The seed arrived
Without warning
On an unknown
Foreign Zephyr.
Deposited
Itself, neatly,
Between dry stones.
On spagnum green
Softly nestled
For duration
Of summer warm
Swollen with dew
Bursting upwards
Searches for sky
Seeks out sunshine
Stalkly groping
Stronger each day
Budly bursting
Cerulean
Bluely special
Shiny dawning
Unexpected
Glory morning
My windflower
Harry Rogers: Tea shop in Newcastle Emlyn, 8th May 2018
It’s time to call a cab,
To take me to the lab,
Powder nose with a dab,
Sideways crawl, like a crab,
Beware your Jabberwock,
Your monster down the block,
He sleeps till twelve o’clock,
He can’t roll, he can’t rock.
But he can jab, jab, jab
Beware your Jabberwok
He’s gonna stab, stab, stab
Beware your Jabberwock
In your back, stab, stab, stab,
Sciatic jab, jab, jab
Want pain to stop, stop, stop,
Please fuck off Jabberwock,
Can’t stand your, jab, jab, jab.
All down my leg, leg, leg,
Comes in waves, jab, jab, jab,
I’ve got to beg, beg, beg,
Stop, stop, stop, Jabberwock
Stop, stop, stop, jab, jab, jab
Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 29th January 2021.
Tell me what happened to the world we knew.
We partied hard in nineteen ninety nine.
We thought the future would be better new,
That everything was gonna work out fine.
The man sold us rhetoric filled with hope,
We really thought a change was gonna come,
We sucked it in like it was real good dope,
Rose colouring the third millennium.
Lift those tinted glasses,
See the new world for real,
Three drones flew every hour.
Signed sealed and delivered,
DARPA kept on growing.
Man child Trump don’t change things.
Put America first?
He only made things worse.
As the tweet laden crisis sharpened up,
Propaganda mongers spouted their lies,
Worldwide politicians supped the same cup,
Whilst peddling their shared bent alibis.
So far don’t like the third millennium,
Can’t stand hand wringing armchair narcissists,
Nor the paranoid neo Nazi scum.
Who’ll help us all if nobody resists?
Hold on, what’s this we see?
Amongst the advertising,
Out on the streets a sea,
In flowering uprising,
Brave people, young and old
They march together, strong,
Their story will be told,
Peace, justice, love, belong.
Harri Rogers, Aberbanc, 23rd January, 2017 Revised 28th January 2021.
He’s got some front, flanked as ever
By the regulation two flags,
He parrots Allegra’s smooth words,
Sticks to the script, stays on message,
Takes full responsibility
For all his governments actions.
Sets out to convince us of their
Hard work since start of pandemic.
Appears contrite, seriously
Mouths words of sorrow for the dead,
More than one hundred thousand dead,
But he doesn’t say he’s sorry.
No apologies for those missed
Cobra meetings back at the start,
Nor his dithering decisions,
Herd immunity fiasco,
The naked braggadocio
As he strode though parliament,
Whilst he ignored social distance,
How he caught Coronavirus,
Then spread it through his office staff,
Who, ad infinitum, passed on
To unknown legions pre lockdowns.
Cygnus report findings ignored,
Profits before health, business first,
Ignore warnings until too late.
Now new spad lies are spun each day,
Thus, his annus terribilis
Ruined, glorious Brexit
Dreams turned into deepest nightmare
Brings him to this sad point in time.
Please send in removal lorry,
Get him gone, for he ain’t sorry.
Harry Rogers, in The Red Bedroom, 28th January 2021.
All the signs point us, look,
Back through the mists of time,
Lessons long forgotten,
Now seemingly sublime,
The world awash with oil
That no-one wants to buy.
We turn our attention
To power from the sky,
New, sleek, temples arise,
All glass, all glitz and chrome,
Sunshine that we bathe in
Heats up our modern home.
We heed those old shamen,
The sun is God, again.
Harry Rogers: Aberbanc, Sunday July 16th, 2017. Revised in the Yellow Room, 28th January 2021.
Every day I tell myself
I’m gonna fix those stairs,
Fix those ramshackle stairs
Leading to my cabin,
My cabin on the cliff.
But you know how it is,
When you’re panning for gold,
You put everything off,
Until you are too old.
Mountain stream rushes by,
Falls into pool below.
