Poetry

The Four Feathers

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment
I am in the minority 
Yet no feelings of inferiority 
Staying silent in the crowd
No need to shout out loud
Seeing what I see
Still remaining free 
Always watching from the hill
Feeling calm-Being still
Never going toe to toe
With other people 
Who just don’t know
Sucked in sucker punched 
Selling their soul
For a free lunch…. 
 

Angry men-Tin men
No heart-No soul
No depth or understanding 
Straw men-Clay men
Runaway men…
I have been all of these
Like four feathers in the breeze
But life has brought me to my knees 
As I figure out who I should be 
Now just myself living by grace 
Showing love-Bringing peace
To every person every place 
No longer a coward 
Making a stand
Drawing my line in the sand
Encircled killed buried dead
Here lays a once solid man…
 
 
Mark C Bolton, March 2024
@urbandandyLDN
 
 

NOTHING CHANGES OR REMAINS THE SAME… 

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

It’s all unfolding at the same time 

Israel Palestine Sudan Ukraine 

Russia Yemen 

Climate change – Economic recession 

Feels like the world’s 

Heading for a dark depression 

Flag wavers, marches

masterpiece wreckers, 

statue smashers, 

road blockers

21st century wars of mods versus rockers… 

Yet no one is free

We gave that away 

A long time ago 

Created religion, politics, class, race

Instead of reaching inward

Upward outward

To our fellow traveller 

Now slowly being destroyed 

By our own futile false virtue

Chaos and violence reign

Modernity versus the medieval 

I just wish to jump into the sun

For l understand nothing 

Except loving my people

My self-created tribe

Of all faith colour creed

My dear child of the 21st century 

Indiana my friend my book end

Loved more than life…. 

I write poems for the world 

A world I both cherish and despise 

Oh! God hear my prayer 

For I have no one else to turn to

For the well is dry

My heart is heavy 

Am I insane claiming to know you… 

I am just a simple man 

Clinging to your grace 

Trying to be real

Hopefully clothed in humility 

Seeking truth, a reason 

Yet nothing changes 

Or remains the same 

An oxymoron of time

Like my life 

At times ugly 

But truly beautiful…. 

M C Bolton February 2024

Title by John Punton 

Floating While Sinking

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

My skull pressed hard against the wall

Looking for a door

Because the one that I used to use

Doesn’t seem to open any more

A prisoner of my madness

War inside my head

What is truth? It’s meaning

Surely what I dread…

Exposing every folly, deluded selfish dreams

Corruption of my lowly flesh

Secrets bursting at the seams

Who am I?

What am I?

A contradictory man

Searching for a worthy hill

Upon which to make a stand…

Simply made of mud and blood

With the sacred breath of life

Can justify my every fault

To the demons of the night

Crawling around on hands and knees

Surely there’s a key?

An opening to my torment

From the man I try to be…

Yet that is all just vanity

Hiding behind virtuous acts

Heart is willing but the flesh is weak

That is the only fact

God’s grace is just enough

No more or less I need

Just the perfect measure

To truly set me free…

Compelling me to show mercy, love

To my fellow man

I think I have found a hill

Upon which to make a stand

A hill outside a city wall

Where a true man hung and died

Not to start a religion

But exposing all the lies

To return us back to Eden-Eternal paradise

Taking away what is sin 

Opening up our eyes…

Yet my head still bangs against the wall

Still searching for that door

Knowing in my deepest soul

I have been here many times before

Wrestling with the love of God

Like waves against the shore

All my strength has left me

Feel I’m slowly drowning

In a sea of grace and peace

Floating while sinking

I’ve finally found release………..

M C Bolton January 2024

drawing by t.c.

21st Century Stranger

~ Urban Dandy London ~ 1 Comment

I was born a 20th century man

With more dreams than I could understand

Just floating ideas like the clouds

Keeping me lonesome in a crowd…

Yet still I ride against the wind

The rain washing my soul from within

A 20th century cowboy without a horse

No directions, plans or followed course…

Memories of better men

Than I see today

Hard-lived faces, hearts of Gold

Time to show a stranger the way…

Sure, I’ve had my share of mistakes

Things I have said and done

But now I’m old – maybe wise

Realise there’s no place to run

Running from my myself most of my life

From truths I refused to face

Time’s catching up – Hunting me down

God’s bounty hunter leads the chase

Ride I will through the storm

Into the moonless darkest night

A 20th century frontier man

That will never give up the fight

A 20th century frontier man

Slowly riding out of sight…

M.C. Bolton, Christmas 2023

POEM FOR MY PEOPLE

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

I wish to sit with the ancient fathers

Watching the floating embers

Disappear into the desert night sky

The flames keeping away the chill…

A bright moon shines upon the flocks

Sweet smelling incense smouldering

Fragrance so pure so divine…

We are at peace tonight

Enjoying the favour of God

The beautiful eyes of the veiled women

Glinting underneath the starlight

Their modesty so endearing…

Feeling free, free from myself

Accepted as a friend – Fellow nomad…

This is where I truly belong

Amongst the Patriarchs – The righteous ones

Made righteous by their faith

In the one true God, the only God

Sharing bread drinking fresh mint tea

Laughing hugging the men like brothers

Bowing to the women

Treating them all with honour, respect…

I am a stranger

Yet they saw my heart

For I came in humility with grace without judgement

Such pure eyes can see into my soul

I know I can never leave!

Tomorrow we pack move on

This is my tribe now

No ceremony or initiation

Everyone just knows……..

