The Audacious Free Will of the Predestined Chrononaut

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godheads
Godheads by Donato Giancola

 

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, the 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 live 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 supply,
Or pay us with dread, if the price is too high.
The eyes of long-ago future will see
All of 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

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sleeping girl
A Sleeping Girl by Edward Baily

 

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.

 

 

It’s Probably Important

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filing cabinet

 

It’s Probably Important

Filing, filing,
They must be got in order,
Thought who’d be such a hoarder
To let them stack so deep ?

Filing, filing,
A papery assortment
Of doggery deportment,
And thoroughly asleep.

Do they rustle out in vain,
And yearn to be of use again ?
Or do they long to end their plight
With damp or flame or paper mite ?
Either way, the data’s piling;
Only remedy is

Filing, filing,
So endlessly abundant,
So battered and redundant,
So crumpled and a-crease

Filing, filing,
They served so well their placement,
So box them in the basement,
And let them rest in peace.

 

 

Poet’s Corny

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poets' corner

 

Poet’s Corny

(In response to Wendy Cope’s Engineers’ Corner)

Oh, shut up Wendy, carping still,
Like a Guardian trendy, elite and crabby.
I suppose you write your poems with a quill
By candlelight, in a world chock-full of balladeers.
But I warn yer, without the engineers
There wouldn’t be a corner, for there wouldn’t be an abbey.

 

 

A Rose by Any Other Name but This

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jezebel
The Brutal Murder of Jezebel at the Hands of the Baying Mob by Gustave Doré

 

A Rose by Any Other Name but This

Atheist parents do not breed Jezebels,
Their daughters are precious, not pawns in a game.
Atheist parents may mock what the Bible tells,
But that is no reason to resurrect the name.
It may sound pretty, and the Bible may teach slander,
But why would any parent choose a stripper’s name to brand her ?

Atheist parents do not breed Jezebels,
Their daughters are Marys and Sarahs and Janes.
Atheist parents may not fear burning hells,
But that is no reason for bully-bate names.
It may sound pretty, but it’s home to tarts and brats:
For we cannot name our children in the way we name our cats.

 

 

Moving the Goalposts

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goalposts

 

Moving the Goalposts

So much emotion invested
In teams over which we have little control;
So many loyalties tested,
Where happiness hangs on a single damn goal.
We buy into brands and we swear that we’re theirs,
But we’ve nothing to offer ’cept hoping and prayers;
So they win or they lose – and at least someone cares,
Though we act like it cost us our soul.

But all of that devotion
For an empty sporting rite
Must leaves no spare emotion
To our fellow humans’ plight:
There’s torture to be ending, and forests to be saving,
There’s justice to be tending, and freedom to be braving;
There’s too much needs defending to waste our flags with waving,
Let’s get our passions working here instead.
We need to get ignited for the good of all the blighted,
Regardless if they’re wearing blue or red.

 

 

Hybrid Vigour

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light fantastic
The Light Fantastic by Tim White

 

Hybrid Vigour

English: a right bastard-son of a language –
A teenage two-fingers to logical sense.
With lucky-dip spelling – a standardless gauge,
An anarchist mang’ling our logical cage –
We think that we’ve captured it dry on the page
With pronouns and adverbs and grammars immense,
But this is one battle it’s folly to wage –
It breaks ev’ry rule in the end, so dispense\
With these thoughts we can tame it, or even condense –
There’s no passive mood in its imperfect tense.
It’s waiting to trip us, bamboozle, upstage,
And piss on our tenets in nat’ral defence.

English: a beautiful fluke of a toolkit,
And we are its masters, and never its slaves.
And each time we use it, it’s changed just a little bit,
Changed just a little – but should we permit ?
Yet if we can follow, it must be legit.
So don’t stem the growth and the sparkle it craves,
But keep it adapting, surprising, and fit –
And bring on the jargon and slang that ‘depraves’,
And don’t mourn the umlauts and genders in graves,
For this is precisely how Darwin behaves –
Red in its verbs and its nouns and its wit.
You can’t turn the tide, but you can ride its waves.