Next door the wreckage of
Panhandler Johnny’s hut,
Clings on precariously
To the shale walled cliff,
Whilst golden aspen trees
Shimmer in Autumn sun.
Stand, knee deep in water,
Nobody there but me,
Search hard for golden flakes.
I look at my cabin,
My wilderness log home,
God how I love this place.
Happy on my own with
My cabin on the cliff.
Don’t cha know that I’m an
Old, gold, panhandling man
Little darlin’ I’m an
Old, gold, panhandling man.
Harry Rogers, in the hut. February 23rd 2017.
I wrote this song lyric awhile back when I was in Atlanta Georgia in 2017 for a dear friend who was grieving the loss of her loving husband. I have revised it today, hope to record it soon, who knows when but soon.
Life is hard in a railroad town
Lots of things there to bring you down
The clunking and the clanking steel
The donking bells are all too real
The whistle blowing all night long
Fucking up your favourite song
Engine giants busy hissing
On the platform someone’s missing
But
It can be alright again,
It can be alright again,
It can be alright again
Yeah
It will be alright again
If you step up onto the train
The train can be your salvation
You must get up onto the train
You must let it leave the station
Take that journey to somewhere new
Along the track that leads to you.
Oooh that journey to somewhere new
Along that track that leads to you
Oooh it can be alright again
Gonna be alright again
Yeah it can be alright again
It’s gonna be alright again (to fade)
Harry Rogers, In Doctor Bombays Underwater Tea Party 2017 and The Red Bedroom, 26th January 2021
One fig and two pear trees
Asters and raspberries
Small pond, a rockery,
Tall hollyhockery,
Fork with one broken tine
Above the railway line.
Watch goods trains steaming by
Eye stinging smuts fly high
In 1953
My father’s aviary
Full of budgerigars
And broken pedal cars
A crazy paving path
My mother’s carefree laugh
The queen ascends the throne
On tv in our home
My brother gets knocked down
I watch him spin around
On coronation day
As we went out to play
The ambulance comes quick
Whilst I am feeling sick
To tell my mum I ran,
She left me with my nan.
We sit out in the sun,
She cuts a sticky bun,
Pours me some Tizer pop,
She even drinks a drop.
Pink blancmange and jelly,
Horse drawn coach on telly,
Queen waves through crowds at me,
And Richard Dimbleby.
Harry Rogers, in Harriboy’s Hut, 7th February 2017
There’s a heron by the Quaggy,
Across the road, in Brookmill Park.
He stands on one leg in the snow,
Soon be snapped by my old friend Bo.
Someday perhaps I’ll see it too,
When next I visit old Deptford,
That feels a long way off today,
As we’re all still stuck in lockdown,
We wait for all clear siren sounds,
Politicians swim through treacle,
Mistakenly blame the people,
Who don’t play by their confused rules.
Down here, two fifty miles away,
As last nights snow begins to melt,
On radio I hear the fools,
Play pass the parcel with the buck,
There is no desk on which it stops,
As Pritti now sends in the cops.
Not one has the ability
To take responsibility.
Perhaps to Frog House I will bring
My friend good cheer in next years spring.
I hope the heron is still there,
In twenty two some pints we’ll share.
Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 24th January 2021
Walk by the Isis,
On warm summer day,
Down to swimming hole,
Swing out on the rope,
Drop into the pool,
Nineteen eighty four,
Know that I’ll never,
Forget this moment,
Water grips so cool,
Exhilaration,
Swim upstream aways
Pull new goggles on,
Watch Perch fins flutter,
They hang suspended,
In exposed tree roots,
Beneath cut away,
River bank channels,
Where they wait for prey.
Friends frolic in pool,
Perch watch on, unmoved,
Meanwhile, in Orgreave,
BBC News team
Shoot famous footage,
Which they called battle,
After fake edits,
Where state violence,
Still waits for justice.
I remain mindful
Of events that day,
Seems sometimes these things,
Just don’t fade away.
D’you know what I mean?
Harry Rogers, in the yellow room, 24th January 2021.
Close eyes under shadowy trees
Dappled light plays across my face
Chapel bells jangle inside head
Motor boats plough on through the lake
Lizards skitter over the path
Warm sun on rheumatic back,
Scent of Borromean jasmine,
Ice cubes bob in a glitter spritz,
Children laugh and dance on the street,
Mountains beyond turn pink at night,
Pompeiian puppet show still bright,
All this from a dream in daylight,
Rain falls, eyes open, I’m in Wales.
