Category: Myths & Folklore

The First Second-Coming

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buddha

The First Second-Coming

“All praise to Buddha !
God-son of Maya,
Born unto a Virgin,
On the twenty-fifth December.
Heralding his coming
Was a brightly shining star,
Gifts betrothed by Wise Men,
Songs by Angel-Choir.

Teaching in the Temple,
Twelve and on his todd,
Then baptised in the presence
Of the Spirit of the God.
Tempted hard by Mara,
Tempted while he fasted.
Feeder of five-hundred
From a small cake-basket.”

Or so I’ve heard it said by a suspicious few
Who desperately, desperately, want it to be true.
Are deities amalgams, at least in the telling ?
I can well believe it, but not the kind they’re selling.
But then, what do I really know about such secret lore ?
Perhaps you ought to tell me more…

“Healer of the sickened,
Walker on the water,
Renouncer of the World,
And poverty supporter.
A Kingdom of Righteousness
He built and oversaw –
Then came he down unto us
To fulfil the written Law.

Died upon a cross,
The rumour-mill endorses.
Sealed up in a tomb
Which rent by magic forces.
Rose up from the dead,
Ascended to Nirvana –
Promised to return
For Judgement on our karma.”

Or so I’ve heard it said by the endless games
Who never cite their sources and never check their claims.
Are deities amalgams, or cliches, or hopes ?,
With ev’ryone drawing on the same common tropes ?
I guess that the gods are our latent thoughts aloud
And the prayers go to the ones who please the crowd.

I read all the facts for this poem on a website a long time ago, and have never got round to verifying them, so this version of Buddha might be total bollocks – but then, all versions of Buddha are total bollocks.

Edit – I’ve decided not to check (well, more like finally admitted that I couldn’t be bothered to check) into what I strongly suspect is complete BS – so instead I’ve added the third and sixth verses.

Of Lost & Found Cities

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beige analog gauge
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Of Lost & Found Cities

Nineveh and Babylon have crumbled into dust,
Carthage, Ur and Jericho are pillars in the sand;
Once they were such glories, true – bustling and august –
But now reduced to legends and faint markings on the land.
London, though, is still alive, still growing and unplanned,
Not like dead Persepolis, where only mem’ry roams.
Ephesus and Ashkelon are sinking, gust by gust.
Luxor, Thebes and Memphis, now preserved in ancient tomes,
Sumer, Sardis, Akkad and Knossos are unmanned.
London, though, is standing yet, and just as grim and grand.
Middle-aged, with stuccoed bays and stock-brick-golden domes;
Humble tracks now avenues, from Oxford Street to Strand,
Yet keeps forever youthful as it builds and fells its homes.
Many structures barely make a century’s employ,
Ere yet another edifice is raised upon its bones;
And so King’s Cross and Bishopsgate, and Knightsbridge and Savoy
Have thus by slow rebuilding changed their slates and paving-stones.
Once an early city stood, whose name we still enjoy,
But now that ancient London’s quite as lost as Kish and Troy.

The Devil May Care

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The Devil May Care

The old man lay in bed and watched
His body eaten to decay.
How strong he’d been in his old day,
How weak he was today, how scotched.
How great his all-too-mortal fear,
How much he’d give for one more year –
He’d even sell his soul to get
To keep it in his body yet –
For even thought the end was near,
He longed to ante-up for one last bet.

“Indeed ?” a voice replied at large
In answer to his silent thought.
“Perhaps the bargain you have sought
Can be arranged, and free of charge.
Yet not a miracle, alas,
But biologic working-class –
To give your soul an unfair bite,
I bring a little hope tonight –
For while it’s true all thing must pass,
It passes slower for those souls who fight !”

Pond Life

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Hydra (Hydridae)
Hydra Producing a Bud by Jan Hamrsky

Pond Life

One day in our science class, we trooped out to the pond
And trawled our nets to haul a hoard from out the wet beyond.
We jamjarred up our specimens, our trove from out the deep,
And took our volunteers back to have a proper peep.
The swimmers and the sediments were busy in their dance,
Or squished between the slides beneath our microscopic glance.
        Tadpoles and waterfleas, fresh-water shrimps,
        Algae and flatworms and dragonfly nymphs,
        Rotifers, water bears, snails by the score,
        Whilygigs, boatmen and duckweed galore.
But best of all, the hydra: the monster in our lake –
One day, or so the rumour went, it turns into a snake !

