The Luxury of Inconsequence
I set the world to right, alone at night –
The future’s glistening.
I sit and spout all day – but that’s okay,
Cos no-one’s listening.
I plot within my head, but have no dread –
They’ll surely stay there.
A thousand plans unborn, my greatness shorn
For ev’ry grey hair.
Yet all the while they’re checked, no lives are wrecked
Upon my schemings –
My legacy’s secure, when you ignore
My fervent dreamings.
Revolution of the Seasons
May Day – the start of the long, late Spring,
When early promise at last bears shoots,
And the frigid world of the Winter King
Is losing, day-by-day, its sting,
As underground, our creeping roots
Are undermining everything.
The dawns are dawning early,
And the dark is in retreat –
A wind of change is blowing,
And to some it’s blowing sweet.
The world is waking, waking,
To the march of springing feet.
Labor Day, when the Summer turns cold,
And all that promise, though showy, is fruitless –
Or just as our efforts are harvesting gold,
So they all dry up and lose their hold –
As footings, once secure, prove rootless,
Infiltrated by bugs and mould.
The dusk is gaining daily,
And the storms are in the skies,
While the chill is on the breeze
And the breeze is on the rise,
And the world is sleeping, sleeping,
As the hoar-frosts crystallise.
A Life at the Living
Here we go again, another day,
Much like the day before,
Much like tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Leading on to evermore.
So here we go again, along the way –
At least we know the score,
As neither happiness nor sorrow,
But the daily drills that bore.
It shouldn’t be like this, we know,
This life, it shouldn’t be like this,
But where did all our future go,
With so few larks to reminisce ?
We cursed how Sundays crept so slow,
Now years of them have been and gone,
With precious little work to show –
Just what the hell was going on ?
I guess we had a time or two –
I bet we did, in all that time,
In all the endless pantomime,
We must have done what young folk do.
But things have settled down, of course,
Along the way, we’ve settled down
In quiet suburbs out-of-town,
And joined the lonely labour force.
And here we go again, another day,
Just like the year before,
Just like the way we always swore
We’d never let become this grey.
But we were young and so naive
To think that we were special then,
To never lose and never grieve –
Till slowly if turned into when.
It shouldn’t be like this, we know,
This life. It needn’t be like this.
If we can just recall the bliss
Before the endless status quo.
If only for a moment, let us play
Upon a Sunday slow –
Tomorrows and tomorrows come and go,
But now is still today.
Real Ladies Prefer Cubic Zirconium
Diamond – as hard as the universe –
A nebula trapped under ice.
Forged in the heart of a supernova,
Polished by continents tumble‘ing over.
Diamond – as hard as a warlord’s curse –
Each sparkle a bullet, the price.
Landscapes are pillaged for so little won –
Carbon for carbon, a thousand to one.
I suppose the pecksniffs will insist that zirconium can only refer to the elemental metal, and that the crystaline form of the dioxide should be referred to as cubic zirconia – but since I never listen to pecksniffs I can’t be sure.
Poetic Truth
1.
You are so wrong, so very very wrong,
To think that rhymes wreck the verse.
Sure, they get used where they don’t belong,
And when ill-used are a curse.
And yes, they take their time to mature
In the life of the poet’s pen –
They cannot be nervous, must always be sure,
And practiced agen and agen.
2.
They write their verses blank and free,
And barely bait the hook –
But Keats and Frost and Tennyson
Can still be grasped by anyone.
They write their verses free and blank,
And barely sell a book –
While Blake and Burns and Betjamin
Can still sell-out and fetch ’em in.
3.
I tell myself, its cos they rhyme –
They hate me that, they hate me that.
I know my verse is in its prime –
They must see that, they must see that.
But still I always get rejected,
While some prosy tripe’s selected.
Must be just how I suspected –
Must be that, it must be that.
The Click
Ev’rywhere in poetry,
Ev’ryone must show it free –
Jarring, scaring, woe-is-me –
Fashion of the times.
