Rastar Defends the Golden Bough

Suspended in sinister silence
Deep in Rastar’s domain is a golden branch
Burnished brighter than the precious bough
Of Diana’s sacred grove. A bough,
Firmly clasped by a hierarchical tree,
Incarcerating the twin terrors- power and demise,
Powers destined to be defended to point of death.

Against a backdrop of lowering skies
Rastar, his kingship under threat,
Has probed the depths of despair
And, as self appointed defender of the bough.
Wields the sword of priest and murderer;
A grim sinister figure, he prowls
Around the tree of power and death,
And knows his murderer,
His successor, in turn, will be slain
By one who is the craftier and stronger;

Raster wretches as the wind wails a dirge
To the wearisome dying of the day,
And he, usurper killer king of the woods,
Falsely deified as God of woodlands
Wild places and wild creatures,
Will defy and vanquish all rivals

Rastar beats the hell out of an innocent rat,
And starts to relish his recent vow
To protect the golden bough.

Rastar Considers

Rastar, with furrowed brow, considers,
And, shuffling beneath his favoured tree, shoulders
A passing pontiff to the ground.
An aggression that triggers cosmic disorder;
The moon, ephemeral in daytime attire,
Escapes within the safety of transparency,
The sun, in terror, burps burning gases
To ignite what man has left
Of Amazonian forests,
God in dismay distributes a plague or two
To teach someone, somewhere a lesson
And as Zeus, whooping with joy
Hurls flaming thunderbolts in all directions,
Pandora,spreads her legs but fails to seduce
The sweet voice of hope to vacate his box.

Rastar climbs to the summit of Hopkins Mount
And, surveying, with increasing disgust
The turmoil surrounding his microcosm,
Gulps down a jar or two of dark ale,
And considers that there is nothing to consider.

Nano-Rastar

Rastar feared his fragility,
A nonentity-structured top down
Which unshielded by molecular anonymity,
Could be, in a nanosecond, wiped out.
He ignored flickering warnings
And toiled hard to earn his death.
He navigated viperous banks
That warned “Rastar go back!”
But fear that flows through frozen veins
Made him fearless.

Rastar Hesitates

February, belated winter,
Season in its own right. Witness
To grey days widening, listens
To Rastar trying to kindle
Frozen minds with songs, sweet but faltering.
Songs that fail to thaw the silence of ice.

But in modesty, Rastar dares not
Disturb late winters slow demise.

Bold April, recipient of skies
Clothed in warming mists, when sturdy oaks
Are enlightened in limpid fields.
And starved soil sucks in latent heat,
And when Emerald energy engulfs the meadow
And nature fires a forgotten fuse.

The earth breathes. It is alive again.

With new found confidence Rastar
Celebrates with vocal fluency.

Green Fuse Blown

Attired in springtime apparel
Rastar, confused and constrained,
In his waking nightmare struts through
A season of mellowed fruitlessness.

Robin sporting his prim waistcoat,
Though perplexed, signals red to cry
In confused ferocity,
“Stop! Enter not this territory.”

The tiny crocus with innocent modesty,
Dances with chill breezes, and blooms
Alongside nature’s seasonal error,
The inconsequential Nerine.

Rastar can, but, stand aside and groan,
For, too early, has Dylan’s green fuse blown.

Pre-emption

As Rastar swooped out of the sun,
A Small boy cocked his plastic gun,
But Rastar taking aim from high
Blithely shat in small boy’s eye.

On ‘morrow’s dawn the chorus rang
To praise him for a job well done.

Rastar Dreams

Rastar considers dreaming
To be an ephemeral art form.

But waking or not, his dreams that night
Spun a seal of dislodgement

From the grip of liquiescent vapours,
And he was unable to escape

The echoes of subconscious mutterings,
‘Lords Ladies and gentlemen.

It is without great pleasure I give you
The obsessive obesity of your dreams,

A billowing prospectus of flesh- projecting
Colossal pretentiousness. A time bomb

Set to nightmare the centre of creation,
A revolving stage frozen with impotent sperm!

Listen and hear the clanking and wanking
As it wearily turns but goes nowhere.

It offers stark realities,
‘Take heed. Take heed! For you will need

To shelter, swelter and cower
Within the shadows of your waking hour’

Rastar, yawned, farted, kicked open the back door
And searched the ice box for fatty victuals.