Harry Rogers, revised in the yellow room, 23rd January 2021
Never a day did I understand why
In Hendon your average new copper
Was taught to refute Karl Marx and reply
With arguments put forward by Popper.
The state must have been really full of fear,
Afraid that they might come a cropper,
Paranoid about revolution near,
Injected philosophical stopper.
Still stirs strong wind of transformative change,
Pendulums swing, seeds fall from the hopper,
Sprout new shoots in far corners, green and strange,
Where plods on beat hear latest jaw dropper.
Someday the force will become a service,
For all the people, not just the churlish.
Harry Rogers In the Red Bedroom, 22nd January 2021
Two million dollars, it all goes away,
Crimes, misdemeanours, so long as you pay.
A message to Rudy, just give him a shout,
One of his goons can help you sort it out,
Rampant corruption, it is so obscene,
Give four five money, he’ll wipe your slate clean.
Like Nixon he’s gone, he had to conform,
Says he will be back, in some shape or form.
Proud boys and boogaloos strut on the street,
They threaten still in the teeth of defeat,
Yesterday Joe put hope above their hate,
Decency rises, it’s almost too late.
Starlings murmurate above confusion,
Have all the fakes gone? Was it illusion?
Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 21st January 2021.
Hope fills our lights a’glimmer
As we get up from our knees,
Darkness cannot get dimmer,
Something floats upon the breeze.
Comes a realisation,
To bring true socialism
All socialists have to do
Is behave as socialists
With each other, comradely.
It’s time to ditch lifelong scores,
Not to scratch old battle sores,
Randian fascists, outdoors,
Ignore all of our old laws,
Don’t give society figs,
Only individuals.
Harry Rogers, In the Yellow Room, 19th January 2021.
Austerity, default mechanism, Used by capitalism to maintain
Status quo, where the wealthy stay wealthy,
And the rest of us have to pay the bills.
Sharing concepts alien to the rich.
Neo-Liberal adage is writ large,
“What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own”.
Pandemic expenses rob one and all,
Reality shows who’s going to pay,
Austerity laws soon back now to stay.
We must prepare for the battle to come,
A harsh world awaits, we see it elsewhere,
Plutocrats aren’t philanthropic people,
The idea of welfare means nothing to them,
The law of the jungle where strong survive,
Randians and crooks are running our lives.
Get ready, new normal won’t be jolly,
We’ve got to struggle like never before!
Harry Rogers, in the Yellow room, 19th January 2021.
Minnows keep dying, swallowed up by pike
Who believe freedom means do what you like.
Rivers are swollen with pike on the feed,
Predators strip hope from people in need.
Sickness is rampant, leeches feed off it,
Out of death rattles they make a profit.
From test, track and trace that does not exist,
To anti vaxxers who peddle scotch mist,
Lynch mob storm troopers on Capitol Hill,
Those venal racists, whose flags make us ill.
Twitler is happy now his days are done,
This monster pike will still shout out he won,
His rag bag army, the Trump lunatics,
Believe it’s seventeen seventy six.
As Joe sweeps by in his new armoured car,
Some say that this is a re- run Weimar.
Let’s hope it ain’t and sanity returns,
Don’t make us watch as America burns.
Harry Rogers in the Red Bedroom, 18th January 2021
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade
I will make you cake today
Gonna bake you cake today
Cake to take your breath away
Gonna bake you cake today
Fold the mixture in a bowl
Like some gentle rock and roll
For my sweetest baby doll
Bake this cake to steal your soul
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade
Forget about old four five
Take the honey from the hive
Skipping to the kitchen jive
Baking makes you come alive
I will make you cake today
Got to bake you cake today
Cake to take your breath away
Gonna bake you cake today
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade
Sticking marzipan
With sweet marmalade.
Pencnwcau, 2nd January 2018.
Emerald Drive calls to me
That back porch amongst the trees
Refreshed anew with chilled tea
Shoot politics upon the breeze
Sweet Georgia night air alive
With music and hoot owl calls,
Talk of nights with Deep Blue Sun,
Grateful Dead, Atlanta fun,
Of peace and hippiedom days,
How media changed our ways,
How new algorithms rule,
The subversion of freedom,
An anarcho fascist tool,
Tweeted by White House demon.
