Category: Myths & Folklore

Panic

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Photo by sumit see on Pexels.com

Panic

        1.
If the sound of distant clatter
From the kitchen shakes you from your bed,
If the smell of bubbling pancake batter
Makes you fear the bread,
Or if the chirpy chatter
Of a TV chef fills you with dread,
Then shriek or slink, it doesn’t matter,
But just scatter to the shed….

        2.
If the sound of critics pishing,
Tutting, and poo-pooing, taking aim,
Or sneering as they’re strutting, swishing,
Choosing who to raise to fame,
Just sucks you of ambition,
That you’ll never beat them at their game –
Then don’t wait from the first edition,
Join a mission, change your name…

        3.
If you hear a distant cry
From the skirl of his pipes in piercing shrills,
If you hear his hooves come trotting by,
Or his bleating, braying trills,
If you glance his wool-caked thigh,
Or horns still bloody from his kills –
Then pant and scream that the end is nigh,
And run high for the hills…

Day 7 – Panic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Ogres

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Photo by Milan Stefanovic on Pexels.com

Ogres

Oh god, is that an OG ogre,
Croaking broken brogue ?
Or else a voguish Mini-Mooger,
Ogling hokey rogues ?

Oh, show me no attention,
I’m just goading Mr Block –
With a token of nonsension,
Till a notion comes to knock…

Okay, I’m only joking,
With the bogeymen and blokes –
Just smoking hoagies like old fogies,
Colloguing a hoax.

I’m groping oafishly, to choke
A spoken ode on ogre-folk.
My mind, though, won’t let go of ‘O’,
For all the pogues I poke…

Day 6 – Ogre – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Frame-Fillers

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Putting the AI into saint?

Frame-Fillers

What makes Mona Lisa smile ?
Well, some say it’s the genius
Of Leonardo’s toils –
That undefining dreaminess,
That soul bared free, that hallowed style,
Not me –
No, I say it’s the pigments in his oils
That manifests his guile.

And now that she’s been painted, see,
She’s micrometre points-of-colour –
Sometimes brighter, sometimes duller –
Quantified by RGB,
And shared by log and file.
Leonardo’s canvas is just that,
And not some holy relic –
Just a poplar panel, nothing more.

What matters is no artefact,
And art critics aren’t clerics,
And a gallery is not a sacred store,
With treasures by the pile.
No – it’s the image, not the paint,
That we must cherish like a saint,
And never leave to perish –
But the board is just wooden tile.

And though there’s some may be indignant,
We can print with oil and pigment
Perfect copies, big and small –
Let’s have a thousand-Lisa free-for-all !
I’d say she’s worth the while…
Her beauty should be on the move,
Beyond the Louvre, to ev’ry wall –
So anyone can recreate her smile.

Day 2 – Relic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Go Up, Thou Bald-Head !

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The Children Destroyed by Bears by Gustave Doré

Go Up, Thou Bald Head !

Why were the bears of Elisha called she-bears –
Don’t dwell on the mauling – but just why was that in their name ?
Did they refer to themselves as me-bears ?
Or hairy toupee-bears, to spare the poor prophet his shame ?
Or should we say ack-choo-lee, they must be sow-bears ?
But wouldn’t pigs furrow the Israelite’s double-deck brow ?
And these days, to play fair, should we call ’em they-bears ?
And not get so bald-faced or frowny on who’s Herr or Frau ?

Ante-Down

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from Cult Movie Cards by Hüman After All, designed by Paul Willoughby

Ante-Down

Let ace be low and always low,
And never beat a king –
Why’s that a thing ?
And shortened decks should keep the twos and threes and fours in spread,
And ditch the eights, nines, tens, instead.

Let’s let them show what they should show,
And wear their pips with pride –
No ranks denied !
For deuces are the lovers, are the prime, and are the zen –
And far less cluttered than the ten.

Best not let these guys meet the bolshy chaps or tarot purists the at the next table then.

Plead the Ninth

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I asked AI for moral guidance, and this is what it told me…

Plead the Ninth

What’s Commandment number Nine ?
The answer can be most revealing
Of the teller’s own Divine –

“Thou shalt not bear false thy witness.”
Here, I get the strongest feeling
Of some Southern Baptist business.

“Covet not thy neighbour’s wife.”
And here, the penitent who’s kneeling
Is a Cath’lic, on my life.

