Day: May 8, 2017

Off the villanelle

I must get off the villanelle today
There are other forms that I might like
Then I can eat and read and love and pray

I could make a sculpture like a Klee.
Get new tyres upon my folding bike
I must get off the villanelle today

 

The thing is, writing rarely pays.
Ted Hughes  did it with his dream of Pike
Then he could eat and read and love and pray

Once upon a time my world was gay
Leisure was a  pleasure, heart was light
I may get off the villanelle today.

Sometimes I feel like just one shade of grey
The heart is numb and all is tinged with blight
Can I eat and read and love and pray.

Life is generous with its dose of fright.
The politicians’  tigers fight and bite
I must  write off the villanelle today
Then I can eat and read and love and play

Shopping

I made an error in my online shopping
I only got one litre of fresh milk
I got eight trifles and a dozen jellies
Cress in an interminable wilt.

I got two large  and multi-seeded loaves
Some eggs and bacon,not yet cooked I fear.
I thought I’d bake some  pizza  with bananas
While they’re reading Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Oh,I forgot to get a few tomatoes
It’s muddling looking through their lists of goods
I’ll have to make a sauce from old  potatoes
Do you think the Italians ever could?

I stand alone surrounded by these foods
No doubt they will enter my dear flesh
But there’s noone here I want to talk to
I feel my mood is going into Crash

Eeh by gum, I wish that I was here

DSC00054

I went visiting a rather silent neighbour
I thought that I could manage fine
After sitting feeling blank and boring
I went home to get  so drunk that I could dine

I had a problem with the oven settings
The sausages were as black as  grandad’s skin
The batter turned to biscuit thin and hardened
I ‘ll never  ever want a Toad again

I sat down, it was only Sunday evening
Six more meals to cook this coming week.
I must buy an oven thermometer
If only they made one that liked to speak.

What are all the quiet people feeling?
Would they like to talk but can’t for fear?
I find it hard to tolerate  their total silence
Eeh by gum, I wish that I was here

I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

I had six inky pages of crushed notes.
From a villanelle I tried to write
Corrections,edits, what I thought, I wrote.

Some of it was cliche or was quote
It was a very private, hidden sight
I had six pages of cramped inky notes.

Should I  reveal the work I  do, first thoughts,
Or keep you in the dark about my rites?
Corrections, edits, what I thought, I wrote.

There is  no answer only many “oughts”
Should these hidden jumbles come to light?
I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

My first thoughts of a theme are scarcely taut.
The   process opens windows shut and tight
Corrections, edits, what I thought, I wrote.

First, the  buried feelings must be caught
For my deeper thoughts, I watch at night.
I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

Passionate the feelings that ignite
The work of  poets with  their fiery sparks
I had six inky pages of handwritten notes.
Corrections, edits, what I  caught at night

 

Befriend me, each one seems to say

All the fears we push away
Will come back later in the day;
Or when we go to bed at night
They will waken us in fright.

Befriend me, each one seems to say
Like small children fallen at play
When mother’s come a sweet sweet kiss
Returns small children to their bliss.

But where is mother now,we think?
As from our eyes the tears we blink.
Let the bag of tears be drained
Let them ease our awful strain.

Be your mother, be yourself.
Be kind and careful of your health.
Mother lives inside our hearts
If we feel then that’s a start

What we see is partly who we are

 

What we see is partly who we are
In winter snow we see the beauty white.
To homeless people, it may bring despair
At night the cold and frosty air will bite.

Flowers of startling beauty now bloom here
Yet even these will make some people ill.
A scent which an asthmatic man may fear
Is most desired as perfume by the well

The adverts which may irritate the rich
May start up envy’s poison in the poor.
Good and evil to our wealth are stitched
All is context, virtue is not ours.
The world I see’s constructed by my mind
And to the worlds of others we are blind