Now all I can do is dream
Of Ice cold beers from Athens,
On astral plane fly moonbeam,
Please take me back to Athens.
Harry Rogers, In the Red Bedroom, 15th January 2021
Impeach the orange,
Drag it through the courts,
Squeeze until pips squeek,
Get all juicy bits,
Peel open in dock,
Probe segments through pith,
Take the wrung out husk,
Remove zest for life.
Comb through plantation groves,
Weed out fungal fruits,
Clean democracy,
Replant justice roots.
Check all mandarins
For cross infection,
Hope lemons and limes
Solve citric questions.
Crush the tangerines,
Ice up mint Juleps,
Brand new cocktail hour
On Capitol steps.
Slowly reawake,
Struggle up off knees,
Drink no more cool aid,
Avoid fresh DT’s.
Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 14th January 2021
This dog in a manger “free world” leader,
Deranged as he orchestrates true chaos
Whilst he persistantly tells the same lies.
He cares not about how many will die,
Such collateral damage is to him
A price worth paying to avoid justice.
Misled people believe propaganda,
Attend organised rallies and demos
As if invited to Sunday picnics,
Like Eisenstein’s sheep they devour fake manna
By the shovelful, minds totally blown.
What they fail to realise is how
Completely they have been rooked and gulled,
Stitched up to provide artificial fronts
For the death of their democracy.
They send millions of campaign dollars,
To keep the demagoguery afloat,
Soon will be a time no-one has a vote,
The confidence trickery still will shine,
They’ll believe the dictatorship benign.
Amerika televised great again,
I cry as I watch, and hard falls the rain.
Harry Rogers, in the Yellow Room, 13th January 2021.
Coups and insurrections, all plotted up
Over years of greasy mind massages,
Tweeted to hungry, fevered, acolytes,
All eager to have their prejudices
Polished, and honed, by the demagogue.
Lies are tools in this faux relationship,
Poisonous slogans, memes and banners,
Disseminated by Potus four five,
Infected social media for years,
Encouraged growth of nazi militia,
Fanned the flames of vile racist terror groups,
Stormed the Capitol in fake show of strength.
How strong the constitution? Can it hold?
How much storytelling is left to be told?
Harry Rogers, in the Yellow Room, 13th January 2021.
Julian, unconvicted journalist,
Banged up on his own in Bellmarsh chokey,
Solitary confinement, no contact,
Twenty three hours a day all alone,
His fellow colleagues in the media,
At The Guardian and the BBC,
Are all still at work, protected in law,
No charges for use of information,
From the self same sources as Julian.
Justice is nowhere seen to be done,
An innocent man treated as guilty
For doing his job when he showed us truth.
Torture is illegal, so judges say,
Yet when they use it we all look away.
Harry Rogers, in the Yellow Room, 11th January 2021
My poem for Grenfell
Clambering cameraman shoots it all,
The contorted refrigerator door,
Melted cistern hanging from bathroom wall,
Dividing panels black ash upon floor
Fired plastic grease streaking bare concrete,
Empty twisted spare metal window frames,
Exposed mattress springs, revealed bed stead feet,
Blasted patterns wrought by spurting gas flames,
Metallic skeletal homeware litter,
Rooms no longer clearly defined spaces,
From kitchen see cracked ceramic shitter.
Outside broken ashen tear stained faces.
Post the classic black and white images.
Very contrasting, have you seen enough?
Aberbanc: June 23rd 2017.
I’m overcome by realisation.
By the life lived by a woman, Ella.
Known as Jean Rhys she short circuits my mind.
Brought up short in The Wide Sargasso Sea,
I am knocked off my sleek sex waxed surfboard.
A hurricane of understanding comes,
Climbing back on my board, bracing for the
Giant third age wave, rolling over weeds,
Ready to be ridden in clear sunlight,
Towards shining, swirling, vortex centre,
Where the flotsam and jetsam disappears,
Sucked into deepest blue water below,
To forever swim amongst eels,
Never escaping dark, green, reeds.
Aberbanc – Easter Monday 2017.
There will be lumpiness, and bumpiness,
Perhaps there will even be Trumpiness.
Anonymous queues bring jumpiness,
And increase the levels of humpiness.
