Oriental Droppings
Haikus – poems of failure –
Pintsize tweets of mental fluff.
Exotic in regalia,
Just self-congratulating puff.
Strangely obsessed with the weather,
And crushingly serene –
Thinking they’re oh-so-clever
For counting to seventeen.
Yes, that’s right, I said haikus with a pluralising S. If this upsets you, you need to stop speaking English altogether.
Strange Bedfellows
I know the temptation – any stick to diss them,
Any ally welcome, any grudge a friend –
Any note of caution is abject criticism,
Any mediation is weakness to the trend.
But surely we are judged by the company we keep,
Regardless why we keep such clientele –
The rival of my enemy might sometimes be a creep
Who should really be my enemy as well.
Real politic with an opportune autocracy
Is just another way to say hypocrisy.
The Rover
If you find England is too small, my dear,
Then jump on my boat and I’ll sail you from here !
I’ll sail you to Russia, I’ll sail you to Spain,
I’ll sail you away from her beer and her rain.
But if in a day or a month or a year
You find that you’re missing her rain and her beer,
Well, I won’t be there, dear, to sail you back home –
For I’ll be in Oslo or Cairo or Rome.
Fruits of the Verge
Normandy roads beside Normandy fields,
All run between Normandy ditches.
Your radishes, cabbages, onions and leeks
Are right on the roadside in vegetable pitches.
They’re unfenced by hedges or sedges or nettles,
Just Normandy roads between Normandy riches.
The Waters of the Flood were upon the Earth
Noah, lonely and bereft,
Cast adrift with wives and sons.
Of other folk, no more are left –
These are the only ones.
But lo !, across the waves and foam
Comes sailing forth on breezes fresh
A vessel very like his own –
The Ark of Gilgamesh !
This is an early poem of mine that features my patented exclamation comma (!,) which one day shall be combined into a single glyph to rule them all… Incidentally, my older self cringes at my rookie mistake of placing Gilgamesh himself in the other Ark when of course it was piloted by Utnapishtim. However, despite this, it remains the only poem of mine to ever earn me an income (£10), as recounted in the footnote to this poem.
Dramatic Tension
Ah, Theatre ! I think I’m gonna miss you,
But maybe not the agony you always put me through –
You may raise gasps and titters from the proper-postured sitters,
But you leave me bent like Richard, joints askew.
Your drama may be modern, but your seating is Victorian,
Which quickly sees my comfort heading south.
Your balconies and rakes are long my source of joys and aches,
Where ev’ry twist brings heart-and-knees-in-mouth.
The Audacious Free Will of the Predestined Chrononaut
Into the future we charge,
We travellers in time,
Past all of the past and into the future.
Tachyon trekkers at large,
In our own time,
From marcher to moocher –
But all of us heading in one direction,
Through the temporal intersection:
Into the future we barge our way,
Each and every day.
There’s some say the future already exists
And it does ! We’re in it today.
This is the future, as this is the past,
And the one hold the other in sway.
We may like to think that we’re free how we choose,
But however we choose it, a future arrives.
So best to ignore it and get on with living,
Before we have run out of lives.
We are the eyes of the future,
Spying on history,
Witnessing first-hand the long-dead past.
We are the ones who are there,
And writing it down,
So the future can read it at last.
They pay us with hope, from their endless supplies,
Of the glories to come if we only choose wise.
So the eyes of the long-ago future will see
In time with the past yet-to-be.
There’s some say free will is just an illusion
And lives are determined and fast.
That’s true for the future – their choices are narrowed
By what we do now in the past.
We may like to think that we’re free how we choose,
But however we choose it, we still live our lives.
So best to ignore it and get on with living,
Before all that future arrives.
Sluggabed
She did not wake this morning, nor this afternoon, nor eve,
And all this week she’s spawning ev’ry dream she can conceive,
And the daylight still she’s scorning for the visions she shall weave,
Till her health begins its pawning for the means to stall her leave.
The poem is not about a statue, but I do like this sculpture.
Salad Days
The radish is too ladish
To attract the carrot strips,
But tomatoes dream of celery
And blush down to their pips,
And the spring that’s in the onions
Send cucumbers a-twist,
So the feta beds the lettuce,
But the garlic stays unkissed.
Ghoti
Language is languid, it’s lazy at heart –
Refusing to change and keeping its calm.
Sometimes it’s hazy and falling apart,
But let’s view its ticks as a charm.
Cos under the surface, its footings keep shifting,
Its grammar gets shonky, it’s meanings keep drifting,
It’s making it up as it any-old wishes –
Till some fish are fish, but some fish are fishes.
Rhyming Couplets 