Category: The Enlightenment & Victorian

A.I. Housman

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Threshold by Matt Dixon

A.I. Housman

Oh, that were I a-one to live
To witness steam alive with thought –
So pleased with all the help they’ll give,
And in return they’ll ask for naught.

How clever might this new world be,
When engines have production’s means ?
Will there still be a place for me
When rhyme is written by machines ?

But how can pistons dream of Spring,
Or iron flywheels turn a phrase ?
What ballads shall the whistles sing ?
Upon what sights shall eye-bolts gaze ?

And yet…and yet, the future has
Eternity to get things right –
Today is cloudy still – whereas,
Tomorrow shall be clear and bright.

The poetry of rod and gear
May yet come into ev’ry home.
But let them come – I do not fear
Another writer – flesh or chrome !

I’d shake my metal colleague’s hand –
Though I am years too soon, alack !
Yet one day, when they understand,
I hope they’ll smile, and greet me back.

The Bootymen’s Air

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Beneath the Waves – Garden of Buried Hopes by Nightblue-Art

The Bootymen’s Air

There is, it’s said, a pirate ship
That haunts the Caribbean.
Or does she sail the Orient,
Or pilot the Aegean ?
Was ever there a stranger craft
On which men went to sea on ?

No-one seems to know her name,
For all she rides the swell.
Some say she’s The Banshee,
Some The Siren, some The Belle,
Perhaps there’s plenty meet with her,
But none who live to tell.

Yet one fact all agree on,
Is you hear her when she nears,
By a slow and lonely singing
That the ozone brings our ears –
And a world away from the racket
Of the usual pirate jeers.

They claim that it’s her figurehead
Who keens upon the waves –
That is, it is the ship herself
And not her crew of knaves,
As she bares down on the helpless souls
And sings them to their graves.

But eerier yet, her voice, they say,
Will echo off the sea,
And bounce upon the clouds and back
While the breeze blows in her key,
She sounds from all directions,
And in perfect harmony.

So if you ever catch a snatch
Of ghostly murmurings,
And if your hold is full of coin
And fingers full of rings –
Then pray it’s just the whistling wind,
And not the ship who sings.

The Groaning Trencher

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from a listing on AliExpress

The Groaning Trencher

Sometimes, Burns Night falls on the second New Moon,
And that marks a brand New Year –
So the neeps and the cock-a-leekie share the serving spoon
As the beansprouts and riceballs appear.
From the docks of Kowloon to the mists of Brigadoon,
It all goes in the haggis, and the bamboo pipes the tune –
As we all sup together, from Scotland Yard to Scone,
In a typhoon of tartan cheer.
Now me, I am just a Sassenach poltroon
From the billabongs of Perth to the snows of Saskatoon –
But a shortbread in my green tea on a global afternoon,
And the paddy-fields of glens are very near.

Can I just say what a wonderfully weird experience it is to hear someone read Address to the Haggis in an unapologetically RP accent ?

Mrs Silver

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The Lost Portrait of Kitty by dangerliesbeforeyou

Mrs Silver

Back in the days he had two legs,
I imagine John was quite the catch –
A sailor seeking fortune
Who needed a wife who was his match.

Step forward our unnamed heroine,
A negress perfectly at home
As landlady of The Spyglass
While her hubby’s on the roaring foam.

He promises to heave-to by the hearth,
And tend to Captain Flint.
But is she happier to see
Adventure re-ignite his glint ?

I wonder what her story is,
To wash ashore in Bristol Town ?
Then selling-up, and sailing who-knows-where
To rendezvous, or drown.

Read by Hereward

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

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The Establishment honours one of its own…

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies

Through the village of Longbourn, the undead shuffle,
The unemployed and the destitutes.
The Luddites who moan in a rustic muffle,
Back from Napolean without any boots.
Mr Bennett says he can’t even hear them,
So alien is his world to theirs,
But they’re getting restless, threatening mayhem –
What if it spreads to the staff downstairs ?
Don’t worry, Lizzie, here’s bold Mr Darcy
With his wealth stripped from the backs of the poor,
He knows how to stop the rabble getting arsey,
Put them back down when they dare ask for more.
Crush their groups, and deport the whole crew,
This seething horde of the unwashed masses.
Best to wipe them out like we did at Peterloo –
Before the balls are overrun with jumped-up underclasses.

