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

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)

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.

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.