Sunday 28 December 2014

On Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Birthday, Cheerfulness Taught by Reason Revisited.

Alas, we're still too ready to complain,
To think too much about our selfish needs,
To see the sunlit garden full of weeds.
Reciting grievances, we don't refrain;
The catechism of our woes seems vain,
Demands attention constantly and seeds
Yet further mournfulness, and then our deeds
Can't help us, we are victims and so must remain.
Oh pusillanimous hearts be comforted;
We all of us our destinies can shape;
Can all determine on a course instead
Of bowing to our 'fate'.  We can escape,
Free ourselves from fashion's tyranny, tread
The path of cheerfulness, wrapped in reason's cape.

A Farewell Do (rondeau redoublé)


Because this is the end, a celebration
Not rejoicing in finality, just a line,
To show the clear demarcation
Between the person you were once and the fine
One you are now, with hindsight; to combine
Reality with memory and fiction. The restoration
Of you as the person whom we define,
Because this is the end, a celebration,
By all things positive. Appreciation
Of real good and good intention.  We pine
For you now you've left. This declaration,
Not rejoicing in finality, just a line
Or two to point out your achievements must align
The truth with the ideal version.  By implication
This illustrates our need always to refine,
To show the clear demarcation
Between messy reality and idealisation.
It's not a funeral, none of us is grave, the wine
Flows freely. We rejoice in positive simplification.
Between the person you were once and the fine
One we say you are now, is a sign.
It reads "Accept and remember without question,
Do not towards the gritty truth incline,
Because this is the end."

Funeral Coat

The long black coat hangs from the bedroom door.
It speaks of death in black exaggeration.
I wish you didn't fit it any more.
Grim-reaper-like in my imagination
It seems to bide its time, makes silent proclamation
Of intent. Were it my death I wouldn't bore
You with this worrying, such things we face: regard as preparation.
The long black coat hangs from the bedroom door;
And threatens, not me, but all those whom I love.  And yet, before
I am myself snuffed out, oblivious, through medication,
I must find strength to suffer and endure.
It speaks of death in black exaggeration.
It offers nothing hopeful, consolation
Could not be further from me now.  I can't restore
My mind to peaceful happiness.  In desperation,
I wish you didn't fit it any more.
Though you'd buy another.  The chore
That living would become, the devastation
Of being alone, becomes a mess of thoughts I can't explore.
Grim- reaper-like in my imagination,
The long black coat is all I hide from. There's no limitation,
Despair appears to have no boundary, no floor.
All I can offer is a prayer of supplication.
A symbol of death hangs from the bedroom door:
The long black coat.

Advice When Renewing a Passport Photo

Look straight ahead
And let your jowls sag.
Open wide your strangely wonky eyes.
Don't smile, you're a miserable old bag.
Make sure your hair is flat
Don't try and tread
The fine line
Between seriousness and merriment
By making your eyes shine,
This is a document, not an experiment
In how to appear secretly happy.
You're meant to look crappy,
As you would at 4am,
Straight off the plane or the ferry.
Look as if you worry
That you aren't quite right;
You don't want to confuse
Anyone who views
Your picture by being confident.
Don't look pretty or even pretty-ish
Look a bit of a fright.
Then everyone will know you're British.


Foundation

I am become a dappled thing,
A spotted, freckled melanin
Of speckle, spattered aging skin,
Which wrinkled too and growing thin
And slightly wispy round the chin,
Is really quite revolting.
Glory be to Man for makeup in
A slappy, slathered lathering
Of sloppy cream, concealing
Such blotchy, patchy withering.


Thoughts occurring while sitting on a cold hard pew, in a cold church...Sitting on the Aga


To warm one's arse upon the Aga's domes
Makes winter bearable by heating well
One's fat. Cheeks as cold as death in homes
Devoid of stoves with perching space, tell
The story of this absence in the face
Of ladies who must bear their stately piles
As best they might. Though warmth redeems a place
From all its failings; direct heat brings smiles
Of comfort and of ease which radiate
And warms the hearts in turn of those who in receipt
Do not recoil, do not repudiate
As in ignorance of the true source of this
Benev'lent glance believe themselves the cause.
For so much joy and comfort, so much bliss
Derives from warmth come from behind; the laws
Of nature which evolved through many a year
Adapt.  Fundamentally pleasing things bring cheer!


Evidence of Old Age

Is there any evidence more depressing,
Of the nature of old age, so fast progressing,
Than the discovery, when standing cold and bare,
Of a singular albino pubic hair?
Is it right to try and pluck it out?
And what if the children hear your shout,
Because it hurts,
And come running? What should you do?
And what if, as is rumoured to be true,
Removing hair results in exponential growth,
In little spurts,
How would you cope then, when you are loathe
As it is to admit you're over the hill?
Should you resort to dye,
Or apply
Mascara
To start with until you are a
Total greybush?
Or is it better still,
To put it out of your mind,
And not to look,
Because, after all, nobody will know,
Unless you write about it on Facebook?


Your Political Ideas are Like your Lady Di Hairdo

You wear your points of view,
As you used to wear
Your Lady Di hairdo.
They aren't much to do with you,
Just a sort of camouflage.
I suspect you'd give them up
In friendly badinage
With handsome men,
But wearing vaguely left ideas
On your sleeve,
Allows you to believe
You are the right sort,
Empowers you to snort
And toss your mane,
Whinnie your disdain,
At anyone who
Thinks you
Should think them through.

Thoughts Occurring While Listening to Scheherazade on Radio 3

I didn't know there was a Scheherazade place in my head,
I imagine it fitting itself in the cracks between grey matter,
The nooks and crannies of the music, attached to hooks instead
Of more important things.  The chatter
Of neurones leaping the gaps which are filled with sound
Making up famous tunes, so they aren't gaps any more
Will probably cause senility. I will go around
Knowing lots of pieces but unable to name them, I'll bore
Everyone to death with my constant humming, sickened
By the familiarity I will be Classic FM without a DJ,
Endlessly trying to reproduce order.  The arteries, thickened
By age and cholesterol, will try and play jazz and I will blame PJ,
Assuming the exertion of pumping blood is him listening
To the sort of rubbish I always switch off, and the battle
Between classic FM and jazz record requests will be seen glistening
In my mad old eyes, as I sink and hear death's final rattle.

I Don't Want to Plug in Your Charger

I don't want to plug in your charger,
I only plugged it in yesterday.
Why do you live so precariously,
Always about to die?
The fact that you want plugging in again
Seems like a metaphor.  I have eaten a custard cream.
Make do with that, vicariously
I am at least as tired as you.
I am not going to expend more energy
Going up stairs, anyway,
I don't like the way you imply
I use up all yours, wasting the day,
Getting fat,
Sitting about Googling
Don't shut down or I will scream;
You have 4% remaining,
But you never ask what % have I.


Temptation

A massive bar of fruit and nut to eat,
In purple foil wrapped and close at hand,
Is just the thing to make a pleasant treat,
When dieting and trying to command
Your instincts. Don't try and understand
And don't ignore your inner man. For sweet
Temptation is too much.  Try to resist and
A massive bar of fruit and nut to eat
Will keep its nagging up.  Admit defeat
At first, before it melts.  You might demand
Better of yourself another day. It's neat;
In purple foil wrapped and close at hand,
Don't leave it perfect. Though it contracts as you expand,
At least you gain some heat
In the process of consumption. Anything, however bland
Is just the thing to make a pleasant treat
When dieting.  Cheese, potatoes, cold meat,
But chocolate most of all, and any brand.
So just give in, retreat!
When dieting and trying to command
Your instincts, you haven't  a hope in Hell. Don't stand
On ceremony, just dig in. Dieting is just deceit,
Dressed up as goodness.  Whatever you have planned
Is doomed to failure. Go ahead and cheat,
Eat!

