OF WHAT COLOUR IS LOVE

For you lovers in this age and time

Take this skeptic to task and tell me

The price I pay?

Conviction for faith eternal

And maybe keep this flame burning forever

Or imprison those hurried whispers

Ever so ephemeral

Of what colour is love?

Is it red?

For the supreme price of loyalty and sacrifice

So then I may intone

"I shall share a lover's fate"

And with a smile approach heaven's gate

Is it blue?

The colour of dreams

Sailing down the calm blue seas

Charting a course of destiny

Under the wide blue heavenly skies

Nestling safely asleep in the serene arms of romance

Tell me if it is black

The angry skies, the rough seas

The dark end to a morning of promises

A sad tale of lovers gone astray

Wet tears on lonely nights

Or even two lost souls together finding their way

Under the dark curtain of bright stars

Or green maybe

The fresh promise of a new birth

Of health, sustained growth and longetivity

Inspired by nature's benign elements

Or green still as the green eyes that see all evil

Bought emotions, weightless still

Despite the weighty pockets on which it is anchored

The hollowness of materialism

A heart's dereliction for an empty bank account

Is love as bright

As the sun's glowing rays?

The glorious rebirth of a golden dawn

Or the dove's purified plumage

Of peace and tranquility

Brightened hope and a renewed zest for loving

When life could hold more promises

Than the colours of the rainbow

Of what colour is love?

Tell me that I may know when I meet it.

FACES

These faces I often see

As forlorn as ships on boiling seas

What nature's glorious art has turned to be

A mask of pain and anguished pleas

Grooves traced by tears a thousand miles

Wrinkles of worry like valleys wide

And hollow tummies are reflected in arrested smiles

Blank stares and haggard hides

Drought ravaged bodies and hunger-crazed eyes

Staring out of hollowed skulls

Gaunt souls bent double by the scourge of affliction

Wearing the skulls of poverty like a common identity

Are these the faces I'll always see?

A race of oppressed beings

Memories of a harassed humanity

The tribe of the dehumanized

WHEN MEN PLAY GOD

When men play god

Men die, the skies cry

And hope is the beggar round the corner

Dressed in sores and rags

It's all hail and blitz

Hell and no bliss

When men play god

Peace is a bargaining chip

Pushed across polished oak tables

By podgy fingers

And life expectancy

Is the heave ho of laboured breathing

In solemn and awe inspiring halls

The clang of an anvil

Resonates round the exchange rooms

And the echo is heard still

In the inflated tummies

In distant and unheard of lands

Five million children lie dead

In a valley called depression

When men play god

The spark of life is extinguished

By a finger - no!

Not the finger on the roof of St. Peters

But the finger on the button

The writing on the wall spells

Calamity, annihilation, doom

Bombs, missiles all go ka-boom!!!

I look in the mirror

And I see two or more of me

Dolly's bleating is a merry sad song.