Saturday 18 June 2016

Thoughts Occurring While Looking At Portrait Of Milton As A Child.

In dreary dullness and in gloom
He gazes out, does not look down,
His essence lingers like a perfume,
English roses, warm air blown.
His doublet, once striped gold and brown,
Is black with coal dust dark as doom,
His stiff lace ruff, silly costume of a clown,
In dreary dullness and in gloom,
Is cream and grey like storm tossed spume,
But still it serves to frame his face.  No frown
Distorts his youthful brow, his cheek still sports a coral bloom.
He gazes out, does not look down.
He was not then of great renown,
Yet seems a father to the man. What an heirloom
Man inherits, in childlike clarity of thought which lights up the unknown.
His essence lingers like the perfume
Of a better kind of wisdom which survives beyond the tomb.
His face is grave, his intellectual merit, though not here fully grown,
Is obvious as he looks on. Freedom's not some foul fume
English roses, warm air blown,
Are not sweeter, breathe it in. Why doubt what you are clearly shown?
Past light of stars illume
The present darkness of the night.  Choose what is known.
You aren't children, but free men, born
In dreary dullness.

Sunday 5 June 2016

Bronze Fennel, Hot June Day

The garden's pubes have wilted in the heat,
Flopped over, quite collapsed and flat,
They're flaccid, lying useless in defeat.
I take the turgid, phallic hose and sprinkle them
Hoping they will rise up, once again look neat.
I'm sure they will, yet now I think of them like that
My filthy mind sees stink horns lurking underneath,
The hard, white, leather balls of jellied slime,
Which burst apart and thrust their polystyrene willies in the air,
Each bell end sporting its white hat.
As a child I'd see them all the time,
In innocence thought nothing of their looks,
I never see them now, and do not care,
For they belong to childhood's beech woods and to fungus books.
And this luxuriant, deep bronze, pubic hair,
Belongs to well kept gardens and grown ups.