Disqus

Statistically I suppose, the loonies one meets
Online, are not representative of the population.
Yet, one cannot avoid the feeling that the streets
Of cyberspace are rather crowded with 'em.  Frustration
With reality leaves those, lacking in any originality,
To revert to repeating any age old, worn out idea,
Questioning nothing.  A frugality
Of imagination cannot be compensated
For by verbal diarrhoea.
Yet such is the nature of these discussions
That any verbosity, as long as it's fashionable, over stated,
Becomes acceptable.  But cheer up!
The repercussions
Of being rude with brevity aren't too severe.


The Dishcloth Is Too Much With Us Late And Soon

This cloth is too much with us late and soon,
In rubbing and wiping we lay waste our powers,
Little we see on surfaces that's ours,
Yet we have wiped marks away; a sticky spoon
That leaves its mess, a cup made faint, half moon,
Those brown patches by the switches, at all hours
Which are wiped up now but will return like flowers,
For this, for everything, I 'm out of tune,
I'd rather play my violin all day
Than let my fingers stiffen and grow fat,
From spending days wiping these marks away,
And yet somehow I always seem to think that
My mood and musicality, the way I play
Will be improved by clean surroundings.  I'm a prat!

Closet Bastards (rondeau)

The closet bastards are to blame
they hide their thoughts as if a game
of hide and seek is what we need
when judging people. And indeed
we cannot find them wanting. Shame!
How dare they! They should speak and name
their dreadful thoughts. They're all the same!
and yet they carry on, succeed:
the closet bastards.
They act quite nicely, seem quite tame,
they're bastards though, although they're lame.
We know they're thinking's wrong and bleed
for those they harm. Are they a breed
camouflaged in niceness?  Let's frame
the closet bastards!


Friday 19 December 2014

Approaching the Winter Equinox

The days grow short, the spirits seem to sink.
Sun sets at half past three, leaving a grey
dark drabness of the mind. To try and think
and act with cheerfulness, portray
good will and make a seasonal display
of Christmas jollity, requires one to make a link
between one's endless chores and play.
The days grow short the spirits seem to sink
and one's positive emotions veer towards the brink
and tumble headlong off the cliff and drift away.
The inverse of the shadows, one feels the soul shrink.
Sun sets at half past three, leaving a grey,
dull moodiness which must betray
one's falsity, seeping, as it does, from every chink
in one's facade.  All is disarray,
dark drabness of the mind.  To try and think
in rational terms is hard.  Yet when the long pink
fingers of the sun reach out and show the day
has been a wasted one, we must rethink
and act for all we're worth with cheerfulness. Today
is not the time for self indulgence anyway.
Life's over in a blink.
Pretend at happiness, lead misery astray:
the days grow short.

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Mohammed.


Forced through the scarred and screaming space
Stitched up half a lifetime ago
You ripped your way where fibroblasts had worked their miracle.
Emerged, in violence, bloodied and lay limp
Before your first breath became a cry
That joined your mother's agonised sobbing.
A wanted thing, no embarrassment of female parts
To turn the wondrous moment into shame.
No need to think of your turn, of the time
To gouge and cut and tear your sex,
And hear your screeching pain.
Your time will be swift and simple, surgical and clean.
A fraction, a moment before awareness.
For now, there is just the joy of seeing you,
A boy, Mohammed.

Monday 1 December 2014

Photographs of my Garden on Onedrive

The summer's always beautiful, don't doubt,
For where all's brown and dead now
The garden on the internet is out
In blue, full bloom, with yellow roses anyhow.
Full and blousy drenched in scent and waiting
For the camera to snap them, quick!
Today is perfect Fruhlingsgolden day.
Tomorrow Zepherine Drouhin, Roserie de L'Hay,
And peonies, delphiniums and the frustrating
Alkanet, which is a vile weed but has a trick
Of painting May cerulean to match
The endless beauty of the summer sky.


And every year I think it isn't true,
But wait, low spirited, and think I've seen the best.
Forgetting that each year such fresh things hatch,
That life's renewed, made young again.  The rest
That winter is, wherein the flowers live in photographs,
In cyberspace, does not take any toll on real life.
Only the hand that holds the lens to try
And fix the garden, this time really at its heavenliest,
Grows older, blotchy, speckled, gnarled.

But I
Look out from the same place within my head.
And hope, that like these miracles, these photographs,
The garden of my mind is ageless yet.

Thursday 27 November 2014

Listening to Apres un Reve, Late November Afternoon


The fog, in swirls, sets out to hide the dying of the light,
The Acer's red against the grey opacity,
Merely fades into obscurity.  And sight
Becomes redundant anyway;  the only necessity
In these blissful moments,
Is the capacity to float on melody. The night,
The fire, the English drawing room fade, dream like,
And all that remains is this strange complexity;

Each note a cycle, just a frequency, 
And yet, mysteriously, loaded with beauty.

Tuesday 4 November 2014

What is the Opposite of Aubade?



The tapping of your toenails on the floor,
then silence where the runner lies along the corridor,
then over Turkey carpet at full speed
and through the air to land beside me where
I lie anticipating this ritual, this need
to bond again and to establish once more
that we belong to each other, as we did before.
Before the darkness closed our eyes
drooping my lids over sandy and tearless spheres
dried by the fire and brilliant screen
and my absence sent you to your basket
and our souls inhabited different worlds in dreams.


Like breaking fast this routine is necessity, indeed,
it is the foundation of our understanding,
not just our love but something deeper,
a telepathic link between our minds.
But it starts with this greeting, this physical connection:
your wet nose in my neck, the curve of your head,
your silky ears against my face, this convention
of  reunification after separation,
this greatly joyful meeting, which I adore.


Sunday 26 October 2014

The Love of Dog



There is a dog place in my heart that feels like love,
not real love such as one feels for one's offspring,
not friendship though, it 's something more.
It's like romantic love without the sex part,
similar in how it seems a mad obsession.
There is a dog place in my heart which seems like summer,
full of warmth and ease and joy and gladness,
that sets the image of a long white nose and two big ears
above so many other things I care for.


There is a dog place in my head and there my thoughts turn.
And in my mind I see the beautiful expression
of two round eyes which seem so full of kindness
and of tenderness and humorous ideas.
And I know that it is really a reflection
a mirror showing what I want to see.
And I know I might sometimes see, also, sadness,
but it's only there because it's a projection,
a belief the dog's in sympathy with me.

Peace and Furniture

When the hurly-burly's doing
And the anger in my head
Is swirly, whirling, and renewing
Thoughts I wish would fly instead,
Because this constant, endless brewing
Seems quite pointless
Then, I lie upon the bed
And look at Auction catalogues and lifeless
Things, though not quite dead,
Bring peace.
For here I'm viewing
Time made solid, priced but priceless
Objects crafted and before me spread
According to an ordered number showing
Sense can be established and a thread
Drawn from a dresser to a faultless
Piece of china or an ancient painting. Knowing
That the taste and knowledge of a man who looked ahead
And saw that these were worth collecting
Reaffirms my sense that nothing
Matters.  Beauty isn't truth just pleasing.

Sunday 19 October 2014

Teaching Tolerance to Class Two (two rondeaux back to back)

Are you sitting tolerantly, then we'll begin:
Now, find a partner everyone,
That's right we're going to have some fun,
Oh good!  You must have read my mind,
All same sex pairs. Now, do you find
Anything odd about this, John,
Does it seem wrong to like someone
Who is just like you?  When you've done
Pulling Leanna's hair, remind
Everyone
What we call it. That's right, gay. None
Must use that word, meanly and one
Or two of you are mean behind
My back.  Put those fingers down, kind
Children don't swear.  Damn! Bell's gone
Everyone,
Come back here at once! Right, that's it!
No playtime.  Oh all right , (little shit!)
I do know it's your human right
(To go outside and start a fight)
But today we must try and fit
Our tolerance class in. That's it, sit!
Now, shut up! We must not commit
Acts of intolerance, alright?
Come back here!
Nobody is allowed to quit
No notes from parents; the spirit
Of tolerance will be taught. Write
This: I have no choice.  Conor, don't bite
Lee .(These bloody kids are the limit)
Come back here!


Wednesday 8 October 2014

Graveyard


If God is love, He's in the graveyard buried,
out among the leaning stones, moss covered
and underneath the brambles making hedges
over ancient graves which now are wild waste.
But He is not Romantic in His presence,
He dwells too at the edges, by the field,
in new land divided neatly which seems smothered
by small graves of shiny black or speckled granite.
If God is love He dwells among the gaudy flowers,
far from the ancient yews, in open space
and in the shale and brightly coloured  gravel,
alien to the beauty of the place.
For love is not less love when it inhabits
the souls of those unsubtle in their taste.





In Praise of Rustic Brick



October light and sun's slant rays, and pink
and peach streaks in the west; elicit
from the fired clay a warm response
a glowing call, at end of day,
from russet, gold, marl, terracotta.
and if sun sinks into the earth
without a painting of the sky,
because the cloud strains every sinew
to hide the red behind the grey;
then still, at least, sun's heat 's implicit
in the rather duller colour
of the iron oxide;
as if each day, brick might attest
to the fire growing hotter
that changed it from the soft and plastic,
baked it hard and made it rigid.
So that we who gaze upon it
feel a happy reassurance
that the burning at the centre
of our life, our whole existence,
does for now, at least, continue.

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Archimedes Calculus

I read this story and thought it scandalous:
2000 years before Leibniz and Newton
Archimedes did the math
And discovered calculus,
(Presumably not in the bath,
All those small stones don't you know?)
He wrote it down,
But may as well have remained mute on
The subject, because some clown,
Or monk to be precise,
Took the parchment on which it was writ,
And covered it up, every last little bit,
Which just goes to show
That duplication always pays
Because all the workings most concise,
(Archimedes great codex)
Were lost to maths and science,
Because of the appliance
Of Christian liturgical texts,
And it took a further 730 000 days
Before Newton and Leibniz
Worked out calculus and the significance of bits.

What to do About Mrs Houston

Is she the better part of me,
Like valour, the discretion
And if that' s so, how can it be?
What benefit repression?
Though valour isn't Ali' s thing
She just likes having fun;
Mrs H. must always bring
A cloud to hide the sun.
And quench the flames of silliness
With sober, grown up thought
And cool things down with chilliness,
Or, as a last resort,
Switch Ali off, keep her inside,
Imprisoned for weeks on end,
And make her cower down and hide,
And never recommend
Her for parole; its always her decision,
But when at last
She' s free again, then Ali goes doolally
And makes herself a target for general derision.
So in steps Mrs Houston,
Who calms things down and yet,
She's never really beaten Ali:
At least she hasn' t yet.


Thursday 2 October 2014

On Looking at my Mother's First High School Photograph 1937.(Rondeau)


Her eyes in frozen sepia still
Express such searching, and her will
To seek me out, to understand
To sympathise, is clear.  As planned
The faded shade and light fulfil
Their strange and wondrous role: distil
The essence of the soul and spill
It out upon the card, command,
In frozen sepia
And gentleness, response; until
I have to look away, to kill
The tightness in my chest, demand
No tears, and take myself in hand.
This wise, kind child's my mother, still,
In frozen sepia.

Wednesday 1 October 2014

'It is Only a Very Shallow Person Who Does Not Judge By Appearances' Oscar Wilde

Your eyes, which are your soul,
Made manifest, unfathomable,
Defying scientific explanation;
Express in pools of blue or brown,
Round, moist with brilliance,
And fragments of reflected light,
Your very essence:  your whole.
To find a gaze impenetrable
Is merely to avoid confrontation,
There is no fleeting thought so quickly flown,
That leaves no evidence
Of its flight,
No trace residual in the coal
Black depths of pupils. For each inimitable,
Unique and transient manifestation
Of thought is known,
Finding its mirror in the onlooker, whose excellence,
Whose skill in guessing right
Your emotion, is illimitable.
And thus your eyes are by definition
The second person singular, a pronoun
Made physical in the face, speaking in silence
The language of consciousness: insight.




Sunday 28 September 2014

Warm September

September, balmy as June,
And the air has a warmth and a thickness,
And the rosehips glow
In the afternoon,
Prepubescent in their spotlessness,
But ladybird-like in their redness,
Though altogether too slow,
To be ladybird-like in their quickness.
But a ladybird squashed by a bike
Must cease to be ladybird-like;
But does becoming lifeless
Make it rosehip-like in its deadness?
September, balmy as June
And the fruit of the blackthorn is sloe,
Upsidedown
In the heat of the afternoon,
Adolescent in its sleepiness
As a sloth and just as slow.
And the blackness comes and goes,
Now it glows
Like the nose of that creature,
With beetle-like, granite-like shininess,
Then it seems to absorb,
All the light of the orb,
And a new distinguishing feature:
A bloom of dullness and dreariness grows.
And September balmy as June,
Turns me barmy as loonies out under the moon,
As a dreamy, afternoon weariness shows
In my face, as my mind
Leaves all reason behind,
And begins to see fruit hanging up by its toes.

Harpsichord



Jangling tunefully under my bed,
The sound rising up
Through the old deal floor,
Filling, persistently, my head,
With harmony
Spelled out by plucked gut and brass,
The reason of some ancient season 
Speaking not to the soul
As the Erard and Broadwood,
Not affecting, a lunar like pull
On the whole tide of emotion,
But appealing to order,
And understood by some
Instinct known to Pythagoras.

Rameau, Scarlatti, Daquin,
Handel, Bach and Couperin
Providing energy, brilliance,
Commotion, and a joyful demonstration
Of the power of rationality,
Precision, joy, vitality, glittering elegance,
Consisting of and insisting on intelligence.

https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U

https://youtu.be/sImPb1RJkwI
https://youtu.be/GjuyUTiskZo

https://youtu.be/oWkChhFFunc
https://youtu.be/xTGIgbzWcmk
https://youtu.be/v5lvdFLtUxw

https://youtu.be/XbBBNCFwKrs
https://youtu.be/JyTo4Arb_uU
https://youtu.be/jB_HZN8lQwA
https://youtu.be/6X4myFuf5y4
https://youtu.be/QKcDFIMrbng

https://youtu.be/Cbi3o72AJZ4

https://youtu.be/y5xcBR8BGos
https://youtu.be/8_k9bfPrRpY
https://youtu.be/780x8Blgyyg
https://youtu.be/hiw3s1Q3g3M
https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U

https://youtu.be/m71_m_oXp0U



Wednesday 24 September 2014

A Memory



September, as I remember it from childhood,
Was the scrunching of beech leaves in the wood,
Among the skeleton bluebell stalks that stood
Bleached like sun-drenched, ancient bones, by filtered light.
From May to August under pale-green canopy
We played and sheltered from the summer rain, not quite
Aware that autumn always came again, its mood
As fickle as the friends we made at school.  One year
The rain was endless and the streams began to flood,
Carrying tides of foam as if they ran with ale.
And in Assembly in the vast and woody hall,
We learnt 'To be a Pilgrim' and I understood,
Somehow with new appreciation, the idea
Of fitted words and music, all bound up as one
Convenient package, to take out and get undone
At will, beside the scummy stream and in the mud.







