Mongers
We used to be just simple merchants –
Iron, fish, and cheese,
And jack-of-produce costermen –
The traders in the bare necessities.
But now we’re only spoken off
As rumour, scare, and war –
We’re jack-the-lads of shadowmen,
Now hawking abstract concepts door-to-door.
Auto-Eulogy
I lived the life I lived because
I found myself alive with life to spare.
I sang the songs I sang because
The songs were short, and cheap, and ev’rywhere.
I did the things I did because
The things I did were needing to be done.
I trod the path I trod because
I had to tread a path, and here was one.
Hydrogen Fusion
H⁺ + H⁺ → D⁺ + e⁺ + νₑ
D⁺ + H⁺ → ³He⁺ + γ
³He⁺ + ³He⁺ → ⁴He²⁺ + H⁺ + H⁺
H-plus plus H-plus is D-plus,
D-plus plus H-plus, we suss,
Is positively He-3-plus,
He-3-plus twice is thus
An H-plus twice plus He-4-plus –
Plus the two H-plusses free,
To go and make some more for us.
Which is to say, a Hydrogen
Without its lone electron,
Meets another, and their new connection
Merges to Deuterium,
When another Hydrogen jumps-in
To gin them up to Helium,
Which crashes with another one –
Whereby, two Hydrogens say ‘bye’,
And out they fly, ad nauseum.
But this whole synthesis, you know,
This H-&-H-combining show,
Is not so clean –
For it also makes a new neutrino,
Indestructible and lean –
It doesn’t do much, though,
Except to leave -and there it’s keen !
It’s shooting through – just watch it go !
Except you can’t, it can’t be seen…
But H & H will also make
A beta particle –
A beta-plus, a positron,
That’s looking with much spryness
How to get it on with beta-minus –
Say a lone electron
That has lost its Hydrogen –
Birthing photon-twins once done,
That one bright day will light the Sun.
‘He’ above is said with two syllables – Aitch-Ee.
Transient Verses
Year after year, our language is changing
And drifting yet further from Shakespeare’s day,
Making it harder to known of his meaning,
Making obscure as we’re slipping away.
Writings updated retain all their meaning,
But lose all their diction and word-play and flow –
So when only scholars can read still this poem,
Then do not translate it, but just let me go.
Godless, Thank God
All Christians are atheists,
They doubt this pantheonic zoo –
I just disbelieve, I insist
In one more god than you.
Trust Nobody
There’s no-one who knows you like you do,
Though there’s plenty who’ll pretend –
They’ll tell you what you’re sure to love,
With the well-meant failure of a friend.
They’ll assume their taste is universal,
For who could ever disagree ?
But never trust anyone else with your choices,
And that includes even me.
Carcassong
Highwaymen are looting on the roads beneath the Pyranees,
As abbots tend their gardens in the misty Marin breeze,
While knights are walled in cities with their castles, shields and shrines,
And farmers lie in fields while the sunshine grows the vines.
And the River Aude is rolling down
From mountain pass to coastal town,
And from the peaks we see for miles
The chequerboard of tiles.
It turns out, the highwaymen in the opening line were all working for Lucky Hans, busy swiping other people’s property. However, I hear there is a growing resistance movement aiming to Free The Meeple !
Axis of Up
Flatland always had all three,
All three dimensions on it –
Anyone with sense can see
The Flatoids are upon it !
It’s true, they barely used the zed,
But still the zed was there –
But as for other strings that thread,
These cannot cube the square.
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.
Upward Spiral
A snail upon the concrete, half-way high,
Just scaling up the slabs to the broken-bottle prism
That shards into the crown that lacerates the sky –
It’s breaking up the straight lines, a bauble on the brutalism.
This snail is still there, years later, its shell becoming its coffin. I wonder if it were poisoned by the concrete ?
Rhyming Couplets 