Mongers
We used to be just simple merchants –
Iron, fish, and cheese,
And jack-of-produce costermen –
The traders in the bare necessities.
But now we’re only spoken off
As rumour, scare, and war –
We’re jack-the-lads of shadowmen,
Now hawking abstract concepts door-to-door.
Intwinned & Intwined
My brother is a part of me,
I carry him within
He will forever be my twin.
We joined our forces in the womb,
Became a greater whole,
The soul with whom I share my soul.
Behind these eyes, within this skin,
Above our common tongue –
Our mutual breath is in each lung,
But in our synapses we part,
Although I hear his thoughts –
They burn in me like sparks in quartz.
But those are his, that other voice,
That telepathic call –
I have no choice but hear them all.
For he’s the evil, I’m the nice,
Yet brothers of the blood –
Our heart beats twice, our sinews flood,
And we will fight to shine or sin
As only brothers could…
I mostly win – that’s why I’m good.
But don’t be shocked and don’t blame me
When he must have his fun –
For we are we, and we are one.
Auto-Eulogy
I lived the life I lived because
I found myself alive with life to spare.
I sang the songs I sang because
The songs were short, and cheap, and ev’rywhere.
I did the things I did because
The things I did were needing to be done.
I trod the path I trod because
I had to tread a path, and here was one.
Pollarding
Last Autumn, all your leaves came down –
Just like they must each year.
But seeing them when dead and brown,
And unlike all the rest in town,
Is just too late, I fear.
I should have seen them all when green !
But now I wondered – what tree had we here ?
Big, they were, the largest, broadest leaves
In all this urban wood
And finger-lobed, for holding-up the eaves,
And poking now from gutter-sleeves
About the neighbourhood.
My thought was fig, with leaves that big,
Yet far too gropey to do Eve much good.
But I, alas, might never even know,
For once your leaves were shed –
The shears came out and brought you low,
As all your branches had to go
And left your trunk for dead.
No tree could sleep with cuts so deep –
You surely won’t be rising out of bed…
April was well underway before
Your twigs began to sprout.
And then, such tiny hands they bore,
As ev’ry day a couple more
To prove you yet were stout.
At this rate Fall would claim them all
Ere half the sun-grab hands were even out !
But then I looked a little lower,
Where some suckers crowd the roots –
While your wounds may heal the slower,
Round your foot you’re still a grower
Shooting out a dozen shoots.
Succour feeders, weed succeeders,
Sucking sunshine into fruits.
May saw plenty spindly upper twigs –
A hedgehog on each bough,
To carry leaves, so close, so big,
As if they’d snap right off the rig,
But seemed to cling on anyhow.
As June grew late, they put on weight
As fleshy forearms now.
By summer, something stirred in me,
A memory about the bumps
That swell no larger than a pea –
They’re really next’s year’s fruits-to-be.
But here, of course, there were no lumps –
For what life stirred was secateured
Down to your barest stumps.
So will I have to wait another year
To see your fruits in Fall ?
I wonder if I’ll still be here…
You will, of course, that much is clear –
You’re bursting branches big and small.
Unless your twigs are lacking figs
Because you never were a fig at all…
Song of Summer
Summer makes the Spring give way to her,
She makes the roses purr,
The strawb’ries blush, the bubbles grin,
As Summer brings the Summer in.
Summer makes the Spring her sideman,
Summer takes the stage by thunderstorm,
Her beaches swarm, her waltzers spin
As Summer brings the Summer in.
Summer makes the Autumn wait his turn,
But still the year must churn,
The days must short, the rains must spout
As Summer sweeps the Summer out.
Summer always comes again,
When Summer takes possession of the sky –
Her dragons fly, her birds give song,
As Summer shines all Summer long.
Suburban Antares
Right at the bottom of the Zodiac, he lies –
At the bottom of the garden, at the bottom of the sky –
Barely rising high enough above the privet hedges,
As he’s hugging the horizon – just a hello and goodbye.