Tuesday 9 September 2014

Guardian Angel?

I felt your presence first and knew your purpose,
You did not need to speak, just filled my soul,
My heart, my mind with understanding,
The sense that death was fast approaching,
That my mother's life was near its end.
There was no rush of fear, no apprehension,
No ecstasy, no great elation,
Just deepest peace and total comprehension
Beyond any desire to comprehend.
And then it seemed the sky split open
And in the silver sliver like a migraine
In the space, the tear, the rend
Between the sky and light and air
Was confirmation,
A certainty of God's existence,
Unnecessary, for resistance
Was not within my scope of action.


And then you waited at my shoulder
At my left hand in the kitchen,
Beyond the moment of acceptance,
Like a doctor with a patient
Until you knew it safe to leave me,
When you became the chiaroscuro
Reassuring shadow of a friend.

Monday 8 September 2014

Lucifer (Iblis)

He walks abroad: inhabits souls,
Possesses, those who would know God,
Convinces them he is the Lord, patrols
The inner city streets;
In search of frail minds.

He rapes and tortures, cuts off heads,
And all the while the weak look on,
Or turn and look the other way,
Or make excuse because the kinds
Of men the Devil finds,
Are different.

But those who turn, cast down their eyes,
As first he 'grooms' with love then treats
His victims as his slaves,
Accomplice him after the fact.

Christ taught his followers to pray,
'Deliver us from evil'.
We do not pray, we do not act,
Inhabiting the rational sphere,
Believing man is good and wise.
We only heed the words instead:
"Judge not, lest ye be judged",
Preferring to misunderstand
The words of John
We intellectualise
To countenance our fear.

Should we not call out Lucifer?
Should we not label right and wrong?
If we do not, how can we say
Our consciences are clear?

Seeking ever to comprehend,
We make excuse, we lose command.
The truth is simple, hear!


Wednesday 3 September 2014

Third of September 2014, (another beheading of a hostage by a British Jihadist, David Cameron seeming to think the most pressing problem is Putin's 'Hitler-like' intentions towards Ukraine, meanwhile nothing being done about the rape of 1400 white girls by Muslim men in Rotherham)

"In describing the vacillation and incompetence of the government during the reign of Ethelred Unraed, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that when the enemy was in the east then our levies were mustered in the west, and when they were in the south then our levies were in the north, and that whatever course of action was decided upon it was not followed even for a single month."

From a comment on the Telegraph blogs by one "The Real PM".

The enemy was violent in the east,
And so we wagered war towards the north.
And next we closed our minds and almost ceased
To notice inhumanity; poured forth
A worthless propaganda to drum up
Support for causing further bloodshed when
Ceasefire had just then been agreed.My cup
Of absolute contempt runs over. Men
Will vacillate, and dither else cause harm
By pointless interference; then ignore
The consequences of their actions,  arm
Guerillas, condemn self defence... Yet war
Against the enemy within's forbidden,
"Lets kick over the traces, keep things hidden!"





Friday 29 August 2014

Heat


All winter long I sit and dream of days like this,
And gaze upon the sunflowers on the wall,
But when they come I sit here still, and bliss
Is cool air and gloomy shade inside.
The garden dappled by strong light through summer leaves,
Grown coarse, is pleasant beyond French doors,
But the heat and brightness of the lawn
Is tiring to the eyes. And the small glade
Of trees, bamboo and shrubs grown tall,
Although it brings relief from the hot glare
Irritates the skin with thunder flies.
And so summer is more of an idea, a fantasy
Than it seems to be a real, experienced thing,
A longed for period of happy wallowing
In a sense of freedom
And the smell of ripening wheat.

Thursday 21 August 2014

The End of Summer

That time of year again,
When one's conscience is ripe,
Pink and blush, bruised,
Dripping,  pectin bubbled, smashed,
Maggoty, quite golden with guilt's stain,
Observing the fruit, decaying in the rain.


Friday 15 August 2014

In Malmesbury Abbey

Athelstan lies here; he's carved in stone.
Paler, cleaner in this sheltered place
Than the weathered, lichen-spotted grey, grown
Concrete-looking, which rises over him. His face
Sans nose, reveals no trace
Of Kingly arrogance.  The high and rounded bone
Above his cheek, the heavy lidded eyes, reveal his race.
Athelstan lies here; he's carved in stone.
King of England, Scotland, Wales, he rests alone
Undisturbed by visitors who pace
Above his ancient dust - blown
Paler, cleaner in this sheltered place
Than dust of men who lie without.  The space
Around him has no special atmosphere. He's shown,
Described, explained; there is about him no more sense of grace
Than the weathered, lichen-spotted grey, grown
Tired-looking outdoor graves of men unknown.
A thousand years, more, is too long then, or is it that the base,
The tomb, is empty, he's no more here than in the stone,
Concrete-looking, which rises over him. His face
Is blessèd peace derived from absence, and no case
Against him, so nothing causes him in death to moan,
Or walk abroad. A bachelor, he held Britannia in his embrace:
Athelstan lies here.

Thursday 14 August 2014

The Harrogate of the South

Something of the seaside in the palette
Of pale, pastel paint and stucco
And term time home to Claire and Charlotte
Girls whose height would please El Greco:
These days the very rich are long and thin.
Something rather harsh and unrelenting
In the terraces so regimental,
And also something odd preventing
Familiarity, an elemental
British coldness, though there's something continental
In the broad and tree lined streets wherein
Well heeled ladies go clipping-clopping
Into town to do their shopping
At the chain stores which are dripping
With expensive, tasteful, boring clobber,
Reassuring to the bulging wallet.
Something rather soulless; the houses harbour
Nothing interesting, nothing eccentric,
Only sameness, or do I labour
Under misapprehension?
Is there something wild, anarchic,
About the people,  a kind of tension
Which exists between each unforgiving,
Rigid, harsh, hard, building
And the messy humans therein living?

 
MORNING DOG WALK 26TH MARCH

The only pure white that’s left,
Now the snow has gone,
A single egret,
A colder shade of pale,
The colour of the word bereft,
Or absence, or the word alone,
Then, suddenly, rising up from beside the river,
As if their sole purpose were to dispel such negativity,
Five roe, thin leg’d and frail,
Momentarily dancing the stiffness from their limbs,
As if before King Solomon the prophet,
Then, as is their proclivity,
Disappearing, arrows from a quiver.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY?



The great flat plain of Ging Gang Goole,
Draped in mist at winter’s fag end,
Gives the lie to this fanciful notion,
Gives the lie and will not bend.
Grey’s not a colour, but an emotion,
With an intrinsic desire to offend,
And to crush all hope and worthwhile intention,
With tiny drips, and then recommend,
Another dose of the same tomorrow,
One shade of grey and resistless sorrow.





Suddenly Nothing.

Watching the wind
Through the silence of secondary glazing,
And an absence of internet connection,
With a sleeping dog, at my side, I find
That the shimmering and waving
Of the silver birch in my peripheral vision
Through the first layer of hand blown glass
Gives the impression of hallucination,
As if a migraine aura is limbering up.
And a sense of impending doom
Fills the vacuum in the room
Created by the muteness of the radio.
'Today' has gone away.  Suddenly nothing.
No bossy, questioning speech,
I am left with total peace.
And all I can do is admire the way
The purple of the copper beech
Contrasts with the cloudy grey,
Watching the wind.

A Neglected Room

The Hamadan runner is catty
Where it ends near the secretaire,
And that lovely old thing's rather tatty,
Having once been a piano. The chair
By its side is a Chippendale,
Or at least made to his design,
A hundred and fifty years later
Although it looks rather fine,
By the Rosewood
That bears the name Broadwood,
Maker to kings and princesses,
With its mouldings in egg and dart line,
And its satinwood inlays, and brass
And smooth columns topped by Acanthus,
In crisp carved Corinthian style.
And in truth its all got very dusty,
As I haven't been in for a while,
And the other end seems rather musty
Where the documents lie in a file
And the cobwebs are joining together
Inaccessible, corner recesses
Such as under the old corner cupboard,
Shining richly, reflecting the glass
Of the windows which seem to be spattered
With dots of something resembling puss.
The lowboy with oysters of walnut
Is hiding its whirling veneers,
Under piles of papers and dumped things
And jotted down silly ideas
For poems about rooms which smell catty,
And furniture that's rather tatty
Which that day I regarded with scorn.
And observing it all I grow ratty,
And needs must squash all my fears
That the house is getting beyond me,
So I bring in the beeswax and mop
(To show me I don't always shirk
And because I don't want to dwell
On how useless I am at housework)
And set about washing the boards
Either side of the Hamadan runner
Where the fluff has collected. The hoards
Of old 'Country Life' though
Look up from a tottering pile
And beckon me over to read them,
So I pick up the one at the top
And peruse the property porn.
And see rooms which do not look neglected,
In houses much grander than this,
And I know that I'll live here forever,
Because I could never accomplish
The sort of tasteful arrangements
One needs must in order to sell.
And the house may look somewhat dejected,
But as long as I don't write about it,
And tell it like it is,
Then it doesn't really matter,
For sitting among the tat,
And the dust and the cobwebs and smells,
Is my private heaven - bliss!

Clever Hippy

An independent midwife I knew once, a classicist, 
Often spoke of shit and cunts and piss,
And this I understood was quite alright,
Because she'd been at Oxford and was bright.
Her hair was long and grey, her cheekbones high,
Her voice had learnt to imitate the way,
Such girls as her had need to sound
Coming from up north, but hanging round
With gels from Cheltenham or Rodean:
Like someone who'd make small talk with the queen
And pepper it with unembarrassed swearing.
She smelled of josticks and was was fond of wearing
Brightly coloured tights and ethnic tat.
I loved the way her mind could squash quite flat
All sorts of big ideas, her intellect
Commanded all my humblest respect.
And yet her life was really quite a mess
She had rejected far too much and I confess,
I found it rather boring in the end,
Having such a clever hippy for a friend.

Wednesday 13 August 2014

Holst in Cheltenham

He stands, an island in a pond
And waves his baton like a wand,
Conducting passing spirits who
Played for him before and knew
The way to please was to respond
To the commands of his left hand.
Yet most who pass don't hear the band
Of ghosts, or think they can't be true.
An island in a pond
Is an unlikely place for sound
Of any sort. Yet from beyond
This world, comes shimmering, pale blue
Music of the spheres in a few
Familiar bars, and there he stands:
An island in a pond.

Sunday 10 August 2014

Perigee and Perseid



Pale porcelain plate,
The supermoon at perigee,
Closest to the earth and full,
Shines brightest to illuminate
The Perseid, the meteor shower.
Not plashing through the galaxy
But flashing silently; its fate
To flash unseen. For Phoebe,
Cannot contemplate
Competition from the stars
As she must keep her earthly date,
Shine, glare, blind, obliterate
The thought of Pluto, or of Mars,
Leave only Venus on the mind,
Of those who watch the sky this night.


But looking out to Perseus,
To Cassiopeia and Cepheus
Turning from the lunar pull,
One might discern the sparks of light,
Fireballs as clear as planets
Sparks of gold and points of white,
That trail behind Swift-Tuttle's comet.
And witnessing this heavenly sight,
In the sparkling constellation
Of the city sacking fighter,
Of a mythical man and wife,
Feel that there is something greater
Than this transient human life.

An Antidote to Wilfred Owen

I feel alive at last and full of joy,
Last night I killed a German boy,
I didn't know I had until I had,
But when I knew I had my heart was glad,
This is the work that I came here to do,
The point of all the training I went through,
The point of digging trenches in the mud;
The point of bloody war is shedding blood.
I know the conscripts hate it and I try
To cheer them up, talk sense and when they cry,
I tell them why we're here, and tell them jokes,
It matters we should win, the other blokes
Are human but they're Hun; the killing 's fun,
When you do it from a distance with a gun.
The great thing is to put your mind at ease,
Imagine that they're cattle with disease.
Don't think of them as friends or as your brothers,
Don't think of their poor sisters and their mothers,
Just think of how much sooner we'll be back,
If we get stuck in, don't give them any slack.

Some Thoughts About Thinking

Ideas expressed as statements aren't made true,
By adding qualifying adjectives.
Ideas must stand alone, but very few
Can.   And do we question our objectives
When reading, listening, thinking or is each thought
Coloured by our moods, by what we think we know?
Has questioning become a last resort,
Where, in infancy, it was our first, and does this show
That wisdom grows with age or the reverse?
We should shake ourselves to our foundations
Every day, see certainty as quite perverse,
Examine all our real motivations,
Know ourselves and come to understand
That thinking's best, when thoughts aren't second hand.

Good Friday Givendale


A porridge hill which curves to meet the blue
Horizon, marl increasing light but glare
Reduced by texture; lumpy. And the hue
Is butter cream, not white, so as I stare
My eyes are not made tired by the scene
But rather open wider to take in
The panorama as a whole, serene
And lovely, still and silent yet the thin
And cold fresh air in contrast to the heat
Of April sun is not a metaphor
Quite sufficient for the day.  And the neat
And sloping fields, the long, forked road before
The azure air are just the old psalm
But I'm walking with the righteous - it's an organic farm!

Morning

Downhearted, miserable and full of gloom
Morning has appeared in the room,
But first has stressed and startled me awake,
And left me lying all a quake.
With racing pulse and hormones which
Make me act like a vile tempered bitch.


Saturday 2 August 2014

Music and Movement

When you're ready, at your leisure
Find a space, by turning round:

Small and plump in navy knickers,
Pulled up over cream wool vest;
And rubber plimsolls smelling slightly,
I hear the harp and do my best
With arms outstretched, a dizzy dolly,
Pirouetting like at ballet
And moving lightly,
Or I hope so,
I'm following the strange commands,
And I become a tree.

