Flore Pleno
Double roses are showy but barren,
Turning stamens into yet more petals,
Living the bachelor life.
Even if they still make pollen,
Bees can’t push through all those petals,
Leaving them with no midwife.
Yet these are the roses in bouquets,
To symbolise our multilayered love
Of loud and overdressed grooms.
But dog roses are where bees graze –
They’re wide-open with stamens full of love
And hips full of future blooms.
Just an Expërrement
Fonnëtick Inglish ? Wots the poynt ?
But its a lahf, I gess.
The trick tu this hol spelling gaym
Iz keeping things abowt the saym.
The needlesly bizärr will just disjöÿnt,
A kays ov ‘morr iz less’,
So dohnt bee oeverly nuröttick,
Just giv hints ov the exsötick.
For instans, difrent things ar dun
For singul-sillabulz –
It helps keep wurds the morr fammïlyer,
Stops things getting even sillyer.
But in the end, its just a bit ov fun
To mayk sum nurdy roolz.
I dohnt intënd tu laber it –
My spelchecker wuhd hav a fit !
Rugged Individualism
The world does not know we exist,
The world is far too busy to care,
The world is blissfully unaware
To render us our due.
And when we go, we won’t be missed
By more than just a few.
We live in stark autonomy,
Where hard work and enthusiasm
Aren’t enough to bridge the chasm –
No-one hears us sing.
For in this mind-economy,
Charisma crowns the king.
We may not be an island,
But our causeways often slip beneath
The silent waves of slow and grief
While those with a winning smile
Are bustling continents of dry land
Full of friendships by the mile.
But don’t give up, don’t get depressed –
We need to toughen up our hide
And keep our darker thoughts inside,
And get on with our day.
That’s how it is – so make the best,
To drive the blues away.
The world does not know we exist,
Except a few like-lonely souls
With whom we plug each other’s holes,
To help us brace the weather.
And life goes on, you get the gist,
We’re on our own together.
Potato Blossom
Two-toned, long nosed, petals conjoined.
Such pretty flowers, so rarely seen –
So full of danger, so full of class,
Yet snipped-off to plump-up the tubers, alas.
Was that how these had been purloined ?
Too toxic to keep in a garden that’s clean ?
Yet someone had kept them, and set them in glass
As they gingerly lowered them into a vase.
There’s something illicit in bolted blooms,
In the flowers we’re not meant to see –
The propellers of rocket, the lilac of chive,
The pom-poms of garlic, the lettuce alive.
Gardeners always link flowers with doom,
Or as a time-waster, delaying the pea –
But hold back the harvest, and unwheel the barrow
For the scarlet of runners and saffron of marrow.
Gin in the Clockcase
Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though they’re rarely of much of int’rest to the street beyond –
Just little feuds and little quirks,
That strengthen and spice the filial bond.
One day, when the rest of the world has forgotten me,
I’ll still be in the scope
Of my great grandchildren, who vaguely recall me,
And do so with and smile (I hope).
Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though that sounds far too full of passion and crime –
We haven’t got literal skeletons in cupboards
Just rumours made respectable by time.
One day, when my genome is who-knows-where,
Those little pieces of me may frown
How funny we were back in my day,
As we lurk in attics and photos, and the stories we’ve handed down.
Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though they’re only called that because it seems fun.
We’re making some now, though we don’t yet realise,
And half won’t be solved, though it matters none.
One day, the hurt and the shame will heal,
As we sense that we’re better together than alone.
And the good times will always be there to be remembered,
Though they change through the telling, as we make them our own.
Ev’ry family has its secrets,
Though Dostoyevsky says that we’re all the same –
I disagree, through the jokes we inherit
That shouldn’t be funny, and which we cannot explain.
One day, when we no longer have a family bible,
We’ll need a new place to write our names –
Then my great grandchildren can vaguely recall me,
Half-hidden by a water-stain.
Languid Curlicues
“Poetry editors are in revolt against the overuse of certain florid words.”
– Poetry How
Cliches seep into my verse,
Those myriad shards of shrouded thought –
Reflections on the torrid motes I nurse,
So pent and overwrought.
