Dune
The desert is a beach
That has never known the sea,
A desiccated ocean
Where the bed has broken free,
A long-abandoned ruin
Where the rainclouds never play,
A once-abundant jungle
Where the trees have drained away.
The heat above, the cold below,
The sand will flood, the sand will flow,
And the waves are high, but the tide is slow,
And the haze is a shimmering spray.
Bio-Radio
Telepathy – could it be radio ?
Could we ever evolve to receive it ?
You’d better believe it !
Pigeon already can, you know,
Or at least, the magnetic field,
So science has revealed.
And then there’s electricity,
Made by the platypus and eel
To help them stun or feel.
And, for sheer simplicity,
We all see visible light, or course –
Well, that’s the self-same force !
But could we ever transmit ?
Even bio-luminescence,
Is a rare and gloomy presence,
Though it looks like it might fit –
Lengthening the waves it sends,
Detected only by its friends
Who see much deeper in the red –
Though still strictly line-of-sight,
And not exactly bright.
So next – a wire inside the head,
An aerial – but what does it solve ?
And how could it ever evolve ?
And the energy required
To beam-out further than a voice
Will never make it nature’s choice.
No, we’ll never be wired,
We’ll never buzz with secret speech –
At least, not till we’re cyborgs each…
Any artists may already be familiar with Inktober, where every day reveals a new word to prompt an lunch-hour’s doodle or a quick sketch on the train home.
Well, I decided to take some of those words as titles in an attempt to beat back the block. So this week (in the wrong month), I present my contribution to Inktober 2020.
Ah poetry – the consolation prize for those who can’t draw.
Unvictus
Blockbusting, balls-walling, entrepreneur,
Overman-achieving and Sorbonne-viveur,
Moving-and-shaking and never-make mistaking –
God, I could never be so bold !
I’m the one who failed to get to know you,
I’m the one it’s easy to say no to,
Nobody’s enemy, nobody’s go-to,
And always the last one to be told.
I know that you work hard, but always with results,
You go the extra yard, but you don’t do nuts-and-bolts
It’s down to me to tidy up and lock the doors at night,
While you’re off making masterplans to set the town alight.
I’m not like you, off to change the world again,
The hero of the story, the driver of the train,
The leader and infallible, the oysters and champagne,
The charismatic marvel to behold !
We cannot all be actors, we cannot all be confident,
We cannot all ignore the inner voice that never gives consent.
I guess I don’t blame you, when your talents are so rife –
And when even I would toss aside the novel of my life.
You’re the exception, but you think that you’re the mean,
It’s only for your eyes that the world is bright and keen,
While I’m drowning in the wake of wherever you have been –
But hey, that’s just the way the dice were rolled.
Heroic Verse
Bloodaxe Books are publishers of poetry –
And what a name !
As though these are the sagas of berserkers
Seeking Thor and fame,
For telling down the trestles of the feasting hall
From lord to knight,
Or singing by the troubadours to mistresses
By candlelight.
Odes to ale and hymns to war,
And saucy wenches by the score –
To lustily recount and roar,
And ready for a fight.
Or razor-sharp in their attacks,
From broadside blasts to cutting hacks –
Their impish imprint swings the axe
To let their verses bite.
All my teenage years I sought
For such a flame –
Till, furnace-wrought, it came !
Not for them, one conjures, the namby-pamby
Hearts on sleeves –
Nor whinging of confessionals,
Or whimsies to the Autumn leaves –
No, these are the words of men of action,
And dames of destiny,
To stir my loins and quick my heart
And never rest in me.
Yet much of what they print is dry –
Their blade is dull, their name a lie –
A rubber-and-ketchup alibi
That’s sorely testing me.
So spare me flabby free-verse faff,
And mopey milksops full of chaff –
I need good craic to blow the gaff
And hone the best of me.
I guess what they do has its place,
But all the same,
It’s such a waste of a name…
Foreword & Forewarned
Dear reader, thumbing through my book –
Allow me to ally your quarm,
Dear reader: you shall fetch no harm
Within – for ev’rywhere you look,
I promise you shall only find
Here poems with their lines entwined
In rhymes and rhymes which lace and bind
Agreeably with eye and hook.
