Category: Myths & Folklore

Dressed in the Raiments of Emperors

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Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva by John Collier

Dressed in the Raiments of Emperors

Oh People of Coventry, turn not away !
For not only Thomas should view this display.

Oh People of Coventry, look not in shame,
She canters so proudly, erect in her frame.

Oh People of Coventry, unshield your eyes !
She wants us to watch her, to join her, to rise.

Oh People of Coventry, protest exudes,
So cast off your shackles, your breeches, your prudes.

The story is based on a real woman – Godgifu, Countess of Mercia, who survived her husband Leofric and died soon before the Domesday survey of 1086 (which lists her former lands).  The bareback ride doesn’t appear until the Flores Historiarum collected and retold by Roger of Wendover in the early HE 11200s (early 1200s AD), and Peeping Tom didn’t get a look-in until 11600-700s.

As for the poem, I wrote this so long ago that it feels almost as old as the legend.  Strange I was trying to channel socialist values through a protest over lower taxes !

The Rose & The Nightingale

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a bit like the flag of japan

The Rose & The Nightingale

(In reply to Oscar Wilde)

Poor little student, moping for a girl,
He yearns to have a crimson rose to give her –
“Shucks !” thinks a nightingale, heart in a whirl,
“I’ll plead with the rose-bush to deliver !
But woe, all its blossoms are white as a pearl…
…Unless I thorn my breast and sing a-quiver.”

Thus the little nightingale gives her life for beauty,
As nothing but a lacky to a human.
Raising future nightingales – that should be her duty !
At this rate, extinction’s surely looming !
The rose, though, is delighted with this unexpected booty –
With birdie’s rotting body, times are blooming !

Lonely in her dying breath, as atoms fall apart,
She thinks this makes a handy metaphor –
The poor romantic soul who bares her tender little heart
For the callous world to savagely ignore.
(Like artists ev’rywhere, she demands we love her art,
And buy into her struggles and her lore.)

As for the student, he plucks the crimson rose
(Denying for this bud to spread its seed),
And seeks out his classmate with the very pretty nose –
But she looks less than happy with his weed.
“But don’t you see ?” he says, “This bloom’s a mutant !  I propose
To splice its genes and follow where they lead.”

“Pah!” says his paramour, crushing all his dreams,
“I’m bored with ev’ry rose and phlox and crocus !
For I’m in love with rubies, sparkling in the sun-beams –
I want to find a way to make them focus…”
The student is crushed – as is the crimson rose, it seems –
He’s had enough of love and hocus-pocus !

An Atheist in Heaven

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5 6 7 open up those pearly gates
The Gates of Heaven by Dragon7350

An Atheist in Heaven

Upon my death, should my beliefs attest
To be so wrong,
And should my doubting self yet house a soul –
Which lurks obscure until eternal rest
Proves not so long,
Then rises up when summoned to extol,
And give account of faith, and weigh agenst
A common mark –
Then let it hold no shame and hold no fear.
And should my final form be then dispensed
Unto the dark,
Still my whole life was loving and sincere.

Free-Zoning

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zoners still believe this

Free-Zoning

We don’t need Miscavige, see,
To run our audits, rig our fates –
We’re moving up the bridge all by ourselves.
We needn’t wait till OT3
To learn of Xenu’s DC-8s,
Now Teegeeack’s escaped your secret shelves.

We’re the methadone to their crack,
The thirteenth sign to their zodiac,
With a finger-wag to psychiatry,
And a less-homophobic piety –
We’re still in the zone, but at least the zone is free.

We’ve shed your cult, we’ve sunk your navy,
Quit your billion-years a slave,
Although we all think LRH is swell.
Yet still the core is true, unbeaten –
Still believe in body thetans,
Just like Quakers still believe in Hell.

With solar-powered e-psych probes,
We’re the white-shirt face to their cult-black robes,
Lightly tutting at SPs,
But never disconnection, please !
We’re an altogether healthier paranoia, with no fees.

Dream On

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Dream On

Sleeping is our right,
It is our patriotic duty –
And ev’ry dream is freedom,
And our freedom is to dream…
Sleep, my fellow patriots,
For sleeping is our beauty –
And dreaming is our industry
In which our twilights gleam.

Seventh Day

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like morpheus
detail from Sleeping God by ernestoriveraart

Seventh Day

And on the Seventh Day the Lord did rest,
With feet-up on a cloud –
And hereafter, in Sunday best,
We imitate his weekly quest
To switch-off from the crowd,

For ev’ry Seventh Day, the Lord makes clear
To leave the fields unploughed.
For on this day the Lord is near –
So don’t have too much fun down here,
Incase we get too loud.

But what do you suppose he does Upstairs
When punched-out from the week ?
When through with listening to prayers
And judging sins and love affairs,
And blessing all the meek,

Kicking-back with a glass of manna, say,
Or visit Zeus the Greek ?
Or maybe give the spheres a play,
Or take a jog round the Milky Way,
Or give his beard a tweak ?

Thus ev’ry Seventh Day, to decompress,
He rests his weary head –
And he commands we acquiesce
To give up any busyness
And copy in his stead.

So we must waste the day with filling pews
And quelling Monday-dread –
Half our weekend in a snooze,
A seventh of our lives we lose,
Because he swings the lead.

Telling the Bees

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honeycomb close up detail honey bee
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Telling the Bees

The day that Grandpa died, that very day,
My father took my hand and led the way
On up the garden, round behind the potting shed,
And showed me how to tell the bees that he was dead:
He gently rapped the back-door key
Against the frame, and spoke the name,
Then wordless handed it to me
That I should do the same.
I guess it worked – this informed hive, now his,
Survived intact, as was, as is –
Though surely, bees think not of grief
When Father was, to them, a honey-thief.

The day that Father died, it fell to me
To take my son and take my key
And pass-on the traditions of the hive –
To tell the bees he was no more alive.
But as I rapped upon their frame,
My puzzled boy a little scared,
I found I could not speak his name
To bees who neither knew nor cared.
And so, I placed a hand upon my lad
And told him how we honour Dad –
It’s not through what the past believes,
But like he taught: by being honey-thieves.

Read by Edgar, voiced by John Dobson

Cocky & Fishy

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candirus

Cocky & Fishy

Candirus – do they ?
No.  They don’t.
Firstly they can’t,
And second, they won’t.
They parasite gills –
Not penises, ever.
They’d suffocate up there –
That wouldn’t be clever.

They don’t swim up pee-streams
(Even if laminar),
Cos fluid dynamics
Need far too much stamina.
They haven’t a tool
To wedge your tool wide,
Nor have they the strength
To push-up inside.

So next time you’re spreading
A rumour or two
That deep down you desp’rately
Want to be true,
When pissing on truth
Cos it pleases your gut –
Recall the candirus
And keep your hole shut.

Con Spiracy

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Diana V

Con Spiracy

Need a good conspiracy
Of shadowy cabals replete with omnipresent spies ?
There’s always the Illuminati,
With their fingers on the pulse and firmly in the pies.

Link them into Davos, sure,
And Hollywood and NASA, and the Barons of the News,
And throw in Templar Knights of yore,
And shake them up with Satan, and then blame it on the Jews.

But why would any self-respecting paranoid
Of all these “scum”
Insist they’re really lizards from across the void ?
Now that’s just dumb !