May This Grieving Never End I do not want to leave these deep black soils I feel a deep resistance a clinging within my bones Like saying goodbye to my dying loved one I stepped back from the doorway breaking our gaze And there were those reasons for my mind to say Leave Now Leave Now Leave it up to Them So I have done my leaving and it makes my grieving Longer Much Longer and May it Never End Because I see now what is made then in that final gazing Threads woven never breaking Binding wisps and tightening the images in my head So much time for weaving this silken rope of grieving That I hold when my heart is screaming Or crying in my dreaming Oh Mercy Please Mercy Come Hold Me While I Weep Many more years have passed since I lay crying on the carpet I still feel the woollen fibres pressing on my face I feel those rough short fibres as my fingers lay there plucking Searching for a baby’s body that had left for another place The carpet wet with weeping and breasts that could not stop from leaking Soaked into the carpet that rough and earthy fleece. Grown by sheep nibbling the grass grown on that black soil I will never forget the black soil giving me this peace. I felt the black soil women coming carrying woven blankets As they wept and held me they took me to the pond And washed my wretched body, the milk and the bleeding That soaked into the ground. And though it was the black soil, to where I was returning, The women of my dreaming come from another place, They came to me from black soil but they are the desert mothers, From mountains and the forests, from cities and villages, Free women and imprisoned, not even defined by gender, Or birthing from their body, just mothers of the spirit, Love shining for their children, selfless in their own soul, To comfort and to guide and bring our burdens home. I saw the people running, running for the plane, Family, friends and neighbours running for the plane, Please one more space, one more small space, For the bonds of humanity please one more space. For people bravely running, let them come onto the plane. With anguish and with grieving they took their precious space. Once we walked into the gardens with perfumed yellow roses, The yellow chain trees held us for a moment in their shade, We stood near the herbs of healing, silver green leaves resting, While a gentle breeze was playing with the tassels of my shawl. I saw the timeless mountains holding this river basin, Where the spring rains feed the fruit trees, Mulberries, pomegranate and the grapes of summer time, The eagles soar the high peaks and the juniper breeze Comes drifting down the mountainside. For a moment my mind is still now, The desert mothers send me these visions in my mind. The song of the desert mothers came along the trade routes, Bring the light of their holy faces to murmur words of peace, And the song of their sweet voices to guide us in our grief. People cry we cannot go when our hearts are breaking, Their voices sobbing and shaking, the desert mothers answer God sees all our faces and the faith of many places. They whisper go now, go now, we will stay with them. Take one more look and hold them, We will be with them for all time, We will be their witness, for they are our children, And while there is suffering the grieving never ends.

Money Will Not Save Your Children Did you sign up for this then, When we sold the world? Now we have to watch the men To whom we sold the world Deliver crap right to our door Make it fast so we want more. Heart shape waffle maker Multi hook clothes hanger Melania silky bed sheets Anti panic gravity blanket Kanoodle game to play alone Imagination overload. They pile the garbage keep it hidden. Money will not save their children. Once a nerd now high achieving, Getting rich is getting even. Sedated cats wearing clothing, Drunk dogs running, falling over, Children taking selfies, acting like its cute, Grown men being angry, looking like a brute. That’s how low you can bring them. Money will not save your children. Money will not save your children. Keep it in a warehouse while you still can, Make a fortune call it a jungle, Weeds will grow empires crumble. Make a fortune name a poor man. Leave this planet, find a new one, Send a rocket, look for new land. Money will not save your children

