LIFESCAPES
Poems by Pam Crane
Copyright 2017 Pam Crane
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MATURITY
IRON
In the crust of a thousand islands,
In the rocks and the dust of Mars,
In the core of a whirling planet,
In the breath of a billion stars
The metal of Man was waiting
For a brain and a thumb and fire.
An age of history-making
Began with naked desire;
Firing, hammering, honing,
Ready for food and foe,
Blade and spear in the forest
To swing, to thrust, to throw.
Mankind has harvested iron,
Harnessed its weight for war,
Hard in the mouths of horses,
Strong on the fortress door;
Melting, moulding and casting
Cauldron, helmet and chain,
Armour against the weapon,
Shield to carry the slain.
Hoops for the cooper’s barrel,
Rim for the carter’s wheel -
And then the gun. And the girder.
Man has discovered steel.
With steel he plunders the planet.
With steel he murders the trees.
With steel he conquers his neighbour ...
But loses to Heart disease.
The crust of the whirling planet
Is left with the rust of war,
Waiting for souls to ripen
Just as it was before.
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MY CAMPAIGN
Roll up! Roll up! And vote for me,
This rare day of democracy!
Your Independent candidate
Is up for vigorous debate
On any issue - you may pick it;
I shall add it to my ticket.
Join me! Wear my fine rosette!
I found these on the internet,
The symbolism quite apparent -
Frills and ribbons all transparent.
My platform? I am anti-greed.
‘To each according to his need.’
So - nurses’ wages? They must rise;
That should come as no surprise.
I am also on the ball
With soccer - salaries must fall
To where they were back in the day
When games were televised in grey;
The pricey foreigners must go
So local lads can run the show.
Then we can all afford to cheer
Our teams three dozen times a year!
The beating heart of my campaign
Is second homes. Let me explain,
That only for a licence fee
In this corrupt economy
Should anyone at all be given
More than a single house to live in.
After somewhere nice to stay
With kids or friends on holiday?
You’ll have to rough it like the rest
Of us, and be a hotel guest.
Open the villages again
To local folk and working men!
My logo is a garden gnome:
“Make every house a proper home.”
Still on the theme of rural life,
One phrase that cuts me like a knife
Is “National Park.” A park’s for play.
We’re throwing peace and space away,
Granting the ignorant permission
To tramp the wild into submission.
I’ll curb the greedy National Trust,
Stop all the farms from going bust,
Punish the waste of food, and pull
Strings to revive the trade in wool.
(... Remember the verses on the bus
And tube that once delighted us?
When Brummel Beau, the swell of swells
Electrified the Brighton Belles,
The Prince would hover in the offing,
Killing romance with fits of coughing.
‘Another cold, Sire? Listen do!
To be well-dressed be wool-dressed too!
In elegance it is the rule,
There is no substitute for Wool!’)
We must control our lust for oil,
Return the plough-horse to the soil.
Spread the forests, marsh and heath,
Meadow and moor, till we can breathe.
I can see progress here and there,
But people need another scare -
We’re seeing fewer plastic-trees
Yet micro-beads are in the seas
And particles lodged in the brain
May drive us secretly insane.
Is our poisoned air why we
Deny the world’s divinity?...
I’ll fight the rising tide of noise
From shrieking girls and fighting boys;
The clubs and bars will close at ten,
And we can get some sleep again...
Under a blazing Milky Way
Once light is limited to day.
No fireworks may be lit before
November 5th; I’m waging war
On every huge exploding shell
That turns an evening into hell
For those with post-traumatic stress,
And trembling pets. The friendliness
Of toffee-apples round the fire,
Sooty potatoes, rockets higher
Than stars, and flowers of coloured light
Are joys enough on Fireworks Night.
And those who wind their windows down
To blast their ‘music’ through the town
And all who leave their engines running
For ages at the kerb, I’m gunning
For you! You shake the old, the ill,
The tired - I’ll force you to keep still.
Many end up on a ward,
Sick or broken, stressed and bored.
On my watch, to help us heal
We shall feast at every meal.