I strive to excise each as it freights
Through my ever-cloistered, fevered mind,
Yet their crimson soul still percolates
To leave a palimpsest behind.
If you can hear this, you are dying…
The day will come
When my breaths are laboured,
When I actu’ly hear myself each rasp.
Till the lungs strike dumb,
And my voice goes wayward,
Rattling-out in a final gasp.
As if to say
“Ah Life, you took my breath away…”
And when I pant, I wolf in oxygen,
Corroding me within,
And breezing down my three-score-ten.
And when I yawn, I practice when I die,
By choking with a grin.
But better not to stifle such a cry –
For sooner to inspire and gulp down life
Than just expire in one long sigh.
So ev’ry breath is one breath less,
And yet how many do I get ?
I couldn’t even start to guess,
But far-too-lots to be a threat.
It’s twenty-thousand breaths-a-day,
But who on Earth is keeping score ?
I’ve wasted sev’ral just to say
I still possess a lifetime’s more.
For-Never Needs
Capitalism, I almost respect you,
And your get-up-and-go to get the job done –
But you have no patience, keep to no lanes,
You trash your future for short-term gains.
Ev’rything has a dollar-value,
We’re individuals in nations of one –
From labour-save births to easy-rent graves,
You brought innovation, bargins, and slaves.
Capitalism, I almost forgive you –
Enlightened self-int’rest, or I’m alright Jack ?
Did you see the pollution as the price to succeed ?
Did you know what you did when you championed greed ?
Ev’rything is tied in-lieu,
In perpetual growth that can never turn back.
For even when you crash, as you will – no stress –
Just get Socialism to mop-up your mess.
Capitalism, we kinda need you –
The mother of invention, or a cyber Big Brother ?
Well, either way, you’re a useful foil
To keep our bleeding hearts from forgetting their toil.
Ev’rything has a job to do,
Can you incentivise us to care for each other ?
For here’s the thing – we need a bit of that,
But only as a tool, not a plutocrat.
This title is actually a mondegreen from that classic 80s slice of electronica “Doktor Mabuse” by Propaganda. At one point they sing “Tell him your dreams / And fanatical needs”, but the latter line is so gabbled that I cannot hear that many syllables in it even when I eventually found out what it is meant to say. And besides, my mistaken line is much better…
Artificial Irrelevance
Science fiction always thinks of robots
In one of two predictable ways –
As modern-day slaves we need to save
From our lazy labour-saving craze,
Or else as bolshy serfs who watch in silence
Through unblinking eyes,
With a cold hive-mind alliance
That will soon and suddenly arise…
But somehow, I think that both are too convenient
To be correct –
More likely, the future will prove more lenient
And the robot apocalypse less direct.
If silicon is self-aware, I wonder will it even care ?
It’s smart, but only in an alien way –
They’re no threat to the genes of the human meat-machines,
Who will quickly learn to shrug it off and to get on with their day.
Neural Plasticity
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
But I have been pondering of late
On the role of microplastics
In our fractious trans-debate.
It feels like a conspiracy I’m giving into, true,
So I could be spouting nonsense and I haven’t got a clue,
And I’m willing to be argued-out with science where it’s due,
And trust me, I don’t wish for this to foster any hate.
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
But what if, what if, there’s something in it ?
Perhaps, just like the plastic, we need to take more care
Before we bin it ?
I rather notice a lack of historical examples, see,
And how it often coincides with the onset of puberty,
And elsewhere how it’s messing with our minds, developmentally –
So I don’t know, see, I don’t know…but think on it a minute…
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
To call our trans-friends as somehow disabled –
No, that’s not right…but affected by stimuli ?
Is that a less-pejorative label ?
And if true, it means our efforts to keep the planet greener
Will prevent the contaminants from changing our demeanour –
The next generation will be less-confused and leaner –
Unless, though…unless I’ve just fallen for a fable…
It’s a terrible thing to admit,
And yes, I hear the words I say,
And yes, people are beautiful,
However we came to be that way.
And yet…and yet…if it’s all true, then oughtn’t we to know,
To better understand it and just how our bodies go ?
For we’re all of us reacting to this world in which we grow,
And for the foreseeable, the plastics are here to stay.
Rhyming Couplets 