M C Bolton November 2023

LA VIE EST BELLE

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

My God whom created the universe, heavens, Earth

Finally creating man in his image

Knowing we would fall…

Consolidating evil in one place

Exposing the Prince of this World

The father of all lies

Who kills, destroys, enslaves, subjugates

In his wish to be God

Desiring worship adoration…

The creator of false hope, delusions

Political ideologies, legalistic religion

That confuses minds

Turning humankind hearts to stone

God knew this would happen

There can never be peace

For darkness is upon us

Brutality the norm

As the fallen ones roam without pity or mercy

Satisfying their darkest hearts

Just for a brief moment

Before they are forever chained in the deepest emptiness…

Yet still my own flesh rages

For it knows its own time is but short

One day it will be over for me

Gods grace made perfect in weakness

The meek will surely inherit a new Earth

Oh! To return to Eden

Creation’s perfect forever first day

There I will breathe easy

Sleeping peacefully for a thousand years………………………..

M C BOLTON OCTOBER  2023

TORPID

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

The eternal battle

Good versus evil

Light versus darkness

Truth versus falsehood

Love versus hate…

Universal entities at war

Beyond understanding or mental comprehension

Our limited imaginations

Cannot create or fathom the eternal consequences of the unseen…

Living like squatters in no mans land

Amongst mud, blood and steel

Completely devoid of any fear

Just the blind acceptance of fate…

Nothing matters anymore

Opinions, dreams, fashion, music

Fame, football or damned celebrity…

Shuffling along to the food hub

Collecting bread like a sparrow

It’s all gone!

We were promised food

Promised freedom!

‘What is that?’

Shouts out the wag

Now just perma-frosted ideals…

Incoming-As another meteor crashes into the river

Causing rainbow ripples

Mothers holding their babies

Rushing quickly home

Before the mist ushers in the darkness…

Demons preparing-howling salivating

Last orders please

The pieman shouts!

As rags with legs 

Scurry into their caves

Awaiting the night

Like a punch drunk mongoose

Facing an amphetamine fuelled cobra

Lilly is walking fast now

Clutching her precious lantern

She looks like a cartoon

Wolves howl half-human half-beast…

I feel nothing 

Yet somehow survival mode kicks in

As I steal a dead man’s watch

With ‘to Dad’ engraved on the back

But I switch off my own happy memories

Machine, machine, I must be a machine…

A blind man rings a bell

Calling all to the house of prayer

Knowing nobody ever enters

Not now, not in these times

For we have all been left behind……..

Mark C Bolton, September 2023

US Navy officers surveying Hiroshima after the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city, 1945. Image from the National Museum of the United States Navy. Previous image: The US Army’s atomic bomb exploding in Nagasaki, 1945. Image from the Library of Congress via PICRYL

HEART STRINGS AND VIOLINS 

~ Urban Dandy London ~ 1 Comment

Gently stroke my hand

Once more in your dreams

Then say goodbye forever

As you walk into the night…

I feel like a stone

Dropped into a well

Never to see your face again

Behind your subconscious veil…

My crime simply to be free

Living without judgement

Too much for this world 

Piety sought above mercy, grace, forgiveness…

Virtue the rotten fruit

Of the new freedom proclaimers

Enslaved by their ideology

Foaming at the mouth at the dissident

The once bullied now bullying

Will I die a nameless number ?

Yet my love I miss you

Same old pain again

Just a poor simple poet

Who never played the game…

Feeling closer to the outsider

The outlaw, eccentric, insane!

Always a loner even in the crowd

Deep inside my silence 

Really shouts out loud…

I loved you so my darling

Perhaps the last I ever will

As I sit upon my pale horse

Observing from this hill

The battle that rages inside me

Reality versus what I feel…

Will my ripstop camouflaged heart

Ever find love again?

Returning to the desert

To give it time to mend

So touch my hand just one more time

Before you vanish out of sight

A memory , ghost, a fading scar

A shooting star that surely burned so bright……..

Mark Bolton, July 2023

@urbandandyldn

END TIMES

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

The Aliens are invading

Shooting down our planes

Returning to their inner-earth bases

Whence where they came

False flag operations

Colluding with the Greys

A new intergalatic-interdimensional war!

Fallen angels-Fallen humanity

The man of light will appear

Restoring peace order sanity…

His mark on our forehead

His praise on our lips

The price we must pay

For some form of normality…

All wars have ceased

Utopia now created

A strange sense of freedom

For dissent not tolerated

Bread and circuses

Lies the new truth

Those that question

Thrown from the roof….

Behead the poets, the prophets, the wise

All those that see

But not with their eyes

Oh! Yeshua our saviour

Please return soon

Enlighten the masses

That still worship 

This harbinger of doom…..

M C Bolton, June 2023

QUEST

~ Urban Dandy London ~ Leave a comment

The Sun is not my star

I’ve travelled from afar

My quest to find my true love

As through this universe I roam

An inner longing once more

To walk through marbled halls

Where jewel-encrusted shields

Hang from golden walls

To wear robes gleaming white

Forever walking in the light…

The Sun is not my star

I’ve travelled from afar

My quest to find my true love

As through this universe I roam…

Journeying through space, dimension, time

To sit once again beside my Queen

A woman of the purest beauty

Who I see only in my dreams

But I found you here my true love

Upon this earthly place

My quest surely guided

By your majesty – By your grace…

The Sun is not my star

I’ve travelled from afar

My quest to find my true love

As through this universe I roam…

Yet now is not our time

To leave, to run, to fly

I will wait for you my true love

Together we’ll journey through the sky

Maybe for a thousand years

Until the sun is out of sight

To find the place that was once our home

Never again like nomads roam

The Sun is not my star

I’ve travelled from afar

My quest to find my true love

As through this universe I roamed…….

M.C. Bolton, March 2023