The Actor

All we are doing
Is putting on an act
Our bodies stage props
Ancient and cracked
Our hearts the electricity pulsing...

Through sound monitors and stage lights
Mechanical doors and Camera flashes
The scripted lines of our life re-unites

And as we get up each morning
We reach into our very own actors’ wardrobe
To wear today’s latest trend
Worn all across the globe
So there is no individual cast
Of actors fighting for their part
Instead we divide them up
In class, intelligence, talent and art

Next comes our debut performance…
Do we want to be pretty or plain?
Strong, weak... a protagonist, a fool
A hero won or victim slain?
The choice is ours – they’ll never know
That we wrote the script
And sowed the very threads
We came prepared, equipped…

To be anything you want
To be the idol of your dreams
The flawed hero, handsome villain
Our faces forever on your screens
To pause and play and fast-forward
To your heart’s content
And when you are bored of us
There will be another to fill that boredom like cement

But all this acting, all this pretending,
Faking, bending-truth and fact
Isn’t at all that healthy
Perhaps it was all made to distract?
Maybe we should all open our eyes
And see that we are not standing upon a stage
We are standing on grass, beneath clear skies
We are not wearing any kind of cloak or disguise
We are here not to act but to improvise.

Waking Up

I recently put up a YouTube video of a poem I wrote, hoping to perform it 'Slam-Poetry style' but my performace style is awful! I have a looooot to work on (including being able to recite my poem infront of a camera)!
   So here is the video in all its mediocre glory (and poem below):

Waking Up

What happens when we wake up and realise
That we've been living all these lies
That good and bad stand side by side
What happens when we understand
That we're being fed right into their hand
Us 'the people' - the 99%
Forced to believe sin and made to repent
But it’s too late for any kind of formation
To replace the current system that beats half-heartedly to any occasion
There's no more truth to fall back on
There's no light to be shone
The darkness consumes any flicker any flame
But we're already too blind to see through this game
The fascists are just a disguise
The communists take pleasure in being their alibies
Republicans are harvesting oil
And the Democrats believe in earth and the land’s soil
Everything we've been told has turned upside down
There's no monarchy, no jewel-encrusted crown
And there's wall of apathy
Put up to control the victims in society
The ones who worked and slept and ate and wept
The ones who want money, a 2-bedroom house and job security
The ones who died of old age
Forgotten long ago when they succumbed to that rage
Years left to be alone
Their dignity ripped from them the moment they were put in a home
Their own family telling us they can't see what we see
Their mind has gone, there's no point in making conversation
They’re in a better place, their heads no longer capable of realisation
And then they die and their life becomes a tomb
Forced into a coffin, there's no such thing as death coming too soon
When you're 83 and put of sight
You were never quite right...
And now were all too susceptible
To be anything but replicable, predictable
It's too late to write on banners and walls
To speak against money and spam phone calls
So we all go back to our beds
Feeling drained from our hearts to our heads
Thinking is the last thing we need
I mean we've already planted the seed
What more do you want?
Red paint and your own debutante?
You need to go back to reality
You don't see through the eyes we see
We've had ours closed all along
There is no right and wrong
Good or evil...
Just money and people

This Land

Recently I have been listening to a lot of PJ Harvey's latest album 'Let England Shake' which is all about conflicts in war, soldiers and a whole lot of other interesting and important things regarding our heritage, country, lifestyle and so on. Its definitely made me think more about what I had previously learnt and read about wars, especially modern ones and of my Granddad who never really liked to talk about his time fighting out in Burma during WW2. I live very close to the sea, in fact just a couple minutes’ walk away is a large golf-course that ends into tall cliffs along the Norfolk coast. I don't know why but I started imagining a battle taking place there and this poem is the result of that...

 

Snow falling through the winter cold,
sharing with it - the dreams of old
Ice and sleet that pave the way
To where my loved ones forever lay
Cold bodies beneath marbled stone
The Same tomb that will one-day be my home
This ancient crest of land
Sowed by the workers ancient hand
Has once again breathed life and death
With only the bleached-white bones left

Of those who fought through gas and rain
Over trenches in the pouring rain
Fields ablaze with rich explosions
Shrapnel falling deep into the oceans
It's gaping mouth - harsh and bitter
It's teeth woven like thick wicker
And as the winter snow melts clean
Who would know what this land has seen?
Let the memories die with those there
To keep fresh again this winter air