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First Published in 2022: 'The Momentary Clock'
Understanding Chaos
There is nothing here but the fullness of summer,
with its birds and beaks
tapping out the hollow sound of hours.
Of many hours; of many moments;
of many summers on reseeded ground.
There is nothing here but the whole of summer.
I will make my sacrifice to imagined gods.
©2022Peter Hague
First Published in 2022: 'The Momentary Clock'
The Microphone of Love
The microphone of love
is a terrible thing.
It whispers all our comments
into the smothering street.
Where the burden of semantics
deranges all our words
and our hearts are ever swollen
by this bullying betrayal.
I saw you at the bus stop
heading for a plane
to fly you out to anywhere
and lose me in the game
Love’s microphone was listening
but you never said a word.
You went away, not in silence,
but singing like a bird.
©2022Peter Hague
First Published in 2022: 'The Momentary Clock'
The City of Palms
You must keep the virtues
and the low volume of your populous.
And not be degraded
by the discomfort of turmoil.
That deafening cacophony
of the broadening minority
who seek to pull down
the palms of your Jericho.
©2022Peter Hague
First Published in 2022: 'The Momentary Clock'
A Hex on the Anointed
I came down from the mountains
to listen to the people.
They hated each other
and spoke with dark malice.
They had grown their own cancer
with a murderous media
who dealt in histrionics
and preordained conclusions.
There was no rationality,
only febrile monstrosity,
while the West bewitched its heart
with a mistaken woke...
and with the accepted guilt;
and the rotten heartache;
and the terrible self-doubt
of a wounded conscience.
They did envy the mountains though –
those static lords –
keeping as always, a perfect distance.
I will return with a vision –
wide and calling –
a broader interpretation,
and a new kind of peace.
©2022Peter Hague
First Published in 2022: 'The Momentary Clock'
I Think That's What She Said
Whose afraid of Virginia Woolf?
“The charm of London is that it is not built to last,
it is built to collapse...”
just after the usurping oligarchs
and the greed of land-grabbers
and the tax-haven millionaires
have all arrived on their golden bedsteads –
squeezing their way around idealist agendas,
yet comfortable with the old song of coming terror.
Their deepest pockets are filled with bullets,
and the ability to kill a wilderness of poets.
They use communist words that speak of money –
which is always the hallmark of rich propaganda.
The wrong sort of people appropriate the arts;
those we call cuckoos – who forge in the fire –
who replace the monuments of the compliant and gullible,
and build hollow trees from the eggs of birds.
(I think that’s what she said?)
©2022Peter Hague
First Published in March 2022: 'Louder Prayers'
The Mask Becomes a Smile
Do not worry, you are safe in our hands.
This poem is not a claw
aimed at your guilty conscience,
or a threat to your existence
in a soured neighbourhood.
We are not ‘The Outer Limits’
and are not concerned
with controlling every aspect
of your next hour.
We leave that to you,
while offering an embrace
and the added encouragement
of a firm handshake –
a random display of plausible humanity,
yet both practical devices
to fill an episode of the above.
For we have heard tales
of engineered and mutating viruses –
and offer love.
We also offer a badge of honour,
gifted in the form of a trusted mask –
awarded at a safe distance and with a printed smile.
For if ever humans needed the art of levity,
it is in this last mile.
© 2022 Peter Hague
First Published in March 2022: 'Louder Prayers'
Expecting No God
Little by little the stars are closing in –
winking out their simple light,
to grow the sky into a fire of feathers –
a fearful thing –
firing-up the furnace of our being
and of our final spring.
As we crawl out from earth –
dead and empty-handed
but with wings.
© 2022 Peter Hague
First Published in March 2022: 'Louder Prayers'
Time Being Is A Difficult Place /2
What is living? This fixed twilight?
Poems say nothing because no one listens.
The news is uncomfortable
and is grown from agenda.
What is this living that betrays its cohorts?
To avoid misunderstanding
the best words will be redacted.
Soon we will listen only to unlit pages.
And these worst words will underpin
the utterings of salvation.
They will be uncomfortable reading
when society flounders.
Abandon all poetry for the hills of prayer.
Abandon all prayers for the skill of whispering.
Say any words with no god listening.
Say any words with no god laughing.
Play host to the chequered memory
of sanctified meaning,
in this redacted mood of twilight and terror.
© 2022 Peter Hague
First Published in March 2022: 'Louder Prayers'
A Pagan Pageant
Has my country become a pagan state –
having chosen a path of eclectic religion?
Not supporting the word of a single god
but allowing many gods to evolve as a pageant.
An uneasy pantheon, wired to commerce,
or signalling green, as the colour of virtue.
Are we a cabal of regulated mysticism,
involving rare beasts and emotive signs?
The ancient scriptures are retained to appease
those who trust in nothing, lest profound or relic.
