CHRISTOPHER HAYES - POEMS

Christopher Hayes is a freelance Lecturer in Business, Strategic Management and Organisational Behaviour. He is also a Trainer/Assessor in Debt Recovery and Spectator Safety, and the Owner/Manager of a small Accounting Practice. He has been writing poetry and short stories for many years, but only recently has decided to seek publication to get his work to the reading public.  He has completed one collection of short stories and is currently working on a second collection.

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​Carolingle
 
A capital candlemass………….

​Advent
 
The light nights are closing fast, as winter now advances,
Autumn runs straight and true on December’s snowy traces,
And icy, fern stippled windows stare out on bare stripped branches.
Profitable thoughts turn their attention eagerly towards Christmas’ gaudy festivities,
And fills each lascivious children’s list with ever more extravagant promises.
The Season’s theme is now a rising urge to spend,
To plunder bank account and credit card as if money has no end;
And somewhere in amongst the gaudy lights and shimmering decorations
Lies a modicum of truth hidden deep inside the celebrations.
 
Christmas Eve
 
Listen, while the frosty air congeals to turgid white,
And mystery intensifies the keenness of this magical night;
Where expectant faces peer wide eyed at the stars,
Hoping for the slightest glimpse of reindeer driven fairy travellers;
I sing, of conjoured myths that now bedeck each gilded home,
And lips that speak of holly, and ivy and mistletoe.
This only feast, this opportunity for excess,
Comes once a year with such dire disingenousness
That what it represents has long since been forgotten,
And replaced with something altogether more morally rotten.
Yearly, the Yuletide Feast raises a cornucopia of images,
An imago frozen in time, of Hunts and Horsedrawn Carriages.
Snowy Streets and frosted glass and rosy cherubim faces
Peer expectantly over notched windows singing Carols down the ages.
A feast of splendour, a pure cacophony of fir driven delights,
Of goose and gander, puddings and porter and dazzlingly flashing lights;
Of seasonal blessings and best wishes for the year after
Greet friend and foe alike in one mirthful extravaganza.
Seen through the rosy hue of nostalgia’s blunt devices,
You miss the whole subtlety of it all and blunder on regardless;
The Candle counts the fading hours as the year draws to a close,
and extravagant spending arises; on turkey, and pudding and Porter
Let’s sit around the fireside and savour this Dickensian wonder,
Of perfect snowy scenes filled with joy and seasonal splendour.
Fir bedecked shops hung with sheets of fatted geese
Give rise to visions of a veritable cornucopian feast.
A gift wrapped illusion from an age of bloody rage,
Imported images from other lands and distant pagan days.
An iconic miser defines the spirit of future promise,
Who turns from inner despite to outward beneficence,
In a single night vague spirits convince him of his folly,
To be much more merciful to the poor and needy.
In past images, resurrected for his instruction
He sees the future picture of his own inevitable destruction
The death of siblings, the hot hate of business failure and shame
Stack the odds against him to lengthen his burdensome chain.
And so in the great Victorian tradition this grateful benefactor,
Lives an altogether fuller life for his peaceful hereafter,
O! Marley, that you struggled upwards from the tomb,                                            }
And with such fearful and terribly ghoulish aplomb                                                }
Instructed your business partner in all those terrors yet to come!                            }
Listen now the merry music of another contrived song,
Meaders through snowy minds to carry us all along.
Fir and mistletoe, the holly and the ivy all testify to this,
That the yuletide feast is nothing more than one great antithesis.
Capital, for the spending spree that tempts some into debt,
Those gullible parents hypnotised by every extravagant gift.
The value of the season is now measured by every till that rings
Up piles of unnecessary, and largely irrelevant offerings.
The momentum of the season begins long before summers out,
With foreign holidays barely ended, Pandemonium raises its ugly snout.
Hits us from all sides with lurid enticements to spend,
Bombards with tempting offers and the “must have” latest trend;
An unrelenting raid that continues for months without end,
Gullible for the need to please their children and not to offend,
Parents ponder hard on gifts that will hardly get a mention;
Overwhelmed by gaudy parcels that purchase such shallow affection,
To while away the day and avoid any hint of close attention.
Such is this mishmash of symbol and ceremony,
Drawn from pagan rites with just a hint of Christianity,
 
Epitaph
 
The cold dawn of Christmas morn lies heavy and overcast with rain,
The distant Dickensian dystopia has failed us all again!
No snowy scenes greet this promised day of days,
No snowy robin or biscuit box scene magicks this long awaited holiday.
The depressing damp soils whatever festive cheer,
And the day unfolds as wet and cheerless as any other day of the year!
 

​I shall wear infamy like a shroud………………….

