poems from the 90s

FEAR

Have you ever known the ultimate fear? The type you feel before you die?

Trapped in a blazing plane falling to earth on a one-way ticket to hell.

No one who has felt fear will see things the same way again – it’s a soul chiller.

To look down the barrel of a gun and to wonder, are these the last seconds of your life?

If the gun goes off you would be lucky to die and unlucky to be paralysed.

What would it be like for a soldier facing the enemy with bombs falling all around?

The blast, the shrapnel, the pain, the death, unending…

All this brings a person’s fear rushing to the surface,

stopping their time in a second.

TREASURE

Find the X on a map tattooed onto the skin of a dead man, it’s buried gold.

Do anything to get it, kill, burn, destroy to find your treasure. Watch out,

our pals will want it but I won’t let them, I can feel it in my bones.

It’s on the next island according to the map.

Now we arrive, it’s time to start digging.

Suddenly I’ve found it! Gold, rubies, emeralds, silver…

stolen treasure that cost so many lives.

Now it’s mine and I can buy the world.

JUMP

Make a decision in your fractured mind, it’s up to you

if it’s right or wrong you stand on the edge staring down

into the void at the people far below.

Do you remember how you got here or what you did?

None of that matters now, what only matters is what you do now.

With tears streaming down your cheeks you jump into space

crying for your mother as you fall to earth, twelve stories below.

Now that you are gone who will remember you?

Who will call your name?

Who will sing your praise even though you were evil?

GIRL IN THE FOREST

She runs through the late summer forest

leaves brushing her face

as she goes to meet her lover.

Into his arms she falls knowing she is safe

and that such passion will follow.

Slowly she takes off her clothes

seducing her lover like only she can.

His eyes search her flawless body

and he embraces her and they fall to the ground.

Soon they start fucking in an orgy of eroticism,

their moans echoing through the forest in time

with the wind and swaying trees,

sunlight through the treetops, joined orgasm of heaven.

VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAIN

After climbing so many thousands of feet up the mountain I have finally reached the top, the view is like another world with so many things visible from where the eagles live.

A fine layer of cloud makes the ground seem hazy and non distinct like a fading memory you want to remember.

Ever so slowly a flock of birds fly past below skirting the jagged peak on their way east.

How many people have stood here where the Gods live to look down on the coloured land below? Tiny villages dot the lower ground like so many ink stains on paper and a lake glistens in the sun, small enough to fit in my hand and as bright as a jewel from this place above the clouds.