The Unbearable Lightness of Verse 2
Last mango in Paris
last tangerine in Tangier
last farrago in Flanders
the last, the final frontier.
Last rutabaga in Tobago
last almond in Algiers
last marionette in Mar-a-Lago
the last, the final frontier.
Garbage Day (haiku)
mayhem in the lane
all the bins have flipped their lids
Jack has left the box.
Oh say, can you see?
Oh say, can you see
that beacon of hope
guttering
in the magaleptic breeze
Oh say, can you see
the white horse
has lost its rider.
Oh say, can you see
by the dawn’s early light
how God’s face changes
with the angle we choose.
Don’t Play in the Traffic
they met on a zebra crossing
it was a pedestrian affair
she had an air of competence
he…just had an air
they went downhill from there
to her house
in the middle of a roundabout
near the station
one morning they looked out
and the cars had changed rotation
the clouds were tinged
with a tawdry shade of orange
the sky was diffident
the sun judgmental
things would not be the same
would not be the same again.
I’ve posted this one twice before, but I kind of like it. Participating in Open Link Night at dverse.
In this issue:
Our film critic reviews the latest summer blockbuster, “Planet of the Buffoons” , starring Boris (Bozo Bear) Johnson and Donald (Agent Orange) Trump and featuring Vladimir Putin as The Wily Sidekick.
In our Business Section:
The value of intelligence, logic and compassion continues to drop on the HTSE ( Human Traits Stock Exchange), while greed and self- interest continue their meteoric rise. Regular readers of this magazine will be happy to hear that vapidity continues to be a solid earner and an essential component of any balanced portfolio.
Speaking of the Environment:
We examine a theory popular among members of the Republican Party, and anyone connected to the oil industry, that when the polar ice caps melt, polar bears will be able to survive on an almost infinite supply of the polar berries that will thrive on the newly exposed land. This new diet will actually be healthier than their previous protein based diet.
*******
Vapid Magazine – where shallow runs deep.
The challenge from Sarah over at dVerse is to write a piece of prosery, of flash fiction (limit 144 words) incorporating the phrase “I dreamt I was the moon” from a poem by Alice Oswald.
So here goes:
Speaking as the Moon
I dreamt I was the moon, a cheddar searchlight in the sky waiting for the arrival of man with his small steps and giant leaps, his garbage can machines, his religion, his culture, his competing ideologies, his self-aggrandizements, his bragging rights, his racism, his greed, his pomposity, his self-importance, his astronauts named “Buzz”. I tell you, colonization never works out for the colonized. Speaking as the moon, I have no desire to be turned into a destination for space tourists or a land fill or, more accurately, a moon fill, then to be compensated, to be re-moonerated (a bit of lunar humour) some hundred years later by some conscience-stricken liberal prime minister of Canada. They say that nature abhors a vacuum, well, speaking as the moon, I can handle a vacuum quite nicely, it’s vacuity, I abhor.
Blood orange
smoke-filtered
a Beijing
Mumbai sun.
let it be
the answer
lies in the
wondering
A Slow Day (tanka 2)
the sky did not fall
the winds of change did not blow
the boat was not rocked
the cat ignored the pigeons
the chickens did not come home.
Hornby Island Tanka
wave-sculpted sandstone
distant sandbar dune buggies
tie-dyed hippie ghosts
eagles, thermals, glaucous gulls
sand dollars , querulous seals.
Participating on Open Link Night over at dVerse.
The Poet Steps Out with Uncharacteristic Resolve
No free verse today
I’m taking my doggerel
for a long, long walk.
This haiku, by my good friend, Slim Volume, was short-listed in the non-starter category at the Mountmellick Haiku festival. Well done, Slim!
Exhibitionist
San Diego Zoo
a pink-arsed baboon presents
it’s late afternoon
Rooster
still dark, the rooster
starts his moronic complaint
damn pre-emptive cock
Retired Mathematicians at a Party (tanka)
there in the corner
reeking of stale calculus
old derivatives
life’s equation, the hard one,
still not balanced, still unsolved.
Participating in Open Link Night over at dVerse.
