Tag Archives: poetry

Toad at the Gates of Doom (poem)

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Toad at the Gates of Doom

Outside the Gates of Hades
sits a cross-eyed toad
beside a burnt-out serpent
a broker and a phone

Outside the Gates of Heaven
sits an angel in disguise
beside an incontinent bishop
with ecstasy in his eyes

and the sign on the gate says:

Closed for Renovation
no judgement today
if you’re looking for accommodation
clear off, go away.

God is on vacation
taking a well-earned break
there’s only so much suffering
one true God can take

So, get your ass back down there
be good to everyone
drink lots of water
and try to get along.

 

(This poem came about because, for a brief period, I was listening to prog metal. Brief because, like all things prog, the talent rarely matches the ambition, the concepts. Pink Floyd were a progressive band but they were successful because they could write songs and had one of the best lyricists in rock, the concepts were secondary. Prog metal players, from what I can tell , are accomplished musicians – the guitarists can play at incredible speeds and the drummers sound like they are descended from the octopus but the lyrics are banal at best and the melodies vestigial. The album titles, though, are always interesting and that’s where this poem started – I was playing around with making up titles for prog metal concept albums…the poem evolved from there.)

Taking part in Open Link Night over at dVerse.

Drain The Swamp Rag

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A version of this poem appeared with 4 other poems, a little while back in the online magazine Anti-Heroin Chic

The subject over at dverse today is “Smoke and Mirrors”, so I thought I would give the poem another outing.

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Drain The Swamp Rag

(Walk that back
walk that back
I know I said it
but I walked that back.)

Attack dog surrogates
inveterate invertebrates
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.

Post logic, post truth,
snake oil and kool-aid
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.

Mike Pence, John Bolton
Rudy Giuliani
re-stock the swamp
with old white males

Inveterate surrogates
attack dog invertebrates
re-mail the stock
to the old white swamp

re-stock the swamp
with old white males.

Lines randomly composed while listening to a band from the Maritimes in the Dubh Linn Gate Pub, Whistler, British Columbia

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Lines randomly composed while listening to a band from the Maritimes in the Dubh Linn Gate Pub, Whistler, British Columbia

Oh. the herring were running wild and fast
as we sailed out from St. John
and the cod were plump as Mary’s arse
on a Sunday morning after early mass
with sausages on the griddle, rashers in the pan
with a whack fol de diddle dairy oh
with a whack fol de diddle dan.

(my first and, hopefully, my last attempt at a seafaring song…a note to my readers:
please drink responsibly or you will end up writing rubbish like the above…)

Don’t Play in the Traffic (again)

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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.

 

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I’ve posted this one twice before, but I kind of like it. Participating in Open Link Night at dverse.

Deep Fried Road Kill ( the sequel to High Plains Sushi)

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Deep Fried Road Kill (a dizain)

Audrey, the lank-haired waitress, scans the bar,
sees Charlie nursing his long empty glass
“Hey you”, she yells, “get your ass outta here”
“Just my ass?” Charlie asks, to loud applause ;
deep fried road kill, okra, potato mash
warm under a heat lamp, he’s feeling ill;
he nods at his miner friends- Pit Fall Phil,
Old Arsenic, Rock Face, Busted Lung Lou –
in the holy glow of the pool table
they’ve still got that subterranean hue.

Yes, just when you thought it was safe to open your WordPress Reader…..the sequel to High Plains Sushi!  

The form used is a dizain, 10 lines , 10 syllables per line, rhyme scheme..ababbccdcd…For a more detailed discussion of the form, see Frank Hubeny’s excellent post over at dVerse.

Freckles (a quadrille)

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Freckles

freckles are stand-offish
they refuse to connect
like scarecrows in a field
like mute sentinels……
(that last line’s a tad too poetic for me)
meanwhile I wait cravenly for a connection,
another “like”
to ride the radio waves,
all the way to my screen.

“Freckles” is the prompt over at dVerse (a quadrille is a 44 word poem)

High Plains Sushi (a dizain)

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High Plains Sushi

this bar is insured by Smith and Wesson
according to the sign upon the wall
Charlie studies his empty beer glass and
time, his old enemy, slows to a crawl,
there’s a Tuesday night two for one special
out at Wanda’s Ranch, but that’s not what he
needs, or wants – he craves that high plains sushi,
tuna, wasabi, sake in a cup
he sits five thousand feet above the sea
and he just can’t….he just can’t get enough.

This poem was culled from  another song lyric/ poem, the original can be found here.

The form used is a dizain, 10 lines , 10 syllables per line, rhyme scheme..ababbccdcd…and I don’t mind saying…I think I strained something trying to conform to it.

For a more detailed discussion of the form, see Rosemary Nissen-Wade’s excellent post over at dVerse.

