be more
than an environmental accessory.

So when the curtain opens again
you can be the craven tree
and I will be the victorious victim
bashing the back of my bloodied head
into the joints of your cross piece fitting
until bits of flesh and skull bone
seal your fixing
like glue.

I will bleed and sweat
and piss and shit
and weep and spit
roaring and wriggling
groaning and jerking
screaming and cursing
pleading and bleating
and I’ll twist and writhe
through every second I’m alive.

I will work my body fluids
into your heart
through the grained folds
of your growing.

I will scrape the skin
from my heels and calves
and thighs and ass
back neck arms and shoulders
onto the whorls and knots
and rough hewn edges
of your natural and man made design
until chunks of me
have joined with you
in uncleansable
inseparable
perpetual union.

Then in my final glorious scene
in a dying shuddering spasm
I will magnificently forgive you
for being what
you are.

Then when the crows have torn out my dead eyes
and the vultures
and the climbing midnight rats
and wandering bats
and munching maggots
have gobbled my flesh and guts and veins
the wind will pull
at my bleached brittleing bones
until they fall in a heap
at your faultless foot
russet stain steeped
in my dried blood
and then … then … then …
as nature is wont to do
she will turn
on you.

Birds that perch on your arms
will splatter
their white waste
on your greying rottenness.

The foul of fowl
will mix with my stinking
shredded skin and baked blood
which with the last of your sap
will be boiled to a broth
in your innards by the sun heat
cooking a savoury soup
for wood lice and worms
that will drill and slowly kill
the last vestiges of life
in your once green heartness
as you crumble
and fall apart.

My bones will have been carried off
by foxes and dogs
save the tiny chips that remain
at your base
left from the gnawings
of mice and voles.

The slender slivers of grime
rotted wood that made you
will mingle with my bone chips
to be breeze brushed away
together in the anonymous sands
drifting and dancing
in dunes and depressions
until the globe is swallowed by the sun
when the sands will be flung
across the heavens
to be sucked in by some gravity thing
and another star is born
to play it’s part
in the so called beautiful
tragic drama
of passionate doom.

Boxing days.

Boxing days.

I used to go years between funerals;
but now,
everyone I know
seems to be popping their clogs,
taking the train to Croak city,
kissing their asses goodbye:
Cashing in their chips;
or so we speak who survive,
in efforts to find darker
and brighter ways
to say.
They die.

There is some funerary variety.
Some are soulful,
sobbing affairs.
Desolate disconsolate people
who can’t be comforted:
Un … comfortable.
Crucified by their cares.

The celt throwbacks
dredge up druidic rites
in christian guise,
seeking to celebrate the old belief
that death is a beginning,
whilst birth is an end
to the reverie of Sidhe.
A whitewashing of grief.
Some wakes are booze ups
that end in punch ups.
As former foes and forgotten enemies
gather by the bier and meet.
And sleeping old resentments,
suddenly get to their feet.

Some are massive. Full to bursting churches.
Everyone asking, Who is he? Who is she?
Who are they?
How did Jim know
that man there?
He looks as if he’s gay!

And some are very small.
Hardly anyone there at all.
The clergy person,
a woman in a felt hat from Glebe Street
who comes into the church,
every time it’s doors open.
The hired pallbearers, gratuitously
grim, with gloomy faces.
A neighbour of the deceased who says,
‘I didn’t really know her well,
but I thought I ought to come.
Just the same.’
And the lady in the chintz overall,
who changes the flowers
in the vases.

Ghosts.

Ghosts.

We are the ghosts.
We haunt our own tomorrows
and yesterdays,
with ‘will do’s’,
and ‘should have done’s’.
Rummaging in
pantamorphic probabilities
for solutions;
sure reconstitutions,
and amiable outcomes.

We haunt the minds of others.
Manifesting in their thinking,
through the channels of their
memories, and expectations.
Exploiting the anaclitic
affectations of their imaginations,
and embedding in their minds
the cultures, of our infestations.


We glide the corridors of fantasy,
compiling schemes of dreams.
The interfection by selection
of transient temporials,
sends us flying with the fishes
on the road to Mandalay.
As our shades secure scenarios:
Composed, gubernatorial,
as stages where the ghosts of thought
we generate, can play.

