Heartlands Poems

HOLY ANGER

God, in vengeance is jealous.
God, in vengeance is furious.
On the table of his foes vengeance is served,
For his enemies, his wrath is reserved.

Slow in anger,
Great in power,
He acquits not the wicked,
The guilty does not go unpunished.

The whirlwind and storm dance in his hand,
The proud clouds at his feet like dust gather.
The seas and rivers run dry at his command
And lush pastures of blooming flowers wither.

In his presence, mountains shake,
Haughty high hills crumble,
In his presence, earth's heartlands quake,
All spirits, flesh and blood tremble.

Before his fierce anger, none can stand;
He pours out his fury like a flaming fire,
His blazing anger none can withstand,
Aged mountains mourn and crumble to dust in his ire.

Into deep darkness, he pursues his foes;
In furious floods, he sweeps away his enemies.
Like drunken drunkards, they stagger; turning and turning and turning,
Entangled among dry thorns afire, burning and burning and burning.

The Life of 'AE'

On a mild Spring’s night
In the heartlands of Ulster 
A prodigious child was born 
For Ireland, to save her

A man of modest means 
Yet formidable wit
The mystics he joined 
A cause to commit

In poems and paintings
He found self expression 
Yet through a noble pursuit 
Would leave his impression

He traversed the country
On a campaign of recruitment
To free the impoverished through struggle 
And the Co-operative movement

With Horace Plunkett and Connolly 
He struggled for justice
Yet the Gombeens and the despots
Outweighed Caesar Augustus

Though Russell did not stop 
In this quest for social reform 
From misery to prosperity
One sought to transform

But the inconsiderate dogma 
Of the Irish Free State 
Meant to delay his mission 
As the ‘Homestead’ must wait

George William Russell grew older 
Crippled by usury
To wretched cancer, succumbed 
Rest in peace, ‘AE’

Against Hegemony

Steps on mud, a stalking thread,
Red strings wind through dying groves
Where life needs time, to find footing,
Red strings halt hands in greed which hold
The axe of ignorance, the axe which bleeds
A people in flight from homes bulldozed
For one brute mine more, to feed empire
Which jangles keys, which confines in loaned
Dependence made, our trough withheld
By bloated old speculators whose cold
Lies obscure serfdom; worded as freedom,
And the east wind is chided,
For fetishism, advert slogans uphold
Impotence among them who create,
They are given consumerist mirrors,
As leeches of mankind are weighed in gold;
And as burns away our way of life,
All bonds formed in toil shared,
The market-canker births hedonism
The imperial axe bloodies us, brothers of old
But hold tight onto the strong strands
Of crimson in the heartlands,
Seize imagination, seize thought
Beyond nettle laden garlands
And thorn crown of parlay,
Rip with the iron of hardship
All parasites, them whose is the whip,
Can’t be pleaded with, can’t be controlled.

My Red Rose

Let destiny create a distance... 
Firestorm of roses will set an inferno...
Arrow goading the scented sceneries. 

Maniac in love, heartlands of homophiles.
Lovely heart cradled in my lover's arms... 

Glass dome saving the last petal...
Canvass the soil for a sepal... 

Eclipse eyes yearning forever this memory, 
Century of love marking romantique history,
Chancery charming this unsettled elapse... 

Bowing on the vow of your untangled fragrance, 
Heart on your heart always.

Moonlight and Proses

Storyteller weaves his tales
throughout my mind and heart.
He alchemies my leaden days
into golden thoughts.

We soar above the shrinking earth
on word-filled wings at night,
glide on intellectual planes;
it’s Truth we seek to find.

Charting unknown territory
of heartlands, minds and brains,
we plumb the depths of mysteries
that rule cabbages and kings.

Like Capote penning portraits,
his stories glow so real.
Their 3-D essence touches me
in déjà vu surreal.

He’s captured me in tidy yarns,
with friendship for a knot.
Allowing him to nurture me,
he feeds my starving heart.

He takes me here, he whisks me there,
with legends of the fall.
But one place I can never trod
is deep inside his soul.

Wood Lands-

 was a strolling through the heartlands
and you are in the foliage
Woodlands
When I thought of the woodlands
there are the trees never pining
Death shall never come to the maples
and the peonies never foresting
the burr oak brought such sorrow
Tomorrows

Much I marveled the thorn less butterfly bushes
Take thy grassland from out my heartfelt kisses
Woodlands 
Tomorrows
Embracing much I marveled those grassy cypress trees
My mind always strays to hedgerows also surrounding me

I saw the forests by the grave
All those host of nest those insects they enslave
Well behaved
and the prairie never soiling
As the arboreal barberry bushes bowling
The woodland wetland waiting


An echo murmured back the word, 'rain-forest!'
Tomorrows
Woodlands


2/27/20
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr.2020©

There the Reckoning

Where the earth, 
either scorched or drowned,
meets the fire of war 
or the floods of indifference,
where the sky,
once pristine, now flight-scarred,
meets the trawlers and the oil rigs
on the dying sea,
and the righteousness
that you wore as an amulet
became a millstone
that you could not bear.
Where the industrial heartlands,
robust and cruel,
run feverishly to or from the inner cities,
painful, seething and morose,
where the last suburban outliers,
fading and sanctimonious,
meet the first agricultural small-holdings,
desperate, stoic and resilient,
and you happened upon wealth
too bountiful to be shared,
but mostly succumbed
to the will of the mightier few.
There waits The Serpent,
there waits the heel of The Chosen One,
there waits the reckoning
that no malevolence can escape,
buried so deep within you
that they can never be seen or found.

