Tonight’s Bedtime Song

I’m tired tonight, my plumber’s back is aching, my poet’s pen is dry, my heart is yearning, my mind is thinking of peace, and my soul is singing the same old tune. I hope you like this song, and the lyrics by Nick Cave are worth a read.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Lyrics

“Hallelujah”

On the first day of May I took to the road
I’d been staring out the window most of the morning
I’d watched the rain claw at the glass
And a vicious wind blew hard and fast
I should have taken it as a warning
As a warning As a warning
As a warning

I’d given my nurse the weekend off
My meals were ill prepared
My typewriter had turned mute as a tomb
And my piano crouched in the corner of my room
With all its teeth bared
All its teeth bared All its teeth bared
All its teeth bared.

Hallelujah Hallelujah
Hallelujah Hallelujah

I left my house without my coat
Something my nurse would not have allowed
And I took the small roads out of town
And I passed a cow and the cow was brown
And my pyjamas clung to me like a shroud
Like a shroud Like a shroud
Like a shroud

There rose before me a little house
With all hope and dreams kept within
A woman’s voice close to my ear
Said, “Why don’t you come in here?”
“You looked soaked to the skin”
Soaked to the skin Soaked to the skin
Soaked to the skin

Hallelujah Hallelujah
Hallelujah Hallelujah

I turned to the woman and the woman was young
I extended a hearty salutation
But I knew if my nurse had been here
She would never in a thousand years
Permit me to accept that invitation
Invitation That invitation
That invitation

Now, you might think it wise to risk it all
Throw caution to the reckless wind
But with her hot cocoa and her medication
My nurse had been my one salvation
So I turned back home
I turned back home I turned back home
Singing my song

Hallelujah
The tears are welling in my eyes again
Hallelujah
I need twenty big buckets to catch them in
Hallelujah
And twenty pretty girls to carry
them down
Hallelujah
And twenty deep holes to bury them in
Hallelujah
The tears are welling in my eyes again
Hallelujah
I need twenty big buckets to catch them in
Hallelujah
And twenty pretty girls to carry them down
Hallelujah
And twenty deep holes to bury them in

 

 

Let Us Climb

Climb Aboard, (Introduction by, Jane Basil)
all who wish an end to war are welcome;
we beg you to share our message of peace,
that it may reach across the wildest desert,
weave through cities, travel with the waves of the seas
that stroke our shores and soak into our sands.
Let it grow to encompass our nurturing planet;
let every peacemaker of every nation join hands,
and be embraced with love in return.
Let peace become a pandemic
the like of which we have never known.

This was written for our peace campaign which was dreamed up by my amazing friend Paul Sunstone. Yep – remember the name; that man has greatness in him. We want the campaign to go viral. Share his post (see link below) and/or write a post of your own.

Click <<<<<<<HERE>>>>>> to find out more

and find even <<<<<<<MORE>>>>>>>   <——— there

The above introduction is copied directly from Jane Basil’s blog site and her post  “Climb Aboard”  

Climb Aboard

Below an older poem of mine from over 10 years ago, and I’m afraid nothing has changed, and Click onto “Return The Bullets” title to view Paul Sunstone’s latest post.

Return The Bullets

The mind awakens to secret cannons shattering my bed.

All the violence of the worlds pounding inside my head.

The killing and the maiming of all the innocents who fled.

What happens when all the little lambs are slaughtered.

When the people’s of all religions and creed are dead.

And we can’t return the murdering bullets back into the barrel.

I’m afraid.

The backyard stairway is far too steep to climb.

The hand rails are way out of reach to find.

And the public change-room windows are covered with bars.

Now encircling the city hall, the security backdoor is ajar.

Entering the marble aisle, the White-room appears vacant.

And guileful leaders have run, leaving a chasm of gloomy dark.

I’m wondering.

Where to go, the healing house is full of ugly holes.

The citizens cowering in shadows behind splintered lighting poles.

And the crumbling streets are awash with rivers of leftover blood.

Now the warring bosses have to fight amongst themselves.

Throwing poison pens and paper darts at each other.