Hopefully, soon, we will see dumpiness.
Harry Rogers In the Yellow Room, 8th January 2021.
Down through the woods at Penbryn
On the way yr llan y mor,
In my head Erik Satie
On Socrates and Phaedrus,
As they look for beauty spot,
To discuss all forms of love.
What better place than this gorge,
Where brook runs through ancient ferns,
Majestic trees, rocks that babble.
If ever there was a time
To speak of love it is now,
When leaders rouse the rabble,
As blood drips from tiny hands.
We need healers most of all.
Harry Rogers in the Yellow Room, 7th January 2021.
Reality is hard to see,
So difficult to comprehend,
Every truth is blotted out
By solar energy beating
A cosmic swathe through retinal
Pathways, that obscure ability
To focus sharply on reason.
Brilliant scintillas block off
Actual dark, dreadful, pictures
Of the world seen by aliens.
A nightmare, hidden by the sun,
Glimpsed darkly, once in a blue moon,
During total solar eclipse.
Doesn’t last, lying sun soon shines.
Pencnwcau, 9th April 2018.
I’ve been all around that old music track
From doo-wop to be-bop, still I come back
Always seem to be coming on back
Forever I seem to be coming on back
Coming back to the Dead
Won’t get out of my head
I am always, always,
Coming back to the Dead
Where the strains of Pretty Peggy O-0h
Echo on the wind from Fennario
We keep on trucking down the road we know
To Sugaree along from Jack a Roe
Coming back to the dead
They’re stuck inside my head
I am always, always
Coming back to the dead
Harry Rogers, in The Flying Biscuit 11th August 2018.
I am only summer dreamy,
As the snow fills up the garden.
Sometimes it is important, to
Wander the banks of illusion,
Along the stream of consciousness,
Be able to escape reality,
Without direction from others,
Who would manipulate our dreams.
Arts are often informative,
Influential, pleasant even,
But when wrong hands control vision
Then we are taken into realms
Of fake escape, not true daydreams.
Be one of Sati’s dreamy fish,
Swim in a pool fueled by freedom,
Fed by pure imagination,
Driven by self instigation.
Allow boredom a little space,
Half close your eyes, now remember,
Clifftop walks in any weather,
This is the route to Xanadu,
Where you can truly walk with you,
Or anyone you choose to do.
Harry Rogers, in the Yellow Room, 4th January 2021.
Swift flies on the wind
Into my window
Falls stunned to the ground
Lies there, upside down,
Gently pick it up
Stroke its head with care,
Iridescent, black,
Spark of life slowly
Returns, this bird’s back.
It opens its eyes,
Stares straight into mine.
I open my hand
Hold the swift. up high,
It flys in the air,
Soars up to the sky
I smile as I watch
Freedom fly away,
It’s a perfect way
To start a new day.
Harry Rogers, In The Red Bedroom, 3rd January 2021.
Remember how last Easter
Ministers dilly dallied.
On yachts in Estapona,
Ghouls plotted up giant scams,
They haggled over lease terms,
Stock markets dipped, then rallied,
Adopted fake personas,
Rules changed by spad epigrams,
Dodgy test track trace geezers
Ripped off, then cashed and carried,
As the ghosts of corona
Haunted through videograms.
Yet still it is not over,
No-one dances in clover,
Vaccines stream in from Dover,
Too late to curb corona,
Many ghosts of corona,
Mourn the ghosts of corona,
Brand new ghosts of corona,
Cry for ghosts of corona.
Harry Rogers, in the Red Bedroom, 2nd January 2021.
Will we ride
High on the hog again?
Will we ride
In sun, and wind, and rain?
Will days come
When we forget the pain?
Will we ride
To Canada by train?
Those old friends,
Lost in twenty twenty,
Never hugged,
Spaces now seem empty.
See those bulbs,
Beneath the acer tree,
Sprouting now,
That we will never see.
Dunnock chicks
All fluff upon the lawn,
Scrabble for
A place amongst new born,
This new year
Hard not to be care worn,
Up the plot
Tis time to plant new corn.
We must ride
High on the hog again
Though we cried
In wind and sun and rain
Come let’s ride
We’ll gallop through the pain
We shall ride
High on the hog again.
Harry Rogers in The Red Bedroom, 1st January 2021.
harri seeing red 