i.

watching the sun rise
across the glittering shards of glass
seeping between the broken gantries
silhouetting the rusting towers

this place was once
the richest place on earth
power mongers looked
across these black gold fields
and smiled

the slow wind
makes the metal creak
age has left its scars

I am here now
my feet – cut, bare and bleeding
amongst the ghosts
of a civilisation

it is here though I feel most free
the warm gentle wind in my hair
the sun on my face
and most of all
change in my heart
my dreams so close

I turn and watch

behind me on the horizon
the fires of my people
the fires of the borderland

life encapsulated in tents
in transitory existence
a way to adapt

no untenable desires
no advertisers dreams
nothing to throw
a life from the rails

except me

ii.

erosion pitted pillars
wind blown sand
a mythology unfolded
and long since discarded

a fountain cracked and dry
a throat choked with dust
a symbol of wisdom
standing a test of time

harsh water eating heat
bakes the empty soil
a thousand footprints
trod an age before

in a cave near by
lives a man unchanged
immortal in stories
written on reed and clay

a man who foretold
the desolation
and who could never
walk away

iii.

I bend and scratch my hand
in the earth

I imagine I can feel
in the unimaginable
history

the never ending stories
interlaced in time

but I know
at the back of my mind
I am deluding myself
letting romantic pictures
take hold
in my searching mind

iv.

a car in front of the cathedral
tires crunching in the carefully raked gravel

an expensive shoe
followed by a well dressed man
emerges from a rear door

discretely followed by minders
guns nestling
at their hearts

a handshake
and masks

polite words to be read between
careful smiles without trust

a deal is constructed
lives change without consent

v.

I remember the ocean

my Father took me there
and told me of ships
that went across it
to alien distant lands

it stirred my imagination
that cold empty liquid

gentle and beautiful in the evening sun
with its cruel unrelenting anger
and its ability to conjure dreams

vi.

together we make stories
and the telling of these tales
inspires others to take up the narration

we are telling those stories now
around the fires of my people

the fires of the borderlands