Has charity been devised as a plausible miracle –
an interfering panic of commercialised delay?
Some of the gods are lesser-gods now –
considered unworthy by common dissent.
And by the weakening deference of waning interest
that sneaks its whims forward, under simmering stealth.
Are these the sly tools of undermining intolerance
or just the many layers of hades in the making?
And is this the blank flag of a tenuous administration,
sliding wilfully down the pole of deconstruction?
Sending signals of sunrise to more persistent men –
those employed in the worship of blind intolerance.
They were nurtured with faith, as were we,
but we developed its peace into legislated law.
Yet some loyal, devout and commanded souls
are not easily doused-quiet, or darkly outshone.
Their peace comes with meek and vanquished souls
and the timid apology of the surprised overcome –
an insidious easing, by the subjugation of fools
and the surrendering folly of cowering love.
Some religions are indifferent to adjusting dials;
negotiations are no use to established prophets.
They will not tune in to diverse stations,
to sing with an idealism – given pluralist voice.
Western freedom has lost control
of its freewheeling choice.
Christianity has been cast into the crux of a begging bowl,
via the promiscuous mask of its own eager liberties.
Yet peace shall arise with its persistence of faith –
and advertise Hell – the size of billboards.
© 2022 Peter Hague
First Published in Anima 2017: and 'Louder Prayers' 2022
Walking On Water
If I could walk on water, would I be a fool
to think it was more than just tears beneath my feet?
That kind of skill never leads to very much,
like magic – its praise is never quite complete.
It will always seem a trick to some
and you would never gain their trust.
A true messiah would be an ordinary man,
whose wisdom leaves such elaborations out –
especially potential feet of rust.
If I were walking on water now,
I would be standing in a similar room,
on a similar street, in a similar gloom,
with a similar, tear-stained carpet at my feet,
and the warm blood of my own grail
hidden in defeat.
This carpet is a map of things to bear,
with ripples instead of wear and tear.
I could distract myself and dance with castanets.
I could allow fishermen in to cast their nets.
But I would probably move myself on then
and start the process once again –
to summon an angel with a single click…
or just to hang this dripping carpet out
and beat it with a stick.
© 2017 Peter Hague
First Published in 2021: 'Summer With The Gods'
Where We Live
Life is a death sentence –
and that is where we live.
There is always life in the bundle of travelling –
between the sentence and the death.
And that is where we live: in the travelling.
In the shallow root of it all.
In the perfection of uncertain balance.
In the adventure of the spanning bridge.
Arrival is feared, though somewhat welcome –
accepted as huge, unkind, unavoidably certain.
And that is where we live.
© 2017 Peter Hague
First Published in 2021: 'Summer With The Gods'
I Saw the Wind
I saw the wind this time. I saw its frowning face:
a beast, annoyed at the freedom of the promenade.
It threw our hair across our smiles –
sticking to your lipstick – outwitting my grace.
It pulled at the shirts of unflinching men,
rippling the fabric of cloth and brow.
And also the skin of short-sleeved women,
who had seemed as firm as adolescence till now.
It was a staring wind –
no match for gusty talk or blustering cities,
but one that caught the senses with its small tirade.
A mild wind, really – more an ambition;
a common grumble on the lips of God
while the sun sparked through his special cloud.
It was nothing to interest a restless kite;
a castle of sand; a disturbed crow.
Nor the ruffled gull that blinked and stood it out.
It was just something to dwell upon –
apart from a rare, seductive peace,
which was blown away now, gone.
© 2017 Peter Hague
First Published in 2021: 'Summer With The Gods'
Birth is King
The world seems a monstrous place –
a place of evil and abused logic.
Here, they say that death is king,
but birth is king and death is nothing.
Death cannot equal birth’s endless spasms
that wrap our wounds in a healing clay.
They smear the frame of human bones
with an elaborate resistance – death sent away.
But soon, this borrowed throne of birth
will overflow and tip the balance.
And the bones of humanity will be laid bare.
Stripped of their immunity of safe deliverance.
Then the dark lord of death will reign once more –
the dark lord of death, being the nature of balance,
and the balance of nature, being a god,
above kings.
© 2017 Peter Hague
First Published in 2021: 'Game of Function'
Ageless Games
The sea, my treacherous friend,
has overlapped the sand
in search of incredible dreams.
Rolling those stolen horizons –
back from the perished nightmares
of her drowning souls
Death fears no death. The sea fears no death.
And cannot bring a caring wave
to launch this brutal hour
of ageless games.
©Copyright 2019 Peter Hague.
All rights reserved.
First Published in 2021: 'Gain of Function'
Self Prophecy
We were born looking backwards –
for that was the place of knowledge.
We re-enacted the components of history,
that held examples of a trodden future.
Some futures were labelled prediction,
while guessing had no scent or favour.
All we knew was: we grew like branches –
from the rogue stem
of delinquent behaviour.
