Flore Pleno
Double roses are showy but barren,
Turning stamens into yet more petals,
Living the bachelor life.
Even if they still make pollen,
Bees can’t push through all those petals,
Leaving them with no midwife.
Yet these are the roses in bouquets,
To symbolise our multilayered love
Of loud and overdressed grooms.
But dog roses are where bees graze –
They’re wide-open with stamens full of love
And hips full of future blooms.
If you can hear this, you are dying…
The day will come
When my breaths are laboured,
When I actu’ly hear myself each rasp.
Till the lungs strike dumb,
And my voice goes wayward,
Rattling-out in a final gasp.
As if to say
“Ah Life, you took my breath away…”
And when I pant, I wolf in oxygen,
Corroding me within,
And breezing down my three-score-ten.
And when I yawn, I practice when I die,
By choking with a grin.
But better not to stifle such a cry –
For sooner to inspire and gulp down life
Than just expire in one long sigh.
So ev’ry breath is one breath less,
And yet how many do I get ?
I couldn’t even start to guess,
But far-too-lots to be a threat.
It’s twenty-thousand breaths-a-day,
But who on Earth is keeping score ?
I’ve wasted sev’ral just to say
I still possess a lifetime’s more.
Neural Plasticity
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
But I have been pondering of late
On the role of microplastics
In our fractious trans-debate.
It feels like a conspiracy I’m giving into, true,
So I could be spouting nonsense and I haven’t got a clue,
And I’m willing to be argued-out with science where it’s due,
And trust me, I don’t wish for this to foster any hate.
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
But what if, what if, there’s something in it ?
Perhaps, just like the plastic, we need to take more care
Before we bin it ?
I rather notice a lack of historical examples, see,
And how it often coincides with the onset of puberty,
And elsewhere how it’s messing with our minds, developmentally –
So I don’t know, see, I don’t know…but think on it a minute…
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
To call our trans-friends as somehow disabled –
No, that’s not right…but affected by stimuli ?
Is that a less-pejorative label ?
And if true, it means our efforts to keep the planet greener
Will prevent the contaminants from changing our demeanour –
The next generation will be less-confused and leaner –
Unless, though…unless I’ve just fallen for a fable…
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
And yes, I hear the words I say,
And yes, people are beautiful,
However we came to be that way.
And yet…and yet…if it’s all true, then oughtn’t we to know,
To better understand it and just how our bodies go ?
For we’re all of us reacting to this world in which we grow,
And for the foreseeable, the plastics are here to stay.
Synapse Error
All my school-mates, all my former colleagues –
All now broken links.
When clicking on their memories,
I find each name and face un-syncs.
I’ve left a trail of 404s behind me,
An archive of data decay –
I’ve got no backup with which to remind me,
As all my friendships leak away.
The Ultramarine Dark Sea
Blue, is hard for nature to be it –
We’re told “no pigments” is the why.
Forget-me-nots, though, give the lie,
And kingfishers darting by,
And rocks of lapis lazuli,
And the irises of Lady Di –
And Planet Earth, I hear you cry,
Together with the frigging sky !
So yes, the ancient Greeks could see it,
Just as well as you or I.
This is a particularly pernicious urban myth that will take years to debunk, and shame to say it’s often lefties who love these QI-style gotchas (two moons, anyone ?). I recomend watching Metetron’s takedown of this bullshit.
Raspberry Ripple
The whiskers on my chinny-chin-chin
Just taunt me at ev’ry turn –
I’ve practiced shaving since I was a lad,
But I don’t think I’ll ever learn.
So I dread to see the morning mug,
Yet never dare adjourn –
My beards are patchy, rough affairs
That raise looks of concern.
I use my blades too long, I know,
My moneysworth to earn.
Yet new ones only last a week
Before they start to burn.
And so I tug and scrape and mow
In a job I’d gladly spurn,
As I pull my jowls and wattles taut
With a stretch and crane and gurn.
I’ve tried electrics shavers,
Yet for all their motors churn,
My fingers raise striations still
On a chin like a windmill’s quern.
And that was with the hair of youth,
As soft as a newborn fern –
But now it shoots out gnarly thorns,
So straggly, grey, and stern.
Maybe one day, razors with lasers
Will give me the finish I yearn !
Till then, for all the years and swipes,
The stubble will always return.
The title is my name for blood spots on shaving cream.
I Leave It Up To You
My end was written into my very beginning,
Into my terminal genes –
My past and future are always inferred,
Before I was born, my death was assured.
With fate or biology, there is no winning,
We’re entropy machines –
But the road we take is mine and yours,
To pass the time between the wars.
Brackish Streams
I’ve always been a weeper in the wind –
It only takes the slightest breeze
To turn-on my capillaries,
As drip by drip, I am chagrined,
And have to whip my hankie out
To stem each overactive spout.
I don’t know why
The weather makes me cry,
Especially the cold.
An eye-jerk sense,
Or anti-drought defence
That will not be controlled.
I’ve always been too salty in the frost –
All the Winter, all those leaks,
To run and freeze upon my cheeks.
So tear by tear, my poise is lost,
Into a sobbing, briny wreck
Who cannot keep his ducts in check.
I don’t know why
My gaze is never dry,
Until my eyeballs rust.
They even seep
While closed and fast asleep,
Then desiccate to dust.
Fiddlesnaps
Fiddlers do it on the bias,
Swaggering about the shore –
They lope-along lopsided
With one pincer too-provided-for.
An asymmetric sexual signal –
Over-big, a pumped-up rig,
To wave it peek-a-boo.
I wonder if they topple when they do ?
Vermification
Things keep turning into worms, it would seem,
And not just invertebrates
Exhibiting a certain trait
For straightness in the beam
And legless in the gait.
Things keep sausage-ing to worms, we observe –
The eel and caecilian
Are bound by their criterion
To maximise the curve,
Like the tongue of the chameleon.
Things keep slithering to worms, to and fro –
As through the soil they swim,
The burrowers who drop a limb.
The slowworm may be slow,
But he’s wonderfully slim.
Things keep developing newer way to squirm –
From the lowly and unsung
To the feared and cursed who creep among –
For snakes are just a worm
With a backbone and a tongue.
Rhyming Couplets 