Palestinian Children

or “Tears of The Galilee”

from Rhyme Without Reason by Gary Knapton

How many night-sky stars shine out in hope that this might cease ?

How much closer are we to the prize of living in peace ?

How many people still believe once wars have taken their tolls ?

Thousands of innocent people maimed and dying by the Dead Sea Scrolls

How many walls go tumbling when the bombs fall from above ?

How many dreams are crumbling through the eye of a storm of love ?

How many mouths shot silent ?

How many eyes to see ?

Palestinian children share your tears of the Galilee

How long we been neighbours ?

Yet how little do we care ?

Focused on our differences

Yet blind to the path we share

So many Mosques and Temples

Don’t you find it odd

That we would sooner kill each other than share in the fruits of God ?

Can’t we take a new approach ?

How can it hurt to try ?

How much possibility hangs low in the Jericho sky ?

Suicide bombers and soldiers

Are robbing us of our namesake

How many more miles sleepwalking before we are blown awake ?

How many houses tumble when we bomb our cities in hate ?

How many more lives crumble by the old Jerusalem gate ?

How many hearts fall silent ?

Why can’t anyone see ?

Palestinian children share your tears of the Galilee

PLO and Hamas mask enemies from within

Rocket shells on the Golan Heights

Another bombardment din

Every innocent loses

Jews and Arabs alike

All our brothers and sisters

Fear death from the next airstrike

Human beings are vulnerable

Human beings are fools

Too many men with power not love are making money and rules

Meanwhile back in Disneyland we parody the Burlesque stall

While they starve and suffer in the shade of a Berlin-esque wall

How much more pain rumbles ?

People cannot breathe

How the wealthy grumble from the towers of Tel Aviv

All the world is guilty in its quest for a Holy grail

Deaf to the lesson loud and clear from a nearby Crucifix nail

Open Your Eyes; or "your mathematical chance"

a poem by me from a collection entitled Rhyme-Scheme Lizards

when he died

when told she loved you

how did you feel inside ?

walking along with the inexplicable

running from the quiz you hide

science is cool

but science can’t help

your unprogrammable search

building, testing new hypotheses

grew too big for it’s church

nights are thickets

sun-spun coteries

rife with dreams to enhance

the neural crux of sleeping reverie

your true manifest stance

days are tickets

you’re His lottery

life is a numbers dance

the sum total of hours, minutes, seconds

your mathematical chance

venetia burney says

nothing will change when everything changes

nothing is certain

i know

you’re off chasing new horizons

i pretend to lie low

you went zoom past mars and jupiter

knowing what we can’t see

my head’s visiting darker galaxies

i’m discovering me

did you say hi to titan and phoebe

on your saturn monsoons ?

did you make friends with hip


neptunians

dancing all over their moons ?

take my hand and let me come with you

show me the magic of space

you’re my star


i'll be your satellite

orbiting all of your grace

let’s spin out on anti-gravity

i have planetary needs

take a world each and meet in the middle

hubble knows where this leads

me on hydra

you on kerberos

where do you think we’ll go ?

halfway up a range of liquid mountains

covered in nitrogen snow

Not Like Rain

Perched here above life


Looking out on the fake majestic game


Manchester's pride and shame

I think bigger

And learn now a wider version of my world

How all interactions tilt into a grand design

Newly angled

Everything disentangled yet bound up

Not hopelessly bound up

Rather, hopefully intertwined

The shapes, curves and colours

Musically aligned

And for my ears

A power drill, three sirens, two cat calls,

That dense fascinating symphony of

A hundred car tyres rolling on tarmac

The robotic beep stutter of a vehicle reversing

The bustle of a million lives moving out

Dispersing

Factory sounds, school kids, the whirl flutter of a passing helicopter

Fragile bursts of song and spontaneous joy-strapped laughter cut short

At once shrill and drowning under new sounds ever after

And a thousand un-named dancing things

All meshed into a new collective and sent up to me

On arrival, so charged by urban fervour 


You could cut through with a knife

That distant radio of life

Was that Colin knocking on my door or oil men fracking thirty miles off ?

