Allons enfants …

Cassandra yawns.

Her mother unleashes 

a flaming torch.



Now a round of cocktails

ignites the gloom.

Déjà vu in the City of Light.



Hoodies dance through

a tear-gas brume,

redolent of Monet.



The future is the frontline

as the blade drops

on a dreamscape in the red.

John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
12 October 2026

Hitting the Buffers

 

Skin-envelopes

pushed through the letter box of life

with no return address.

Left to mimic a pulse

in a karaoke club.

Duct-taped bananas.

Broken shredders.

Imprinted ducklings

confusing medium

for a mother.

Poured paintings,

like a load of Pollocks.

Prêt-à-porter pissoirs

and pickled pigs-feet.

Building-supply bricks

on the gallery floor

to mark the final

resting place.

John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
7 October 2026

Gone West

Pioneer parking lot

at the ocean's edge

with nowhere left to go.

Waiting for the big one.

Innocents wearing flowers in their hair

watch Mickey and Goofy

through the fog of burning herbs

to wake

in a tent-city underpass.

Time to leave.

Decades dismantled.

Traces left to fade

in unforgiving sun --

fragments at freight forwarding.

Driving North on 99,

broken white lines blur

to vanish in the rearview

like the glory days

of Storyland Motel.

Beyond the valley’s haze,

palm trees sway

under a tangerine twilight.

Ghost-riders in the golden bus

scramble to hop off

as the night man

receives an error message.

John Walter Taylor

© All rights reserved

27 September 2026

Farewell Calypso

The sirens are singing

as the wax melts

in the rising heat.

Our cadence falters.

Numb to all seductions,

let androids man the oars,

while we stride behind

the hearse of common sense.

Even Aldous would be stunned.

Last-minute cruise deals

bound for lotus-land.

All-you-can-eat crises, 

spectacles and simulacra,

constant candlelight vigils,

Polly-want-a-cracker politics.

Oh for the days of Denver's

bright Calypso.

One small step.

A grateful whale.

               

Like an injured Polyphemus,

armed with GPS,

we grope along the walls,

searching for a way out,

and wonder

how long Penelope can hold on.

John Walter Taylor

© All rights reserved

30 August 2026

As they say it in France

Tuned in to the Great 208.

I can hear you even now,

singing along to C'est si bon,

until the signal was lost,

and the lyrics stopped

somewhere near the Left Bank.

 

Paris, La Ville Lumière,

eclipsed by a long-distance call

and its branding-iron news,

with only a red 3:10 beside the bed,

to light the trembling hand

that held a spent receiver.

 

You and Dean Martin,

a duo never in the charts,

but cherished by an audience of one,

A song unsung until today.

San fairy ann,

as your mother used to say.

John Walter Taylor

© All rights reserved

20 January 2026

The Going of Heroes

I am Feannóg

of ancient days,

the little flayer of flesh.

I groom a feathered coat of grey,

and wear an ink-dark hood.

My badge is the red-steeped beak.

My eyes are funeral black.

They have seen the finest fall.

Their once bright shields

dulled in the bloodied mud.

I was beloved of Baḋḃ,

honoured guest at the battle-feast,

where I drew the garden's yield into my bones.

I remember the wailing laments

at the passing of the war-cry.

I saw valour lost to vice.

I see the celebration of semblance.

Beneath the shadow of my wings,

new hosts set the table,

but I hunger.

John Walter Taylor

© All rights reserved

17 January 2026

The New God

Two minutes of silence!

You must be joking.

Sorry.

I've got to take this.

And with the going down of the sun,

the hand-held glow

became the light of the world,

bringing comfort in the darkness.

And the still small voice

asked, "What are you doing here?"

But the question was lost

amid the noise.

John Walter Taylor

© All rights reserved

10 January 2026