I know
That I'm a bendy sapling,
Waving hands and full of grace,
Feeling free and un-self conscious,
No expression on my face.
And the gold-brown parquet flooring
Patterned in its endless blocks
Becomes the leaves I've cast about me
In the wind that I heard roaring
From the Radio Phonic Workshop
Whose endless, electronic stocks
Of sound effects
Will keep us busy in our places,
On our mats,
Until it's time to move the benches
Back to the Formica tables,
Ready for our well made lunches.
And this time of private playing
Running silently and swaying
Thinking little, mostly nothing
Will be shut away again.


And all of us back in our clothing
Mostly solid farmers children,
Will remain
Silent on this recent passtime,
Can it really be a lesson?
Though we know we all enjoyed it,
Still there seems but little reason
To discuss what just went on.
What's to say, about such nonsense?
Curling slowly, now unfurling,
Growing upwards from a seed,
Blowing backwards in a gale,
Shedding leaves right out of season.
Seems it was a guilty pleasure.

Saturday 26 July 2014

Touch Screen

Little migraine auras litter you,
Rainbow, smudges, glitter you,
As, in the evening light, you catch some ray
Of golden brightness gone astray.
And then the words beneath your rigid glass,
Are secondary to patterns, pink, green, blue,
Which, greasy finger tips have slid
And tapped and swiped, in childish dances.
You don't catch coal dust in between your keys,
And grime, but only little specks and motes.
You shine yourself from underneath,
Pale, butter yellow, when I'm making notes.
But it's in the unexpected brilliance
Which glances on your surface suddenly
That shows the popularity of places.
The zed and ex bear barely any grease,
The smiley face and exclamation mark,
Show hardly a trace of poking, but the space
Bar is quicksilvered in the dark,
A veritable oil slick; so the chances
Of mistyping, adding unexpected gaps, increase.

Monday 21 July 2014

Mostly inspired by Alexis de Tocqueville writing in 1835

Dear Sir,
I wish to be a child of the state;
I know my place and yearn for Neverland,
My infancy is a perpetual joy,
So please provide for my security.
Please help, don't leave me to my fate,
I only wish to stay a happy boy.
Foresee my needs and then supply them, stand
Up for me, facilitate my pleasure,
Manage all my principal concerns,
And please direct my industry and leisure.
And though I'm but a child,
Should I procreate,
Make sure that you control the descent
Of all my property; please regulate.
Inheritances you must subdivide.
And then, because I'm good and love the law,
Provide a network o'er the surface
Of my life, of tiny, petty, bossy, pointless rules,
Complicated, uniform, unique,
And I shall learn them like a child at school,
Recite them and become a mindless bore.
My mind shan't know originality,
And lacking energy, my character
Shall not attempt to penetrate their meaning,
Nor yet to rise above:  please enervate,
I need a nanny's love.

Sunday 20 July 2014

On Maternal Love

Maternal love grows stronger as it hides.
The love for helpless infants we expose
to all the the world because it's general, glows
in shining eyes. It's recognised. Those tides,
that kept us joyful, happy, were besides
the means of gaining sympathy. But those
first feelings were merely the start. We chose
to let the world rejoice with us. The strides
the infant made, becoming an adult
we named and shared, but it was in between,
in ordinary hours that the swell
grew high. The peaks and troughs did not result
in longing for an end. And yet the scene
must shift: love sets its object free and bids farewell.

Thursday 10 July 2014

Bucko Ball (for Kingsley). Written 2014, when Kings was still doing his physics degree



All that you have been 
In becoming yourself
Is summed up here,
In this almost sphere,
From messy, papier-mâché castles,
The amazing, War Hammer, armoured mammoth,
The tiny working trebouché,
To the Lego walking machine.
Summed up: 20 hexagons to make a Fullerene.
A three dimensional representation,
Of what you already know,
Providing information
So that you can show
And thus command
That part of your mind;
That has yet to find
A mathematical, theoretical solution,
Which must spell out 
In algorithms, codes,
Something real;
A concrete construction,
Which makes inroads
Into absence
And helps you understand.

Saturday 28 June 2014

Common

Her hair is burgundy it's true,
But that is not enough, alone,
To spell the c word, nor the blue
And green of her exposed tattoo.
It's something bred within the bone,
A coarseness in the countenance,
Which speaks, before the voice
To prove, refinement cannot be a choice.


It's something in the maintenance
Of her relentless narkiness,
That tells of no embarrassment
At how she is perceived.


She seems within her element
In shouty, mardy, argument,
Her hide like a rhinoceros
Both physical and metaphor.
And there's a kind of hopelessness
That hangs about her family.
And yet the youngest of her brood
Seems different in her happy mood,
As if she is a throwback, who
Conjured from some other place
Has all the cheerfulness and grace
Of any happy little child, a winning smile,
A carefree, nature and a face
Which tells us that her quietness,
Would soften any heart. But for the while
I sit and watch, it seems to have not that effect,
But rather works against her.


I think that in her mother's view
There's evidence of alien genes,
They must be from the father's side,
Because they make her mother mean,
With extra special emphasis.
I leave the scene,
And wonder if this helpless child
Will grow into another lout,
Or keep essential gentleness,
And prove that nature overcomes
The hard harshness of common mums.

Friday 20 June 2014

Crane Fly


The crane fly sits beside the bog,
I wish he wouldn't do it,
He doesn't have a cud you see,
And so he cannot chew it.
And yet he seems to ruminate, and meditate.
"And yoga?"
He's really good at it
And likes to sit and prove it.
For though the
Daddy Long Legs is a rather silly creature,
He has a spiritual side,
His one redeeming feature.
And yet one wishes he'd desist,
For there's nothing less like Nietzsche
Than a crane fly by the lavatory
Who aspires to be a preacher,
And cares not for your point of view
Or transcendence beyond structure.
His appetite for mindfulness is nought if not prodigious
But how can life be re affirmed
By something you've just squished?
Because there's nothing left to do,
When bugs become religious.




Wednesday 18 June 2014

Nebulousness

Yes, nebulousness is meant to be bad, I guess,
But I wish to express a certain distress at the mess
That is caused by people who wish to address
Issues by defining them, then enshrining them in law.
What could be less English? Shades of grey
Make up each day in cloudy moodiness. We dress
In such a way as to easily divest ourselves of wooliness,
If we wish to catch a ray, we don't display our flesh
With that intention, we act according to the weather.
Whatever seems appropriate at the time we confess
To be the epitome 
Of what it is that it suits us to be,
Do you see?

Saturday 14 June 2014

Swifts

This morning they were merely shadows,
Racing on the curtains, as the day grew bright.
Soundless, black, familiar patterns against light;
Not quite the real thing but just their echoes.
At noon they're screeching out among the sparrows
And the wood pigeons whose great delight
Is randy flapping, clapping, mating, in spite
Of  balancing on fragile saplings. Swallows,
Which are altogether calmer, are, this year,
Noticeable by their absence. Only swifts
Against the shoals of mackerel now appear,
Tiny darts of darkness over drifts
Of fluffy flowers.  Madly they career,
Then vanish where the cloud's in rents and rifts.

Calm


The calm and peaceful placidness is back,
Tranquility replaces the attack
Of panic and anxiety. And yet I 'd rather
Have my whirring mind, than this docility.
This bovine state seems heavy and too dull,
There's no spontaneous creativity,
I'm better when I'm mad, my mind's more full,
Imagination keeps me happy. Serenity 's
A school lunch semolina,
Served without a hint of strawberry jam,
I'd rather do without it: being Serena
Isn't really being who I am.

Friday 6 June 2014

Summer Afternoon.