The nineteen-fifties
were the measure of intellect.
The nineteen-sixties
were of war and freedom.
But these decades were disciples
of the coming apocalypse,
and its screw is inching
into your future’s ear.
It is blowing in the face
of this frowning millennium
and blowing in the wind
when you fail to listen.
©Copyright 2019 Peter Hague.
All rights reserved.
First Published in 2021: 'Gain of Function'
The Queen of Bees
As she walked the streets, the zealous bees
flew in and out of her extensive pockets.
Some thought it monstrous – others pitied her.
Some thought it tragic – while others blamed magic.
Most people threw coins into an upturned hat
she had glued to her hair, using spoonfuls of honey.
Never once thinking – The Queen of all Bees –
should be scarce of money.
©Copyright 2019 Peter Hague.
All rights reserved.
First Published in 2021: 'Gain of Function'
Lives Matter
We are all enslaved now.
A virus owns our lives.
I watch it creep out of sight,
from behind my new, procrastinations.
Whole days spent hiding inside
with the windows shut
and the curtains closed.
Yet the dumb TV seems full of crowds,
intent on breathing each other’s air.
My mind is sealed by fear.
I hear the pause of the super-spreader –
some poor guy who lives on cigarettes
and blows propaganda in your face.
He won’t stop until the virus kills him,
but it won’t kill him – he’s the slaver’s son –
a true captain of cancel and revenge.
He knows the score – He knows the whip.
And has come to bring the world
to its knees.
©Copyright 2019 Peter Hague.
All rights reserved.
First Published in 2021: 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred'
The Perfection of Memory
If you leave me I will stop –
caught like a ship, by rock.
Left alone by the refusing wind
on an unwilling ocean of stilled pretend.
Only the invisible sun
will light my strange, new boredom –
an empty bowl of sky
where a moon means nothing.
With you the sea is infinite.
With you the sea is willing.
But if you leave me, I will stop.
And with everywhere to go
I will go nowhere –
a ship, beached or caught by rock.
I will be barely able to roll with a wave
or roll on a sock,
or comb my hair in a useful way.
I will wait with lowered eyes –
confused and hollow –
tainted by my own coward lies...
where you are still perfect
in my forgiving memory.
©2021 Peter Hague
First Published in January 2021: 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred'
Live Performance
We can live if we want to –
right up until the Sun explodes.
We can live in joyful dirt, like toads...
but only till the Sun explodes.
It will burn us into a blackness, then,
without true form or consequence –
yet a cloud that needs no biological glue
to bond that eternal persistence:
the cosmic essence of me and you.
We are small enough to start again –
cleansed into the comfortable shape
of nothing.
© 2022 Peter Hague
Origins 1990s. First Published in January 2021: 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred'
Camouflage
Ladies and Gentlemen! We are about to go onstage –
bending make-up over broken skin,
with the effort of a reluctant voyager
trying to close a suitcase that has far too much within.
This is a performance in itself,
so appreciate our efforts and the risks involved –
we may not be top-drawer,
but a surplus of lust at least aspires
to the lewdest beckonings of the worst top shelf.
And do not mind if our manners come adrift,
failing standards from time to time...
and try to avert your eyes
should we lean too far, or you feel offended.
In reparation, I urge you to laugh if we get up-ended.
We have a real ‘off-stage’ suitcase too.
It is over-burdened with fabric remedies –
the hats and clothes for the ailing shape.
And just in case nothing suits,
we can always throw about these intemperate bones...
‘The Cape’ – the last resort – the actors’ folly –
a foil designed to take the edge off the naked ape.
We will no-doubt use camouflage and some sticky tape –
for the misplaced thoughts our orchestra reveals:
That sad beauty, which finally shames us.
© 2022 Peter Hague
First Published in 2021: 'Hope in the Heart of Hatred'
Girl On a Wall
Seeing you there was a shock –
in comfortable Lincolnshire.
Beautiful and strong
in the grime of Main Street.
A mask, smoothed tight
across a soul of overwhelming features –
a look that made me want to make something else –
to make something of myself.
In the heart of all difficulty
you seemed life’s easy.
Seeing you there –
sitting on a wall and waiting for what?
Is all a man or designer needs
to draw the layout of his life
in an exceptional way –
to put a face to it.
©2021 Peter Hague
As well as these recorded readings of my own poems, there are other readings of my work, and also the work of others in the video section of this web site.
"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."
A Place in the Universal
Here, on the bright side of death
I occupy the right side of my heart.
I am at the centre of my being –
a line scribed from head to soul –
a blend of genes, running pole to pole.
I am at the centre of my living dial –
at the confluents of patience, blood and bile,
and all revolving in the universal smile –
that inherent affinity –
dispensing an axis for all.
©Copyright 2019 Peter Hague. All rights reserved.
Published on Twitter – 18 November 2019.
“I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.”
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