THE LAST MOHICAN

The last Mohican

I met had a mat of

Crow’s nest hair

Interthreaded with

Woolen strands

Bright as feathers.

‘Thank you for stopping.’

Reservation in her voice

As the shopping non-stoppers

Stampeded by.

We enacted the ritual

Called ‘Giving to the Poor’

‘No-one stops anymore.’

She sat down on some steps

To suffer the bows and arrows

Of disgraceful disinterest.

Toting for some kind

Of change outside the market.

Donal Thompson

www.donal.info

SEEING THE BUSKER SET UP

How many of us

see the busker set up?

Or hearing the music

think where it comes from?

We hear reflections

of notes on tube station

Tiles and believe the

walls are singing to us.

Because we have never

heard them silent.

Because the busker

is always there.

As if his song

is the only song.

As if we can’t

make up our own tunes.

Donal Thompson

www.donal.info

MAGNETIC SOUP WAGON

Perhaps a fumbling shuffle

this promised shift to spirit.

A mistrustful nodding from

those who never made it to the party.

A reassurance like a magnetic

soup wagon among

A dereliction of bricks may

tease us from the cardboard night.

Light may come through a

proliferation of windows in

Ringbound schedules. Genuine

prayer mats flattened on floors,

Taken from walls, purchased

on tours of commerce. A piety

Attack like the reinvention

of running by joggers.

From us our atomic attachments

may be beaten by vanguards

Running ahead of tanks

with sticks and ideas.

We may sniff a gush of something

in the rush of heat round a petrol bomb.

Or reap a gift from the

cracked head of a hero.

Throw together a new vocabulary

tall as minaret and recharge

Our icons to topple tired economics.

Pick at the bones of old faith.

Strive for voice by unmuting

the still good of the past.

Will we slaughter the Sacred Dow ?

Will we choose Rome? Or

Stonehenge?

Then again some northern kids

may keep it safe from the magpies

Until we remember ourselves once more

And vow to stay awake this time.

Or, perhaps, it will be parcelled

in the fracture of promise.

Coded in the cold fear that for us

it may not come at all.

Donal Thompson

www.donal.info

EGYPTIANS

What are you waiting for?

This is it.

That shadow.

This website.

That car outside.

This evening.

The land mine of the day you die

Is already laid so you might as

well go

FiGhTiNg

down the road as

dancing

As well

dancing

as

FiGhTiNg

Or

Buy bricks to

Build rooms to die in.

We are little Egyptians

Weighing our souls against

Mortgages. See them balanced.

If you like.

If you can.

Donal Thompson

www.donal.info

GLOBES IN BOOKSHOPS

When I see

Globes in bookshops

Fixed north and south

In the hooks of ?s

I long for

One good kick at the Pacific Ocean

Or a fingertip on Brazil

To save the world

In a penalty shoot-out

Donal Thompson

www.donal.info