The cumulutive effect,

of wanton neglect,

Is a hole where a heart should be.

I speak from experience,

in all its variants,

And that’s exactly what happened to me.

And even if one is pure,

There still is no known cure,

No hope in this world to be redeemed.

This cruel, unholy defect,

That only angels can detect,

Is so much colder than at first I dreamed.

A heartless parents’ inheritance?

A lifetime in soulless penitence?

That’s exactly what has befallen me.

If you doubt that I am sure,

That I am empty at my core,

Just place your hand where my heartbeat should be.

And you will see.

And you will feel.

Nothing!

© M.H.

Frosted windows

as eyes, are caked.

The sleeper awakes.

Deadened extremities

Limbs still numbed,

The alarm hums.

Sunlit stabbing

Its clawed ingress.

The mornings’ caress.

Focus swimming,

The daybreak buzz,

Blows off the fuzz.

Mountainous stairs,

Down to kitchen glare.

The kettle’s there.

Cup and spoon,

Plate and toast,

Coffee’s mild roast.

Finally alert,

Slumbers’ thirst slaked.

The sleeper’s awake.

© M.H.

The concourse,

Bursts with breakfasting people,

Unaware that fate has marked them.

Death is visiting here today.

The offices,

Clatter with clamourous commerce,

Ignorant of the futility of the day.

Trading will soon cease.

The weather,

Is gloriously sunny and bright,

And from its realm, a bolt of fire rains.

Cutting the morning astray.

The windows,

Of every building for miles from here,

Imploded, shattered, like scattered lives.

The sound borne on metal wings.

The lives,

Of those who lost and stayed,

Of those who won and left, to remember anew.

Inexorable in their disarray.

The memories,

Shriek from pictures and testimony,

The faces of the departed, frozen forever, hopeful.

The cares of a death not deserved.

And the passing,

Years that cannot asuage these tears,

This hot and burning anger and hate.

From above in September fire.

© M.H.

September

Fire

Shapes dance,

In the corners of my eyes. 

A cavorting demon,

Made of shadow.

I move,

To try to see its face.

It moves with me,

Never captured.

Eyes closed,

Sleep gives me short respite.

But in my dreams, they are,

Made of light.

I try,

To ignore their playful gait.

Focus ahead always,

Looking straight.

But soon,

When the night hails the moon.

Harlequin devils,

Fill my room.

Really,

They are no fun to have around.

But at least they,

Make no sound.

© M.H.

Your love in silence, I did profess,

But in my shyness, could not confess.

Now, as I watch you undress,

With no further need to impress,

I finally can express.

This night is our congress.

Your smile, I fervently digress,

Has me hypnotised nonetheless.

And, as I blissfully tumesce,

An invitational ingress,

A love I could not hope to supress,

Grows quietly to possess.

© M.H.

Dark and grey, an English film, the Wednesday Play

We always watch the Queen on Christmas Day

Won’t you stay?

Though your eyes see shipwrecked sailors you’re still dry

The outlook’s fine though Wales might have some rain

Saved again.

Let’s skip the news boy (I’ll make some tea)

The Arabs and the Jews boy (too much for me)

They get me confused boy (puts me off to sleep)

And the thing I hate – Oh Lord!

Is staying up late, to watch some debate, on some nation’s fate.

Hypnotised by Batman, Tarzan, still surprised!

You’ve won the West in time to be our guest

Name your prize!

Drop of wine, a glass of beer dear what’s the time?

The grime on the Tyne is mine all mine all mine

Five past nine.

Blood on the rooftops – Venice in the Spring

Streets of San Francisco – a word from Peking

The trouble was started – by a young Errol Flynn

Better in my day – Oh Lord!

For when we got bored, we’d have a world war, happy but poor

So let’s skip the news boy (I’ll go make that tea)

Blood on the rooftops (too much for me)

When old Mother Goose stops – they’re out for 23

Then the rain at Lords stopped play

Seems Helen of Troy has found a new face again.

I miss your laugh,

I miss the silly things you’d say.

I miss your horrible coffee,

That I drank anyway.

I could never love you like you loved me,

And I think you knew,

I would not stay.

But, I miss you anyway.

I miss your smile,

I miss your kisses in the night.

If you ever asked me to come back,

You know I just might.

But I could never love you the way you want me to,

And I think you knew,

I would always stray.

But I miss you anyway.

I miss your scent,

I miss the playful glint in your eyes.

I even miss the things I hated about you,

And when I told you lies.

I will never love you the way I love everything else,

And I think you know,

In the end I’d go.

But I still miss you, you know.

© M.H.

The world weary soldier,

And his motley band.

Set out one Sunday,

To visit the Nether Land.

He’d heard of tales,

Whispered in the dark,

Of a man who breathes fire;

And it ignited his spark.

His group travelled afoot,

In (some say) a vain quest,

For thirteen days and nights,

With only the merest rest.

Until, on the fourteenth morn,

They spied a pall ahead,

Where fluttering embers eddied,

Around a raging heart of red.

”This must be where it lives”

The weary warrior exclaimed,

And in his questing mind he thought;

”I wonder if it can be tamed?”

They set a camp, not too far down

the path, in a clearing wide,

And kept expectant watch,

Learning to skillfully hide.

And their reward came, after not too long,

When the sound of crashing was heard.

And into their view, stood not a man,

And none could say a word.

This giant beast, did walk on two

great muscly legs, with claws and teeth

the size of spears, and saucer eyes,

A plume of hellfire spouting beneath.

They did not run, or shirk the fight,

But stood, and in turn burned.

Until stood our leader, one man against hell,

Whereupon the dragon snorted and turned.

And did follow our hero, puny pistol aimed.

Chased down this fire-breathing man,

And all the while, thinking, in pursuit,

”I really don’t have a plan”

The lair loomed out of a clearing,

And the beast sat waiting for him.

In the centre of a ring of lesser beasts,

One taloned hand, beckoning him in.

”I go to die” our hero thought,

But the beast had other schemes.

A human mate for this wily foe,

To let him live it strangely seems.

So he disappeared from the life he knew,

Became the talk of legend in time.

A consort of the beast he did agree

to become, and with this he was fine.

He learned to fly on the devils’ back,

And saw more worlds than most.

Lived out his days as a dragons’ friend,

And the giant, now the genial host.

He thinks back some days, to a thought he had,

When he wondered if the beast could tame.

But instead the beast did tame him,

And a happy slave he became.

But on days when contemplation comes,

”To think it’s come down to this,

I have softened, am living and dying,

In the backdraft of the dragons’ kiss”

 © M.H.

I walk the bombed out streets
On tired feet.
There’s no-one alive to meet.

The sky cries a grey tear,
My way, unclear,
No-one wants to come here.

I want to leave this place,
Change my name,
My life,
My face.
But there is no release.

This country is in my blood,
It will not let me go,
Until I am part of its flesh.
Under it’s earth and inside its heart.

Ukraine and I shall never part.

© M.H

There’s a space,
That waits for the heartbeat to happen.

There’s a space,
An empty, yearning void I have had forever.

It waits for you.

© M.H.