Hydra, hydra,
Now that I’ve spied ya,
I can’t decide what I love about you more:
Your proof there’s a Zeus, or
Your looks of Medusa ?
Not hard to deduce you’re a snake down to your core.

Just think – an anaconda with a plethora of heads
To slither round the playing field and stalk the cycle sheds !
But Mrs Patrick told us no, the two did not equate,
For hydras were cnidarians, and snakes were vertabrates.
The former lacked a brain as such, and var’ous other parts –
(Though snakes, our teacher told us, were likewise not so smart,
And multi-headed mutants would attack their conjoined brothers)
But hydra bred asexually to be both spawn and mothers !
And better yet, they’d learned a trick for ageing without ageing
By morphing from their adult selves back to their childhood gauging –
So, rather like The Doctor, but with tentacles and stem.
I’d like to see old Herc attempt to kill off one of them !

They say you have a silent c –
Well, not with teenage me !
Cknidarians, cknidarians,
Aquatic antiquarians:
Preserving ancient shapes and genes,
Behold the mighty cknidarenes !
If only Greeks had known of you,
Just think what legends would ensue !
Instead, your polyps are maligned –
Medusae, sure, but not the Grecian kind.
Contrarian cknidarian,
You slithered through myth-infested mind.

Limbo Junction

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railroad tracks in city
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Limbo Junction

The Netherworldly Underground
Are here to keep things flowing –
We’re proud to serve the downward-bound
To get you where you’re going.

The Pearly Gates to Sheol Flyer’s
Very shortly to arrive.
The chartered tour for Angel Choirs
Now departs from Platform 5.

For the Armageddon Sprinter,
Make your way to Platform 6.
For the endless Fimbul Winter,
Take the last train to Apocalypse.

Attention those who head for Hades,
Please take care to spare your blushes –
Carriage F’s reserved for ladies,
Muses, sirens, succubuses.

The overcrowded, overdue
Express to Pandemonium
Must wait a goods train passing through
With waggons of plutonium.

Platform 1: the Nod-Land Sleeper.
Platform 4: the Brimstone Belle.
Passengers for stations deeper,
Take this train, and change in Hell.

The rapid shuttles come and go
From Heaven to Damnation,
While the all-stops Purgatory slow
Has yet to leave the station.

Purple Requiem

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festival music rock sound
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Purple Requiem

It ain’t your fireman or soldier
Who risk the most to do their job.
Your real heroes, I told yer,
Are your bassists and strummers,
Your keyboards and drummers,
Your strutting party-dudes and your master bong-plumbers.
They’re ever alert and ever a-throb,
Just waiting for the call to rock the joint large,
Just waiting to save us from the numpties in charge,
Just waiting for the call from the downtrodden mob
To rescue us all from the bummers.

But the price is high, the fates are sprung –
Too many albums filled with the songs they never sung.
Too many sobbing fans recoiling at the haste
With which their idol’s promise was undone.
Too many, many bands atrophied by the waste,
Too many mothers lost their rebel son.
Recruited to the cause while they’re still within their teens,
They slave away for years in their thousand-dollar jeans,
With the hair and the teeth and the endless magazines.
They’re out there, dying too young –
Labour-market casualties, axemen unstrung.

Do they really hope to die before they get so old ?
Before they’re easy-list‘en‘ing gold,
Before the cramps have taken hold ?
Or do they think they’re better dead before their soul is sold ?
Before their shooting star has stalled,
Before they’re shagged-out, fat and bald ?
Sometimes living on, they cry, just makes the struggle cheaper.
To play the great gig in the sky, don’t fear he reaper.

Some won’t even make it to the twenty,
Many dead before the big three-oh.
Thus drop the mighty cognoscenti –
When ev’ry flight to Rio
Is another flight could crash,
And what else but on drugs
Can they find to chug their cash ?
And the groupies are exhausting,
And the booze is flowing plenty,
And their bodies suffer burn-out and the rash.
Thus the endless nights of forcing
Make their flesh all pocked and denty,
And suddenly their eyes have lost their flash.
Then when at last the blues hit town,
They gloom on up and come on down,
And find a noose to wear or vein to slash.

