On a Quote from Leibniz 

‘Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.’

Arithmetic might please my soul,

although it seems, that on the whole,

my spirit, cannot calculate.

Instead it seems to concentrate

upon the sweet melodic role,

to keep the beat is not its goal,

I’ve never known it to extoll

arithmetic.

Yet melody requires control,

harmonic rhythm fills the hole,

one hears the chords elucidate

so, is the way they resonate

arithmetic?

“These Are My Principles, If You Don't Like Them I Have Others”.

To manufacture meant to make by hand,

but manifesto has a different root.

Now manufacture means to mass produce

and manifesto, so we understand,

is quite redundant so we substitute

a fag packet or postage stamp, reduce

this thing once held in high esteem, rebrand,

pretend that nothing’s fixed, all points are moot.

For principles made public might induce

the earnest demos to demand

we stick to them, we’ll not go down that route.

We’d rather suffer torrents of abuse.
Ideas are mass produced, in think tanks now,
They're cheap as chips and worthless anyhow.

Transformation

A metamorphosis in spring:

a sudden gust and then a lovely sight

a single petal from the Frühlingsgold

takes flight,

and twists and spins on its one wing

and I,

although I saw from whence it came, behold

above the border, in the azure sky,

a zany, half drunk Brimstone butterfly. 

The Last of The Oxford Marmalade

Congealed and dark, the marmalade
within the jar, has not been paid
attention to for weeks.   Marmite,
that other English 'marm', of night-
black, salty, treacle darkness made,
has been in the ascendant; strayed
into morning's territory, preyed
upon my slimmer's mind, with spite
congealed and dark.
And now I feel I have betrayed
Frank Cooper's," Oxford" Vintage, played
fast and loose, neglected coarse, bright,
bitter, sweet, thick, Seville delight.
And now it's dry, the marmalade -
congealed and dark.

The Babushkas of Chernobyl

Epitomising what we understand

as central to our human flourishing

embodied here upon this poisoned land.

They feed on what is deeply nourishing,

their love of liberty, of God, of home,

where home is not some recent rootless place,

but somewhere throughout which their minds can roam

through decades of sad memory and trace

their footsteps back to suffering and still

find love, because 'love conquers all' and when

it's beaten down it seems to grow, until

the worst the world can do is shown again

to be a catalyst for fighting back.

And nowhere can withstand true love’s attack. 

To Cast

The verb to cast means pointedly to throw,

in youth one casts as one casts nets, quite wide.

Light cast, blocked, will always cause a shadow,

antithesis, a different view or side.

And actions have their opposites, divide

the world by force, too commonplace to show,

though as we trip we curse our hurried stride.

The verb to cast means pointedly to throw,

to hurl our choice and seal our fate, yet know

we rarely set, cannot ourselves be cast, though cast aside,

we’re ever changing, molten, our thoughts flow.

In youth one casts as one casts nets, quite wide,

and catch ideas which dazzle and then slide

back into streams of nonsense where they grow

to be swallowed by other children, swimming against the tide.

Light cast, blocked, will always cause a shadow

and so 

we needs must flatten obstacles, deride

opponents, trample where they sow

antithesis, a different view or side,

because we can’t admit ideas elide.

So sad attempts at clarity make narrow,

and focus means we barely see and yet decide

the fate of others with our vote, our arrow:

the verb to cast means pointedly to throw.