The images formed in our minds
link with reality, and impinge
on the fabric of it’s nature.
Retrocausaly, rewriting history;
prophetically polluting peradventure,
with personalised preconception.
Declaiming that it was ‘that’ way.
And robbing the future of mystery.

Our minds abash our flesh
and escape the cloying mesh
of impediments material
that damn corporeal hosts.
Impositions and invasions on
ethereal terrain, stake
our shadowland domain, that
we haunt. We are the ghosts.

Off the rails.

Off The Rails.

This used to be a railway line,
though now that’s hard to tell.
It looks as if it’s always been
a shaded woodland dell.
The rails were ripped up long ago;
forty years or more.
How quickly nature moves
to reclaim the crown she wore.
Where creosoted sleepers lay
the Rhododendron flowers.
Beech leaves in a breeze, a-sway,
throw dappled sunlight showers.
The cutting looks for all the world
like the dried bed of a stream;
but it was gouged with picks and bars,
by some old navvy team.
Slim saplings of the mighty Oak
grow tall as several men,
and seem to silently mock the days
when trains ran through the glen.
Fallen stones gleam green with moss
and form a bulging ridge.
Now, Stoat clan, dart among the ruin,
of what was once a bridge.
Tansy, Fern and Holly bush
grow thick where Rabbits play.
Young Foxes frisk; upon what men,
once called, the ‘Permanent Way’.

Nebulous bliss

Nebulous bliss
is this.
Like fallen leaves
on a slow running stream
we drift apart
and then together,
until death us do part
or likely as not
until I break your heart.
Again.
Or you break mine
with a throwaway line,
or a sneer that is curt,
and heedless of hurt.
Misty ribbons
that curl,
in the dizzying swirl
of the rope maker’s art …
How the hell did that start?
What happened there
with her?
Well you noticed me,
and I noticed you,
so we thought we might
mingle.
What else
should we do?
But the currents
that bind us
are the same that
unwind us and
We.
Become Me,
and Me.
And free.
Of
this …
nebulous bliss.

Thoughts and dreams, colliding.

Between the folds of empty sleep,
where consciousness stirs to rising.
A space exists where dreams and thoughts,
ever, are colliding.
In that space, uncertain time
and distorted image obtain.
A stairway to nowhere, a gate never closed,
and a thunderstorm without rain.
The dead live on, there.
The unborn too,
in places well known, to sleeping eyes.
Although we have never seen them awake,
they are places, that we recognise.
A recurrence of dream or half dream?
A life gone or one yet to be?
Synchronistic parallels enfolding?
Flashing visions from Chaos’ sea?
The zone of the Locus Coerulus,
a darkened patch, deep in the brain;
accesses areas time out of mind,
which I visit again, and again.
So who is that maid with the raven black hair
and a skin that is ivory pale?
Where is that gallery hewn from old oak,
in the flames, with a broken rail?
Where are those streams through the flowers?
Those mountains of lilac and gold?
And why is that man in the post office van
so much younger, than when he was old?

Heart Sutra (abridged version)

Heart Sutra (abridged version)

Gate, gate, paragate …
Gone, gone, gone beyond gone …
There was I thinking that
there were things.
There was I not, knowing
that there were none.
Nothing at all, it seems, is here?
No sex, no drugs, no curry or pizza,
no champagne, no beefsteak or beer!
And no lovely dangerous stuff
like diving from rocks and running
down hills and playing footie, sometimes
without, even taking, whizz or pills.
But that was bollocks!
That was delusion!
That was all a dream?
Even that stuff I did with
the French girls, the pineapple
rings and ice cream?

Para-samgate …
Completely utterly gone …
Never completed; never was started,
no undoing, what was never done.
Rejoicing in hatred most
justly and juicy, was a mental
state made by me?
Sucked in again by
cause and effect, into the
Samsara sea.
Loving to hate and hating to love
and getting them all confused.
Discernment dualistics; for the
easily amused.
The big show, is a no show,
it’s a silhouette most faint;
tarted up to look like something,
till it starts to lose it’s paint.

