When I started,

the day spread

over and down

the greening hillside.

Now I’ve stopped,

the day retreats

behind the golden

glowing mountains.

Ronnie Smith©️December 2019

I’d say ten.

Swinging his legs

on the stone

by the gate.

Selling plums,

“best price”, in my

Boy’s Brigade sweater.

Anchor still holding.

Ancient monastery on

sacred land. The must

of a Scottish church hall

on a young Moldavian.

Ronnie Smith©️December 2019

Here, the thunder

booms and bounces

between the high

granite walls, long

into the night. Each

valley straining

for the final echo,

the last word.

Ronnie Smith ©️ October 2019

Guernica rests at peace,

tucked in the folds of lush unmade hillsides. Its prim

narrow streets grill gently

in the siesta sun outside,

as the earnest woman smiles

in the pleasantly horrific,

kempt and silent museum.

A loud child laughs, echoing

across the park of the people

where the tree chars within

the columns of its mausoleum.

A witness to pyrrhic humanity.

The dictator turns in the pitiful

grandeur of his mausoleum.

A last death to be set on top

of all the others. Punctuation

in the narrative of madness.

Only Picasso reminds us, for

willful blindness is harder than

deafness. And we cannot deny

seeing the anguish of our end,

long after the stench of Godless cordite and the death-filled screams are long gone.

Ronnie Smith ©️October 2019

There have been times,

Winter was a curse. A

punishment a bitterness

for earlier joy, longer days.

Now it is a release, a balm.

From boiling days and airless

prison with no cooling visits allowed. Not even at night.

Now, by the sea, pleasure

in the roaring turmoil. Comfort

in the blasted sand, intrigue

at the stranded southern tree.

Now summer is torpid death

and winter, cleansing renewal.

Now seasons are scattered on

the old dusty floor of memory.

Ronnie Smith ©️October 2019

Our New P.M.

The pudgy blonde face

with its narrow darting eyes,

distrusting and distrustful after

long years on the notorious edge.

The endless smirk his only default.

An elitist, openly contemptuous, knowing

unaccountable fan club will do their duty

without checking, without balance.

The jaw, forward and hard-set

on only one thing. To have his name

engraved on the trophy, the nation

of whom he thinks so little.

What strange force has forged

this opportunity? Patience, I say

and others’ poverty and desperation.

Johnson, bouncing on the knee of austerity.

Ronnie Smith

June 2019

The past is not History,

the past is today.

It validates our now, our pride

and glory, our finest us.

Each anniversary, a Royal

Wedding with flags, marching

and blank bearskin salutes.

Placebos for what we are now.

That moment, a frozen crescendo.

First defence then attack and

the long final denouement, mired

in the failure of victory.

Ronnie Smith

June 2019

Of course Trump is the most perfect example of a persona non grata in every imaginable circumstance. As a result, he is interesting.

It is not that he lives in a bubble, he is actually a bubble. He behavior betrays a solid and irreversible belief that there is no world, no galaxy, no universe in which he does not sit at the center. There is no recognition or acceptance of an ‘external’ for Trump, there is only Trump.

Trump has sucked the Presidency of the United States of America into the Trump Organisation. The US constitution has been suspended in favour of a war with every aspect of the rule of law and the principle of democratic accountability. There is no policy-making or solution-finding or even an administration to speak of, only a canal of family and business associates. Rather, the US Congress appears to have consented to a four-year Enabling Act, as the German Reichstag did in 1933, to allow Trump to do whatever he wants.

Trump receives no salary, instead his organisation invoices the US taxpayer for services provided – accommodation, use of equipment (golf cars for the secret service) and so on.

Trump, the bubble, is not actually the President of the United States as he accepts none of the values, conventions and responsibilities of that office. That is why impeaching him seems so difficult. How can he be removed from a position that he does not hold?

Complete strangers yelling
at each other, in the streets.
Flags and banners waving,
a war undeclared but vicious.

Calling names they don’t, don’t,
understand; “fascist! racist! nazi!
semite/anti-semite! (pick one), 
remoaner! idiot! dummy! hag!”

All of them sharing their fear, 
their hopelessness, their hateful
impotence fueled by the potent.
Then home, to watch the News.

Ronnie Smith
June 2019

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton