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.
Graduation Poem
I’ve written these poems for years now and years,
Yet still lurks a lurking, a fearsome of fears,
That dreads their rejection by judgement of peers:
My learning has only begun.
And years out from now, will they gather a sigh
For the bark-of-the-dogg’rel I doggedly try ?
And a laugh at the talent that’s nowhere to spy ?
Must still my apprenticeship run ?
I reckon I’m ready to face that exam,
My verse is rehearsed and is well worth a damn,
So let me be truly the Poet I am !
Oh, say juvenilia’s done !
Vexillologically Vexed
Born in revolution was the Tricolour,
And suitably to radical design –
Oh sure, there were tripartite flags before,
Yet nothing like this latest Paris line.
And afterwards, we’ve trickies by the score,
As flagginess itself is redefined –
Back then, it showed a total break with lore,
By genius or accident of mind.
Felicity, simplicity,
Tradition would no limit be !
Their senses jarred by disregard
For all chromatic symmetry.
And so, unlike the world before,
You favoured grand to bear your brand –
Your tricolour said France for evermore !
Look on, you Russians, look and see,
The repercussions flying free –
For even in your own domain,
Napoleon has come again.
You took his classic of its type
And switched the order of each stripe –
And not content, we now discern,
You flipped his flag a quarter-turn.
I know, your old one had to go,
The flag that evry’body knew –
It still may shine in pure design,
But there was nothing pure on show.
And so, like Germany before,
You forewent grand for safe yet bland –
And tricolours are great for that, for sure !
Watching You Idle
I love the way you love to put
Your limbs to work on your behalf,
And use the top side of each foot
To gently stroke your other calf.
I love the way you interlace your toes
So absently,
But best of all, I love how no-one knows
But you and me.
I love the way you stretch and pull
Your sleeves, to burrow hands within
So all that shows beyond the wool
Are fingertips where cuffs begin.
I love the way you flex and click your thumbs,
And use the other eight for drums –
I love the way your body uses stealth
To exercise all by itself.
I love the way you use your eyes
To stare and stare and never see,
Until they catch you by surprise
By darting off quite suddenly.
I love the way they love to smoothly glide
And sometimes fly –
But best of all, I love the way they hide
When feeling shy.
I love the way you purse your lip,
And chuck your tongue, and breathe out slow –
And always lodge an apple pip
Within your teeth, and never know.
I love the way that ev’rytime you smile,
It has to build itself a while.
It’s not your body that I most approve,
But it’s the way you make it move.
De-rigging the Deck
“No more taking high tea with the higher-ups,
Your majesty,” they told the Maid of Cups.
“No more living fancy-free like landed thieves,
Your majesty,” they urged the Page of Leaves.
“It’s not enough to be a patron of the arts,
Your majesty,” they warned the Queen of Hearts.
“No more clearing crofters from their fells
For sheep as far as one can see,
Your majesty,” they scared the Dame of Bells.
“No more shall your eldest fruit-of-loins
Be favoured for ascendancy,
Your majesty,” they snarled the King of Coins.
“You cannot beat or crush us all to graves,”
They shocked the Knight of Batons and the Prince of Staves.
“You cannot bribe or threaten us, my lords.”
They spooked the Knave of Diamonds and the Jack of Swords.
“We may be only deuces, threes and fours,
But to the House of Roses we bring wars.”
“The Court of Acorns next shall we uproot,
And then the Clan of Shields can follow suit.”
“We’ll strangle with our tentacles the bonds of Wands and Pentacles,
Then flush the royal flush out with a poker –
So let our fingers ruffle to the revolution shuffle,
And show Arcana Major why it can’t contain a joker.”
“You may be fat on clover, but you’ll soon be eating grubs,
Your majesty,” they promised to the Queen of Clubs.
“You’ll feel our pique upon your neck when sharpening our blades,
Your majesty,” they goaded to the King of Spades.
“The pips are taking back our land,
So drop your bluff and fold your hand.
We’ll take the tricks and watch you fall,
For lowly aces trump you all.”
A Logbook of Wonders
What on earth does Philip write
Within his purple notebook, lined ?