I strimmed the creeping, wild garlic leaves
Down to the ground, dark and damp
In the grey afternoon, before rain,
And the earth and mushed vegetation
Spattered my long leather boots.
And the ancient fern and the Ilex Aurea Rex
Became islands again in a sea of stubble and soil.

And now in the heat of this June afternoon,
This perfect, summer day
The pungency of a French tramp:
Garlic, and the process of decay,
Wafts to me over the lawn,
Mixing with the aromatic coffee
At my side, and the smell of post-dog-walk-body,
Bulging from too young, too small Broderie Anglaise,
Soapy, sweaty, fatty, and the sweet scent
Of elder blossoms, not yet turned catty.

Thursday 5 June 2014

Hornet

I wish with all my heart I could endure
That whining, high pitched sound. And yet alas
I feel it's true, I have no real choice
But to do this creature in, and thus ensure
Never again to hear his awful voice.
The bombilations of the hornet in
A flat, against the window pane increase,
And his size grows in proportion to the din.
And then I know that I must make it cease,
With a squirt of something nasty in a tin.
And now I know he'll bombilate no more,
In any key, by any window glass,
And I'm rather pleased, and skewer him,
To display to other members of his class.

Wednesday 4 June 2014

A Scunthorpe Bag Lady

She stoops and scratches at the exposed earth,
her arm between the railings, as she strokes
the crumbling soil with all the carefulness
Of an archeologist, who brushes
and brushes, one layer at a time, searching
for God knows what; some long gone, long dead thing?
Then on she moves, her bulging knapsack,
gives her the appearance of a hunchback.
Her walk is a slight stagger with a list
to port, as her eyes skim the borders
and she tries to perceive the particular
in empty patches in between each drift
of summer flowers in suburban plots.
There seems no purpose in her scrutiny,
she's careless of the tab ends cast aside,
her hunting seems to be for what SHE'S lost
although she is uncertain, it's specific.
She's unaware, and seems oblivious,
Rough callous children laugh and then disperse
to shout and stare and watch her rolling by.
She stoops and scratches at the exposed earth.

Sunday 1 June 2014

The last Day of May 2014

Last of the sun, last bright ray,
Lights up a corner of mahogany,
About two feet long,
Eight inches wide,
It catches on each slant egg of bead,
Down the wardrobe side,
And shows the chocolate swirls
Among the redder gold,
Flame veneers, in the last flame of light.
It grows darker, ceases to glow
As the sun starts to sink out of sight,
In the west.
Now only the dusty cornice
And a little patch of wall
Are still bright.
The swifts race past the window
Not at all in time to Dvorak on the radio,
And the sky blushes, a slight hint
In the north east,
Of the harsh orange and pink
It is splashing about
Behind the house,
And the cat prowls and yowls
Somewhere downstairs.
The warmth has gone.
The room cools back to blue and grey.

Through the French Doors

When once the sun is in the south
The light within the house degrades,
And like the mouth
Of some great cave,the room
Beyond the windows, bright,
Rolls back in shades
Of deepest gloom.
But standing in the lack of light
And looking out beyond: the sun
Upon the snowball bush,
The alkanet,and the first blush
On apple trees, appear better than
They would have done
Without the contrast of the tomb,
To emphasise and frame the sight.


Thursday 29 May 2014

The News (Rondeau Redouble)

Stoned to death, by those who should have held her dear,
A woman in Lahore, these things happen over there,
About a thousand women every year,
But in the major cities it's more rare.
The governor of the bank of England took care
To explain that banks need to be more moral and to be fair.
Stoned to death by those who should have held her dear,
No, don't let that thought stay in your head, hear
The commentary now on Carney's speech, a pair
Of economists on the phone; one in the studio here.
A woman in Lahore; these things happen over there,
Crowds gathered to watch, but didn't dare
To interfere, women are chattels, this was a family affair,
About a thousand women every year
Are stoned to death in 'honour killings'.  The peer
Lord Oakeshott has resigned: the Lib Dems came nowhere,
There's support in the South West for their ideas,
But in the major cities it's more rare,
Have you heard about the fashion for eating flowers? Beware
Don't eat Hemlock, it's just a mere
Fad, but worthy of lengthy discussion, we must keep you aware,
Of trends.  A thousand women a year, in Pakistan, disappear,
Stoned to death.

Wednesday 28 May 2014

Looking for the Bradawl

It seems to be the saddest thing of all,
Not contemplating death itself,
But looking for the bradawl.
I want to make an extra hole,
So you won't slip your lead,
As if you'd have the strength again
To stop, stock still and stubborn,
Refusing to proceed
Beside the road, beneath the bridge,
Or underneath the piano.
I used to heave and haul,
And treat and fuss
and call to you, imploring.
I haven't thought of it for years
But its name came to my mind,
When I looked at your neck
Grown lately so thin,
And stopped on our walk,
As you lagged behind.
And I thought of a collar
Like a strip of Meccano,
Punctured with regular holes,
A new one every fortnight,
Until the sight of your head,
So beautiful, on it's neck, growing thinner
And thinner in my minds eye,
Was more than I could bear.
I'll leave the bradawl,
Unfound, somewhere, anywhere, nowhere.

Wednesday 21 May 2014

First Hot Day of the Year


Pastel dress over
Mountains of flesh,
Peach, pink, blotched,
Rashed. See through -
Knicker showing.
Bingo wings,
Billowing pillows,
Rippling, flowing
Folds of lard,
All squashed
Into a yard
Of cotton jersey,
Pale blue.

Some People are Just Very Stubborn.

One fine, bright day in the afternoon,
I found an ideal, which felt like June,
Warm, with flowers, its air was soft
And I picked it up and held it aloft
And I thought it the loveliest thing I had seen,
And I wanted to share it and not to be mean,
So I gave it to everyone that I knew,
With its heat and roses and sky of blue,
And some of them took it and felt like me,
And some of them took it but couldn't see
The warmth or the flowers or clear blue sky,
And I couldn't persuade them they could if they'd try.
So I saw that in order to share and be kind
I must leave it somewhere for them to find
On their own, unobserved so they could pretend
They had thought it themselves, for this couldn't offend.
Though I left it about in a casual way,
Still some folk ignored it and they'd even say
It wasn't like June but was wintry and cold,
And that I too would know this before I was old.
But I couldn't be bothered to hear what they said,
And decided I'd only listen instead
To the people who thought as I thought
And that those who did not must be taught
To appreciate things from the point of view
Of warmth and sunshine and sky of blue.
So I had it arranged to start a campaign
To educate everyone over again,
And if by the end of their re education
They still couldn't see it, then out of frustration
I'd arrange for a law to be passed
That made it illegal at last
To question the lofty ideal,
Or suggest that we had to be real.

Friday 16 May 2014

Speak Simply on the Internet

Speak simply on the internet
and do not curb your views.
all round with caveats.  Forget
your audience and speak your mind. Refuse
to edit and to hedge because we know you use
complicated phrases to conceal the truth and yet
we see it still. Complexity and truth you never must confuse.
Speak simply on the internet
because you may as well. We do not vet
your script because to do so would abuse
your right to be yourself. So don't be wet
and do not curb your views.
Speak about ideas as you would tell your news.
Forget the thought police, their threat
makes them reality. One who plainly speaks never strews
all round with caveats. Forget
whom you address, it's mostly just yourself, to set
your mind. Nothing's gained by being diffuse
it can't be helped if you upset
your audience, don't think of them unless you're trying to amuse.
If all our words are going to live forever we owe a debt
to history of honesty. Circumlocution is no use
to the future. So don't sweat:
speak simply.

