POEMS: POEMS AND PUZZLE

 

THE ONLY SEASON

THAT WE’LL KNOW

With clammy airs and chill-spots,

and dervish winds

that prankster around corners,

this half-life of mud and sodden grasses,

along with predictable patches

of flecked and crusted snows,

neither fully thawed nor frozen.

How odd, then, that this in-between,

sad-sack world of dog-fur-dirty drifts

and icy, grey mounds (duly discarded piles

of weather against the side of the house)

means Spring is here!

 

DOCTOR’S ORDER

Some restraint was applied

When removing the eye

(with screams heard down the hall.)

“It’s not for the squeamish,”

said Doctor Sid Beamish.

“It’s best we all play ball.”

 

DRIFTING

Voices gather

in the street,

like fluff

in an old man’s 

coat pocket.

 

MOMENTS LIKE THESE

Waves upon the seashore,

Sand dunes by the sea.

Blue sky paints the heavens,

White birds soaring free.

 

WE NEED A SMALLER PLANET

One not needing bedtime stories.

A world more compact—editable.

More reasonable, one not given to reprobation,

or to fits of teeth-chattering agues and colic.

Where there are no sudden eruptions

of the skin, no blemishes of unwanted youth,

no last-minute trials or impertinent challenges.

We need a world that’s staid and made up,

like an old woman’s flat: laid out and orderly,

with preserves in the pantry, soup ladle in bowl,

sensible placemats, and a single cat.

A world that’s clean and tidy, easily managed.

One that’s as warm and cozy a place as can be had

in the time remaining. Mercury, perhaps?

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD #1

“Now, Eight would be great! So fill up my plate.

With Six as my fate, it’s never too late.

But, while at the daycare, won’t they all stare?

Oh, life's so unfair!” (It’s done on a dare.)

 

Our Jeff is at home, still feeding his jones;

at fifty-odd stone, he really can’t roam.

While just down the street lives Candy-Girl, sweet.

Her toffee-skin treat he never will eat.

 

CROPLANDS ARE PLENTY (Many are empty.)

While space-age gentry wave at re-entry.

When flown into space, they strafe 'cross our race,

with each saving face like some Great War ace.

 

When microbes and gas beat hot suns and glass,

we’ll all go to mass and STAY OFF THE GRASS!

Praying for angles (hopes there to dangle),

we must untangle all that we mangle.

 

Those Ice cubes in trays—are cold of a day

when all that we say went the other way.

Soon, icebergs’ last mash no ropes can they lash,

while SATELLITES SMASH into space-yard trash.

 

UMBRELLAS IN SPACE (like rubbers in place)   

may well shade our face but won’t win the race.       

For holes in latex (please read the fine text),

like belts of Semtex, blow up what comes next.

…..

BOUTIQUE WILD ZONES, remote-controlled death-drones. 

Brave bombers phone home. Soon eBay sells bones.

Long-distance killing: A geek’s life, thrilling!

Heart’s blood congealing. JACKALS ARE MILLING.

 

Car bombs and bedlam. Bankers make mayhem.

Pandemic medicine? All hopes are grim.

And landmines? Don’t cough! They tend to go off.

“Oh, don’t be a toff!” The dead schoolboy scoffs.

 

Elephants forget now. Whales beach, somehow.

Our children have rows. (Their guns go Pow-Pow!)

Wrong-way pigeons? Or a leopard’s skinnin'?

Default’s our sinnin'. And God’s not winnin'.

 

Black carbon still leaks from mountain top peaks.

Leaders still speak while caterpillars creak.

Will waters retreat in Red Sea’s defeat

or cover us neat, and not miss a beat?

…..

OUR OCEANS ARE BLUE. But is that still true?

Won’t skies now eschew their claim to that hue?

All water, all air, and land that is fair

Need more than a prayer from those who are there!

 

Dark Stone Light Stone

Gather the deep, the dark, the hidden.

Gather the old, the lame, unbidden.

Bring these gifts to the seashore caves,

upon the dawn and breaking waves.

 

Then gather the tree, the flower, air;

gathering such breaths, found everywhere!

Next, take these o’er the rising tide.

On golden ships you soon will ride.

 

And sail bright waters to lands unknown

and build bright castles with patterned stone.

Build new kingdoms upon new shores.

Build new freedoms for evermore.

…..

And call the light to darkness.

And call on time's apprentice.

And call the land a heaven.

And call yourselves forgiven.

 

MEMORY: FULL

Store it on your hard dive

or on your memory stick.

Store it on a CD,

on some electric trick.

 

Store it on some paper,

across a yellowed page.

Store it in that notebook

you kept for such an age.

 

Store it in a temple.

Burn it on a pyre.

Gift it to a greater god

to store it that much higher.

.....

But store it all quick!

And store it up soon.

Beneath the bright sun

and the waxing moon.

 

THREADS

Sunlit spider’s weave—

just in time,

across the 

darkened path.

   

REGRET REDUX

What will you do

now at the end?

How might you fix

that which must mend?

 

 

 

"I can make it rain over there. Why not here? WHY?"

I HOPE TO BEG THE READER’S PARDON by including in this post a few brief poems that I’ve bagged over the years. Some are trophy-heads (if I may be so bold!) Others are adornments and nick-knacks. Which is which I leave, as always, for the reader’s discretion.

 

Cheers, Jake. 

 

 

 

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE!

  

 

Homo faber (sigh...)