Ravencross
I saw a raven at a crossroads, perched
Atop a rustic fingerpost.
Now there, I thought, as she crowed and lurched,
Is a raven being raven-most.
With pretty hamlets beneath her claws
And shepherd’s skies behind her jet,
She guarded the lanes with portent caws
Where the paths of chance and folklore met.
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda, Buddha
Living in the present, in the middles, not extremities –
No-one owns a raincoat, and no-one’s building memories.
Washing whites with colours, touching wood but never farming trees –
No-one reads the manual, and no-one’s singing harmonies.
Mic Check
Purple people prep pipettes with proper pulp from Prees,
While Pippa Pepper’s preppy puppy Poppy plays to please,
And Papa Piper pips the paper Pope at popping peas.
The Star-Spangled Manna
To Anacr’on in Heaven, in bounty and might,
All night have we drunk from your wellspring of plenty.
But come, can you see by the dawn’s early light
How the cast-offs the shut-outs are bribing the sentry ?
With wearisome head, must quell this new dread
And face down the upstarts who’d stand in our stead,
Yet oft they look on’t us and find us supine –
They’ve come and they’ve seen us, much less than divine.
Darker Later
When I was young and fair as fair,
My mother sat me down
And warned me as she brushed my hair
To never pout or frown –
“It draws the sun from curl and frond
And clouds your golden crown.”
And lo ! I once was blond as blond,
But now I’m brown as brown.
Oscillations
They may be named for Robert Mogue,
But that name never suited –
So when his synths first came to vogue,
The ‘Mogue’ was quickly booted.
For now the great subconscious found
A name as funky as their sound –
We only had to hear their fugue,
To know we had to call them Moog !
Brolly Dolly
What is it with black umbrellas ?
Only make the weather darker !
When the skies are less than stellar,
Do not make them even starker !
Make our brollies blue and gold,
A private sunbeam to unfold –
The overcast may make us pout,
But when it rains, the sun comes out !
Lazy Eight
Is anything more useless than infinity ?,
When the universe is finite and when ev’rything must cede –
There’s nothing lasts forever, there’s nothing truly limit-free –
So count on up to fine-ity (a number larger than you need.)
For endlessness is not a destination,
And nor is it a something ever-growing –
It simply is a signpost that we pass on our inflation
That always points ahead and reads keep going.
The Bland & The Brutal
This macho rejection of beauty as quaint,
We bask in the ugly in building and paint –
Those worlds of the graceful and subtle all fade,
We cannot return back, because we’re afraid.
Tempus Fudge-It
I held my time within my hands,
And tightly cupped its precious sands,
But held it open to the skies:
Alas, when time can’t flow, it flies.
Rhyming Couplets 