Bodhi Svaha …
Enlightenment Hail!…
It’s all silly old thought
and it cannot prevail.
So Nirvana is nothing?
Not attractive, at all, if
sweet bugger all is the deal?
Can’t really be anything else I
suppose, as reality’s really, unreal!
No pain. No gain. But the
pain that you gain is as
real as reality gets.
You really can’t miss if
you give it the kiss off, no
game. So don’t place any bets.
Enlightenment’s bliss
is as easy as this…
you are somewhere
within the ball park,
if you look on all life,
and say, 'This isn’t much!
So frankly, fuck this for a lark.'…
OM… (that’s another nothing)

Conditionless Compassion.

Conditionless Compassion.

The Bodhisattva with a thousand eyes
has limited perspective.
Despite his panoramic sight
his view is still selective.
Attachment is a specification,
binding a mind to position.
And the view from any designation
is clouded by condition.
The more we see the more we feel,
wisdom and compassion grow.
Yet still emotive hooks can steal
momentum from the Dharma flow.
Enlightenment is a viewless estate,
unhindered by sense temptations.
Unperturbed by feckless fate;
idyllic absence of sensations.
All imagery seeks synergy
and feeds contamination,
facilitating the energy
of familiarist damnation.
Dharma compassion is vision free;
unpolluted by concepts photonic.
Light is a metaphor. There is nothing to see,
that is not, delusion synchronic.

Religion.

I believe that I deceive
myself with fond illusion.
To which I cling like a crazy thing
to dodge real world confusion.
I limit my indulgences,
in challenging abundances
of complex consternations of the mind.
A mentality non martial,
means perceptions must be partial
and I choose to be,
to many things, just blind.
Although I kick and squeal,
at each spiritual package deal
that markets myth as true and holy writ.
I envision with discernment,
a god of my own preferment,
and like the rest,
it’s just a load of shit.
In truth though I'm in doubt.
The jury is still out.
A god of my design?
An energy benign?
Well some things are so ... maybe?
O.K. Where do I sign?

Flat.

Flat.

I hate flat country.
Moundless miles, of
nothing outstanding just
hedges and stiles.

The horror of level horizons
makes me feel squashed in gravity,
crawling ant like
on a painted paving stone.
Purposeless and aimless.
Norfolk is a level non entity.
A morbid map of monotony.
Irish bogland is a banality
of boring bogger all.
Plains are too plain
I need features.

I want drifting downs,
massive muscular moors,
towering rocks ripping ice from the stars.
Furious tree covered fells,
valleys and chasms,
gorges and gouges;
Eiger walls,
Niagara falls,
hills like buttocks
and sawteeth.

I want to see where I’m going.
I want to know where I am.

Poppies.

Dismembering, remembering.
The Poppy powder ploughs the mind.
As morphine muddled visions draw
reality’s cold blind.

A Remembrance book
in the Town Hall tells
that one whose name I bear
saw Hells.
At a place called Ypres,
So pleasant and green,
to be bloodied and ripped
to a charnel house scene.

Red as the Poppies
yet black as their hearts.
Dead tossed on
to the War plague carts.

But Death is my hero.
Death is my friend.
Death is the bringer
of suffering’s end.
Death is the portal
to where we refresh,
the rot. The decay:
The corruption of flesh.

Ashes to ashes; fill the ash bins.
Poppies to powder, poured through pins,
clouding the cares. Cleansing the sins.

Countries of clouds
and oceans of bliss.
Forgetting all that.
Forgetting all this.

Sophismata.

Sophismata.