And early years, or so I hears, are diciest of all
As the Mayfruits of success will press the harvester to call.
But if they still kick ass at fifty,
Got no pension, ain’t so thrifty,
Gotta take another tour of duty – such a haul.
Sponging cronies, bootleg phonies, “Hello Montreal”,
Three-legged ponies, alimonies, drive them to the wall.
So what sets them so thrillingly upon a road so killingly,
And choose a trade so willingly that sees her children fall ?

Yet still you’re out there, gods divine,
With scream and shout.
Keep on flouting it for ev’ry single one of us,
Keep on pouting it for ev’ry single mug and wuss.
You’re always there, walking the line,
Just rockin’ out.
Keep on vaunting it for those of us who never can,
Keep on flaunting it and sticking it right to the Man,
Keep on party on and shine,
Just like it’s Nineteen Ninety-Nine.
For they can never undermine the peace and love that you began.

You’re always out there living it, living for us all –
And cos you are so superstar,
You lighten up our daily crawl –
You make it all alright by far, for us to be so small.
So rest in peace, and rest in rock, each fallen avatar –
Your life was brief, yet through our grief
Comes weeping your guitar.

Cuculus horologus

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Cuculus horologus

I once had a clock,
Just an ordin’ry clock,
With its cogs that enmesh in a segue
Escape and endock,
With the whispering tock
Of the gentle-most metrical shower.
But a cuckoo took stock
Of my welcoming clock
And she chose it for hosting her egg-lay.
Imagine my shock
As her offspring would mock
At my tranquil repose, ev’ry hour.

That hatchling would knock
At the gears of the tock
And he’d suckle a share of their motion
He’d peck and he’d rock
Till their screws would unlock,
And he’d toss them aside for their power.
Yet still the old block,
Though it lost its own flock,
Was a parent of clockwork devotion.
It pandered this jock
With his swagger and cock
As he sang for his mate, ev’ry hour.

Out There

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moon and stars
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Out There

Life, it shouldn’t be so rare –
I don’t mean Mars or Venus.
There isn’t much can flourish there –
Bacteria, perhaps, can bear,
But higher life is pretty spare –
Too harsh for such a genus.
Yet surely in the Milky Way,
How many planets must convey
A goldilocks for genes at play ?
They surely must have seen us.

Life, it shouldn’t be alone –
It seeks out other threads, where
On planets older than our own
They should have let themselves be known
Across the interstellar zone –
What wonders might have bred there ?
The distances, of course, are vast,
Yet still we should receive the blast
Of radio from light years’ past –
Yet all we get is dead air.

Guardian Angelface

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girl with box

Guardian Angelface

I once knew a girl
Who wasn’t so old,
Who went by the name of Pandora –
Her hair was a-twirl,
And her jawline was bold,
And her countenance jarred all who saw her.
For she was a child with orders to follow –
She practised today to be ready tomorrow.

So stern was her stare
As she marched round about,
And no-one had better ignore her.
She never would share
What protruded her pout
Or what epical labours now chore her.
For she was a child with burdens to carry –
She hefted them high, for she’d no time to tarry.

She cradled a box
With she firmly kept shut,
And she stroked it to sometimes assure her.
Her all-weather socks
Were so often a-strut
With that cask always ported before her.
For she was a child with secrets to ferry –
She warded them all, be they downcast or merry.

When asked who had asked,
Who requested her quest,
She might answer Mary or Flora –
And endlessly tasked
With this hallowed behest,
Her mission e’er onwardly bore her.
For she was a child with futures to wonder –
She gathered them up with the stars and the thunder.

The Unfeted

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agriculture clouds colors countryside
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The Unfeted

Remember when we dreamed
Of all the ways we could conceive
To change the world ?

Remember when the future gleamed
In rainbow rays ?
And we were so naive
To really think that we would change the world.

Remember when it seemed
Those early days were just the eve
To our success ?

Remember when our promise teemed
In endless Mays ?
And we would soon achieve
The riches rightly due our just success.

But a simple application of statistics
Should be enough to warn us
Of our herculean mission:
When our peers too were flush with optimistics,
No dais could have born us
Till so many faced attrition.
We thought enthusiasm was the only vital spark,
We didn’t see the chasm till we woke up in the dark.

Remember when we schemed
Of what to play and what to cleave
From all of life ?

Remember when frustration screamed,
With cold dismay ?
We could no more believe
That we were brash young kings enthralled with life.