Ne’er a Maid Forgive me for writing The simplest of rhymes The cadences soothe When speaking of crimes. A soul makes a torrent Churns bile salt and oil. The heart beats like thunder And brain cells will boil. What could make my blood bubble Like a fire lake in hell Becomes not much trouble And I am able to tell. Pendle Hill martyrs Sang for my soul I knew not their names But later was told. Gave me their stories When I was ready to hear. Sad secrets so tender Hands and faces appear. In a deep forest clearing Was a fathomless pond The pool of the weeping Tears from ages beyond. Rosewood skin women Strew flowers over graves My eyes soothed by petals Were we angels or slaves? From essence we come And then we return to bone As we grew from the marrow In our grandmother’s womb Our mother’s mother made Our face in a locket beaded By a silk threaded rope Were circled and seeded In our mother Before her birth From essence and blood To ashes and earth We are the fruit of the woman Who made the girl, when grown She then gave birth to us This is the cycle whole The seed is fruitful whatever the life We live we die alone We grow in two mothers. And then we return to bone. With saucy round eyes And porcelain hearted I heard glistening tales Of petals that parted. In sand dunes and Kombis And back seats they laid Then I knew to my shame I was never a maid. Shame it creeps quietly Then grabs on my arm I rebel I seek freedom I am trapped every time. There are secrets so deep And memories vanished A stricken heart cannot weep And the soul has been banished Since I could form words The truth was not spoken The tongue it is twisted And my voice it is broken. Like a stigma, a mark Of mortification My silent cry grimace Is my degradation. So knowledge comes easy Like essence distilled When floating not breathing A chance of life or be killed. In the bath he lay grieving His sadness of life A clown face eyes drooping No purpose his wife I saw him splayed in the bath From a height of three feet I shrank with gaze blurring But he made our eyes meet My bile rises choking And burns in my chest My life could be ending Is this a torture or test He holds in his power My life and my death His hands press the pillow I no longer draw breath The searing the soaring Of mind breaking free Of viscera screaming I am now I will breathe Fingers and toes Eyes that can see You know you will grow And what you want to be I stand with my bruises And mind intermittent Pain seeping outward A step sends me spinning Though we feel helpless We are wise ageless beings And rising out of my flesh I was flying not fleeing A vulture sees death In the sweetness of life A whore in a baby Corpse flesh in a wife If you seek to do evil It is that which you find And though you may flee It will nest in your mind Suffer little children To come unto me Was the only way out As far as I could see If god made his image And people despoil Heaven is hidden There is only turmoil It is in the way that we see Some things that are there And we wonder why There is a rope and a chair The rope it lies still No thought when I chose Chair stands there calmly Demure in repose. So this is evil Banal like they said My eyes drifting upward To the beam overhead. A trance dream no nightmare The eye blinded bright A red shard splintered From a glass of lead light. From a window once broken In a church saved by fate And flew into my hand As a jewel it was placed. So here I am sitting in the Church of St Jude The quiet lady chapel To pray not to brood. For the soldiers, the fallen And a babe newly born A niece smiling down And a lover to mourn. Forgive me for praying To genderless saints I see them as beings Beyond those constraints But we make them our mirrors And follow lost directions To valleys and mountains Lakes with clouds in reflections . I know there is sweetness And kindness and faith The truth I can find it In my body not a wraith The blood that once flowed Is now drunk as wine A symbol so constant Holds steady with time. When blood is chilling Then nothing remains This Blood that was Given Enlivens the veins. As living was stolen Bleak ruin my soul But the Eternally Living Fed and Made Whole. A sister baby breathing doll Became the bargain struck For the price of my soul A throat could be crushed. With this I yielded, hushed Two years old could understand The fate of a baby In harsh cruel hands. An implicit agreement Deliberately abstract Sign language of violence Became a binding contract. A toddler goes rambling Off on her own Looking for comfort In other people’s home When the baby is here Cannot leave her behind Strange sight unseen By the wilfully blind. A child with a pram She could barely reach Arms upward and aching Pushing down the street. A babe with a tie and A smart trilby hat Not a babe but a man Anyone could see that. Grand mother Great aunt What were they thinking When these babes arrive Like refugees sinking. Tutt tuttingly returned Press buzzingly ring Leave at the door Down the road hurrying. Beds that are made Till death you must lie in When will that be No one is certain. Shroud bride released Stumbles downstairs Fear shame and cranky Acts devil may care. Never smile At a paedophile Even if you meet him Walking down the aisle Forget manners Wedding planners Tear up flags and banners Use garlic cross and hammers …. Parchments of memories That wish to be told Cruelties and kindness In my mind they unfold. Seven lifetimes it sleeps Like a corpse in a shroud The generations it keeps Like a sun behind clouds. Then with the moving of planets We foretell as the seasons She unfurled as a heliotrope Rampant with reasons She knew all the answers She mocked every question She moved around lovers As if they were chessmen In hotpants and platforms The world was her circus Walked tightropes with monkeys For a dubious purpose. A wild reckless terror A prisoner released Leaving behind her A scarified beast. The beast became weaker From scissors not a sword From a naked wet heliotrope He cringed not a word As a bird fights a mirror And murders itself He fought the intruder He was left on the shelf A midnight cuckoo came calling Plump ripe fully growed Cradled snugly in my mother’s limbs He turned into a toad I learnt to walk on eggshells Before the cuckoo turned to toad Already cracked and broken I packed my box and hit the road. So I went to the Mossy Well Not knowing where I fled Got on a bus the first I saw So surely was I led I stood in the porch of the Baptist’s house I was told it would come they said On twelfth night the Epiphany The crocodile came my way To be accused by name And that is what he got No matter why he came. I cannot speak for the Unrepentant souls Of crimes so dark and drear Just mark with chalk And seek holy wells Protect ones who I hold dear. I pray for the souls of the helpless slain For a moment’s gory lust I stand with my blade at the water’s edge Watchful sure and just. They can pray alone with their reptile tears Or find a priest with hardened skin To strike with words To fan the flames While the reptile burns from within.