28th December 2018

Don'T Write Poems

“Don’t Write Poems“
*************

what can I say i write poetry my life
in solitude yet to read the original
will it please, you tease
your words spectres roaming blind
then ouch pain spectres hit a nerve
inspired my words poetry
please do not say do not write
with words i explore
wonderlands fairylands dreams
the heartlands of my soul

********************

31st May 2018

Poetry for the Sake of Poetry - Poetry Contest - Sponsored by John lawless

High Rise

Wandering past bungalows
Sneaking through high covenant areas
Setting servants and dogs barking.

I go home
Desperation crawls in to the heartlands
As dawn crawls in.

Bastards!
They’ve built towers
Everywhere.

Down below I will build a house no bigger than myself
There will be no roof and no walls
I’ll step out into the darkness

If you are nearby one day pay me a visit
And please, plant me a sunflower
For a little glow.

In Seeds of Sunflowers

Between the fibers 
of this page,
an ancient magic
has been laid


Pressing leaves 
with mystical power,
and kissing the corners 
to grow sunflowers


Cherish a word
a wish or rhyme,
making it grow
deep in your mind


Taking the letters
that are your divine,
weave them into
a master design


Make your own mold
and pour yourself in,
to not be yourself
is the greater of sins


Feel the earth
beneath your feet,
build your own kingdom
a heartlands retreat


With the gift of hands
you can shape a world,
and the only barrier
is what your mind holds


Sowing the seeds
you collected through life,
tend them with love
they will flourish with light


Dream with your heart
and ever be true,
the universe will gather
just to know you 


After searching for faults
letting pride blind my eyes,
I stripped off all masks
to soar a blue sky


Now planting my seed
with love in my sight,
I wish it to flourish
a precious long life


Covering these pages
in tendrils sublime,
Thus binding loves magic
I send it through time

The Wounded Year

When all the marbles leave the bag
Fret not, weekend wrangler,
For the beat of your heart 
Wobbles the very Earth

This your wounded year
With waves calling from pier to pier
Rise, rise your gutless cheer!

Fear not the flashing spheres
Running over shadow-patched cracks
Gleaming with the glory of unkept dreams
Sending shockwaves through Heartlands.

Castles In Spain

Drumming from the amps, bristling with snares and hooks,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Aide memoirs of the past, post-war resurrection, stubbornly,
Wreathed in wires of smoke and delineated by baselines,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In the imaginary glare, scrubland plains play host,
The homeland of bleached white sonic structures,
Aspiring to touch the scorched stonewashed sky,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
Ravaging the cold corpses of pastoral dictators,
Burying them in gritty sand, interring with their
Emotional fascism for companionship on the final
Journey into the heartlands of the dead conquistador,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”);
In that hopeless kill zone of love and promises,
That vain and empty body of soulless night,
That reflective insult of scorn and terrible beauty,
Replications of dreams laid bare, films on her iris,
Panoramas populated by citadels of waste,
(“I see in your eyes, castles in Spain.”)
(“I see in your eyes…castles… in… Spain!”).
But what can I do?

Ronin

I wander the landscapes of solitude
Unchecked and unhealed,
Beneath heavens speared with bamboo rain,
A blade on my back concealed
Beyond where the eye can envisage and see,
Deserts burning dry,
Beyond where the temples sink in the dust,
Under a storm laden sky.
There is no one to swear allegiance to,
The loneliest decree,
To walk the earth as the years dissolve
And land crumbles into sea.
I wander the heartlands of yesterday,
Of feudal souls no more,
Where the killing fields were hearth and home,
My brothers men of war.
No master to slip the chains and unleash
Honour and ferocity,
Belonging to nothing, beloved of none,
Rootless, accursed and free.

Where Leads the Heavy Road

Where leads the heavy road, please take me there 
On spines of chrome and steel, 
On the silken backs of angels, 
To where the heartlands are so real. 

Where leads the heavy road, please take me now, 
And lay my past to feathered rest, 
And usher out the time of old, 
And fold it's arms across it's chest. 

Where leads the heavy road, please take me soon, 
On winds of sweeping change, 
On the brightest asphalt trail, 
To where my life roams on the range. 

Where leads the heavy road, please take my hand, 
And spirit guides will weep aloud, 
And bid me face a new beginning, 
And she will greet me standing proud.

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