Category: Evolution, Medical, & Chemistry

Pointless Deaths

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candle

Pointless Deaths

On ev’ryday, there’s somebody,
Who dies in quiet tragedy,
Who dies because biology
Cannot continue hence –
From choking on an apple pip,
Or falling from a clumsy trip,
To organs one day losing grip,
And none of it makes sense.

A fatal fallen power line,
Drowning in the Serpentine,
Little lumps we thought benign,
We never even met.
Neckties wrenched to stranglehold,
Coming over sweating cold,
Salmon eaten just too old,
And that is all we get.

Little cuts which never heal,
Brakes that have a perished seal,
Kidney stones as hard as steel,
Gone in a moment’s flick.
Poisoned by a buttercup,
Bitten by a friendly pup,
Simply never waking up,
We die too young, too quick.

Paralysed by peanut shock,
Shaking loose a hornet flock,
Falling golf-balls hard as rock,
So frail is life of man.
Infants dead before their birth,
Here today then gone to earth,
And all our deaths are ever worth,
Is showing there’s no plan.

Rhino Dancing

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pink sugar
Pink Sugar by Olivier Ponsonnet

Rhino Dancing

The best thing about her ?  Whenever she speaks
The tip of her sweet nose will flex up and down.
But only the button, you should understand –
The subtlest of bounces beyond her command.
Crowning her philtrum and charming her cheeks,
Her pogo-ing hooter is hitting the town.
Her bobbing proboscis is truly quite stellar –
But if she don’t realise, I ain’t gonna tell her !
You have to be close up to see it in action,
And more when she smiles and less when she frowns.
A wonderf’ly random and quirky attraction –
Who says the best noses are sported by clowns ?

The Long, Long Chord

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vocalist performing on stage
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Long, Long Chord

My mother always fears
I’d have ringing in my ears –
Of course, I never really thought I would.
But here I am, and hear I do –
She warned it me, I’m warning you,
A cautionary tale from the buzzing brotherhood:

The chainsaw guitars
With their scattershot strobes,
The piercing vocals
With scouring probes,
The throbbing basses
Vibrating my lobes,
And the beat –
The beat that was pounding my whole,
That was pounding against all my thoughts and control,
And was pounding my drums and my skull and my soul.

My thousand belting solos on my air guitar
(A Fender),
And my crooning to my hairbrush
Till my larynx cried surrender,
While my head was busy banging –
So my hair could whip its splendour,
And the only way to do it, dude, was loud.

My mother never understood,
The self-same song is nowhere near as good
Until it’s cranked up to eleven,
Till they hear it up in Heaven,
And its words ain’t sung no more, its words are howled.

But no, I’m not deaf, I still hear fine,
I can still hear the subtle feedback whine
In the midst of the overdrive riot.
It’s just when all is chilled and quiet,
There comes a gentle radio static –
An F-sharp in my cranial attic.
My mother was right, I cannot deny it.

But it’s cool, it only serves
To call to mind the legend’ry crowd
That I still pump in there, far too loud.
So let it hiss, cos that hiss is a part of me –
And who needs a shell to hear the sea ?
It’s what I’ve got, so best just to surf it.
Cos you know what ?
On balance, it’s probably worth it.

Sluggabed

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sleeping girl
A Sleeping Girl by Edward Baily

Sluggabed

She did not wake this morning, nor this afternoon, nor eve,
And all this week she’s spawning ev’ry dream she can conceive,
And the daylight still she’s scorning for the visions she shall weave,
Till her health begins its pawning for the means to stall her leave.

The poem is not about a statue, but I do like this sculpture.

A Little Way Off

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The Letter
The Letter by Duffy Sheridan

A Little Way Off

“Watching you daydream is like watching flowers bloom in real time.”

– Russell McLondon

When your eyes unhook their gaze,
Slipping back in time by seconds,
When your thoughts roam out to graze,
Something not-remembered beckons.
You are taken through by where-knows what ?
It’s all so ev’ryday except for when it’s not –
Just like random numbers, only with less plot.

And your smile is sort-of-just –
And never meant for those who see it.
And your breath is held in trust –
Softly, slowly, then you free it.
Waiting for your day to recommence,
You’re floating off beyond the realm of making sense –
Just like in the movies, only less intense.

