Stoneleigh
It must be nice to live in Stoneleigh
when the summer’s just begun,
with all those wretched butterflies flying,
basking in the sun.
And oh! The cost of ice cream,
and the sticky mess it makes
when spilt on picnic hamper
as we sit here by the lake.
Now the car is overheating
and the leather seats are burning;
the sun so hot is overhead
and for the clouds I’m yearning.
And oh! How light the evenings are,
they’re longer than last week’s.
And just because we’re here,
That doesn’t mean we have to speak.
So come home to my bungalow
and sip a little wine,
and sample all the comforts
of this humble life of mine.
For fantasy is relative, but death is absolute.
Can you be a flautist if you haven’t got a flute?
Poems published October 2011, but written some time before
Questions
Is it crime to want justice?
Do we need war to keep peace?
How do non-starters know when to begin?
And when do the unstarted cease?
And when all the people who love me have died
who will read this little piece?
Nature
Give me a banjo, I’ll give you a tune,
And we’ll sing ’til the hills hide the reddy brown Moon.
It’s dusk, and the Day and the Night are as one
(and the colours of one to the other can run)
- just balanced, and neither with love nor with hate,
they’ll stay as they are ’til for Day it’s too late.
Irrespective of humans’ adventurous ways,
the shift work of dark nights and numerous days
will continue
- just watched by Earth-Woman and -Man -
until it’s decided they no longer can.
Transient
Create a pattern in your mind, and call it something nice,
Then you’ll be an artist, just like Billy Price.
He did some funny drawings, they were all in his head,
He got pissed off forgetting them when he went off to bed.
What?
Life, death and immortality
- is that all there is?
Insanity?
Hallucination, mind game – all the same.
Not insane, just lucky – maybe plucky.
Reality is mucky – whatever your endeavour
You’re clever if you’re not here.
Is it clear?
Lines upon the Cyprus coast
I crouched right down to infant size and gazed with childlike wonder
at the gentle pool before my eyes – then heard the violent thunder.
Then, further still, as quiet as mice, there hung the stars
that gaze down from their paradise. And twice as far
- or so it seemed to me that day -
the sky just ended.
And as the moonlight swam across the bay, my soul extended
out beyond the dust-dry hills behind
that never needed names
and simultaneously, unkind, a jet plane did the same.
My spirit climbed with delicate ease, and yet so strong,
up through tangled bushes, rocks and trees, where it belongs.
Then all at once, my spirit dived, in awe, into the pool,
where hermit crab and I could dwell: the wise one and the fool.
And as with daylight my euphoria faded in the Sun,
I perceived the two worlds separated that had been one.
Sensory deprivation
I closed my eyes the other day, and then I put in earplugs;
I dulled my sense of feeling with some soft and subtle drugs.
My mouth I filled with water, so I wouldn’t taste a thing,
And then I blocked my nose to stop the smells from coming in.
I hoped by this eradication of all good and bad sensation
to move towards my destination by means of sensory deprivation.
What should I tell you?
Should I tell you that the stars are souls of poor departed children?
Shining down from heaven, there with God?
Should I tell you that our ancestors watch over you?
Stamping on your enemies, roughshod?
Should I tell you there is magic in this sad and cruel world?
That fate will treat you kindly as a rule?
Should I tell you everything is fair in love and war?
Would that make you, or me, a fool?
Should I tell you that your soul will live forever?
Will that ease the pain, and comfort you?
Should I tell you there will be another life
when this one’s spent and you are through?
Or should I tell you there’s no rhyme or reason
that you or I – all this – exists at all?
The truth is hidden, and will forever be;
but must we turn away from it intentionally?
Poetry Corner
A person once recited
a poet’s ‘work of truth’
and I decide I’m justified
as any other sleuth
to criticise the exercise
of writing such a work
when even he, some visionary,
was probably just as much a jerk
- as me.
More than meets the eye
How often have I stood at crossroads such as this and thought
- as traffic passes this and that way down each thoroughfare -
how limited our view quite naturally is
of all there is of which to be aware.