Battling through the light-infested night (plus those long evenings),
Peeking out from skies that are perpetually grey –
From the top floor of a tower block, I bet he looks a treat,
But for us, he’s always hidden by the roofs across the way.
Damnatio ad Bestias
The lions weren’t alone in the Colosseum
To kill the priests –
Not that there were none,
But the Romans also had their fun
With boars, and bulls, and dogs, especially dogs,
To be the beasts.
Their moment was the lunchtime lull
When public executions filled the interval –
And some, I guess, were Christians,
Making up the Lions’ feasts.
Of course, a Colosseum death
Was for the criminals –
And Christians weren’t that often used
To feed the animals.
Persecution was rarer than lions –
It happened, but only in spurts.
But how to vilify Roman indiff’rence
And un-martyred lack-of-hurts ?
We needed far more dramatic saints,
So unleash the lions and uncork the paints !
Harvest Song
Reapers sweep the scythe
And sheafers bush the sheaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathering the grain –
Threshers thresh the flail
To tear the seed from leaf –
Gathering the harvest,
Holding off the rain –
Winnow-women winnow,
And siever-maidens sieve,
Prizing out the pearls
That the golden ears give –
For to the corn we’re born,
And by the wheat we live.
Bringing home the harvest down the lane.
Once it took a village,
And ev’ry boy to spare –
Gathering the harvest,
Stooked and ricked and mown –
Now it takes machines,
With no use for man or mare –
Gathering the harvest,
Gathered to the bone –
Children of the corn
And cottage-kitchen wives
Are spared the broken backs
And spared the broken lives,
With Summers never shorn
By the sweeping Reaper’s scythes –
So bring us home the harvest on your own.
Hydrogen Fusion
H⁺ + H⁺ → D⁺ + e⁺ + νₑ
D⁺ + H⁺ → ³He⁺ + γ
³He⁺ + ³He⁺ → ⁴He²⁺ + H⁺ + H⁺
H-plus plus H-plus is D-plus,
D-plus plus H-plus, we suss,
Is positively He-3-plus,
He-3-plus twice is thus
An H-plus twice plus He-4-plus –
Plus the two H-plusses free,
To go and make some more for us.
Which is to say, a Hydrogen
Without its lone electron,
Meets another, and their new connection
Merges to Deuterium,
When another Hydrogen jumps-in
To gin them up to Helium,
Which crashes with another one –
Whereby, two Hydrogens say ‘bye’,
And out they fly, ad nauseum.
But this whole synthesis, you know,
This H-&-H-combining show,
Is not so clean –
For it also makes a new neutrino,
Indestructible and lean –
It doesn’t do much, though,
Except to leave -and there it’s keen !
It’s shooting through – just watch it go !
Except you can’t, it can’t be seen…
But H & H will also make
A beta particle –
A beta-plus, a positron,
That’s looking with much spryness
How to get it on with beta-minus –
Say a lone electron
That has lost its Hydrogen –
Birthing photon-twins once done,
That one bright day will light the Sun.
‘He’ above is said with two syllables – Aitch-Ee.
We Are Legion
We’re too many, that’s the trouble,
But what to do ?
Who would wish a war to thin the herd
Down to a few ?
Gone are cities brought to rubble,
Gone the Black Death’s fatal third.
We’re safe in our hygienic bubble –
Breeding, undeterred !
Climate change is next to tackle,
Pollution, too –
But even if we don’t, we’ll still be here,
If black and blue.
As a species, though ramshackle,
We won’t go extinct, don’t fear –
Other creatures take the flack,
But we won’t disappear.
For all our poverty and pillage,
Give us our due –
We’re capable of so much common sense
To pull us through.
We’re running out of land for tillage,
Cities growing far too dense –
Time to shrink down to a village,
Time for abstinence !
It’s time to start doing our bit by not doing our bit…
Rhyming Couplets 