Tillers of the Ground

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agriculture plant blur wheat
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Tillers of the Ground

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat of thy bread
For here all the days of thy life,
And this is thy price when thou hearken instead
Now unto the voice of thy wife.
And the wheat thou shalt grow and shalt harvest and mill,
Where’erso the oak-tree may thrive,
Is fruit of the labours of farmers who till
To better the grains they shall scythe.
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat of thy bread,
But sweet grow the grains in their ears –
For whilst thou lay pampered, they fattened each head
Since thousands and thousands of years.

Human Nature of the Beast

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jekyll & hyde
This looks like it came from a Jeckyll & Hyde graphic novel, but alas I cannot track down which one.

Human Nature of the Beast

We know that it isn’t correct these days
To dwell upon appearance.
We know we’re supposed to all scorn the gaze
Of probing and interference.
It’s what’s on the inside that’s worth all the praise,
If mutual respect’s to be more than a phase –
The package should never set eyeballs ablaze.
But have we the perseverance ?

We know this, we know this, we know it’s correct
That judgement should always be saved.
But on that first sighting, the verdict’s direct –
So tell our subconscious it’s badly behaved.
But in our defence, well, we must interject
That lust is a body that flexes unchecked –
So call it perverted, or lewd, or erect,
But still it comes grunting when craved.

We know that it isn’t correct at all
To dwell upon their beauties,
We know we’re supposed to quell the call
And concentrate on duties.
We know it’s absurd, but the order is tall,
And even the gentle and noble‘est fall,
And find themselves sweated and slavered of maul
At the hint of a glimpse of such cuties.

We know this, we know this, we know to our soul:
We’ve all of us bile and phlegm.
But don’t be ashamed, they’re a part of the whole,
A hangover from our primordial stem.
The things that’s important, to keep in our mind
Is that any such thoughts must be kept in our mind,
And to never be let out to leer or grind –
There’s more to our beings than them.

Con Occhi Aperti

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crimson king
In the Court of the Crimson King by Barry Godber – the subject of which is clearly just having a singalong.

Con Occhi Aperti

If I don’t close my eyes when I sing,
Don’t think that it means that I don’t mean a thing,
When all that it means is I don’t close my eyes.

It don’t mean I don’t know the words,
Or when comes the moment to harmonize thirds,
It don’t mean I’m frightened of botching the song,
By notching too low for the highs.
I’m just like the whole throng of songbirds,
Whose eyelid ain’t tightened and eyeballs are watching,
Whenever they sweet vocalize.
If I don’t close my eyes up to sing
It just means I don’t close my eyes.

If I don’t move my lips when I pray,
Then don’t get to saying I still must be praying –
I could just be thinking away.
If I don’t snap my fingers in time with the beat,
If I don’t nod my head and I don’t tap my feet,
Don’t think I don’t got it,
Or done gone and shot it,
If I keep my feelings discreet.

I don’t need to wring out no tears to sing out,
Cos weeping – that just ain’t my thing.
It just means, besides, that I don’t close my eyes,
When I don’t close my eyes when I sing.

White Knowledge

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raven foot
Common Raven Foot by Glor

White Knowledge

Hey, have you heard the news ?
It turns out ev’ry single bird,
From ducks to crows to cockatoos,
Is really just a dinosaur !
I bet you never knew before !
Oh, I guess you’ve heard…

Well, of course you have, I guess…
We all have – hey, we ain’t naive.
Some facts, it seems, we all possess,
They’re quotes that ev’rybody knows –
Apparently, it’s one of those,
Like, ‘sharks must swim to breathe’.

Like how Brazil and Timbuktoo
Have split apart and drifted.
The jigsaw that’s too-good for true,
Is really true !  And the world is round,
In space our screams won’t make a sound,
And the stars have slowly shifted.

Or how without a pinch of salt,
We’d all be quickly dead.
But sodium and chlorine halt
Our welfare quicker, if we dined
On each alone – but when combined,
We’re kept alive instead.

We know all this, we’ve known for years –
It’s just some stuff we know.
It’s been so long between our ears,
We’ve let it grow mundane –
If we forgot and learned again,
Our minds would surely blow.

But hey, not ev’rybody knows,
We all had to be told.
So someone had to first disclose
That farting fungus rises bread,
Or knocking protons out of lead
Will turn it into gold.

So someone has to spread the word,
And we could be the ones !
For someone, somewhere hasn’t heard,
And we could get to cast the spell,
And see their wonder as we tell
Of how we’re made from suns !

Darker Later

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hair

Darker Later

When I was young and fair as fair,
My mother sat me down
And warned me as she brushed my hair
To never pout or frown –
“It draws the sun from curl and frond
And clouds your golden crown.”
And lo ! I once was blond as blond,
But now I’m brown as brown.