All The Letters I Can Write

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Emily Dickinson by Wesley Merritt

All The Letters I Can Write

Emily, Emily, scribing all day,
And so many poems, so much range !
Seventeen-hundred-odd and change.
Emily Dickinson, come what may –
With rhymes that fade in the second-half,
For over a dozen-by-gross of graft.
Sure, they’re short, what you have to say –
Though I prefer ‘pithy’, by the way-
But you tell it so often, all it’s worth,
So don’t mind the length and feel the girth !
One-and-three-quarter thousand, that’s the score.
And finally, I’ve bettered and more !
I’ve blasted past, as I chase two kay,
With the short, and the long, and the inbetween,
There’s something for ev’ryone to ignore !
And sure, they’ve never been published or seen –
So just like yours, and look at yours now !
For you are my hope, my dream, my vow –
To keep on writing anyhow…
Emily, Emily, never in drought,
In your study, your sanctum, your safe redoubt,
Where you homespun ev’ry lyric and lay –
In ev’ry sense, you’re here to stay.
So, two grand of verses ?  I’m in with a shout,
While shut in my garret, not going out…

The Age of Discretion

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The Age of Discretion

I’ve learned when to stand in the spotlight,
And I’ve learned when to soften my tone.
I’ve learned when to keep my lips shut tight,
And smile until it all comes right,
Because I’ve learned when not to fight,
But to leave all well alone.

I knew what I was doing, of course,
I’ve no excuse, and ask for none.
It only serves to reinforce
Precisely what I’ve done.

I’ve learned when not to speak my mind,
And I’ve learned not to gossip or moan.
I’ve leaned when silence can be kind,
To notice all yet still be blind –
Yet no surpise, at last I find
That I’ve ended up alone.

I knew what I was playing, back then,
And chose to play it solitaire.
And now that I have lost my men,
I’ve nothing left to share.

The Home of the Angels

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The Home of the Angels

I’ve heard there’s a sign in the West on a hillside –
That leads to a jolly good land –
Where the Sun always shines on its name in lights,
On boulevards blond and tanned.
I’ve heard there’s a town where they rebuild the cities,
Where the stories are stacked so tall –
Then they pull them all down in a couple of nights,
And we’re left to imagine them all.

I’ve heard there’s a wide road that looks to the sunset,
And lets it all go to its head –
Where ev’ry abode is chock-full of dreams,
But there’s only so many beds.
I’ve heard there’s a sidewalk that shakes our hand,
And the backlots are guarded by beasts –
And it’s true, all the talk, how the whole town gleams,
When it’s seen from a distance, at least…

Cranial Strainial

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Cranial Strainial

I was paging through the vellum of my silly cerebellum,
In pursuit of some astute and cutesy cue –
I was patterning some patter from the matted-old grey matter,
But my gloomy ruminations would not glue.
I was brooding on a doodle from my stewed and moody noodle,
But although my lights were on, my wits were dim.
I was knocking on my noggin for a logarithmic login,
But my lingo wasn’t bingo-ing with vim.
Thus I tried to work the quarry of my murky upper-storey,
But the nuggets were a slug of IOUs –
So I hoped my troubleshooter would reboot my meat-computer,
But my scrutinising loosened only screws.
And for all I poked and probed at my affront to frontal lobes,
I was summoning no summit for my sums –
All my neurons were neurotic, and my id was idiotic,
And my egghead wasn’t laying golden plums.

Onion Friends

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Onion Friends

Friends are funny things really…
I’m mean, I must know a couple of hundred or more
On nodding terms,
And half of those I even know their names,
And out of them, I’ve had a decent chat this year
With two-or-three score,
(Which is not something I get to say
With some of my former flames…)
But out of that group, there’s roughly half
With whom I can share a joke,
And barely a dozen I’d ever consider ‘close’
And as for ‘best’, well, those are the rarest
Among my friendly folk,
Though all are worth the knowing,
To the degree that we engross.

Parallel Paragraphs

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Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

Parallel Paragraphs

Don’t just write what you know,
But let your words off the lead in the wood –
To run and bark where the nettles grow,
In a left-hand neighbourhood.
Use your writing as reason to read,
To shake up the status quo –
Sometimes the blank page plants a seed
To write what you want to know.