​Fluid for the lies that seem to blind us all,
From Eve’s first words that presided Adam’s dramatic fall!
History declares a form of words that ever lack true meaning,
That damn the common man’s exploitative leaning,
And floats to the top that most destructive of common canticle
That is destined to preside over many years of pointless debacle……
Wisdom’s pure invention is a lie with corrosive substance,
That inverts “Common Sense” with unbelievable nonsense,
And turns a grassy knoll into a minor insignificance.
Opinions now deluge the ordinary man’s narrow perceptions,
Turns important events into mere conspiratorial obsessions,
And if there are Flying Saucers, no-one is making any public confessions.
And still the ascent of man from ape to human is hard science fact,
Even though the evidence points to an altogether different tack;
In this no debate is allowed to stimulate the brain,
The thief of pure invention has got away with it again!
The airwaves are filled with such evolutionary fantasies,
As time and again the Creation Adversaries
Fill our heads with pure invention and outright lies!
Evolution’s darker recesses are a racists’s scientific charter,
Of favoured races and survival of the fittest order;
Words and fillips still contest the heated air,
Where shallow promises compliment such heady fare;
Home spun wisdoms grace these crowded confessions,
To condescend to wealth and the grubbiest City Professions.
Bribes for every piece of work that he can take,
The Sound Economist proposes another entertaining fake!
Ah…the vicious banter of another great debate,
Alerts the whips to reign in the most troublesome legate.
Power hangs by a single thread of this tenuous co-operation,
Where even the slightest disagreement will send it all to oblivion.
The face of power smiles at his sidekick’s whimsical observations,
On Europe, Pensions and the boundary alterations;
Yet sits like a yellow lapdog and begs for this slightest titbit,
A titular non-job, the Prime Minister’s non-sequitur Deputy;
A gun without powder, primer or bullet,
An insincere secretary, a mere political Pundit;
And as the Prompter prompts, the Puppet squeaks;
All blue rinse manifesto and Daily Mail speak.
 

Taken from The Book of Idiots
​

Chapter Four
 
                    (our two soldiers of fortune are recruited as World policemen)
 
                  Boom Boom (you’re dead)
                                             Out go the lights?
 
The Sewer King contemplates the complex issues of world minions,
seeks here and there from flatterers such agreeable opinions
as would turn a fisticuffs into a full blown Armageddon
and fulfil his shoddy, so-called saintly ambition
to rule the world; Faithless Lieutenant cringes by his side,
a grey man who rules a far off, insignificant isle,
who dreams of empires, and smiles a sickly, saving grace;
envious rapture distorts his otherwise featureless face!
“A special relationship, sire, exists between yours and mine;
we two, together can police this troublesome quagmire.
Your hand and mine in friendship, this whole world clasps,
Salvation, my lord, from rank anarchy and collapse.”
“Speak, Lord Faithless Lieutenant, tell me what you see,                             }
let the cause be just for such a dangerous prophesy,                                   }
(and make sure there’s enough bankable readies in it for me!)                    }
The Undertaker of Filth and World Decay
exhumes the images of siege and ritualised horseplay;
Here and there maniacs sieze the initiative of another uprising
to murder millions and impose another ruthless cleansing!
A story! A story! The Sewer King dictates,                                                }
and shoves his fool back out, onto the stage                                            }
to earn his keep in one more extrapolation of altered states;                   }
”My Lord, you do me more than my slight skill deserves!
Yet the more of dreams unfold a sorrier state of affairs.
Who could resist the solid foundation of this integrity?
A whole Nation believes it is the benchmark of international morality,
righteousness and honesty; a second coming, a twentieth century
new messiah in a land of golden opportunity.
Sits as Judge AND Jury, dispenses judgement circumspect                       }
fawns to its Allies and potential overseas markets                                      }
(and hoards to itself it’s most profound military secrets!)                           }
Be-metalled, as a modern knight of the quickening death,
beyonetted end-forward, searching for that Herald of your last breath on earth,
head filled to bursting with Confidence’s confident sayings,
you heave about and deliver honourable, indecent slayings.
Shinybrite, sublime, a khaki clad eros,
wings on fire with his new, world killing ethos
of rigid right and worsening wrongs and crucified creeds,
where WEST meets EAST, and lays out the battle feast.
“What food is this?” a million slain already, my dear,
FREEDOM fells the iron restraints; old hatreds reappear.
Does anyone here remember hearing the TRUTH?
that reluctant phrase, that elusive gobble-de-gook……..
…there is no pain from it, that cannot be overlaid,
no searching revelation to wipe away your disdain;
you lurch from day to day and wonder for it all,
then out from your protective shell you finally crawl
to meet the dawn: a new age, my friend of indecent suffrage,
we are all nosed to the wheel in the name of fiscal carnage.