 

If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka (plus Mr’s Mueller’s haiku)

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If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka

Why the long face, Bob?
always that same damn question
since I was a boy,

and always the same answer:
it is long because it’s long.

Couldn’t resist reposting that one. Okay, just one more……

Mr’s Mueller’s Haiku

You’re disappointed

you don’t know disappointment

you don’t know damp squibs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.

There’s Nothing Like Being

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There’s Nothing Like Being

There’s nothing like being
in a crowded bar
in a foreign city
on a Friday evening
just after five
and you don’t know anyone
but it doesn’t matter
and you can’t speak the language
but it doesn’t matter
it’s enough to be there
to breathe in the relief
to share the belief
that Monday morning
is a life time away.

 

The prompt over at dVerse is to write a poem about movement, where am I going, where have I been.

Speaking as the Moon

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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.

Trumplings (A Retrospective and a quote from T.S. Eliot)

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Orange is the New Bleak 1 (3)

 

The other day, I was looking back on the number of Donald Trump related posts on this blog and a pattern emerged. In 2015, there were 3 posts; in 2016, 10 posts; in 2017, 23 posts; in 2018, 19 posts; in 2019, 2 posts so far.
That’s when I thought of T.S. Eliot:
“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned wriggling on a wall”
It seems, looking at the above stats, that in my mind, at least, Donald has been formulated and there is little more to be said creatively, even the outrage has become stale. He has the approval of over 40% of American voters and maybe now that is the subject, the man himself has been defined and will not change.

These are the Trump posts  I had most fun writing , they rely a bit more (I think) on language rather than straight polemic. They are arranged somewhat in chronological sequence

“Agent Orange has a dark Moment” was published in Rat’s Ass Review” ,and “Donald Trump – On Reflection” was published in “Oddball Magazine“. “Trumputin” was published in Anti-Heroin Chic .

Inauguration

it
does
not
augur
well.

 

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Donald’s Early Days

A farrago of fiascos,
banishments and bans;
weekends at Mar-a-Lago
the world in his hands.

 

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Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Do you know who I miss? Jeb Bush. I miss Jeb Bush. He was my first. When I hit him with that low energy jibe and he fell apart and all the Bush family could not put Humpty together again, I knew I was on to something. Then Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, I miss them too. But most of all, I miss Hillary, Crooked Hillary. Man, she was tough, had me on the ropes. It took Comey and Vlad, that pointy headed villain, to get me back on my feet. I was nearly out for the count, which might not have been a bad thing. Who needs this shit! I should give Vlad a call, I’m a bit worried -there’s no such thing as a free hack.
Reince Priebus – what kind of fucking name is that? It sounds like bad news from the doctor. “I’m sorry, Donald, you have a Reince Priebus on your rectum and it doesn’t look good”. Ha, I just made myself laugh. And Bannon, I’ve seen sofas on the side of the road in better shape than that rumpled fucker. Spice Box? Hardest job in the world – explaining the unexplainable. That Melissa Mc.Carthy just slays me. How come all the cool people are on the other side? Who have I got? Ryan and Pence? Bland and Blander? Where did Pence come from anyway with his brush cut and his antediluvian politics? The best surgeons in the world couldn’t remove the poker from that guy’s ass. Antediluvian, you didn’t expect that did you?
Talking of cool, I should give Barack a call, ask him down to Florida for a game of golf; check his birth certificate again (Joking! How I miss those days). Man, I hate this fucking White House furniture, is it Friday yet?

 

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Haiku for Donald

petulant pillock

postcranial curmudgeon

bombastic buffoon.

 

Orange is the New Bleak 1 (3)
On Reflection…. Donald Trump

America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.

 

 

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Trumputin (a romance)

Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.

Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.

 

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The Toddler King (excerpt)

5 am. in America

the toddler king
checks his Twitter feed

in the empty parking lot
of a big box store
a plastic bag pirouettes
on the halitotic breeze

national monuments
fear for their lives

the adjectives – good, bad, great-
drop in value again

the toddler king
picks a fight with himself.

 

 

Haiku written in response to a comment by the incomparable Steve Simpson.

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Haiku written in response to a comment by the incomparable Steve Simpson.

it’s summer here, Steve
keeping the syllable count
as low as I can.

 

(see Steve’s comment here )

( if you are not following Steve’s blog, you should be, he’s one of the most original poets out there!)

The Water Taxi Arrives (Caye Caulker Chronicles Take 2)

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The Water Taxi Arrives (Caye Caulker Chronicles Take 2)

like Sherpas in search of an expedition
the backpackers tumble onto the dock
clutching Lonely Planet guidebooks
it’s nowhere near as lonely here
as their guidebooks promise
but it is part of the planet
they got that right
it is part of the planet.

(in the café below
Bob Marley is still jammin’
the locals talk of paradise lost
of Eve and apples bitten.)

This is a rewrite of a previous post.