“Do not covet thy neighbour’s house.”
Now here, there’s sev’ral choices wheeling,
But Orthodox would be my nouse.

“Um…is that the ‘do not steal’ one ?”
While here, their dithering and reeling
Shows them for an Anglican.

“Bring the first fruits to thy Lord.”
And here, I’d wager that we’re dealing
With a Heathen making sport.

You Are The Hero !

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Detail from the original slipcase for Steve Jackson’s Sourcery ! by John Blanche

You Are The Hero !

Remember all those gamebooks from back when we were boys ?
(And girls…though mainly boys.)
Remember how, on tenterhooks,
We’d have to make the choice
Of our turning left or turning right ?
Remember all the monsters and the ploys that we would fight ?
Remember all the dice we’d roll
To see if we would kill the troll ?
And prove our might ?
Remember all the traps upon the roads ?
And treasures that we’d prize ?
Remember finding clues and secret codes
If we chose wise ?
Remember flipping through the pages
On our quest to smash the mages ?
Turning to the paragraph with bated breath –
Would we find the one true path,
Or would we meet with death ?

Well, both, of course.
Ev’rybody cheated,
And nobody rolled dice.
(Not even would the girls obey.)
For nobody could force us how to play.
Whenever we would be defeated,
We would not think twice,
But just shrug and carry-on along our way.
We wouldn’t sigh when we were slain,
And start from chapter one again,
As laid down by the authors of these epic Middle Ages –
Instead, we’d keep our fingers in the pages,
Testing out each turn –
To see which would reward and which would burn.
And we were right to cheat so blatantly
When said and done –
For all the boys (and girls) agree
That gaming should be fun…

Ah, the good old five-fingered bookmark ! But they weren’t all fantasies…

Epic Names

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Thanks AI – any kids this fake-looking must be mythical…

Epic Names

Back when Zeus ruled ancient Greece,
He was the only Zeus around –
No mere mortals dared to name their children
So profound.
At best, they’d add a suffix,
To become an adjective instead –
So Martins are collectively “of Mars”,
And careful how they tread.
We also have Demetrius
To celebrate Demeter –
But not, we note, to claim to be the goddess,
To unseat her.
Now heroes, these were fairer game –
From Jason through to Herekles,
By way of Helen and Cassandra –
Citizens were fine with these…
But it took until the Renaissance
For the coming of Daphne, Phoebe, and Chloe –
And Diana, of course, though she’s Roman, not Greek –
But all were equally showy.
And here in the Twenty-First Century,
Our mythical children thrive –
As Athena, Apollo, Aurora, and Atlas
Are keeping the gods alive !

Perish by the Sword

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The Arrest of Christ, attributed to Grégoire Guérard

Perish by the Sword

Malchus was a servantman
Of Caiaphas the Sadducee,
Who tried to capture Jesus
In a garden at Gethsemane –

But Simon Peter drew his sword
And leapt into a fray,
And before the verse had ended,
Peter smote an ear away.

That ear belonged to Malchus,
On the right side of his battered head,
Though nobody appeared to care
As Malchus simply stood and bled.

And no-one apprehended Peter,
All seemed to ignore –
And Jesus even healed it for him –
(Well, one time in four…)

And once the casual violence
Had fulfilled an ancient prophecy –
The incident was never raised again,
And no apology.

Perhaps there was a metaphor
About ‘too deaf to hear’ ?
But still, the Bible soon forgets
Poor Malchus and his ear…

Aces Low

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I asked AI to design some modern Major Arcana cards, so we have The Rebuilt Tower, and The Wheel of Cheese.

Aces Low

The deck is quite a chunk to ruffle,
With their aspect ratio all wrong –
They’re just too long.
But practice helps the dealer shuffle,
When they deal-out hands of eighteen-strong.

Tarot plays a bit like bridge –
The bidding starts, the tricks are played the same,
With points the aim.
But choosing trumps is sacrilege –
They never get to change from game to game.

The trouble is the cards we lay –
For even when they bear French suits – and mind,
They’re rare to find –
But still they’re full of bullshit on display
Just number them, and leave the rest behind !

I wish the trumps were double-ended –
That’ll teach the fortune-telling quacks,
Don’t touch our packs !
And to balance out the genders,
Can’t the knights become the dames to beat the jacks ?

But no, we can’t enjoy our whist,
Without our cards be saturated through
With putrid woo.
It doesn’t take a psychic twist
For the twenty-one of trumps to beat a two.