Heavy
As Atlas said to Sisyphus,
To lift the latter’s frown:
“We bear a heavy burden,
But don’t let it drag you down.”
As Sisyphus replied to Atlas,
In a weary wheeze –
“Huh. Yours is on your shoulders,
But mine is on my knees.”
So Atlas said to Sisyphus
“Don’t be a deadweight, dude.
You’re so intense and full-of-lead,
And warp space with your mood.”
But Sisyphus replied “Just stop !,
You’re weighing on my soul.
But I wouldn’t stand down there, mate –
This rock’s about to roll.”
Reckless
Brace yourself, cos here comes life,
Ignoring health and safety –
Where bending rules and brains is rife,
And favouring the hasty.
Sometimes, being stupid pays,
And consequences turn out flat –
If not tomorrow, then today,
And here today is where it’s at.
It isn’t good advice, of course,
To hope for freak results,
But ignorance can be a force,
When logic somersaults.
For sometimes chaos lurks beneath,
Ignoring all our careful sums –
So grit your loins and gird your teeth,
And take life as it comes.
Asterichthys
A sunfish may look like a sun,
And a starfish like a star –
But both are fake, for the only one that’s real –
The starriest fish by far –
Is not some Milky Way-long eel,
But Cetus – the stellar monster gar –
He’s bigger than Cancer, older than Pisces,
Swimming the span of the sky high seas.
Hoops & Smits
We’ve ringed the noses of our bulls
Since the days of ancient Sumer,
And blinged their ears with tagging tools
Since the reign of George the Third.
And sheep we’ve daubed with bright and dark
Since Beau Peep was in bloomers,
And likewise branding’s left its mark
Since pharaohs watched the herd.
And long before the Roman Legion,
Pigeons wore a metal tumour
Round their ankles, through the season,
As they carried vital word.
And falcons showed their noble’s farms –
And scientists confirmed the rumour
Of migration, through the charms
They fitted to each bird.
Deers
One deer, two deers,
That’s how or should be –
Mixing with the fishes and the sheeps.
Red deers, roe deers,
Two-by-two, or sometimes three,
If fallows really are at home for keeps.
Muntjacs and sikas,
Followed fallows over here,
And water deers are plurals now, it’s true.
For us native speakers,
We won’t raise a pedant’s tear
If all of them get ess – and mooses too !
Hazy Words
Whatever happened to ‘gloaming’ ?
Do they still say that, North of the border?
Or has it been lost in the creeping gloom
Of a Sassenach fog or a shadowy order ?
When the mist comes roaming,
We may lose sight, discard a husk,
As the twilight stretches ’cross the room,
And the gloam sinks in the dusk.
The Hollow Crown
A crown does not look fun to wear,
A deadweight furrowing the brow,
And getting in the hair.
But it I guess it has that wow !
With gold and gems to dazzle us
In equal awe and dread,
And making such a fuss –
It’s such a big hat for a big head.
But is it iron-cold in icy halls,
By any chance ?
And at your fancy balls,
Does it wobble when you dance ?
I’ve always thought tiaras look
Like all the bling without the sweat –
But those, I guess, can be mistook
For a mere coronet…
Ravelling
Penelope just cannot seem
To stitch the seam to stop her shroud –
She warps her wefts and weaves her wools,
And intermingles through the crowd.
But somehow, she can’t cast them off,
Who team around her loom –
They watch her fingers thread and pull,
To spin the fabric of the tomb.
‘Tache-less
Those clean-shaved chaps all suffer hell
From a lack of stiffened upper-lips,
Their razor-bothered mouths are far too sleek.
When it comes to cunning twirling, well,
They simply cannot get to grips –
Their naked filtrums wobble when they speak.
No rakish pencil wits
For these tongue-tied sunburned Brits,
But the unconnected stubble of the meek.
No bushy walrus manliness
On faces long on gangliness,
Whose claims to hairy days are bare-faced cheek !
Yes, it’s that time of the calendar when all we scribblers unable to draw even a stick-man are made to feel unworthy in the face of the wrist-flicking pencil-jockeys. But at least I can console myself in jotting down some words to accompany their sketches.
And for the first time, I have managed to write something for every day of the month. But this does mean that me usual Halloween-themed poems will have to share the days at the end of the month, giving you all double bubble.
And as with previous years, I’ll use it as an opportunity to display some artwork I’ve found that I enjoy, even though it sometimes has a rather tangental relationship with the poem beneath it.
Rhyming Couplets 