I come from

I come from the smoky rooms of former North London cottages

A place where, as time goes by becomes more urbanised and exotic as does its people

A close peaceful community nudged out by hordes of shoppers, losing your family in the chaotic crowds as the familiar becomes ever increasingly strange

The cosy smells of fish and chips, apples, fruit and wool, overtaken by spice and petrol as new buildings pop up like toadstools in the night

The meadows I played on with dogs and cousins too polluted now, the solution?  More pollution of course, another hundred toadstools pop up to house more strangers, till the village is devoured by the ever starving beast called London

I come from the gossiping nurses and the nagging sheet metal workers, sitting around smoking their money and complaining that making it is too hard!

The smell of bleach stuns your senses and makes your eyes bleed but at least it’s clean

Helicopters sing you lullabies as you fall asleep and police sirens wake you up the next day

I come from neighbours leaning over your fence, giving you gardening advice and cake and eventually curry!

Stray dogs chasing loose cats and getting run over by milk carts

Pigeons swamping the garden pecking at stale bread and the last lizard I’ll ever see gets taken by a fat crow, falling down roof tiles and into a gutter unceremoniously

I come from two sides of a road that society says shouldn’t be crossed

But here I am and I am me and both sides are equally mine

I come from sugar, fat and bread, fizzy drinks and tea

Pure white walls broken by ivory and chrome

Vacuums replaced yearly due to overuse and the bigger the telly the more kudos to you!

I come from a large garden, a sanctuary and au pair

I come from fashion critics, jealousy and violence

In books I hid myself in multiple worlds so that it could never touch me

So I would be free to be me and not them

Finding my own way to a new place

A place that is more like me

It is lost forever now, that place, where I come from.

Hand to Earth

The daffodils are deafening in the spring

The blackbirds sing their chorus on the wing

The trees strum their roots in time

Whilst the bumblebee hums their rhyme

Though you hear it not, mortal men and foe

For you are away from nature and cause it woe

You drown the fishes in your decay

You choke the air as you ride away

You do not see what you have done

You only blame the heat of the sun

You can’t feel responsible for all this pain

You only think of what you gain

What gold lines your pockets well

What will make your stomach swell

And though you have what you feel is good

You haven’t really thought and stood

Beside nature hand to Earth

And realise all that it is worth

Drowning in oil

We are drowning in a world of oil that pollutes our air and skies

Though they say we’re running out of it, the residue dictates its lies

We see that oil has never gone; it’s left its mark everywhere

We are drowning in the remnants of our pasts despair

Anthropomorphised animals

Since a child I have loved anything that anthropomorphised animals, I got into this after seriously becoming a mega fan of “The animals of Farthing Wood” TV series and being an avid collector of their magazine and other merchandise; it wasn’t until I was an adult that I discovered that “The animals of Farthing Wood” was actually and originally a novel. 

I think I was one of the first children in this country to fully understand the impact humanity has on the environment and the animal kingdom, because I remember being commended in one of my schools for a poem I did about pollution and its effects on animals when I was just seven (that’s 1989).  I was a child, who was raised in the suburbs of North London, but I was often shipped out to other relatives around the country who lived rurally and on farms, so being a natures child in every sense of the word, I saw the massive changes humanity did to the world.

Every other month as I grew up my heart broke time and time again as more and more of my favourite outdoor places became new housing estates or had a railway track inserted through it and the dead animals that lined the tracks were heart wrenchingly numerous.

As a mostly isolated child who was ignored unless needed, I was often made to play in the large gardens with the pets I had, usually dogs and a rabbit, but squirrels and various birds became very tame around me as I was growing up that they became extended outdoor living pets.  I grew to empathise more with animals than with people.

To me, the animals seem to speak to me and we had an understanding, I learned their habits as much as they learned mine and we respected each other and each other’s ways.  This is why I found it easy to fall into shamanism, because it wasn’t so much as I wanted to be a shaman, rather than, I flowed into it without realising and it wasn’t until a high school friend said to me she thinks I am a shaman because of my ways, that I accepted that maybe she was right and I am that. 

So I read some books on the subject and I was laughing at how basic the training was in it, been there, done that was my response to a lot of it.  It was just so natural to me, that it seemed ludicrous to think people need courses on these things – whereas if they weren’t so involved in being human and doing modern human things, they’d all be like this too – it’s natural.

