Hempsall- the Fen walker

 
Big bog there was an old tavern near the reed patches
Joseph Hempsall spent his day cutting reed for thatch.
Checking the odd trap with his fellows over the Wicken Fen
Life was simple bright and cheery the most part to spend

He had a pretty busy morning cutting the thatch reed
Checking a few eel traps among the thick water weeds
By two he'd labored  much exhausted and sloven
So made the hour walk to the Broken Oar tavern

A bailiff, a shearer and a traveler drank cheap brandy
Talked of Lord Wentworth whom they slandered gladly
These men cursing and drinking from midday
Hempsall drank too, echoing their naysaying

Before long twilight came and darkness cast a spell
Hempsall chugged, grabbed his gear, then he said farewell
He stumbled across the narrow path within Big Bog
Tavern occupants called him back while croaking frogs

Their voices droned finally Joseph heard none
But he wasn't alone he was talking to someone
He continued his way blind across marshland half drunk still smiling
He began to shout his voice louder and louder... Then silence

The very next day Hempsall turned up in the Broken Oar tavern
Nightfall and three distinct knocks at the door t'was his return
The bailiff opened the door to a pale wet Hempsall
Who cried mud tears down his face

"Seek my body in the bog" he said
then fell his body into water on the entrance

Pushing the last cart

 My Father complained as he materialized on the sidewalk. "Why have you woken me Simon. I was dead, I was in the calm of nothing." 
I just looked at him thankful that I was allowed to see his face one more time.
"What are we doing here then, atleast answer me that." His face questioning and uncertain.

"I am supposed to take you to the market where you can buy some of the things you yet seek."
I looked at his face and realized, the half smile that came across it wasn't authentic happiness. Just programmed fed back from the memories of the forelife.

So we walked into the warehouse of stalls and ate food off plastic trays and checked prices together. "So when did you become a necromancer" My Father asked casually.
"I didn't conjure you here, old man." I responded. Vendors around us made their offers, jokes and impatient sighs as we left their stalls behind.

My honest brother came up to us and warned us. The market would close and Father would have to get back to his hotel. Before I could react he took his hand. I turned back to the curb, our cart was slowly rolling onto the road, I ran and grabbed it as I saw my Brother and my Father leave.
I rolled the cart full of things I had no idea why we had accumulated. 

I pushed it along a dirt stained concrete sidewalk, then over wooden boards, the damp dim undercroft of a long city bridge. The sidewalk turned into damp cardboard and the wheels would no longer move.
I couldn't push it any further.

Tiddy Mun of the Fen brooks(Ghostlights of the fens 1700s)

 Tiddy mun without a name
separate the water from the rain
Separate the stone from the mud
please let us know when it'll flood

Come ye out of those little pools
Bless our crops and wayward mules
Then pop back into the ponds of the bog
Where you nibble on reed and rotten log

Oh Tiddy Mun be the cure for what ails us
Let your ancient presence never fail us
You remind us one day we'll age and dampen
Thwart the mean ghost man with the lantern

Make our time longer indeed not shorter
So we can make amends for stealing your water
Guard our crop ol' Tiddy mun of the Fen
spin the deluge off, our farm steady friend

A symmetry off limits

 How you turn around to me
you boldly face me
words don't come to either of us
I wish I knew what you sought in me

Lost want curved and curling
from Bom dia lips
Your grace doesn't go overlooked
How you keep yourself precious

Then what need is there for words
When admiration is our reality
When you are gone relief drips
like sweat on the machine

A polished smile
On good morning lips
Your routine exposes your litheness
Your gentle balance unforgettable

There is no goodbye
Only reminders of your harmony
Of the eveness we may feel
our proximity forbidden

Dolls and empty roads

 My head is heavy so i lob it forward to drag the rest of my body.

The gutters of both sides of the road are full of dolls that look like me.

Is this my voodoo freeway, divine limbo in judgement imposed on me.

I continue forward no visible cars or people just the sounds of rattling dolls
and my own quiet footsteps.

The crossroads are empty up head as i come upon them I have no notion where to go.

I keep walking legs humming, brain an audience of voices on a lonely desolate road
of abandoned dolls.

Eihwaz Kenaz Fehu

 The rune for digging below.
Endurance, transformation, connection
To find the hidden water.
The creativity to use this water.

The Rune of illumination, knowledge, skill
Craftmanship and clarity.
To bring what has never existed into the light.
As if it was there from the start.

Abundance, manifestation and vital energy.
Effort bears rewards in many forms.
Each powerful and sustaining.

The ten heads of my past life

Ten heads, each holding a different life,
One of my faces on each 
Each with a small light inside it
Burning from eyes and mouth

 A candelabrum of memory
That transforms into the modern version of me
 A hydra of time
That finds a moment of presence inside me

 where every head carries its own era

It's own haunting surreal landscape and voice

One might know the Fen mud

another a dockside in Limehouse

A field growing somewhere in imagination

Lights are experiences burning inside it