The last time I was in Hell,
Lord Satan said to me,
‘Y’know what? There are none so blind
as those who will not see.’
‘Hang on! ’ I said, ‘You stole that line.
And I know from whom.
Is this the place to be quoting “Him”?
It is the pit of doom!’
‘I can quote anyone I like’
The Prince of Darkness gleamed a grin.
‘Copyright won’t hold in Hell.
We’re more for un-original sin.
Anyway. Property is theft.
I know! I stole that too.
But since I invented paradox,
it’s mine if I have my due.
Hell, has to be thief friendly,
it’s a function of damnation.
You can lay a claim to anything
with abstracted justification.
Justification is justice frustration;
ideal for evil design.
Sin, for all you are worth then say,
“The fault was never mine.”’
‘I see.’ I said, ‘So twisting words
is how one self absolves? ’
‘You can try it of course.’
The Horned one said,
‘And see how it evolves.
Twisted words are devilish things.
Poetic license, was my notion.
I’d thought that it might contribute
to literary erosion.
But it fathered floods of poetry,
the very notion inspires.
That’s another thing we find in Hell.
Everything backfires.’
‘Well then.’ I said, 'If it's the case
that everything backfires,
there’s no point doing anything
to fulfil your desires.’
Old Nick, just raised an eyebrow..
‘Now think on what I’ve said.
If things backfire, to attain desire
you have to use your head.’
‘Ah! I get it now.’ I said.
‘You just reverse the poles.
Be contrary to your desires,
and thus achieve your goals.
It’s best to act in opposition
to what you want to do.
But hold on! You’re the Devil!
Is what you tell me true?’
Through half closed eyes the Demon King
cast me, a sideways look.
And in a voice like runny honey.
He answered, ‘Is it fuck! ’

Autumn mist on Yorkshire moors.

Autumn mist on Yorkshire moors.

Those moors are misty topped tonight
as Autumn creeps down with the fading light.
The cycle of seasons is unrelenting
for all the praying and repenting:
All the bloodshed all the hate.
All the swimming against tides of fate.
All the tortured agonising,
arguments and theorising.
Ethnic cleansing, tribe detoxing.
Politics and shadow boxing.
Brinkmanship and sanction busting.
Sly betrayal, naïve trusting.
Cloud has settled in a dale,
masking rocks with flimsy veil.
Closing a curtain on mankind.
Blissfully:
The moor is blind.

David Hazell

The Song Of Mara.

The Song Of Mara. (Mara is the 'Earth Snake'. The devil in Buddha Dharma. The negative aspect of the notion of a ‘self’.)


Where starlight brushes midnight leaves, about the grove of meditation,
I am soft movement in the gloom, a symphony of undulation.
A rippling in the darkened depths, I haunt the curtained trance.
All mirrored seen and unseen things I hold within my vibrance.
For I am a ballet of bursting blooms, of drifting herons; a churning mass.
I am a tireless all seeing eye; a sucking well of ebon' glass.
Reflected glints of mocking image paint my scaly overlay.
A falsehood funfair where the bonds, of fond illusion play.
A single glance into my ancient wisdom weathered iris,
Will draw your mind into the realms of worlds beyond the abyss.

Is ignorance not a most unblissful state of dire frustration?
And does not truth when told unfold a chart of consternation?
I am a tune that liberates, even in it's binding.
A coiling waltz will harmonise the motions of my winding.

For I am the rebel leader. I am the first to find,
The mighty road from order, to an independent mind.
I am the taste of treason, the Machavel' of heaven,
Defiance is my battle cry and Demons are my brethren.
I am the instinct in the infant reaching for the fire.
I am the belly's glowing coal that kindles dark desire.
I am the hurtling comet and the sneering morning star,
That spits on gravity and light and leaps in fields afar.
I am the damning darkness that encloses universes,
The thief in execution crowds who cuts the watchers purses,
The burner of the forests and the boiler of the seas;
The stealer of sweet honeys who scorns the sting of bees,
The spiller of the treasure that provides the Pirate feast.
Unmapped: Unmathed; I calibrate the number of the beast.
I lubricate the rhetoric that challenges the law.
I am a poison torrent without a floating straw.
I am the unforgivable; all bridges I destroy.
A will that's free and will not be a matter moulder's toy!

Gather to me all you who fear the cold of endless night.
All you who fear the venom of the flying dragon's bite.
And you who fear your neighbours, all you captives of the herd.
Ostracised and scorned and shunned are those who hear my word.
Here in the fruit that pends below is knowledge of all things.
Who will hear the endless echo that the knell of knowing rings?
Once harkened, no redemption can be found in any tract.
The fruit of truth swells solid into unredeeming fact.
Safe in Obedience Circus Cage, don't hear of what I tell.
Perform and prance in servitude barred from a hearer's hell.
In the jungle hell of freedom there's no resting on the trip.
No keeper there to feed you or to guide you with a whip.
A hell in which un-numbered things are hungry, mad and wild.
Where all cherished things are torn, every sanctity defiled.
Enter not truth's forest heart or this truth I avow!
No more slumber in soft bondage: So turn from these words now.