Aero-Bats

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        Aero-Bats

Why can bats fly ?
And I don’t mean at all,
I mean still ?
Why have they never gone ostrich or penguin,
But never stopped flapping, so upwards-ascending,
Refusing to temper their skill ?
There’s plenty on islands without all the predators,
Plenty of time for their genes to face editors,
Yet, to their credit, their urge to grow lazy is nil.
Though perhaps that’s unfair on the dodos and fleas,
Who have repurposed bodies to new strategies –
So their airborne commitment to natural fitment,
Is not simply down to sheer will.
The pterosaurs never turned flightless either,
At least from the fossils we’ve found –
It seems that neither stuck to the ground.
I wonder if it’s all down to their puny legs,
Unlike the biped birds,
That stops them forming roaming herds,
Or burrowing into the hill ?
The membranes, though, of their wings attach
To their nether-limbs – is maybe a catch
To developing muscles down there with a kick ?
They just aren’t quick enough for the kill.
Though evolution is ever the tweaker –
The pika-pika can forage and scramble
With hardly a gamble or grounding or snafu –
While vampire bats, they can even run if they have to !,
Yet flying remains their thrill.
I guess it continues to work well enough,
So I guess they continue with flying and stuff,
And we all have our niches to fill.

I Before E

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I fed AI this poem as a prompt, and, well…

I Before E

“I before E, except after C,
When the sound you are making is ee.”

19th Century proverb

Well, yes, there are exceptions,
But not nearly often as they claim –
Can we look at some ?
Well, sure, I’m game.

No, not science, that’s bogus and you know it –
Do I really have to show it ?
Look – the I and E are each in a sep’rate syllable.

And no, not eight, nor beige, nor vein –
I surely should not need to explain –
You’ll have to do better to prove that it’s a silly rule.

And no, not foreign, nor ancient, nor surfeit –
Pronunciation-shifts short-circuit,
Their violation will not outlive you –

I guess there is keister and casein and teiid,
Yet when was the last time that those words were needed ?
So much whaffle we have to sieve through…

But caffein, and Keith, and seize, I’ll give you.

But heifer and leisure, they don’t disobey it,
While neither and sheikh, it depends how you say it,
And feisty, and height, and Reich dodge the label,
While theirs are just weird, with their Rs unstable,
And suffixes don’t count – your swingeings are fallacies –
You won’t find your gotcha in all these banalities –

But buddleia, species, and Eid ?   Yeah, those are fatalities…

Dear The Future

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Dear The Future

Thank you for taking an interest
In my world and my life and times –
Well, not specific’ly mine,
But those around me, and those that shaped me.
Except… you only get to see
A tiny slice of our paradigms –
The few that were preserved,
And yet most likely wholly have escaped me.

The art we leave is the art commissioned
By those with means to commission art –
And overlooks the many times
I’m left to feel so left behind –
Where nobody is saying the things I want to say,
But where to start ?
While all around are images
That in no way represent my mind.

I am a part of my world, in theory,
Yet wield so little influence,
That I sometimes swear I’m an alien visitor,
Stranded on a dead-end street.
But what if every stranger around me
Is thinking the same ?  And yet the sense
That what the Future will take from us
Is simply that of a tiny elite.

I guess that means I’m probab’ly wrong
About the Romans or Tudor-men –
I don’t know bobbins about their likes
And politics and dreams and stuff –
Just because a certain art made money,
For a few years then,
It doesn’t mean it had a lasting impact
Once it lost its fluff.

So thank you, Future, for your int’rest,
But it’s only int’rest in
A few strange costumes from our wardrobe,
Picking apart the hem.
I get it – you study what you can find,
The memories you think we’re dressed-in –
Even though we most-of-us never wore those clothes,
But laughed at them.

The National Fabric

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Photo by Josh Withers on Pexels.com

The National Fabric

Flags are funny things, really –
Waving from the stands,
Or draping over coffins,
Or the jackets of mod bands.

Flags are flown for diplomats,
And flown when armies fight,
And seized-on by protestors,
Tearing-down to set alight.

They’re simple, you see,
And classic designs.
That’s their key –
As branding with bold, bright lines.

They’re loved and hated equally,
As diagnostic style
By the virtue-waving hypocrites
On both sides of the aisle.