After The Wedding

The dog, having worn herself out,

In catching toys, thrown by bored boys,

Lies by the front door, 

Exhausted and stiff, as never before,

Half dozing and twitching, detached from reality,

Patiently awaiting the return of normality. 

The Chairs For The Wedding

The chairs for the wedding, vary, greatly,

Some stand tall, “serene and stately”,

Ready for some, more grand, occasion,

Firm of joint, and sound of rail, 

Their polish sparkling, like their conversation,

Too loud, beside their country cousins,

Slightly wormed, and rather frail,

Trying to mingle, look the part,

Beside the well used, everyday dozens,

Clean and neat and sound of seat,

Straight forward, useful, stout of heart. 

Some are split about the splat,

With no desire to stand and chat

And others, lumpy round the springs,

Make conversation based on things,

Competing to impress their fellows,

Regency, in golds and yellows,

Rosewood dense and strong, unyielding

Imagining the power they’re wielding

Arises from some greater merit

Than their ash made peers inherit

Forgetting ash made Piers’s plough

And fired the arrows from Robin’s bow.

On Tony Benn’s Five Questions

Speak plainly, say what power you have got?

And next tell where you got it from? Be clear.

You act as if you prize your power a lot

and yet you barely ever seem sincere.

And in whose interests do you use it most?

Your own, we all suspect, but do reply,

though don’t say ‘for man’s good’, you should not boast

in such vague terms, for we’ll find out your lie. 

And say to whom you are accountable?

You act as if accountable to none,

leave havoc, problems insurmountable,

insoluble, behind you when you’ve gone

to try out mad ideas in pastures new.
So last, say how we might get rid of you?

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.“

On A Quotation From Ayn Rand

We’re almost living in that age,

Approaching now the final stage

Of ultimate inversion, when

Permission is required by men,

From government, who’ve placed a cage

About them.  How will they assuage

Their guilt, speak out and thus engage

In bolst’ring freedom’s cause, again?

Almost living,

Caged, can we measure, gauge

The distance left, can any sage

Predict the time, when in the pen

The bolt will drop?  And God, what then?

Too late to cry and scream and rage:

Almost living.

Tigger Warning

I must not make the miserable babies, 

frightened or alarmed,

I must issue a Tigger warning,

as I bounce into class in the morning.

So students might be armed

against a sea of bubbles,

and by opposing, burst them.

So that they might live

in the depths of Eeyorishness,

rejecting every positive thing and yawning

at old philosophies , while fawning

over half baked gloom 

and indulging in patronising mawkishness,

towards those they secretly, jealously,

imagine are blessed,

by being dreadfully oppressed. 

Brexit Vote

“In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered.” 

― Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

We have taken every novelty

and sickened of them all,

the big ideas, of revolution

now seem shrunk and small. 

And so we have returned once more

to ancient rules and ways

and principles we knew before

the childish, changing days.

We have tasted every novelty

and sickened of them all,

returned to habits, long disused

in answer to the call

for nourishment and sustenance

and order, after the craze.

And there’s something refreshingly hearty

and something worthy of praise

in the principles and rituals

which brought harmony, after the fall.

We have taken every novelty

and sickened of them all

and we do not seek utopia

every diamond has its flaw.

We have taken every novelty

and they’re rotten to the core

we’ll make do with plain old sovereignty

and earthly common law. 

On The Rights Of Mankind

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power”.   Alexander Hamilton.

Let us not rifle through musty records,

Nor rummage through parchments, dusty and old

For the rights of mankind: they’re not fixed words,

Scratched by a scribe, nor carved in stone, but gold.

For they are drawn with light, as a sunbeam, 

Within the whole and glorious volume 

Of human nature.  Dancing their bright gleam

And shedding warmth and light within the gloom

Of long confusion.  Why make the attempt

To capture and pin down elusiveness

Divine?  They will pertain, no one’s exempt.

Their truth will stand, there’s no exclusiveness,

For mankind’s rights, arise from light, like flowers,

And cannot be erased by mortal powers.