A Ghazal about Everlasting Love (and a rabbit)
like that rabbit on TV
our love will last
you know, the pink one with the drum
(our love will last)
and the dark sunglasses
(our love will last)
who sometimes hits a wall
(our love will last)
and sometimes stalls
(our love will last)
but he keeps banging that drum
(our love will last)
the rabbit keeps banging the drum
(our love will last)
but unlike our love
alkaline batteries are not everlasting
and eventually the rabbit falls
breathes his last
and we need another simile
one that lasts
like plastic in a landfill
our love will last
like craters on the moon
our love will last
like the power of the sun
our love will last
like the winds out on the ocean
our love will last.
In my previous ghazal , “Bucket List” I vowed to write a ghazal about everlasting love for the dVerse ghazal challenge. So there you have it, my first love poem, a big challenge – I’m the kind of person whose usual response to the words “I love you” is “right back at ya”.
Landline (for Dad)
Sometimes, I think
I should text my dad
give him an update
tell him where I’m at.
Not that he would answer
he’s been gone a few years now
and even if he were alive
texting would hardly be his thing;
at the turn of the century
he was still approaching
what we now call a ‘landline’
with some trepidation.
Landline: a rope
uncoiling towards the shore.
He once told me
that when we have children
of our own
we begin to understand
our own parents better
so I think my text
would be an attempt
to let him know
that, yes, dad
I have found this
to be true.
Slim’s Other Dream
3 a.m.
Slim returns to his dream
of pipes bursting in the attic
even though he knows
there are no pipes in the attic.
4 a.m.
Slim wakes
to the remains of a poem
crackling on the antic air.
A re-post, the weather is too good today to be indoors writing!
Stock Market
a bear is on the loose
the once priapic market
losing altitude
false hopes and false dreams for sale
nothing tangible.
This is response to the dVerse prompt to write about markets. It’s a haiku that I have upgraded (?) to a tanka, check out the poetry over at dVerse, some excellent market poems.
The photo is of an actual market in Sicily.
Walk (Dublin 2016)
In Iveagh gardens an exhibition promises:
Contemporary sculpture based on
Non-monumental ideas of the uncanny.
This phrase sticks like chewing gum
To the bedpost of my mind
As I walk through Stephen’s Green,
Replacing: One then offers the cat up to the aperture
Which, according to my brother,
Is the ultimate step in programming
One’s automatic cat door to accept
One’s micro-chipped cat.
Outside the Shelbourne Hotel
Tourists wearing horned helmets
Board a Viking ship on wheels.
I am in search of a pub sandwich
Two slices of white bread, ham, cheese ,
Toasted in a cellophane pack
Small jar of mustard on the side
Served with Guinness
In a quiet pub where I can sit
And think non monumental thoughts
And where the barman asks me
As we watch Lionel Messi
float past three transfixed defenders
Is he the best ever?
And I am surprised not at the question
But at the deference.
The challenge from Anmol over at dverse, is to write a poem on the subject of walking and observing. This poem was written after a trip back to my home town of Dublin. Walking around one’s home town is not so much about looking for the new as it is about re-discovering the past; it’s more about the memories that the place holds rather than the physical aspect of the place. It’s also about trying to recover a feeling or an experience from the past.
The photo is of Dublin from Sandymount Strand, and of course, Joyce’s “snot-green, scrotum-tightening sea”.
(The poem appeared previously in the Galway Review)
Hal The Halibunist Looks Back On His Long Career
halibuns about Haliburton
halibuns about halitosis
halibuns about Halle Berry
halibuns about Halley’s Comet
halibuns about Spiritus Mundi
halibuns about Rosamund Pike
halibuns about Solomon Grundy
halibuns just for the fun of it
halibuns at Sun Dance
halibuns in Halifax
halibuns about halibut
halibundance
halibundance
halibundance.
That Eternal Question
god’s old dilemma
exercise or exorcise
judgement or demons
The Stats
a recent survey shows
that sixty per cent
of all statisticians
suffer from
percentile dysfunction.
The Oscar of being George ( a hesitant haiku)
pride comes before a…….
without pride….one would never…
get up……off one’s arse.
The Tight Rope Walker
After John’s hamster died
he could not tell up from down,
he became a tight rope walker
tottering grimly forward
without pole or safety net
modern medicine is just a sham
couldn’t save one damn hamster
he never acknowledged
the gravity of his situation.
The challenge over at dVerse is to write a quadrille (44 word poem), incorporating the word “up”.
