Rockflower
Coral, that was her name –
Not Carol or Cora, but Coral del Mar.
Dressed in yellowy-pink, she came,
As if from an attic trunk or bizarre.
Prickly brittle, broken free,
Yet often shrinking into her shell –
She loved to watch the shallow sea
As if in want of a diving bell.
Traps
The books call this an igneous province,
As if a country of lava –
They also call these rocks an intrusion,
So more of an empire, rather.
But due to the terraces up the plateau,
They mostly call them traps –
Like a very slow escalator,
Till the warring flanks collapse.
Or are they prisoners to their nature,
Locked beneath the land ?
Heaving, layering, underpinning,
Mountains raised from sand –
Pushing-up from underneath
By stealth or by explosion,
To reinforce the battle
With the forces of erosion.
The books call these the flood basalts
That roll across the shield
Unstoppable, a stony horde
That sweep the battlefield.
To Boldly & Beyond
Strap in, guys, and hold on tight,
It’s gonna be a bumpy flight –
Heartbeats thump and circuits hum,
As heavens here we come.
Countdown into single figures,
One last breath and pull the triggers –
Engines fire and thrusters thrust,
And Jupiter or bust.
We’re up, we’re up-and-away !
Too late to pray,
Too late for anything but on.
The course is set,
But don’t blink yet –
Don’t want to miss the great beyond…
We’ve slipped the bounds,
But don’t look down,
Look straight ahead into the future –
Feel its kick
In spine and rib,
And don’t be sick when coming to, yeah ?
And after all that smoke and fury,
All that science, all that glory –
Now it’s all so strangely still
Atop the highest hill.
But oh, the view is worth the trip !,
As earthly problems loose their grip.
Cast off and sail the weightless sky,
Till the hydrazine runs dry.
And yes, that line is meant to say loose and not lose.
Outpost
Out here, we see them all come by,
All those that come this way, that is –
The trails round here are sparsely-spread,
And we are kind-of hard to miss.
There may be horses, may be camels,
Or shanks’ ponies – all depends –
And dogs, who have to earn their keep
As guards or hunters, or as friends.
There’s a wall to offer shelter,
Because winds and tigers can’t be tamed –
And then there are the soldiers,
For even barren parts are claimed.
So is it lonely ? Not as lonely
As the eagles overhead –
And all will come this way in time,
There’s nowhere else to go instead.
Armour
Beetles, tortoises, and nuts,
Pearls in shells and wasps in galls,
Hermit crabs in disused huts,
Rolled-up armadillo balls,
Frogs in mud and chicks in eggs,
Goods in crates and crates in hulls,
Drinks in bottles, bones in legs,
Feet in shoes and brains in skulls.
Dune
The desert is a beach
That has never known the sea,
A desiccated ocean
Where the bed has broken free,
A long-abandoned ruin
Where the rainclouds never play,
A once-abundant jungle
Where the trees have drained away.
The heat above, the cold below,
The sand will flood, the sand will flow,
And the waves are high, but the tide is slow,
And the haze is a shimmering spray.
Bio-Radio
Telepathy – could it be radio ?
Could we ever evolve to receive it ?
You’d better believe it !
Pigeon already can, you know,
Or at least, the magnetic field,
So science has revealed.
And then there’s electricity,
Made by the platypus and eel
To help them stun or feel.
And, for sheer simplicity,
We all see visible light, or course –
Well, that’s the self-same force !
But could we ever transmit ?
Even bio-luminescence,
Is a rare and gloomy presence,
Though it looks like it might fit –
Lengthening the waves it sends,
Detected only by its friends
Who see much deeper in the red –
Though still strictly line-of-sight,
And not exactly bright.
So next – a wire inside the head,
An aerial – but what does it solve ?
And how could it ever evolve ?
And the energy required
To beam-out further than a voice
Will never make it nature’s choice.
No, we’ll never be wired,
We’ll never buzz with secret speech –
At least, not till we’re cyborgs each…
Any artists may already be familiar with Inktober, where every day reveals a new word to prompt an lunch-hour’s doodle or a quick sketch on the train home.
Well, I decided to take some of those words as titles in an attempt to beat back the block. So this week (in the wrong month), I present my contribution to Inktober 2020.
Ah poetry – the consolation prize for those who can’t draw.
Unvictus
Blockbusting, balls-walling, entrepreneur,
Overman-achieving and Sorbonne-viveur,
Moving-and-shaking and never-make mistaking –
God, I could never be so bold !
I’m the one who failed to get to know you,
I’m the one it’s easy to say no to,
Nobody’s enemy, nobody’s go-to,
And always the last one to be told.
I know that you work hard, but always with results,
You go the extra yard, but you don’t do nuts-and-bolts
It’s down to me to tidy up and lock the doors at night,
While you’re off making masterplans to set the town alight.
I’m not like you, off to change the world again,
The hero of the story, the driver of the train,
The leader and infallible, the oysters and champagne,
The charismatic marvel to behold !
We cannot all be actors, we cannot all be confident,
We cannot all ignore the inner voice that never gives consent.
I guess I don’t blame you, when your talents are so rife –
And when even I would toss aside the novel of my life.
You’re the exception, but you think that you’re the mean,
It’s only for your eyes that the world is bright and keen,
While I’m drowning in the wake of wherever you have been –
But hey, that’s just the way the dice were rolled.
Heroic Verse
Bloodaxe Books are publishers of poetry –
And what a name !
As though these are the sagas of berserkers
Seeking Thor and fame,
For telling down the trestles of the feasting hall
From lord to knight,
Or singing by the troubadours to mistresses
By candlelight.
Odes to ale and hymns to war,
And saucy wenches by the score –
To lustily recount and roar,
And ready for a fight.
Or razor-sharp in their attacks,
From broadside blasts to cutting hacks –
Their impish imprint swings the axe
To let their verses bite.
All my teenage years I sought
For such a flame –
Till, furnace-wrought, it came !
Not for them, one conjures, the namby-pamby
Hearts on sleeves –
Nor whinging of confessionals,
Or whimsies to the Autumn leaves –
No, these are the words of men of action,
And dames of destiny,
To stir my loins and quick my heart
And never rest in me.
Yet much of what they print is dry –
Their blade is dull, their name a lie –
A rubber-and-ketchup alibi
That’s sorely testing me.
So spare me flabby free-verse faff,
And mopey milksops full of chaff –
I need good craic to blow the gaff
And hone the best of me.
I guess what they do has its place,
But all the same,
It’s such a waste of a name…
Rhyming Couplets 