Me, I think their mumbling knows,
Ev’rybody’s writing prose –
But not I, I’m fighting those –
Gotta have my rhymes.
Gotta have my flowitry,
My meenie minie moetry,
My Edgar Allen Poetry –
Rhythm is no crime !
Even when it strains my lung,
Even when it stains my tongue,
Even when my brain is wrung –
I sing it till it chimes.
Elevenses
Polly Dacktle has ten fingers,
(Well, eight fingers,
And two thumbs.)
Polly Dacktle has ten fingers,
But there lingers…
What’s that…Crumbs !
Look ! She also has a spare
Upon her hand, just waiting there –
So if another needs repair,
Then out her extra digit comes.
Of course, it’s always there, if needed –
And if not, it’s there unheeded –
Always there, the ten exceeded.
(Good for doing tricky sums.)
Polly Dacktle must wear mittens,
Only mittens,
Never gloves.
Polly Dacktle must wear mittens,
Like her kittens.
(Not like doves.)
She wants fingers free to move
With ev’ry digit in its groove –
And so with scissors she’ll improve –
She snips and tears and pulls and shoves.
Now she has contrived to riddle
There a hole ’tween Ring and Middle
Where her spare can flex and fiddle,
(Just how Polly Dacktle loves.)
Polly Dacktle learns piano,
Learns piano
From her Teach.
Polly Dacktle likes piano
(Miss Delano’s
such a peach.)
Polly has to practice scales
And stretch for keys, but never fails –
Her widened span just skips and sails
And holds all music in her reach.
Gripping racquets, catching balls,
And shooting baskets, climbing walls,
Or sculpting clay, and dialing calls –
Polly scores at all and each.
Polly Dacktle isn’t evil.
Never evil,
Often good.
Polly Dacktle isn’t evil –
(Nor’s the weevil
In the wood.)
Neither one is plotting danger
Just because their look is stranger.
Polly’s fine, so never change
Her many-multi-fingerhood.
Shake her hand – there’s no electrics,
No prosthetics, no deceptricks.
She can touch in asymetrics.
(Don’t you sometimes wish you could ?)
Second-Hand Elegy
Someone I sort-of kind-of knew, I learn has died.
I heard the should-be-sadder news today, a fortnight on.
It feels too late for grieving, so I haven’t cried –
I vaguely wish I could, but still I’m dry inside.
For truth – I feel removed, my slightly-closeness gone –
I know I have no right to, but I feel a touch denied.
But that’s alright, it’s just a touch,
And maybe they’d admit that they would only half-remember me.
I know I knew them not so much,
But let me dwell a bit upon their insufficient memory.
Bankrupt Holiday
Bank Holiday Monday –
It’s just two Sundays in a row.
Why must we clone the one day
Where the time ticks-by so slow ?
The world is closed by three,
As people lose their appetite –
And though we know tomorrow’s free,
We stay home Sunday night.
Then comes the dreaded day
When we have to do stuff, rain or gust,
We must not let it waste away
Without the National Trust.
But here’s a thought, I say,
When we need a break to stay ahead –
Let’s all take off a Friday,
And get two Saturdays instead !
Here Today
We’ll never know when our end shall be,
The screen goes black, the credits roll,
And wide awake or in our sleep,
We’ll never know we lack a soul.
Perhaps that’s why for some it’s tempting
Taking matters in control.
I’ll never know how they make the choice,
And they, alas, aren’t here to tell –
Chronic pain or chronic guilt,
Or pits of lonely, muffled hell ?
I hope it’s not intense romantic folly
That has cast its spell.
I’ll never know how they feel that way,
So desperate to shed the weight –
Yet if I’m honest, right now in my life
Most things are not so great
But never for a moment do I
Seriously contemplate.
I’ll never know, and I hope I never will
What makes them run aground.
There’s always a chance of beauty,
And belief it can be found –
I’m certain that I’ll kick this slump
And you’ll be seeing me around.
Rhyming Couplets 