The Long Grass

Her, a special speckled fawn
Lost in the long grass of life

Camouflaged by strange shadows that dapple and mask
The truth, in an age of virgin innocence
Fluttering away into realities of sealed contracts
And sworn oaths of no return

To be hunted and taken in bitter silence
At dawn, in the long grass of life


Harry Mills
5th June 2012 English Bakery Boracay Philippines
In memory of Mejie Fernando

Midnight Rainbow

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

Midnight Rainbow

Is this your name, Peace ?

Then, show me your night sky

Let me ride the bright star

Let me kiss your black lips

Then, arc me tenderly with your midnight rainbow

3c English Bakery Boracay Philippines 10^th February 2012

Graveyard: Valencia Island

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

Graveyard : Velencia Island

Here, I read the slate tomb names

In their graves, under the turf of Ireland

Men, women and infant just sixteen months

A mouth yet to smile

Sleep against the bitter wind that scours

The lichen off your hunchback coats

You cold souls of Valencia

Harry Mills : 1^st January 2012 

Forgotten German Ghosts

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

Forgotten German Ghosts

Dad’s leathery neck, lathered with green carbolic

Peering through the window to his sacred ‘pinks’

Towelling and raising each eyebrow in turn

Reflecting his good fortune in a kitchen sink mirror

It hung, defiant, in the back-yard coal shed

A battlefield trophy, memorabilia exchanged

For a packet of fags, to carry home as hero

A dead man’s helmet, scalped and looted

On the naked fields of forgotten slain ghosts

Much later, when time becomes the inevitable forever

My thoughts of Dad, open with the mornings curtains

Down the back-yard, past his boxes of carnations

To a plume-less pride exhibited with a victor’s scorn

Hung at dawn in our back-yard coal shed

30^th December 2011 : Caravan

Forgive them Father

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

Forgive them Father

Dead man from Arakan, touches the giant red tree of death

Majestic mahogany, marking the red-wood coffin’s door

For all to knock and enter there, the alter bare, to

Paradise

His finger of bark to mark the light of truth and in life’s dark

Pointing knarled arms to heaven to fold around

The forgiven hand that held the gun, in

Paradise

Father Fausto Tentorio

Electronic Lies

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

Electronic Lies

I lie in bed and lie

You, thousands of miles away, lie under a blue sky

Electronically I text

Ironically, it’s no longer the wanting, the urge for sex

It’s the contentment

The environment of lethargically sinking into a marriage

That uncontrollable

Emotional scream of sucking quicksand, it’s gripping hand

So, I lie here in bed and lie

A week before I return to Boracay, alone : January 2012

D' Talipapa

From the book: MIDNIGHT RAINBOW

D’ Talipapa

As with this old seeping, creeping age

Reality?  Or perception of a cold, sleeping dream

Blurring the fading pictures of a wandering life

Slurring the mouthless words, adrift each night

Her long, long hooped stocking legs walking

Mumbling her mother-tongue, unknown language

Paraded through an aquatic zoo of the dead

Faded, once staring, bright unblinkerable eyes

All lifeless, beautifully naked and spotted

Captured in the ocean’s death nets, garrotted

Marked with the freckles of the sea’s trillion

A touch of slime, then back to oblivion

D’Talipapa Fish Market Boracay : Harry Mills 1^st August 2011