A collection of some of my writing over the years 

The Document (Photography)

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/document

The Power of Documentary Film

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/power-documentary-film

Robert Burns

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/02/21/robert-burns-anniversary-mans-man-athat

William Blake

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-07-26/william-blake-paradise-hard-way

Political Song in America 

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2014/02/09/political-song-america-thirties-and-sixties

Dylan's Sixties protest  songs revisited

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/05/15/dylan-70-his-1960s-protest-songs-revisited

The Story of the Blues ( a short history in six parts )

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/01/25/story-blues

Sex, prison, law, and racism in the blues

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/02/09/sex-prison-law-and-racism-blue

Migration Blues

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/02/22/migration-blues

Post -War Blues

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/04/14/early-post-war-blues

Blues in the Sixties and Seventies

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/04/24/blues-1960s-and-1970s

Blues after the Seventies

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/06/06/recent-years

Bertlold Brecht

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/04/16/was-brecht-misogynist-and-fraudster

 

Written during the pandemic

  · 

Shared with Your friends

Drowning

It works it's way into your

brain and your bones

No descent in a blaze of Glory

Clinging on to time

Mocking our feelings of progress

Mortality made visible

Old Brueghel dusted off

Death letter blues Revisited

Spoonfulls of unflavoured medicine

dished out invisibly

Old songsters they knew the score

Big Bad Wolfs knockin' at the door

Skys fallen in just like a thousand times before

Grand ambitions fall .from the sky

like hard rain or lime

Racial fissures crack open yet again

Mercury risin', bubblin', gettin' stirred

The brakes on the hearses are faulty

Chasen' the Shadow of the Sun

Little Green Men Robocop guns

Casting the blame is a dangerous game

How does God choose

Whose prayers does he refuse ?

No slipping of the leash

No colour now it's dark

The system well its dyin' folks

This time we'd better Paint it Black.

August 2020

 World War Z ?

We've cracked all the bells in bread basket land

Lied to, half-starved , press- ganged

We fire " Fascist " seeking missiles into the dark sky

"We must destroy the City to save the City"

barks a dog on a short leash

What happened to smoking around the barracks fire ?

What happened to training thrills with Comrades ?

What happened to leave with girlfriends, cafes,bars ?

Will our Coffins be Zinc this time ?

No one dances around our fires

fanned only by the Winter wind

Far off but not far enough a monster can't sleep

imagining Nero like conspiracies-

a mentor to the Western Left

The patient Moscow River sounds a Siren song

for King Rat to gather with the other rats

hypnotised, sleep-walking ,descending into oblivion.

Peter Burton 21.3.22