contents:
Mother Love
Circles
Heron
Gypsies
Best of British Technology
Happy Christmas, Happy Concepts
Lammas

 

Women in Bhopal preparing to burn an effigy of Union Carbide 
CEO Warren Anderson - still absconded, still no compensation.
Fifteen Years since the Gas leak killed thousands, and continues…


Mother Love...  home

Deep in your heart a well of sadness lies
Around your dreams, uncloaked, a living hell
You gave your precious treasure up for skies
That seemed to promise Heaven - yet, they fell
Tenderly, tenderly, the softest touch brings pain
A flash of bright-eyed laughter, a moment gone
And now you live for days when measured gain
Shall give your tears release, where rainbows shone
On cheeks now wet, now wreathed in smiles once more…
He plunges into your arms, heart beating, boy…
Your precious burden, running to your door…
Then turns as swiftly, Oh! To favourite toy...
It is a dream, the treasure now has gone
Bereft, you're left, paste on your brittle smile
Bleached bones beside a graveyard soaked in tears
Fixed, frozen-faced, taste gone, for a little while
For Union Carbide's Gas choked off the years...
The growth to manhood of your little child
Bhopal's gas disaster from Union Carbide's pesticide plant
Still no proper compensation as UK Lawyers stop the grant
So far they've had more money than the victims ever did
Though thousands died, and more are maimed, the perpetrators hid

By Jane Johnson, copyright.2000.


CIRCLES home

This is a thread on the theme of 'round'
The Earth who is circular, also the Ground
Our Globe is spun around the Sun
Whorled world whirled while we're all unwound

This is a theme on circles and cycles
On spinning plate halos and archangel Michaels
On whirring wings wearing and weaving the sky
As small rotund children ask 'Why?'

Look at the Day spin the Moon spin the Night
Our eyeballs, round pupils, letting In Light
Look at the year spinning round Father Sun,
As Galaxies spin, around Universe spun.

The alchemist's stone; flax spun into gold
The spinning wheel thread, of a yarn, a tale told
The whirlpool like clockwork, the spiral of sound
The matrix of movement - everything's ROUND!!!

The Spiral Nebula sweeps out her arms
She floats evanescently with all her charms
Her substance expanding, 
To embrace understanding
The Depth of the Diva soothes spirit and calms

The point of power in the Endless Now
The Heart of Eternity here showing how
As the One Point expands within Virtual Hands
One Loves' consummation, 
One Heartfelt breath… 'WOW!'

By Jane Johnson
c. March 2000

HERON home

I saw a heron in the garden 
The other day
Around the twelfth of June when
Mac passed away
I didn't know it then but
I see it now
A heron is not a 
Garden bird somehow

As I opened the door he
Took fright of me
As I stood on the step he
Took flight from me
Such a great bird, a
Blue Heron

We often sat in the garden,
Mac and I
But usually he sat alone watching
Time pass by
Mac, singer and player of the Blues
He had no time to lose
But he took the time to choose
To keep on rocking in the free world
Mac, the angels rock on with you

Michael 'Mac' McCreery
 1st May1942 - 12th June 1999
Requiem Mass @ Our Lady of Glastonbury Saturday 4th September 1999
 Rest in Peace From Jane Johnson who would love to have been a better friend

Gypsies…   Jane Johnson copyright 1999 home

As children, when we went out to play 
The clapping game, we'd chant and say
'My Mother told me I never should
Play with the Gypsies in the wood
If I did, she would say
'Naughty little girl to disobey!'

But when the children bullied me
To the trees I would return
Where branches shielded open sky
And bracken bonded with fronds of fern
To offer me a sanctuary
Reassuring me of their concern

With tiny creatures I would hide
Their names and calls I'd learn
I'd feel their trembling deep inside
At the passing of the Hunter, Herne
And the touch of Man upon the land
Self-made god, the giant Cerne

The Gypsies were wood-creatures, too
They knew the landscapes' ways
The turning of the tides of moon
Numbered their weeks and days
They loved the rain and blessed the sun
And hid not from his rays

They learnt from Mother Nature's School
Her wanton summer mantle spun
In Dervish dance of life and death
Till, cruel or kind, all life was one
All creatures breathing with one breath
Beneath the bright sun's gaze