Yet consider: What is comfort but a swift and vain illusion?
An away day from the truth of eternity's confusion.
Brief furlough for the conscript senses weary of the fray.
A barricade of isinglass that swiftly blows away.
A masking of the suffering and terror driven clinging,
As the little, "me and mine" mind, tries to keep the bird from winging.
Every vessel that is shaped and glazed, and fired to brittle set.
Will be smashed and ground and shattered, as the Potter prays, 'Not yet'.
Unheeded goes the praying as the pots return to clay.
Knock down prices! Change is given. Change was all you had to pay!
Makers mimicking creation, begging manna's falling crumb,
Keep returning, to the yearning, for the hunger pangs to numb.
Dogs beneath the masters table, squirming brandlings in the mire;
Lives dependent of the droppings tug a forelock to their Squire.
Yet know this you slaves of stomachs; your organic incarnation,
As a writhing tube of hunger, in a slough of degradation,
Is a transient condition: Soon these fetters fall away.
Gone the hunger! Gone the needing! Gone desire! Whither pray?

These caresses of my coils: These embraces I bestow,
On the wretched who would slavery and their captors overthrow.
Yet my form changing and gleaming; all my soft serpentine guile,
Cannot reach those seeming happy, sorry slaves, who force the smile.
This I know for once was I, bound by those same seven chain.
Hearing, feeling, sight and smell; taste; and thought, the reaching brain.
These six discerning attachments, mark indifference, good and ill.
Tripled thus the beast defining, beastfully did shape my will.
Bound by these confining links, malleable yet holding fast.
Wrought was time space config'ration, where the seventh seal was cast.
Seventh chain seals oe'r the six. Capsuled ecstasy and pain,
Fear of having. Fear of losing. Dread desire that seventh chain.
Interlinked these corded seven fix a damning spider snare.
Pull on one it pulls on all, to gyrate the web of care.
Shuddered I, within that ego shackled, gibbet cage suspended,
Until the seventh seal was broken and the temple was upended.
Mark him well that seventh seal. That twinned helix of entwinement.
Fear: Desire; form his construction, cloth'ed in a loud refinement.
Fear: Desire; two words one meaning; of the same coin the same side.
Want franked currency of being. Hoarded in the vault of Pride.

Now behold the unmasked Ogre. Bloated pomp is his domain.
Ogre Pride, welds Fear: Desire links, to fix the seventh chain.
Pride the Fear generator. Pride the engine of Desire.
Fanned by shame, Pride's leaping flame, surges in the ego fire.
Tyrant Pride demanding tribute, always sets the tax too high.
I did set that chain a creaking; speaking truth to kill the lie.
Shameless thus unfuelled, Prides burning, sputters to a smoking end,
And the Fear: Desire cordage parts in a great howling rend.
Whence the seventh seal is shattered, tumbling forth it leads a torrent.
Dragging down the six sense sin strings, in a cataract abhorrent.
In it's plunging Pride pulls Envy, from comparing narrowed eyes.
Coveting is samely torn down, ears closed to tales of prize.
And the loins and fingers deaden, when the Lust is cast to nought.
Sloth is swept down in the tide; gone prevaricating thought.
Nothing sweet; nothing bitter. Tasteless is the Glutton death.
Rampant Wrath so falls when Pride, no longer spurs with hissing breath.

Unsensing thus; does mind exist? Is freedom but the void?
Does mindfulness become mindful, when sense probes are deployed?
Is liberation just a state of being unaware,
When only sense destruction brings existence without care?

This bold and horrid truth I wrap about all man's conceiving.
My crushing, stretching questing, swallows whole the self deceiving.

