Projected truth

Mercator, you useless map!

I told you'd be sued for that

When size matters you're all lies

Africa's ten times that size!

I know that you love Greenland most

You've studied it from coast to coast

But the number (of) polar bears won't rise

If you give land twice the size

I don't care you have best eyes

For drawing features angle-wise

But Equal Earth's the way to go

Low distortion steals the show

By giving everyone due size

You start to give them back their rights

Or so the campaign's story goes

Let's wait and see how it unfolds.

When? Now soon

Torn apart at last
Countries old will go
Bilbao, don't be stuck in past
It's time to go
And drift on mid-Atlantic snow

Like shards of shattered glass they last?
But no, like crumbs of earth they fall
Into the salty sea the mirth of bats
Follows crumbs wallow, try to run
As salty syrup swallows nearly every one

While some split to meet the deep
Even sooner yet some
Decide to disband their grief
And like band of robbers
Stick together with pockets of air

To delay their death each day by one day more
Wonder more and more how these lucky few
Rise against their past and

Frown down instincts lasts in others and 'stead
From a deeper well

Draw the water that puts out hell
And they will drift but reach the other side
Where no cry reaches throne unanswered
Where every pain and fear has its other,

Gentler side.

On your matriculation

Maybe one day you will show yourself

Among bookshelves, thirst for knowledge

In libraries classic, joys of old, in Oxford

Between stones of thought climbing windows

From roofs in gowns in Magdalene frowns

Formal halls by high tables and your weight in gold

Or escape to rivers by canal boats

Unlocked by locks, Surprised by Joy

As you get lost wandering by canal path

On skateboard

The thrush and flush of first real love

By Christ Church meadows, ducks and water

Always deeper and deeper in baptismal love

Maybe you will cry as you hear

On morning of May the pain of beauty

Revealed in voices, and never explain

What you felt that morning on North Parade.

Meet Him by Gatehouse, and North Gate

Then show up at KEEN and First Aid

And find friends willing to share tute sheets

And debate late at night thoughts

About the existence of God

As cold chills of Moon-wind reveal

The ecstatic fear of nothing-something

Caressing your real imagined world of Second Quad.

Maybe you will find a ghost of me walk by a book shelf.

Maybe in you I will find my younger self.

Nets

Peering out with eyes of old

Never ventured out from port

Could have I been this or that?

But there isn't time for that

We are great at weaving nets

Fashioned out of our regrets

Catching people passing by

'Stead of letting them get by

But there is another thread

Marching relentless ahead

Stories found on tapestry

Woven by Her Majesty

Travels

Scuttle through the roof of sea,

Monsters thudden silence floor;

Could not wait to tell you how

We've been here some years before.

Layer thick with cream round plane

Flight of thoughts travels on time

Below clouds of conscious pain

Port of peace be yours as mine.

TLP/7

Tell me what I cannot know

What must I say not

But perhaps can show:

My inner world of pain

Within a language game

My inner world of joy

Around my troubled toil

My inner world of peace

In love that is sun kissed

My inner world of hope

In faith more obstinate than lost;

Which defies all logic but

Leaves the needs of heart intact

So's not to tear it from its place;

Such is the impossible

Ask of grace.

Carinthia

Where fog rolls down to greet the grass

That clambers up by mountain pass

I dare to meet the air serene
And tread the leaves of pine trees lean
Towards the proclaimed hope at last
Of gifts promised in journeys past.