I know as I was growing up, cousins and even my own mother would be frustrated at how the squirrels and the crows won’t go near them, when they wanted to pet them right then and there like I could… I would tell them, you need to do this and do that before they come to you, you need to respect them and do it like this because they see it as impolite if you don’t – “you’re mad” was often the response as they grumpily slump off back inside, hating nature for rejecting them!

“The Animals of Farthing Wood” were not the only inspirations however, there were many others such as “Blinky Bill”, various Disney movies, “Rude dog and the dweebs” and so much more! 

So animals in some way or another are a regular feature in my stories.

Happy reading!

Oily world

We’ve made plastic everywhere

In our food and clothes and without a care

Fishes dying on our mess

Cancer growing in our chests

Plastic and oil equals horrid future toils

How I wish we didn’t spoil this world

Greed and ease are our sin

Look at the mess we are in

I have cried those bitter tears

But am I alone in that my dears?

Roll your sleeves up and start a trend

Vow to make amends

Linen, felt, wool and cotton for clothes

Keep away from acrylic it’s rotten and society doesn’t seem to know

Don’t choke the world with your ease and greed

Listen to how I plead

Please

Let’s get it on

The world is screaming in this heat

Life is on the verge

And it isn’t meat!

It’s all the toxins you consume!

All the chemicals are our doom!

Drown the world in oil plunder

Kill us all and all the wonder

Choke us with your smog and know

That we have no other place to go!

So think on that and change the world

A new mission for you has unfurled

We are super heroes you and I

And together the world will not die

One action and then another

We can save the world and build another

A newer greener happier place

On this same planet that we’ve disgraced

If we do it now it won’t be too late

So let’s get on cleaning up our mistakes!

Concrete Box

Nothing screams disease like humans packed into a concrete box

Grey deserts confound even the most cunning fox

Read this and weep for the nature we have lost

Though humanities tears have turned cold like frost

Shall we remember the greener days where all life was one?

Shall we reverse time or is the world done?

You hold the key, yes you little one

One can save the world, even from the numb

Earth is a bubble

The Earth is like a bubble it was never meant to last

So please don’t touch the bubble or it will die in a blast

Be gentle with the bubble, keep it clean and keep it pure

Maybe we will live longer, though we can’t be sure

Life is such a precious thing, yet you treat it without a care

You forget that Earth’s a bubble and that all life is rare

The Earth Song is nearly over

There is a situation

I want to emblazon

The Earth is beaten

By all of your junk

And it is poisoned

By every substance

That man has made

Earth is digging its grave

And it’s dragging you down

Down to the core

To deterioration

This situation is all of your fault

With this pollution

You need ablutions

Wash it away

Wash the pain away

Wash it all now

Or you will drown

Take a serious approach

Do no more encroach

On this beautiful world

It was paradise once

It was beautiful once

Humanity’s a dunce

Will you join my song?

Will you show that they’re wrong?

Stop polluting the earth

Because we haven’t got long!

Save the Earth

Or it’s the end of this song!

Our biggest mistake

The Millennia bought so much hope to all around the world

Life was changing for the good

Medicine at its finest, racism crushed underfoot

Then a decade in its all trashed

With plastic waste and a democratic slash

Democracy is bleeding to death

And my heart along with it too

Life was good, but nobody knew

Nobody knew that how they lived would make the world askew

A simple little plastic, a few chemicals here and there

A carefree attitude to living that is what has me in a scare

Things have to change quite soon, not soon in fact, right now

Because how we live today, is our sufferance in the future – WOW!

Yes profound, but true wise words

Don’t keep on with your ignorance and being backwards

It’s time to learn it’s time to change, for you and all your future kin

Because trashing this beautiful world has to stop, it is a sin!

Not being religious now, but Earth is our home

If we kill this planet off this century where do we have to roam?

Nowhere, that’s where, you can forget living on Mars!

Mars is a desert, cold and cruel it is not as nice as ours

You have to take care of our ancestral lands, for we are ancestors too

Stop thinking about yourselves for a change, you are not here for long that’s true!

You got to think about the kids, about the creatures we all subjugate

Because if we don’t take responsibility, all of us!  It will be our biggest mistake!