“Let’s strive to enter by the narrow gate. Just as the trees, if they haven’t stood before the winter’s storms can’t bear fruit. So it is with us; this present age is a storm and it’s only through many trials and temptations that we can obtain an inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven.” - Amma Theodora.

“Choose the meekness of Moses and you will find your heart which is a rock changed into a spring of water.” - Amma Syncletica

First President On The Moon Happy Birthday to you first president on the moon, Happy Birthday Mr President we will look up to you, Favourites of America, are astronauts the chosen few But always they will remember, first president of the moon Hey Mr President The rich men can build their rocketships But you will build the tallest tower far into eternity It is a brave choice but best use of your skills and energies Apollo were explorer apprentices when we compare them to you. To colonize the moon, is not an easy thing to do, But you built a wall around Mexico And there are so many rocks on the moon Don’t postpone be opportune The world has changed far too soon On the moon there is no climate change or corona virus So everything you say is true

Accounts of Resistance On Hyde Park They have built a mountain So the warlords feel at home If they ever come to visit those Mansions of glass and stone. Ballistic glass is gleaming It will not purify the source Of this wretched funding, That flows a deathly course. There is no global Britain On the streets of Kabul. What is the global currency Buying the streets of London? One Hyde Park winter morning I crept along the empty street. And saw the glass towers gleaming Through a whirlwind made of sleet. I was swept by voices chanting Stopped by traffic lights turning red, Behind glass saw figures moving, Swaying with arms outspread, Chanting, humming the air was pulsing. Who are you up there? I asked. We are the Desert Mothers calling From the future and from the past. Quartz glass windows, but I heard them, I heard chanting on the roof, Along the ceiling suspended hallway Aluminium, clear and bullet proof. Floor to ceiling laminate windows Stops the ammunition shell, Penthouse scenic triple glazing, Views of heaven come from hell. Women running, calling, praying In this money laundered place. Covered by their linen robes, Praying for this haunted space. To these souls, for these sons, Sins of the Wolf, they were sent. Praying for their heavy hearts of lead, Seeing not their earthly tent. We have our online influence While democracy still remains, We let them buy this country With their death gotten gains. We took the warlord’s money But not people who were slain. Desert Mothers claim the future Know the past, what the truth is. Stories over ages, written in the sand, Secret money deals, swindles underhand. Sand stories pour through windows, Telling terrors, deadly deeds. Behind the doors of citadels, That is where this money bleeds. Mothers walk along the trade routes, Round the mountain, twisting roads, Fleeing people coming through, From the war zones, forced from homes. Past fields of pale pink poppies, These savage strongholds grow Another type of bleeding As people flow along the road. Past ancient forts and bunkers new, Where men rule an empire, Lame and twisted bending or, Wrought and tense to chase the sky. Have their fill of worldly offers, Could never hear a mother’s cry. God is watching over his children, The Son is crowned with pointed thorns. Time it passes, each warlord falling, Desert Mothers hold the stories. Those who hear will be haunted, Still the Mothers soothe my sleep. As I fall the dreams made smaller, My thoughts, my conscience close they keep. I hear the Mothers running In the mansions, for the plane, In my mind it becomes a merging, A call no longer to contain. For the killers, for the grieving, They are moving through the passage ways I hear the Desert Mothers calling, Running as they come to pray.

Turning Back The Trade Routes Turning back the trade routes, All will be undone, Back along the trade routes, The Desert Mothers come, Turning with the change, Driven by the change. With the fire our blood is flowing, With the flood our dreams emerging, With the drought our mind is seeking, With the storms our souls are spinning. Turning with the change, Driven by the change. Walking back along the trade routes, Past the warlord strongholds, Turning back the trade routes, All will be undone. Back along the trade routes, It will be undone. Turning with the change, Driven by the change, Making life a wasteland, Tell you its a jungle, Name our mirror image, Turn into nightmare. Payment makes a fortune, Inventions of a poor man. Flying in the prowlers, Maidens sold to tourists. Pack their jewels away, Never will be filled, They can eat brioche, Never will be full. Will never be enough, Fly them to the moon. Still never be enough, Knitting mamas wait, All will be undone, With the fire our blood, With the flood our dreams, With the drought our mind, With the storms our souls. Turning with the change, Driven by the change, Turning back the trade routes, All will be undone, They never will be full. It will never be enough, Fly them to the moon, All will be undone. Back along the trade routes, Turning with the change, Driven by the change, It will be undone.