What on earth does he record
When fascinated, moved or bored ?
What scribbles he both day and night ?
What wisdom gleaned ? What knowledge mined ?
What does he with his pen engage
Upon the ruled and virgin page ?
What on earth does Philip cite ?
What theories turned ? What views opined ?
Bless this ink that interweaves
The world and all between the leaves.
So happy he whose days are bright
With words to muse and thoughts to find –
Shining life, a jewellèd crown,
With endless things worth noting down.
The Anointed
In India, they termed me Krishna –
Persians knew me, though, as Mithras –
To Syrians, Adonis was I called –
Attis then in Asia Minor,
Horus my Egyptian class –
And Dionysius, the Greeks enthralled.
In Italy, they dubbed my Bacchus’
Stole me from their neighbours’ crew
And Hebrews, ah, the Hebrews did the same:
Plus a dash of Perseus,
Tammuz and Osiris too,
All combined in who I then became.
Pleased to meet you,
Hope you guessed my name.
Once Is Never Enough
To sharpen the spur,
To entice the remarkable
Glow that’s igniting
The will that is sparkable.
Kindle its bright’ning,
This newly-conceivable,
Almost-achievable,
Sulphurous, lucif’rous, sharpening blur.
Sharpening blur,
Don’t orphan this glowing –
Don’t let it be solit’ry,
Singular-showing,
Or flirting idolatry –
Awed by the magi,
Then gone with the mayfly –
With only a lingering tingle of myrrh.
Let us confer,
Many’s the symphony
Fractured in movements
With only a common key
Stalling reprovements,
Each passage belabours
Unhelped by its neighbours –
Always ensure that your themes reoccur.
Themes reoccur,
It resonates sweetly,
This act of creation,
Its song builds discreetly
Through reiteration,
Till harmonies swelling
Enrich with each telling –
We need them again and again to bestir.
To sharpen the spur,
To heighten the senses,
And work through the pain,
Till knowledge condenses –
Then test it again,
Obtaining our mission
Through raw repetition –
We’re always the sum of whatever we were.
The Talk of far-off Forums
Some cities were built on solid rock,
Some cities were built on marsh,
Some cities were built on shifting sands,
Or fault-lines sleeping in filigree strands –
And some cities brought their own earthshock
By building themselves in wilderness harsh,
Or building themselves on the very lands
That other tribes sought in their conquering hands.
But no matter how long ago,
And no matter how brute their overthrow,
And no matter how the northwinds blow –
Not all their dust shall dissipate
Upon the breezes’ sarabands –
For all a city’s kiss-of-fate,
A glimpse remains, a trace withstands.
Through their footings bared and carvings old,
Through their buried pot and coins of gold,
And through their ev’ry mention in the tellers’ tales still told.
Some cities were held in high esteem,
Some cities were held in spite,
Some cities were held as shining states
To journeymen seeking their golden gates –
And some cities gave a lustrous gleam
That prophets implored their gods to smite,
That preachers condemned with envious hates
As other men praised for their glorious freights.
Ambition or apocalypse,
Each name upon their distant lips
As the place where sin and fortune grips –
The place, the home of orgies grand,
The nest of countless sirens’ baits,
Where ev’ry taste it shall command,
As ev’ry thirst it satiates.
Through their legends past and heroes bold,
Through their poets’ songs and glamours sold,
And still their very mention breathes them life that we behold.
Tubular Belle
I happened upon her by chancery lane,
A greenford-eyed angel was riding my train.
She stood like a monument, no poplar tart,
She’s shoreditch to snaresbrook my hammersmith heart.
Her body’s a temple, all saints can’t compare,
So redbridge her lips and so blackwall her hair.
Her beauties are out of my gallions reach –
They pinner my tongue, which cockfosters my speech.
A wapping-great loughton’s west acton the fool –
He’s epping and barking, but she’s morden cool.
She’ll ruislip his grasp with her fairlop display,
And mudchute him down as she bounds green away.
I see her each mornington crescent alone,
Her marble arch skin is like cream leytonstone.
This queensway of smiling’s from upney above –
I cyprus with wonder and kilburn with love.
Rhyming Couplets 