The things you don’t know about me Would surprise you, I know – Or at least, I would hope so. If I thought that you knew, If you’d even a clue, Of the things about me That I daren’t let you view – Or if upon learning You showed no surprise – Then you’re far too discerning, And worldly wise. I know how I’d feel If I thought it could be That you find the appeal In the same crap as me – If I thought it were true, Then I think we’d be through – So I swear, never share, What you secretly do. We can laugh and engross, And pretend we are close, And gossip on who’s seeing who – But keep a firm grip So you never let slip All the things I don’t know about you. And maybe then, maybe, You won’t get to see All the things you don’t know about me.
The Romans faced decline, they say, A hundred years or more, Before the Goths stole Rome away, All in one day. It wasn’t just a day, of course, With forces building at the core Throughout the hundred years before.
So were there Romans in that fray Who watched the turning of the tide, The steady slide, the slow decay ? And were they powerless to stay The endless slump of getting worse, The creeping curse, the seeping sore, The gradual fade to grey ?
Or did they never smell the rot They’d got ? Perhaps too decadent, Too drunk to see their own descent, Too busy in the hay. They maybe missed the skulking spore Until the joists had given way, And brought Rome to the floor.
But that was then. We’ve surely learned How Rome was burned from within as without – The morals shine and loudly shout, And history shall not be spurned. And yet.., I sometimes look about And wonder where we’ll be in, say, A hundred years or more.
Wherever you have got, and how you got there, Is less than I could care – you come, you go – And sometimes you will telephone from out-there. You’re somewhere else, and that is all I know. And so I’m left back here, back in your old life, To vaguely wonder where on earth you haul – And if you can remember what’s my number, Then maybe I shall someday get your call.
“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.
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