Nowhere in my whole collection
Shall you need to choke a groan
At all the orphans, all alone,
With friendless lines in disconnection.
Barely noticing their neighbours,
Such lines flail with blunted sabres,
Never pooling all their labours,
Pulling ev’ry-which direction.
Dear reader, pondering my book –
Feel free, take your time.
Take the long and thoughtful look
And do not worry – they all rhyme.
Cyclamens
In the Summer’s heat I bought ’em,
And they barely raised a leaf –
But here in the depths of Autumn
As the roses come to grief,
And while the first of frost is looming,
With the pumpkins come and gone,
So now the cyclamens are blooming
Just as though the sun still shone.
What Have We Learned ?
I know it doesn’t feel like it,
Especially on the news,
But the world is getting safer all the same.
Wars are killing fewer,
Though it’s hard to spot the clues
In the endless rounds of jingo, spin, and blame.
But there, buried in statistics,
Proof is waiting to be found
That murder, rape, and vi’lence are all down.
We’ve never had a world so good
As this world here, right now –
Better than our hope could dare allow.
It never was forgone,
It’s taken so much hard work to achieve –
Work we never knew that we could do,
Was going on.
So ev’ry time we heave,
It seems we get a little calmer,
And we get a little kinder,
Though we need the odd reminder to believe.
And yet,
We know it doesn’t feel like it,
Especially on the news –
For all this peace, there’s not that much about.
We’re killing people daily,
And ev’ry time we do, we lose –
So war is down, but war is far from out.
Our angels may be better,
But our angels still fall short of best –
The world is getting good, but not yet blessed.
Our progress may be progress,
But it’s coming far too slow –
We cannot wait for fairer winds to blow.
It never is forgone,
And all this work could quickly fall apart –
The darkest days of our old ways
Could yet be set upon.
Let’s hope that we are smart –
We haven’t time for shock and awe,
We haven’t time to settle scores –
We need to stop the wars before they start.
Flying the Flag
Come and join the army,
Risk your life each day,
Occupying deserts
For below the av’rage pay.
Politicians praise us,
They’ve always got our backs,
But then they go and sub us all
A pittance, less the tax.
Come and join the army,
Buzz off all your locks,
See the world, then shoot it,
And spread about the pox.
Tabloids love us, lefties hate us,
Locals try to make us bleed –
So hire us cut-price killers
For the cost of chicken-feed.
Macaroni
Patsy Doe, a girl that I know,
Hates semolina second to none –
She find it just so stodgy-slow
When puddings are meant to be fun !
Her mamma tells her “Patsy, really !
It’s only a bowl of unmolded spaghetti.
Just think of it as chopped-up fusilli,
And eat up all your dessert already.”
(Ah, poor mamma, you’ve no idea just what you’ve done !)
From this moment on, young Patsy
Becomes enamoured by dried clumps of wheat –
She reads gluttonously, so that she
Can understand each straw and sheet –
Strings and pens and pipes and worms,
Shells and wheels and butterflies –
So many forms, so many terms,
She wants to try them all for size.
(Ah, poor mamma, so many types to cook and eat !)
So Patsy learns the difference
Of tagliatelle and fettucini,
(Like how her brother can tell at a glance
A Maserati from Lamborghini.)
She tells her fam’ly of how Columbus
Ate up his pasta dry, of course –
Until he discovered the tomato, thus
He finally created the perfect sauce.
(Ah, poor mamma, too much pasta means no bikini !)
Patsy Doe, a girl that I know,
Finds carb makes her grow up faster –
Time to shake up the status quo
And swap her olive oil for castor.
Enough of the childish alphabetti,
And ravioli parcels with loot in –
With Atkins, maybe she’ll be less sweaty,
And none of the cool kids are eating gluten.
(Ah, poor mamma, with cupboards full of uncooked pasta…)
Rhyming Couplets 