Thursday 15 May 2014

'Every Child Matters'

To say that every child matters is
Not to claim simultaneously
Its antithesis, viz.
Every parent's extraneously
Inconvenient and not worth consideration.
Yet it's easier to solve the equation
Without a valid solution for x and y
Because it is known, has been shown
In countless studies that it's pointless to try.
These lumpen layabouts are beyond redemption:
Druggies, smokers, drinkers, itinerants, likely to drift.
Their efforts will always be below par,
Ours, that is.  Don't worry, we know who they are,
You are safe, for a time, until the goal posts shift.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

To  Those Who Have Original Minds

Of course you do, each of us is individual,
But it's also true,
That there are, in us all, residual
Traces of all life's experiences, ideas
Which we have absorbed, and veneers
We wear in order to conceal
Aspects  of who we are.  They reveal
More about the truth of what is underneath,
Than honesty.  We grit our teeth
And would deny with our dying gasp
Those habits of our real nature, clasp
At any straw to prove
We're not as others think we are.
And yet part of us is just the sum
Of all we have denied.
But it is better, to understand
That we are as see through as glass,
And others are not blind.

Learn to know
That we cannot command
The way we are interpreted. Let go,
Accept your fate;  what you choose
To show and what to hide,
Only serves to amuse
Those who like to read the human mind.

Monday 12 May 2014

The Right To Be Forgotten


The right of everyone to turn to dust
Is one which nature grants unto us all
Regardless of our nature.  She is just,
Pursues equality. And when the call
Of death we hear, we know that though we sigh,
And think of all we love and leave behind
Yet peace is the assurance that we'll lie
Forgotten for eternity and blind
And deaf and unaware of those above
Who seem to like to seek and find us out. 
For we're not bits of history to love,
Not future relics of a bygone age. I doubt
The future really needs each small detail
Of our lives, posted on the web and out of scale.

The right to be remembered - Walter Sedlmayr


I lived once, was a man, but no more; my
Life was cut short. Now I am dead and gone.
Yet he who took my life needs must still try
To wipe me off the face of the earth, none
Must know his crime nor know he took my life.
Thus I am killed twice. For if the law
Shall come down on his side, yes, him who's knife
Or gun, was my end (you can't know which, for
That would mean one must speak his name or state
The facts) thus a kind of blank am I.
To live, then live no more it was my fate,
Also to be obliterated so that the lie
That justice has been done and time been served
Can be kept up, but nought of me preserved.

Saturday 10 May 2014

Now Is The Glorious Summer of Miss Jean Brodie

We'll bully them: each impressionable child
when young, so they'll be ours for life.  We say
make them conform, in youth and let no wild
spirit, no independent thought betray
the catechism, the instruction. Play
upon the unformed mind with fear, but styled
as wisdom; be doctrinaire and they won't stray.
We'll bully them: each impressionable child,
for each is father of the man.  Defiled
in youth the spirit withers away.
Yes, take an eager, susceptible child
when young and they'll be ours for life.  We say
teach them to ask questions everyday,
but only those that are allowed.  Beguiled
by our immediate knowledge, they'll go our way.
Make them conform in youth and let no wild
new, ideas of freedom influence.  Praise the mild
obedient ones, who mirror and obey.
and never offer hope to the exiled
spirit.  No independent thought betray,
which might be seized upon by eager children. Weigh
every word.  Those who object must be reviled;
teach names with which we might insult them; who are they
to question this great plan we have compiled?
We'll bully them!

Wednesday 7 May 2014

To Those Who Have Original Minds

Of course you  do, each of us is individual,
But it's also true,
That there are, in us all, residual
Traces of all life's experiences, ideas
Which we have absorbed,  and veneers
We wear in order to conceal
Aspects  of who we are.  They reveal
More about the truth of what is underneath,
Than honesty.  We grit our teeth
And would deny with our dying gasp
Those habits of our real nature, clasp
At any straw to prove
We're not as others think we are.
And yet part of us is just the sum
Of all we have denied.
But it is better , to understand
That we are as see through as is glass,
And others are not blind.
Learn to know
That we cannot command
The way we are interpreted. Let go,
Accept your fate;  what you choose
To show and what to hide,
Only serves to amuse
Those who like to read the human mind.

Monday 5 May 2014

May 5

Last night or in the early hours
I woke from some most marvellous dream
And knew that I had found the truth.
The truth of what I cannot tell, I seem
No different knowing it.  The flowers
Of may are no more bright, the bird song
No more my delight than bird song was
Just yesterday.  And yet that feeling
Most profound, that sense of peace was very real.
Perhaps I am not meant to know,
Perhaps the truth is never ours
To understand when wide awake. We must conceal
It from our reason, in order that we don't mistake
Attempts to speak that great elation
With the SENSE of exaltation,
Because our language, limited by comprehension
Of what we think is our existence,
Contains no means to give expression
To the workings, out of season, of the mind
In relaxation, whose temporal lobes sometimes reveal
Those strange convictions which persist,
Ideas in daylight we resist,
A greater thing beyond, above:
God, truth, light,  peace, love?


Friday 2 May 2014

Becoming

Never perfect until death we understand
a little more of who we are each day,
not really metacognitive. Unplanned
we grope our way
towards the being who we call ourselves; play
at being finished in each moment. The sand
of time still trickles through but does not run away.
Never perfect until death we understand
but very little of who we might become, and
yet can look back at those golden grains and say
that part of myself was also me. Thus we command
a little more of who we are each day
but only what is past.  We cannot stray
from any beaten path, we beat our own, demand
acceptance of our present state and thus portray,
(not really metacognitive - unplanned)
a version of ourselves which others can identify. And
the truth of who we are is on display
seen passing in the movement of the second hand.
We grope our way
in opposition to our former self, this might cause dismay
to those who knew us once, in seeing us again, the stand
we take at any given time is made to weigh
as part of us, but we're both finifugal and unplanned, 
never perfect until death.

The Chemicals of Self Doubt and Certainty (sestina)

A fear which is in essence chemical,
between the ending of my dream and wakefulness,
comes flooding in among the crevices
of matter,  white and grey, within my head.
And so I rise to consciousness in panic
and feel I must un-say all that I've said.
I don't know why it's all that I have said,
which is the focus of this chemical
attack, but in the early morning in this panic,
I must expunge myself; in wakefulness,
or something like it, some sense within my head
wants to take back evidence,  from crevices
and places less well hidden. Crevices
are figments; the internet has none. I've said
I want to take things back, but in my head
there is no reason, just some chemical
which causes me to act, in wakefulness,
according to an incoherent  panic.


And yet when I review my thoughts, not panic,
but a sense that I was right floods crevices,
so self doubt starts to ebb in wakefulness
and, as what I have thought is what I've said,
in reading back I reinforce my views, another chemical?
A Certainty Etching Acid in my head?
And is this why I do it? Does my head
present me with this sense of awful panic
to make me question? Is the chemical
of fear really benignant, are crevices
flushed out  to be re- filled?  Who said
we were more sane in wakefulness
than sleep? I feel, in wakefulness
a need to reassure myself. My head,
requires encouragement because I've said
things years ago I disagree with. I panic,
lest I'm wrong now as I then was, crevices
in matter grey and white, contain the chemical
of doubt. In wakefulness, I  panic,
my head, no doubt, in crevices,
contains all I have said, and bathes it in this polarising chemical.