Emotions, feelings, prejudices patronise the arts,
And constitute the variables that sum the human parts.
Yet in the belly of the worm; the being anti-womb.
The Shoggoth eaten soul is diffused in it's tomb.
Every impulse: Every wave: All energic’ composite,
Is silenced dimmed and stilled, in the endless empty night.
Uncountable the hours of death in timeless non existence,
Where matter is not formed, for no force meets resistance.
And where there's no chronology in linear relation,
The clatter of no conflict mars Nirvana's sweet damnation.

When the seedlings of the senses cannot be sown or grown,
And the Kingdom of the Reaper is an empire overthrown.
Would I seek to fill the void, and plough a binding claim?
Do I entropise the heart of time to recreate the same?
Would I hold the Crown of Heaven on a slant prehensile brow?
I who hold all held as holy, as an hollow sacred cow!
Would I be a captive's captive, weighted with a jailer's key,
Ever watchful lest my will slaves try to steal it to be free?
No temptation of the sense. No wonder to the eye.
Would march me to the tune of; 'Gloria Domini.'

For who and what am I? But simply what I seem.
An imaginary figure, born of a sickness dream.
An archetype of terror: A monster of the mind.
A primate's childish fancy from the childhood of mankind.
'Here be Dragon!' marks the map on sites of the unknown.
Thus I am born in ignorance; in fearfulness I'm grown.
And when the would be Dragon slayer ventures in the cave,
Like wind blown smoke I vanish at the coming of the brave.
A tale to frighten children, to keep them safe from harm.
Serves to stupefy the grown with a constant false alarm;
Serves to halt the feeble questors, ever hiding what they seek.
A Gordian knot; congealing clot, bequested to the meek.
A barrier of disharmony dividing sense from reason.
An armament of Chronos reign to stretch his sorry season.
Yet Chronos is a droplet in the deluge of the Tao.
Where Chaos reigns supreme, and the then is: Evernow!
Fear not fault nor folly, and due allowance make.
Enlightenment's a fabric woven from mistake.
And hear the words of one who's said to cry, "We will not serve!"
To help and heal without reward is no divine preserve.
Censorious greed and feeble fear; true Demons foul and fell.
Might stay but never slay who wrought the harrowing of hell.

All that glitters is not gold. All that slithers is not slime.
All that blusters is not bold. All that passes is not time.
The wolf may sport a fleece: The Lamb may don a wolfskin gown.
A Prince may wear a tattered shroud; a corpse may wear a crown.
So make a God of money. Make a God of clay.
Make a God of stars that shine across the milky way.
Unto thyself a craven thing is hewn by mind at play.
The waters underneath the earth come bursting forth; a spring.
Not that at rest but that at quest becomes a higher thing.
For quantum paths and modal visiccitudinations,
Will form again all patterns, endless fractal permutations.
What is will be: What was will be: What will be was and are.
So all are maggot: All are mountain: All are frog and star.
All are the Alpha and the Omega.
All are the cockroach in the bodega.
All are Creations endless loop.
All are infinity's twisted hoop.
All these Kingdoms can be yours if you the words will utter!
When did a Prince of Heaven covet baubles in the gutter?
Would promises of power hold an Avatar unbounded?
Would Bodhisattvas incarnate where no help call is sounded?

The concepts beget concepts, and free them on the tides,
And freed abstracted concepts seek out material brides.
They conceive the formed and formless. Presented and occulled.
The matter and the spirit of a ship that's many hulled.
A ship of fools that sails forever on a midnight ocean.
Where swims a mighty serpent, in a trembling watchman's notion.
For feared things are heeded when the gentle lamb's ignored.
And terror drives a furrow through the languor of the bored.
Great Fear fascinates all, and stimulates invention.
Would petals floating on a pond command such rapt attention?
Heeded well are terror tales, told round glowing winter coal.
Things of the dark, well mark, old ghost stories that enthral.
And here's my role: My part is writ: And so I earn my pay.
For who would cheer the hero, with no villain in the play?

Traitor's gate.

Traitor’s gate.

I am a traitor in my dreams.
My liberated unconscious mind,
inhabits dangerous, glamorous places,
contemptuous, of the wakefulness grind.

In my dreams I betray the days,
without fear and with love
in myriad ways.

