Unfinished
Must not lie back on the poems I’ve written,
Those sonnets and couplets are all in the past –
Thoughts from a week ago, month ago, years,
Thoughts of their moment, but never my last.
Haven’t I changed since, even a little bit ?
Diff’rently conscious, evolving, hard-won.
Got to keep writing, keep feeling, keep living,
For what good’s a poet who thinks their work done ?
Biblio Tech
Every gentleman fills up his library:
Every manor and palace and hall
Has a room full of shelving that’s crammed full of bindings,
All equally mannered and equally tall.
And nowhere is half a row empty,
And nowhere are bookstacks for want of a board.
Do gentlemen skim for as long as they’ve shelving,
Then quit once their volumes are suitably stored ?
April the 6th
First, stick with a calendar
That clearly isn’t fit for purpose –
Stick with it because, old son,
That’s just the way we’ve always done.
Tradition is a glut of yesterdays,
With wayward dates in surplus –
Till our times are forced to shift
(Yet still two hundred years adrift).
Then hack eleven days off all at once –
A week-and-a-half, just done away –
And then a twelfth is added, see,
For the non-leaping century.
(But next time round – it isn’t,
Cos it isn’t, cos that’s what they say.)
And that is why our pounds and pence
Outweigh our bloody common sense !
Can you imagine having to line your tax year up with your calendar year ? Like much of the world does ? We’ll have no such convenience here !
The Price of Knowledge
Once I was a student,
And a dreamy kid who wanted to know more.
I went to find out what it meant,
To study art and life and metaphor.
And though I had a cocky gob,
I’m not sure I was quite the nation’s cream.
It didn’t lead me to a job –
But oh, it surely taught me how to dream.
I was pretty broke back then,
But I received a grant to help me through –
And when I passed, and stowed my pen,
I looked upon the world as something new.
I found some work, I found some mates,
And neither needed much of what I’d learned –
But still it opened up the gates,
And gave me confidence that I had earned.
So now I gladly pay my taxes,
Pay my way, and never ride for free –
So when I hear of fiscal axes,
Spare a thought for who we used to be –
For loans and debt will only scare
The very ones you think superfluous –
So tax me more ! It’s only fair,
To help out all the dreamy kids like us.
Cruci-Fiction
“And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.”
– Mark 15:33
An eclipse, right ? It sounds so fine,
Especially when we learn of one,
A total seen in ’29.
Alas, we now can calculate
Down to the nearest minute
And the nearest mile its fate –
And this one was November,
And only nine-tenths partial there –
The dark was still a glowing ember.
The near-miss of ’29 –
The sky was dim, the air was chill,
But the Sun could still outshine.
An hour or two round noon –
All build-up with no climax, though,
Then over far too soon.
And anyway, it just won’t do –
For Passover was always held
When the Moon was full, not new.
But what about a Lunar one ?
There’s one in April ’33,
At sunset too – job done !
Except…it’s partial, still quite bright,
And it didn’t last an hour in all,
And the only darkness comes with night.
Some suggest volcanic ash instead –
Though that would last for weeks, and stretch
Throughout the Eastern Med.
Maybe just a heavy storm ?
The legend doesn’t mention rain,
But thunderheads might fit the form.
And yet…is that the best that God
Can rustle up ? A gloomy afternoon ?
His climax barely gets a nod.
We’re better off with desert dust –
When heavy in the atmosphere
It tints the Moon with rust.
But as the moon sails higher,
So the dust is less through which we peer –
So this one’s not a flyer.
And anyway, how come
There was no-one else wrote down the fact
Of what should strike them dumb ?
Three full hours of dark,
Before the sun had even set ?
Now that should leave its mark !
In our hearts, we know the score –
The sky did not go dark that day.
The world still turned, just as before.
Easter Rising
April – Month of Aphrodite,
Flirting with fertility.
The earth responds to her almighty,
Springing with virility.
Tributes thrust from out the ground
With kinaesthetic keenness,
As bulbs are bursting, bound by bound,
To hail the month of Venus.
Easter was a goddess too,
And once she wooed the blooms aloft –
She called them up, and up they grew,
Her sun was warm, her rain was soft.
Forget the death her name evokes,
Forget the manly, fabled sin.
Let’s open blinds and loosen cloaks
To let her April in.
Sprung
Now that Winter’s easing,
And the Sun is breaking cover,
Then what could be more pleasing
Than to wake from hibernating with my lover ?
And as the sap is rushing
And the Spring is turning bold,
Then what could be more crushing
Than to hear she wants to clean-out with the old ?
We’d clung to one-another,
While the Winter held us in its thrall,
I thought she was my lover,
But I guess that April makes fools of us all.
Now with lambs in clover
And the daylight on the rise,
So she wants to be a rover
And she wants to try the Springtime on for size.
She slips out after equinox
With all the world at play,
By the changing of the clocks,
Then I know the cruellest month’s not far away.
With the first song of the skylark
And the golden tulips growing tall,
She’s off to find another mark –
I guess that April makes fools of us all.
Gulls & Marks
April only makes a fool of fools,
But that is all of us.
We’re all believers, come our turn,
Who rarely twig and rarely learn.
We’re far too busy-bees to question rules,
We’re far too nice to suss.
Not all the time, it’s true, but then
We’ll soon enough be fooled agen.
April only sets the trap, and waits –
It’s us who makes it spring.
It’s up to us if we succumb,
If we’re the sharp or we’re the dumb.
And if we spy the ruse, and shun the bait,
We still admire the sting –
For gullibility, it seems,
Will spark our love and build our dreams.
April only gives us all a chance
To fool our foolish selves –
And boy, we’re ruthless in our art,
We know our weaknesses by heart !
We never see the cunning serpent’s glance
When we are rolling twelves –
Reality is harsh and glum,
So keep on fooling us till kingdom come.
I Want to Believe
Yes, I believed you when you told me
What you’d lately overheard –
The more bizarre, the more you sold me,
Gasping ev’ry neon word.
For you confirmed my long suspicion,
Secrets from the other side
That I now learned without permission
And which they had fought to hide.
But then, then you snatched away your proof,
In a manner so offhand-cruel
To this lonely seeker of the truth
With an oh-so-cheerful “April fool !”
My face went as red as my vision,
And my pride with my stammered denial
As I drowned on a wave of derision,
Spat on by my own inner bile.
But if you hadn’t blown the gaffe,
I’d still believe the stuff you’d spun
For what to you is just a laugh,
To me, for once, was a moment in the sun.
Trumpet Solo
Daffodil, poor daffodil,
Stood all alone upon the hill.
Where’s the dancing crowd beside you ?
Where’s your golden host ? Denied you !
Fluttering beneath the trees,
There surely should be more of these…?
As warmly blows the westering,
Are you the scout to test the Spring ?
Or last to rise, too long abed,
Who’s missed his chance for getting wed ?
Some blooms can stand alone and proud –
But you look lonely as a cloud.
Rhyming Couplets 