In Finity
“I’d rather believe in an absolute something
Than trust in an absolute nothing at all.
And thus I choose faith in an undefined coming,
Than ponder the empty and chanceful and small.”
But how can an absolute anything be
In a finite and singular universe host ?
And as for an absolute nothing, well see,
That nature abhors of a vacuum the most.
Four Thousand Million Years in the Making
Unbeknownst to exis’tence,
Who lived in bodies, firm and dense,
There looked upon with apprehence –
An unknown entity.
Beings of a diff’rent class,
Not formed of solid, liquid, gas:
For not one atom had they mass,
But weightless energy.
When they looked upon the Earth
In hill and cave and brook and firth,
They found the rocks had given birth
To life most tangible.
Life alive as mould and trees,
And slugs and crabs and honeybees,
And frogs and crows and chimpanzees,
With tooth and mandible.
“This is outright blasphemy !”
They screamed in thought-like energy
“For never life can ever be
Built with a hard physique.
And they live at such extremes
In ocean depths and fissure seams
And in another’s fluid streams.
With mutant-gained technique.”
Terrified by solid life
They blew apart this world-midwife,
For only there could such be rife,
And now it was destroyed.
Rock and lava shattered thence
And sped across the void immense,
Without a single thought or sense:
A thousand asteroids.
Thus were ended carbon forms
In fumigating magma storms,
Biomass now dusty swarms –
Extinction voracious.
But all this life is hard to kill,
And even in the deathly chill
Of outer space, it’s clinging still:
Patient and tenacious.
As the debris drifts afar,
So come the tuggings of some star
Upon this frozen reservoir,
And bring about a thaw.
Let them countless orbits make,
And with an endless time to take –
One bacterium shall wake,
And life resume once more.
Thanks-Giving
Let us give our thanks to the universe for hosting us,
Even if it doesn’t even know that’s what it does.
And even if it does, it wouldn’t care that it had made us
When it’s only accidental that its stellar constants aid us;
And anyway, we’re here today – I guess we can’t evade us,
Even though we’re only just-because.
But anyhow, we’re here now, and that’s what really matters:
Neither choked nor gasping, and neither froze nor burned.
But anthro-cosmologic-thought just fills the void and flatters,
For if we ever never were, we wouldn’t know we weren’t.
So thank-you, universe, (not that you care) –
Thank-you just for simply being there.
Night-Shift
Whenever I’m stumped for an effortless rhyme,
Whenever the words won’t fall easy,
When wheezing about on the gravely climb –
So that’s when the words come to tease me –
Late-night linguistical lethargies seize me,
Whenever the trumps are the harder to find.
And oozing from creases all over my mind
Come scuttle the lazy, the sham and resigned –
“Who needs a poem to rhyme ?” so they whisper,
“Nobody else is much bothered these days.
You labour at making all endings the crisper
But is it all worth it, the pittance it pays ?
Every poet, from preacher to lisper
Has long since rejected this overgilt craze.
Why must it be you who won’t flinch at their goosing ?
Still clinging to structures when others are loosing.
Oh, haven’t you seen all the standards reducing ?
And haven’t you seen all their rhythmless fame ?
All of the while, so your petty obtusing,
Is leaving you sleepless and out of the game.”
And so on, and so on. I hear them, I hear them –
At three in the morning, it’s hopeless to clear them.
For all of their carping and mocking and chiming,
And trying, so trying to foul and coerce.
But still my resistance I’m loading and priming
To shoot down their posy and prosy-like verse.
If only, if only I unearth some rhyming,
Some trove of concordance to echo my timing,
Some anything, anything with the right sounding –
Some something to stifle my wheedle’ing head.
Something to root for, to bring their confounding,
Something of proof that will shutter their hounding,
Anything splendid and outright astounding –
Anything quick, or the voices will spread !
I must end the poem, I must end the pounding,
To let this poor poet at last go to bed !
The Gods of Melodrama
I swore I’d never once again be fool
For the lies of actors.
To open up like that, it’s all too cruel,
To be only actors.
But when they looked at me with such a look,
Like we’re likeminded –
And yet the stalls were dark, and I mistook,
We both were blinded.
And yes, I know, I know, I’ve always known,
Yet fooled I always am –
They make me feel and feel in ways
Alone in life I never can.
Balding Trees
The leaves all grow each spring
And the leaves all fall each autumn,
But there’s some leaves firmly cling
While the rest – the ground has caught ’em.
I think the final leaves outstanding
Wait till last, to clinch a nice soft landing.
Holy Trinity, Batman !
The Son is the Father,
And the Father is the Son,
And the Ghost is the both of them,
And yet is also none.
They all three knew the Virgin,
Since they all are but a-one:
So the Son is dad to Father,
And the Father son to Son.
They always are and always were
Since time was first begun,
So the Kid’s as old as time itself,
Yet Dad’s the oldest one.
So Son is full of peace and love,
But Father’s down on fun,
And who knows what the Ghost’s about,
When all is said and done ?
Hallmark Horticulture
1.
Roses are red,
And violets are blue…
Except to a bee
Who can see in UV –
Who knew ?
2.
Roses are red,
And violets are blue –
Or so it is said,
But I wonder if true ?
Perhaps in the future –
But for a while yet
Most roses are fuschia,
And violets are violet.
Deep & Meaningless
We cling to the words to remember the tune,
But they can be anything –
Who cares what words we sing ?
As long as it’s catchy, then no-one’s immune !
It’s tunes that are catchy –
The words can be scratchy.
It doesn’t take poets to make songs a hit –
They’re nobody’s onus,
They’re there as a bonus.
As long as they rhyme and their rhythm will fit,
Well, that’s good enough –
Make them any old guff.
We all love some songs that make no sense at all –
Naive and inane,
But we’ll sing them again.
For music is music – it has us in thrall
From concert to single,
From opus to jingle.
We’re all of us guilty, we’ve all sung along –
We’ve all shown disloyalties,
Boosting their royalties,
Meanwhile ignoring some meaningful song
That wants to be soaring,
But just sounds so boring.
The cat’s meow
Is in the melody –
So, altogether now,
One, two, three –
A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop,
A-boop-boop-be-doop,
Do-wah-diddy-diddy,
Goo-goo-ga-joob,
Zip-a-dee-doo-da,
Coo-coo-ca-choo,
Day-o, day-o,
Me gotta go.
Do do-re-mi notationists also refer to ‘middle do’ and ‘re sharp’ ?
Area 42
Aliens, aliens,
Somewhere they’re out there !
The odds are so great,
And the physics agrees.
They just need a planet
With temp’rature fair,
With water that’s liquid,
And low stellar breeze.
And who would have thought it,
But when we went looking,
There’s thousands of planets
Just lurking all over.
So down in their oceans,
What might they have cooking ?
Alas, they’re too distant
To send out a Rover.
Ah, but imagine if we could !
Just grab our towels and jelly beans
And stride our cosmic neighbourhood !
If only we could learn the means.
Until such time, it might be wise
To doubt the news, and watch the skies.
Forget about greys
Or a buxom blue femme,
We know they’ll look nothing
Like anything here.
For they’ll be as strange
As must we be to them,
From opposite ends
Of the final frontier.
So let’s not be too harsh
On yoofoo believers
For who knows what’s lurking
Beyond our ken ?
But things are too distant
For radar receivers
To show us the saucers
Of little green men.
Ah, but imagine if they could !
Above high clouds, they’d scrutinise
Our quaint provincial neighbourhood.
Alas, I must dispute your cries.
The only people up there, guys,
Are far outside our lonely skies.
Rhyming Couplets 