Long-wave sounds ricochet the subtlest of echoes

In this way I decipher the provenance of audio

And the night rain

Falling through the air in deep sweeping sighs

Not the sound of rain landing

But the hurl of its descent through the skies

Shy of contact

Unfettered and pure

Free as a bird

Not like rain you ever heard

the BIG sky blue

Know your script when the curtain raises

Find the keys to your cage

Announce your fine provincial talents

Onto the global stage

Bin your confines

Torch your bias

Rise above the crowd

Engineer the confidence to think and feel aloud

Smile like love and dance the night away

Follow what you don’t know

Yesterday’s theme is "Where You’ve Been"

Today it's "Where You’ll Go"

Unravel yourself to the world around you

Travel the big sky blue

Shape your own experiences

Shake the place up new

Scorch your heart in desire’s bonfire

Kiss the morning dew

Make good your vow to live your life

Make your dreams come true

Laugh like drains and shred the evidence

Wash the old slate clean

Drown the diatribe with your merriments

Beckon a fate unseen

Never get lost in the new paranoia

That colours these PC times

Cross your heart you’re one like no other

Now go out and cross lines

Like the Need You Call Love

or: The Lost & Found - from a collection by me entitled “Cry Me A River”

Something simple

Real old-fashioned

Something quaint and un-broke

Something turbo-boost impassioned

Some fires ready to stoke 

Like the lust that I called chemistry

Like my angels above

Like the teeth of my defenestry

Like the need I call love

I say “safe” for insecurity

My desires fuel greed

I play trust but I get surety

I say “love” to mean need 

All the crimes of my mendacity!

I never heeded my foe

I call sated “half-capacity”

I don't know I don't know

Like the urge I try to satisfy

All the pleasures I yearn

Like the beauty I go blindly by

Dim-lit lessons I learn

Like the world my head goes living in

Houses that I call home

Like my brain - the TV or

The computer that I call “phone”

Like the dream world that I patronise

Like the gift-horse I missed

The escape hatch when I fantasise 

Like the first time we kissed

Like the ache when I curl up at night

Like the distance I go

Like the loneliness of morning light

Like the Devil I know

Like old cares that I don’t care about

Like I’m really not here

Like the screams that I don't dare let out

Like I’m scared of the fear

Like the glimmer in my changing eyes

Like my heart re-aligned

Like places my soul could demonise

Like the darkness I find


I feign strength to mask my impotence

I never counted the cost

I lose hope with every incident

Turn the lights out

I'm lost

Like my box-fresh new identity 

Like the path that I choose

Wipe the debts of my indemnity

Now I’ve nothing to lose

Like my eyes are open once again

Like emerging from sea

Like recalling why I’m valuable

Like re-finding the key

Like the honour of a bird released

Like discovering sun

Like my soul got newly un-deceased

All of my dreams in one

Like my safe-haven came back to me

Like my purpose returned

Like the cruel boss left the factory

Like my problems got burned

Like the vision of my periphery

Came back into my reach

Like my game of soul midwifery

Taught me something to teach

Like a smile re-learnt my face again

Like my angels are near

Like I’m back in time and space again

Like I’ve nothing to fear

Like I’m informed and engaged again

Like I’m back in the game

Like I’ll never be encaged again

Like an end to all pain

Like the heat of appetite

Reflecting over my thirst

Like my hand of friendship out

To all the things I do worst

Like the sparkle in the morning light

Like beauty with no end

Like the distant farewell call of

Hankerings I transcend

Like the laughter I call “happiness”

Like the game I call “life”

I see pain as a short-term problem

I see goodness as rife

I say “hope” to mean the future, now

I say “no” to mean no

I learnt trust 

I know my heart’s alive

Life’s a race

I say “Go!”

Like a baby joyful in surprise

Like I’m back on the ground

Like places my soul could harmonise

Light the torches

I'm found