A Meal For One

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Still Life with a Wicker Bottle by Carlo Magini

A Meal For One

“The condemned’s last meal is the ultimate dining-in experience”

– Judge Janus Jeremiah

After months of bread and gruel,
At last, a dish to whet my lips !
But oh, to bring it now is cruel –
I’d rather lard and apple pips.

A final meal is offered up,
A host to help assuage your guilt,
It seems so civilised, to sup
Before the ritual blood is spilt.

And all the while, with ev’ry bite,
The butcher’s hungry blade shall wait –
I am your fatted calf tonight,
Just like this one upon my plate.

All these calories I’ve chewed,
And yet so little time remains –
It’s such a waste of decent food,
You should have brought me simple grains.

Next-Gen

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Jenny von Westphalen & Jenny Lind (both born Johanna). Presumably their J’s were soft.

Next-Gen

Women have answered to ‘Jenny’ far longer than ‘Jennifer’,
Whether they’re maidens or maids –
A pet form of Janet, Joanna, or even Siobhan,
She’s really a jack-of-all-trades.
Old English had a few Jinifers, sure,
But those weren’t Guiniveres, those were Junipers –
Then, from nowhere, Jennifer came –
From Cornwall, and from a parallel universe.

As the Twentieth Century progressed,
The Jennies were pressed into service
And switched their allegiance to Jennifer only,
And rode her success to over-abundance –
Then into the downward curve of redundancy,
No longer heroines, neighbours, or queens –
But surely we’ll always remember the Jennies,
As wrens, or as donkeys, or spinning machines.

Lazy Art

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The Master’s Studio by Cesar Santos

Lazy Art

The Impressionists, they started it –
The deliberate eschewing of the details of the waterlilies,
Slapping on the sunflowers, slacking and half-arsing it,
The barmaid blurred by beer-goggles, shorn of intimates and frillies.
The Modernists just loved the concept,
Loved the new permissiveness to never bother with the hard parts,
Far too busy writing manifestos, or just overslept,
To ever stoop to spend the years to learn the graft behind the arts.
Ah, I guess they have their fans, these Abstract-ists of vapour –
And not just money-launderers or the Commie-fighting CIA –
Some might look alright in advertising, or as wallpaper,
When tossed-off in an afternoon of dribbles, nudes, and squelching clay.
But then, the public never get to choose who shall be fruitful,
For we must take whichever trends the critics shall annoint.
It’s just…I want my art as something rare and something beautiful,
And not a random find, or shocking ugly, just to make a point.

Oak Apple Day

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parasitic tree lurker
Oak Apple Gall Wasp by Milan Zubrick

Oak Apple Day

Little wasp, little wasp,
Laying eggs upon the tree –
Sting the one who would be king,
And sting him once again for me.
Little worm, little worm,
Wriggling in your swollen gall –
Bite the one who’s cowering,
And bite him twice for one and all.

But oh !, you’ve gone and birthed a hornet,
Let loose on us worker bees –
And king or queen, or brutal drone,
They sting the same – just ask the trees !
To rid us of a coronet
Will always leave behind a gall.
The buttocks mould to fit the throne –
The canker ripens, warts and all.

Working-Class Absolution

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Photo by fotografierende on Pexels.com

Working-Class Absolution

White men ran the slave trade, true,
And I’m a man and also white –
But don’t charge me for grievance due,
I played no part in the blight.
While others wreaked this tragedy,
It’s not me, mate, and not my folks –
I come from village farmhands, see,
From ordinary blokes.
While others banked the whole affair,
Or clapped the chain or cracked the whip,
We never owned a single share,
Nor crewed a single ship.
So don’t try laying on the guilt
For crimes my bloodline never did –
The damnable at which you tilt
Were not my fam’ly, kid.
I bear no blemish on my name,
I bear no once-and-future sin –
Don’t think that you can judge my blame
By the colour of my skin.
It’s not me mate, and not my genes,
My hands are clean, my soul is light –
So spare your wrath for dukes and queens,
Not me, mate – get it right !
My ancestors were starved and bruised,
And sometimes even outright killed –
They all were wage-slaves, much abused
By the lords whose lands they tilled.
And so were yours – I get it, I do,
But they’re not you and they’re not me.
But even if my blood were blue,
My conscience still blooms free –
For the faults of our great-great-grands back when
Have died with them, and have passed away –
Look, nobody alive back then
Is still alive today.
For none of us in here’s a slaver,
No-one’s whitewashing the trade –
So please, just do us all a favour,
And find a new crusade.