Sunday, December 16, 2018

THE GREATEST OF THESE


Our lives are built on sand.
And, yet, I am sure,
Love remains,
Hope persists,
Faith sustains.
The shimmering cross
Shines like a distress beacon
On an everstanding rock.
But, oh, so few can see it,
Amidst the toxic garbage
And the sickly flowers*,
Masking permutations of manipulation,
As postmodern clichés fill the hours,
Verbalised by imposters.

* With apologies to the late Leonard Cohen

Saturday, November 17, 2018

THE BEAT GENERATION*




After cold Winter’s colours of nothing,
We now survey purple jacarandas,
Set against the sky blue backdrops of Spring,
And best loved from shaded back verandahs.
Calmed, I watch the petals drop and settle -
Cool carpets that will soon fade with the heat
Of Summer days - boiling like a kettle -
When daylight saving drains us, burned and beat.

* “The beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity.”  (Jack Kerouac)

Sunday, September 30, 2018

A DAD JOKE


Do you want to bleed me dry?
If I was a stone you would still try.
And an old white man is easy game,
So hurl your harpoon at my undefended frame.

There might be a time
When you will shake and sway,
Full of the fear
That makes me tremble today.

Then you will falter,
When you yield your youth -
That brief season of waste,
Burned beneath a blanket of smoke,
Trivial, like a Dad joke.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

AFTER THE RUSH

I see there are no more dreams,
No more schemes to fail,
No maiden voyages to take.
I see someone else’s seas.
I am no longer
Fit and well to sail.
I wonder whether those days
Of grand ventures
And unfounded hope were ever real.
They seem part of senseless mythology -
Those days when I was strong
And trained to tackle before benches;
When I was new and made of steel,
Blind to the bleak and slippery slope
That waited beyond the wrong.

Spring blossoms blossom
Before blanching in summer,
Then winter will come.

I climbed a mountain
To find it offered a view
Of less than nothing.

Life insured is a truly a worthless thing
Once value dead exceeds merit alive.