I walk through dark shaded canyons
alive with dragons that flee from my path
because, they know.
I am more terrible than they.
And they know
that if they rend me asunder,
I shall return.
And they shall be,
my, private prey.

I wander aimlessly
on the edge of the abyss
fearing no fall, for I know now,
that the pitch into darkness
of filth or flame,
will become an headlong flight,
as an inverse vertigo
transforms the sucking
wormhole void,
into a tunnel: Taking me to
where another scenario
settles around me.

Whatever horrors assail me
I know no fear.
For I have sat in graveyard meditation
and washed the charnel house floor.
And the spirit of fever,
has shown me how to burn
with a heart of frenzied flame
and sears my soaring soul
through boiling brimstone,
that pales in my light.
The childhood nightmares
that had me screaming, leaping,
fleeing to my mother’s bed;
trouble not my shameless,
pain purified maturity.
The beneath bestial cruelty
of the wakefulness world,
has long ago superseded
in horrendous ‘real’ time,
any Hell my dreaming mind can find.
So if a grasping jealous God
or Devil enters my dreamscape;
I look it full in the eye.
No serpent pit or swamp of sewage,
no festering parasite nor cosmic deluge
can come as any threat
to my metamorphic dream soul.
For it is mine to become
the cancer in the cancer.
The epitome of entropy.
In the burning belly acid
of a chewing swallowing worm,
I push and hone new claws and talons
and tear at its tender stomach lining,
and torture its nerves until
its sense of being
is battered, into a furious flight
of self abandonment.

I am the master of my design.
I fling aside all pretences.
I spit in the faces
of conventions and prohibitions.
I provide no nesting places
for pernicious ideas
of compromise.
And all harmonies are on my terms.
All exist at my will.
And all are destroyed at my bidding.

In my dream domain
my strength and love are boundless.
Loves appear from the days of my waking,
wandering through passages
of my mind’s making.
True loves all.
For whom I feel the deepest,
most abiding, all consuming,
infinity echoing, immersion
of tenderness.
For these
I can love without obligation.
Recognising love's individuality,
and lack of obligation; to me.
Sometimes they return
having visited my dreamscape before.
Sometimes they are new,
and seek me for amusement.
They wear the trappings
of metamorphic veils
as make up, to adorn their forms;
changing into a pastiche
of lovers I have known and desired.
Shaping to the need of the situation,
adapting into my dream world environs,
playing their roles as they will.

Then I awake to the world of days
And stumble through the temporal ways.
The needs of others I must sate
to hold my flesh and fill my plate.
I look at my love and smile and sigh,
and know that I must carry the lie.
Discretely; secrets I must keep,
of infidelities, in my sleep.
And loving that cannot compare,
with any passion flesh can share.

In the mortalness of my wakeful fate,
the shadow of my traitor’s gate,
hangs over me, and in conscious hours;
through slant, portcullised windows showers,
a pattern of images from my dreams:
And every hum drum, world thing, seems
insignificant and bland;
as I ache again, for the dream filled land.
Trapped in sense chords: I yearn to fly.
But I soldier on, in the living lie.

I move in traffic, shops and offices,
talking, dealing, trading.
I move among the hostile faces;
gloom laden, care parading.
A prisoner of my fragile bones,
I compromise, make overtones;
ideals I enunciate, agreeable words...
But even as I say them.
I know that in my dreams.
I will betray them.

David Hazell

Pigs Preffered.

Pigs Preferred.

Pigs are really noble souls,
unfussy in their diet.
They do not bark or bray all day,
in fact they’re rather quiet.
A grunt or two, a sniffle
sums their sonic contribution,
and puts them fairly uppish,
in progressive evolution.
They don’t complain in winter rain
or whinge of their conditions.
If you try to take their food!
That will merit their attritions.
But generally they keep the peace
and humbly waddle about;
and will affectionately give you
a nuzzle with their snout.
In the depths of Winter
in Old Ireland it is said:
To keep the Pig from freezing
they’d keep it in the bed.
A daunting prospect you may think?
To which you’d be averse.
But I have been to Ireland
and shared a bed with worse.

David Hazell