Morale will soar - and if we get a
Smile as well, we’ll soon be better!
Prevention always trumps a cure;
In Whitehall thrift has great allure:
I’ll save the NHS a packet,
Ruining Big Pharma’s racket.
Garlic scrips at fifty pee,
Will keep the country virus-free.
(You take it raw, with lots of food.
It does your blood and body good.)
And when you go to see the Doc
He won’t be looking at the clock
And neither will your daily carer -
Pay and practice must be fairer.
Nobody should lie all day
Unloved until they waste away.
Roll up! Roll up and vote for me!
I’ll do my best as your MP
To purge pollution, waste and lies;
Let’s save the world before it dies.
Forward to Index
1PARTY GAMES
Fondly I remember party games,
Tests of character with simple names.
Any joiner-in could take a punt
At statues, spin the bottle, treasure hunt,
Bingo, pass the parcel, blind man’s buff,
Fielding twenty questions off the cuff;
Murder in the dark, musical chairs,
And playing sardines underneath the stairs.
Oh, how times have changed! Our parties now
Hunt down the blind and frail who find out how
To play the system so that they can eat.
They spin the news, they pass the buck, they cheat,
And twenty questions is a bland parade
Of policy, an insincere charade.
In the House they fight for every chair;
Murdered ideals are buried everywhere.
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HEROES
We are the Heroes
All we need to do
Is fly straight perish in fire
Paradise waiting
Islands and cities
Full of mistaken people
Chosen for Heaven
One man with a gun
And a beautiful bomb smiles at
His own Jihad
Glorious weather
To start a war by shedding
The blood of children
Souls of the broken
Stare at the tears and courage
Uncomprehending
No happier day
To pack a rucksack and break
The heart of London
Deep in shattered dreams
New shoes kick the enemy
Old men are weeping
A perfect weekend
For boys in the hood to run
Looting and burning
Not the rescuers
Dying to save a stranger
Nor the blind climber
Not the lovely boy
He and the bomb dismantled
Nor burning daughters
Not the Red Arrow
Who wrenched his plummeting plane
Away from houses
Not aching nurses
Mothers of empty children
Nor weeping Jesus
God in our pocket
We are the right men always
We are the Heroes
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PARADISE LOST
(a Villanelle)
Yesterday you joined us on the summer sand,
Girls in bikinis, tiny children running bare,
You in a bomb-belt, Kalashnikov in hand.
Our simple heaven shattered in a foreign land,
The debris of your holy visit everywhere.
Yesterday you joined us on the summer sand.
In the only Paradise you understand
Naked houris waited for your beck and call -
You in a bomb-belt, Kalashnikov in hand -
But your black leaders lovely lies have slain you, and
There will be no Garden, no reward at all.
Yesterday you joined us on the summer sand;
In that moment nothing happened as you planned.
The hand of God reached down for us and left you there,
You in a bomb-belt, Kalashnikov in hand.
In that love which makes our butchered children whole
Is there forgiveness for your naked, broken soul?
Yesterday you joined us on the summer sand
You in a bomb-belt, Kalashnikov in hand.
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PARADES
I love parades. I love the noise
The dancing girls the laughing boys
The frocks as white as snowy May
To celebrate Our Lady’s Day
I hate parades. I hate the noise
The new regime’s expensive toys
The endless rhythmic martial tread
Annual insult to the dead
I love parades. I love the crowd
The shouts the whistling out and proud
The rainbow flags the sexy gear
We’ve made it through another year
I hate parades. I hate the crowd
The pipes are shrill the drums too loud
And symbols clash in every street
As old intolerances meet
I love parades. I love the smells
Of food and animals the bells
On circus horses scary clowns
When wonder comes to sleepy towns
I hate parades. I hate the smells
Of men emerging from their cells
Waste of body and waste of mind
Bury the lives we left behind
I love parades. I love the weather
We freeze and fry and drown together
To watch a smiling Queen go by
And try to catch a guardsman’s eye
I hate parades. I hate the weather
Shivering sweating in serge and leather
One day we’ll be the men in braid
Now it’s a passing-out parade
I love parades I hate parades
Stories written in cavalcades
The year has turned and here we come
Who will march to a different drum?
