Poetry is?

Tigers, Tigers, burning brightly. Molotov cocktails exploding nightly. I doubt that I shall ever see a tree that’s free of doggy peel

Are values really valuable? Opinions really real?

Are calculations calculable? Do we say what we feel?

Paradise lost by the unemployed, like drinking beer you’ve not enjoyed, or wearing politically Tory hues while faithfully paying your union dues. What is love, if not emotion? Does your dog show you devotion?

Can they really employ diplomatic aplomb, to explain using the Atom-bomb?

Who really has the courage of conviction, to see the humble truth of strange prediction?

Asking themselves if the world we live in can take much more before she gives in? Are we real or honest, or even fair to be well-fed here while they’re starving there? Do we think, or feel, or even mind that blissful ignorance isn’t kind?

A poet’s lot a happy one? Is writing poetry really fun? Satirical but true to life, like criticising next-door’s wife,

or turning the other cheek, tongue stuck fast though knowing well that you’ll still have the last —– laugh.

” At One With None.”

The price of loneliness, it seems, is mental dislocation. Discouraging the mind’s vain search for the right psychic vocation. Leading quite inexorably to the garden of despair,

whose sheltered darkness fans the flames of resentment. Naked. Bare, and all too easily exposed to ridicule’s poisoned barbs.

Don’t we mock the make-up artists when we don protective garbs?

No cry for help escapes our lips, for helplessness leaves us numb, and like the starving birds in Winter, we peck at every crumb

of sympathy offered by those who don’t know how it is, all alone,

till in suicidal seconds they think of those people they tried to disown.

Mute and defenceless. Minds always receptive, we look for a means to be free.

To give something to others, who can’t give themselves, whose immediate needs we can see.

In the final discussion, when words become deeds and the minds of the parties do meet,

remember that loneliness planted the seeds, and in truth love is seldom complete

“Ettiquette Demands.”

Eyes like coals in marble faces. Airless lungs and those false graces. Pinkies raised while drinking tea. Fork in left hand, just like me.

Open doors for beguiling ladies. Join peace campaign, although a sadist. Give up seat to old-age pensioner. Prostitution? Musn’t mention her.

Don’t smoke at hostesses table, blowing smoke rings, though you’re able. Listen politely to chairman speeches. Do wear gloves when eating Peaches. One must maintain the social graces, disdaining dirty, children’s faces.

The civilised art is vital, you see. Ask the rapist in for tea.

Applaud the mugger’s courageous act but console the victim. A little tact should be used when facing demise. Be brave, stout fellow and don’t despise the society we’ve created, for it’s laws were promulgated to protect us.

” Hollows.”

How sad the knowledge that we live but a microspan of years. Too frail to grasp that knowledge which allays all human fears.

Too proud to be defeated in our search for sweet salvation,

and yet too blind to recognise that our paths lead to damnation.

A cacophony of righteous screams that our cause is surely just drowning out the cries of feeble ones, whose defense was not robust

enough to vanquish unbelievers. Still the tongues of those lost souls. As we stand proud. Victorious, knowing for whom the death-bell tolls.

The heady wine of freedom. The uplift of sweet success.

We won the fight. Our cause was just. We feel empty, nonetheless.

” Sea of Love”

Broken by an intangible emotion. Black paper. Something of a void. No mind, no feeling. Saying things my mind ain’t thinking.

Thinking things I just can’t say.

A searing heat runs through my heart. Twas the gentle flame of love before. Women. Tissue-thin, yet so strong.

I have been tom apart, yet feelings linger.

Love, once so serene. Now a troubled sea. Waves of sadness wash over me. I love her still.