Never bruised nor battered, using ivory towers as cover.

I’m terrified.

The dusty mushroom cloud, slowly settles on the barren ground.

With sands of distant lands, shifting into every nook and cranny.

We need the good Doctor, to help us cure these alien scourges.

And foreigners arriving upon waves of our neighbouring seas.

The deathly TV images, wrongly implanted for all to see.

As the press only gossip and drivel with selfish glee.

I’m stupefied.

The guns of freedom lands, haven’t even stopped the cull.

Death to friends or foe, no matter, to the rulers from above.

Their only rules, the poor and weak to be kept totally down trodden.

One day the surviving meek shall inherit their radioactive dirt.

And the rich will feast upon their own contaminated bread.

And we’ll never return the murdering bullets back into the barrel.

 

Ivor Steven (c)  2018

Climb Aboard

Climb aboard my friends, a movement for peace, please read and forward on.

janebasilblog's avatarMaking it write

peacejoinus.jpgClimb aboard;
all who wish an end to war are welcome;
we beg you to share our message of peace,
that it may reach across the wildest desert,
weave through cities, travel with the waves of the seas
that stroke our shores and soak into our sands.
Let it grow to encompass our nurturing planet;
let every peacemaker of every nation join hands,
and be embraced with love in return.
Let peace become a pandemic
the like of which we have never known.

My dad was a conscientious objector 
who was imprisoned for refusing to kill other men;
for turning down the opportunity to shoot holes in their heads,
to plant land-mines and blow humans to shreds.
He missed the chance to charge into villages;
to burn, rape and pillage.

Despite the claimed cause of our the war,
his decision seemed reasonable to me.

I learned of his humanist history

View original post 397 more words

Against The Next War

This is a poem written by Paul Sunstone. Please read and reblogg if you wish to do so.

Against the Next War

Paul Sunstone

(About a 3 minute read)

The internet has made it now
Bound to happen
Tomorrow or the year after.
Bound to happen.

Maybe.
Up to you.

The politicians and the preachers,
The two dogs of the capitalist class,
Will once again want a war,
Just as they always do.

War to them is a gift, you see,
It’s not personal, it’s not their blood.
But war makes some folks rich
And you will never change that,
You will never change that,
Though the dogs will bark it’s not so.

A war of aggression
Against some people somewhere,

Most likely brown,
Most likely poor,
Most likely weak,
Most likely no real threat.

War for the sake of the banks
And for the merchants of death.
War for the sake of the pulpit,
And for the corridors of power.

But not a war for the sake
Of you and of me. We don’t count.
Our side is the one side
That has never counted.
Never.

That’s how war goes, it’s always been so
And it’s bound to happen again,
Soon happen again.

This is your world,
How it really is —
The world you think,
The world you were taught,
The gods want you to live in and love
Them more than you love each other.

In your world are great nations:
Nations the greatest in history,
Nations with the power of suns,
A thousands suns,
To do good, make truths come true
For even the poor man, the poor woman,
The poor child. Make truths come true.

But these nations,
Nations great and greatest,
Act only like whores,
Filthy whores,
Fucking folks raw,
Spreading their diseases,
Recruiting new girls,
Ever younger girls
To fuck you, to fuck all of you,
To fuck everyone.

This is your world
Your world without end.

But now someday you see

Someday now for once it will happen
For once it will stop
Stop the day they give a war
And you
You rise up, join hands
By the millions, possibly billions,
Linked together by the net
And by love, and by common sense.

At last,
At last you will rise, singing
“At last my spirit shall have water!
At last my cries shall be heard!
At last my thirst shall be slaked!”

Yes, you will rise up and you will say
In a voice thunderous and magnified
By the whole world joining in,

Say, “Those people are our friends,
We chat with them by day and by night.
We know their hopes, we know their dreams,
We know their troubles, we know their fears.
We know them, we know their names.

“Jane and Matthias. Terese and Sindhuja.
Mark, Parikhitdutta, and Min.

We even marry them now and then —
They shall not this time be murdered.