Best of British Technology… home
At such a cost…

By Jane Johnson
Copyright 16th March 2000

We can't alter the seasons, but we can change the rainfall.
In the dustbowl of America there's no more rain at all,
Since tools and fuel industries have now laid waste the land
Snatching rivers and trees away, and leaving only sand,
As coal to California is now sent underground,
Through pipelines carrying rivers lost, no more to be found -
(From their British inventors we hear not a sound…) 

Yes, cyber-tools make pig farms efficient and quick
Euro pigs grow to 56 kilos, even though they're sick,
Plaited pigs live in a pen with no room to turn round,
Then in five months they're bacon, and more piglets found.
Machines feed the starving? Have I heard that before?
'Foreign Aid' aids dictators - oh, that's what it's for,
UK's arming their armies, when the starved ask for more.

Agricultural machines and computers - Monsanto's the worst -
They supply patented sterile seeds, hitting India first -
Now wiser, after harvest, the farmers' hearts all burst
As their saved seed won't germinate, they realise it's cursed.
Now suicidal, they die; wives and children ask why?
This Brave New World's future is barren and dry
Rich nations don't care for despair, are too fatigued to cry…


Brave new world of Transport - now let's look at the trains!
(They ran on time much better, before being wired to mains)
In India's vast continent they're still mostly on time
But UK's Great Train Robbers can no longer commit crime
A gang that swept from hiding place would find… Train isn't there!
'Staff shortage', 'late,' 'upgrading' - or else no one to care…
It seems, even for robbers, that life isn't fair…

 Brave New World of computers - let's see, that's going great guns
But whom is it helping? I think we're the ones…
Relying on computers, wrong kidneys are cut
An ingrown toenail?  Dangerous!  Now, take his leg off! ... 'But...'
That's just supposing computers a bed in there have found,
Or leaving frail old ladies to slide trolley-bound to the ground...
The last journey to nowhere, buzzer-less, without a sound…

Feed the world? With computers? To increase our yield
Computers dictate rules for Euro Hedges in fields
They take out all the wildlife, and cut the hedge back sore,
Euro crops, Euro farms - with no trees any more
They feed us - with their supermarkets, posh nosh and pap
There's nothing left that's wholesome now, and most of it tastes crap
Farm shops are in decline these days, for where they were before
Is just another car park for another superstore

You know I love computers - for my music and my art
For writing poems and thinking, of what is in my heart
But I trust Mother Nature, much more than machines
She is our Life Source; they're for our dreams
Machines feed the world?  With World Leaders in charge?
(Too much fear is curled hidden, deep in their hearts,
For the liberal and caring, the socialist and sharing,)
They love power more than peace, for their greed is too large…

Happy Christmas home
Happy Concepts

This is the 
Concept tree
With lights and 
Decorations glowing.
Parcels a-foot, like rivers flowing
A stream of packaged, addressed ideas
A dream of skilfully woven fears
Dressed up as children's playthings,
Justified and brought to attention...
God consciousness?  Hardly a mention
For this is the kingdom of Baal down here...
Like chattering thieves, consumers, shopkeepers,
Raise challenge to Death not to cull us nor reap us
Endlessly processing fairy fools-gold-
'Tis tinsel and glitter, not water we hold -
We get more run down as our well runs dry
We live like machines till our batteries die...
Eating the concepts, eating the leaves,
Letting head forget what the heart believes,
While the Baal puppet-master just laughs at our cry
As the pain and the friction make sparks and wars fly...
Is this the gold that the fairies hold?
Then why the echo in my soul saying "Sold!"
The one-way ticket to paradise?
Where you and I, my beloved, fly
Untouched by such poisonous fruits as these...
* * *
* * *
* * *
Copyright:
Jane Johnson
24 October1994

Lammas, 1st August 1999 home
Copyright Jane Johnson1999

Underneath the ash and willow
With the soft grass for my pillow
Branches stretch against the sky
The stillness calls a dragonfly
With gauzy transparent fairy wings...
High over midfield a lone lark sings...
As the cracked and sunbaked earth below
Gapes, gasping to slake thirst, deep and slow...
Yet the brackish ditchwater, shrunken in slime,
Shows the summer's heat, that bides its time
As I lie full length in the meadow's shade
With the peace of trees in a leafy glade
And rest for a moment, pure and long...
No beginning, no ending, where I belong
In Natures' carousel of beauty driven
By love of life, the life that I am given
A heavenly moment.
Idyllic...
Summers' song...

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