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GAIA’S LAMENT
When am I to be free of men?
Feel the breath of the stars again?
Welcome again a crystal sea
To pulse and rhyme with the heart of me?
Men are piercing me for my oil,
Scarring me with their pits and spoil,
Torching the trees that make the air,
Spreading their poison everywhere.
The fading life in my ocean feeds
On deadly invisible plastic beads.
These will return to choke the men
Who foul the air and the waves - but when?
I whip and I whip their selfish hide,
I spin the winds, I churn the tide,
I crack the cities with men inside
For all the loveliness that died.
When will the polar snows return?
When will the jungles cease to burn?
When at last will the only roads
Be the secret tracks of elk and toads?
I long for the day Cheyenne and Sioux
Can do again what they love to do,
Buffalo graze on a bracing plain,
Waters flashing with fish again.
When will the billions learn to be
Grateful, careful and kind to me?
When will they honour the Earth, their mother?
I die - they die. They have no other.
Every battle between my sons
Has wounded me with the bombs and guns.
Oh friendly meteors, aim for me
And put me out of my misery!
The slums and towers will all be dust,
Ambition will end in bone and rust;
Shocked souls will cry for pardon - then
I shall indeed be free ... oh, when?
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LABOUR
He voted Labour all his life,
your Dad.
I was a loving, loyal wife
And glad
To put my cross by the same candidate
Then wait
Watching TV in the crowded bar
By the pithead, sinking jar after jar
Till the results were in
And we knew
Which side would win
And who
Have to
Take defeat on the chin.
This time it was Thatcher.
Among the posh Tory men
None could match her
Smart, pearled
Vehement
Acumen.
She took us on.
In her blue eyes our blackened world
Of slag and seam,
Of red flags unfurled,
Was alien,
Spent;
Our time had gone,
Dismissed like a bad dream;
The mines had had their day,
They would no longer pay.
And we of the tin baths and the tin hats
Who toiled in blackness on the brightest day,
Whose men clocked up miles in cages not cars,
With scars
From rockfall, pick-axe, truck and buried friends,
We were like rats
To be rid of by brute means for Tory ends.
Oh,
The mines would go.
Not clean,
Not green,
Old King Coal was dead.
The
wheels would stop at every pithead,
And soon there would be nothing to be seen
Of where we had been,
Nothing to show
For centuries of hard labour below.
Then came
King Arthur.
Labour to the core
And one of us, a husband and a father -
And more,
He courted fame:
He rallied our communities for war.
How could we know
Scargill would let us starve?
That slow
And bitter year
The government would halve
Our meagre benefits;
There would be no
Help from the Miners’ Union for the poor
Surviving on our wits,
On fags and beer.
And how could we know
The misery in store at striking pits?
Hectored men would go
Desperate for a little Union pay
Onto the picket lines
Day after day
Believing this would somehow save the mines;
There they would stay
Despite the broken hand, the bloody nose,
Taunting the Right,
Keeping the scabs at bay.
Braving fight after fight,
Arrests and fines,
Under the scrawled signs
Life-long friends coming to blows
Over the side they chose.
And how could we know
After the charging horses,
Black police
And bloodied batons, and the riot shields
In ugly deployment of national resources
To keep the peace;
After our lives became a TV show,
Our banners headlines,
How could we know the mines
Would soon revert to ruins in the fields,
The wild take back our spoil
And at terrible cost
Our loved labour lost
To gas, to oil?
Three decades on,
Son,
Your Dad has gone.
And there’s no coal
And there’s no soul
In this damned coalition.
Thousands went in and then came out of prison;
All that pain
Was utterly in vain.
The Tories won.
The pithead wheels are rusting in the rain,
The talk is all
Of tide and wind and sun
And Labour has broken with the Union.
You’ll try again
To roll back time - but this is a strange
World caught up in climate change.
Each warring party goes by its old name