“You will not touch them,
Our brothers, our friends;
This once the bombs won’t fall.
This once the bombs won’t fall.
You politicians and preachers,
You capitalists and bankers all —
This once the bombs won’t fall.”

Yet you know it will ever be a dream
Just a dream, just a mere dream.
It will ever be a dream
If you, if we, keep on dividing,
Never uniting, never joining,
But instead just staying, just keeping,
To my echo chamber or to yours.

So let’s come together
Let’s come together,
Let’s come together.

So let’s come together
Before the nukes fall,
Before the demons fall.
Before we die in the winter,
And we come together
Never once come together at all.

 

Please seriously consider spreading this poem — spreading it to your site, to the social media sites — in an effort to make it go viral. We need it viral well before the next war, we need folks mulling over the idea of rebelling against the violence. Spread this poem and then you too write — write about the ideas presented in the poem. For you, for your brothers and for your sisters, for your children after you — stop the wars of aggression!

Please Note: Matthias has responded by dedicating his poem, Pooling Strength, to this cause.

Time Travelers

For my readers, followers, friends and all those who doubt my connection to our unidentified Aliens, my “Mothership” landed for a visit today, to check-up on how I was handling the planet earth’s present dilemmas, and I’m afraid I had to report that the situation here is stagnant and quite grim.  

Zap, a gigantic lightening bolt precedes a mystical power surge

Traversing the cobalt skies, like horizontally sleek outriggers

Vividly scoring chords to hang our every word on

Like musical lines, writing out our lost dreams and regrets

 

Sound-waves echoing, poles apart, going north, south, east and west

Conducting iridescent lights over our purple and orange sunset

Vibrating quasars, pulsating from deeply inside, outer-space

Focusing towards the huge magnetic Receiving Dish, signalling “An Arrival”

 

 

Recording a celestial traveler, singing with an angel’s voice

Resonating sweetly, like Handel’s, Messiah Hallelujah Chorus

Translated into our universal language of symphonic sound

Digitally televised for the world’s population to simultaneously view

 

The Super-Sonic Cosmic message to be heard loud and clear

“We’ve returned to your degraded planet earth”

“To again, bestow upon you, Peace And Goodwill”

“Like we’ve done before, Eons of Millenniums ago”

 

Ivor Steven  (c)

Beyond Today There Is Tomorrow

Beyond the broken porthole

I stand on a basin pedestal

I’m going down with the ship

She left the wreck last week

Left my bones in the bathroom

Drowning in the blue lagoon

**********

Last night there was a fire down the street

On the other side of the creek

I heard the commotion in my sleep

The old farmhouse was burnt to the ground

And lingering smoke on the water whispered sounds

Of memories lost and a loyal dachshund

***********

The Alien poet’s brain

Is a fascinating place

A distant surreal view

Hooked, like a fish on a line

Laying tomorrows foundations

On old pieces of used paper

Using dried up ink as mortar

And the sky is the work’s next brick

Remembering yesterdays sunshine

Is today’s dawn and beyond

 

Ivor Steven (c)  2018

Quote #5, And, Quote #6

            “The sound of nature

            the voice of our future

              rings loud and clear

the Symphony of life we need to hear”       

– Ivor Steven

 

                        **********

 

 ” Where there is nature, there is life

       without nature there is no life”             

– Ivor Steven

 

 

Ivor Steven (c)  2018

 

Words, Lost And Found

When your senses are blind

Driving you out of your mind

How do you find that word

Unique and unheard

Lost, gone out of your head

Not there, under your unmade bed

Nor between your untidy sheets

Removed during your midnight heat

You’ve searched along every note-pad line

Flicked through grandpa’s dictionary overtime

The missing word is yet to be found

Your dog stares at you, as if you’re unsound

It’s somewhere, you wrote it down

The word, to be your poem’s crown

Shaking your brain, side to side

Rattle, rattle, adjectives clash inside

Suddenly you remember

It’s something about December

How could you forget

The fallen Refugee reject

Cutting himself on his old sword

Swearing, “restitution”, is the word

Ivor Steven (c) 2018