A Whole Bunch Of Short New Poems!

A whole bunch of short, new poems. Inspired, strangely enough, by the countryside and the natural world. Which is weird, what with my being an urban type and all.

My heart is marked with desire lines -

The patterns tramped by those

Who forced their own route

Across my inner being,

Flattening all hope

And making it easier for others to follow the same inevitable journey.

But in the most part

I'm particularly well-adjusted.

　

I see the clock ticking, it's driving me insane.

I see the clock ticking, it's playing with my brain.

I see the clock ticking and I watch the minutes melt

Each second marks the inexorable advancement of life into the final and unknowable abyss which awaits us all.

I see the clock ticking, sod it, I'm taking the batteries out.

　

One cannot help but wonder

If the whole of human history would be different

If Franz Kafka had ever bought a cactus.

The gloomy wordsmith,

Denizen of hopeless, hapless ill-luck

And the overwhelming decrepitude of the human condition

Admiring the tenacity

Of a prickly green stump.

Surviving without water

In the most inhospitable terrain.

Kafka would certainly have livened up a bit.

Cracked a joke or two.

Written something life affirming.

With fluffy bunnies, perhaps.

Worn his hat at a rakish angle.

Taken up fly fishing.

Bought some of those new fangled

Rollerblades.

Worn a hoodie.

It's just a thought.

　　

　

Supreme, lithe contortions.

Spindly limbs rhythm-bound in dry ice.

Club lights disco and the heat-bound boom boom

Of Kylie.

I can't get him out of my head.

Enraptured by his newness, his nuance

A lightning tingle in a white t-shirt.

As unblemished as my knowledge of him.

An awful whisper rises up

Enunciates a private dread

I should be so lucky!

Alas, he dances closer,

Closes his eyes with the utter seriousness

Of his aforementioned supreme, lithe contortions.

He knowest not the language of subtlety, methinks

　

　

　

Promethean, primeval forest.

Palladium pillars, tall fir tree tree trunks

Perfectly straight,

Neither Doric nor Corinthian nor Ionic

Or very ironic

Those stirring proud promethean primeval palladium pillar-like fir tree tree trunks.

On a carpet of pine needles

I ponder on weighty issues.

The eternal slide of certain sensibilities.

Modern attitudes to homosexuality.

Hats.

Staring up at your stirring branches.

Striping zig zag stirring starring staring

Against the overcast sky.

It's quite uncomfortable

What with all the pine needles and stuff.

But you don't care

What with you only being trees

And not having a conscience or anything.

　

　

 

　

Stirring masses of sultry air

Swirling, ever rising : mirage fluctuations

Of wavy heat rising

In waves

Like the remnants of an old lady's perm.

Oh to be in England, on a summer's day

In a field just off the A303

Where it passes through Chicklade and then becomes dual carriageway for a bit.

Oh to be in England!

Or possibly Belgium.

　

Oh, dwellings of simplicity!

Megalith, monolithic

Monochrome stone dwellings!

Slabs of granite arranged in a loose rectangular fashion!

How I could reside within thee,

Dwell in your stoniness!

Dwell with monosyllabic

Monobrowed stone-age man,

Moaning, simple, stone-age man,

Moaning about the weather, stone-age man

Monocultured and ignorant in the ways of modern man stone-age man.

Chewing with your mouth-open stone-age man.

Eating your bus ticket stone-age man.

Staring at the lesbians.

And the woolly mammoths

And all the other things that upset you on a day-to-day basis, stone-age man.

Oh, dwellings of simplicity!

On a windswept moor!

Surrounded by bracken and moss and things!

And badgers!

Second thoughts, I'd probably just settle for a cheap hotel.

　

　

　

And thence into region

Devoid of architectural merit

Where the sheds stand aloof like soldiers

To whom no-one has told that the war has ended.

And a misty mists in

Misting the misty eyes of misters and missus

Waiting for those aforementioned soldiers,

The ones who looked like sheds who didn't know that the war had ended.

(Or was it the other way around?)

(I just checked. Yeah, it was the sheds that looked like soldiers).

The estuary

Passes slowly

Like a soulful singer singing soulful songs

Amid the belch of seaweed

Her voice warbling

And the mist curling

Making the lonesome sheds look more like gravestones

Or the occasional stumpy tooth in the mouth of a mad old woman.

A hag.

And the seaweed similar to her breath.

Which I suppose is what happens

In a region devoid of architectural merit.

　

The ponies, in all their mighty glory.

How I worship thee!

Fierce, noble creatures, roosting at sunset.

Brave warriors in all their pony pride.

Doing all their pony things.

Can't think much else to say about them.

　

　

The tide comes in and the tide goes out.

It comes in and it goes out.

The tide comes in. The tide goes out.

Except in the Mediterranean, where the tide manages to maintain a fairly constant waterline vies a vies the shore.

My love for you is like the tide.

It comes and it goes and its fairy predictable

In the rate that it comes and goes.

I am seldom navigable at low tide.

Come wreck yourself upon me.

Slipping and sliding in the slick from your spill.

Churning. Mellow. Let's surf the night away.

　

Crawling glaciers and icy springs.

That from the distant mountain, thunderously.

Like the bowel of a beast or the belch of a darts player,

Slime ever downwards slug-like

And thence into frozen cataracts,

Quivering on the mountain, there

Like a frightened bunny rabbit.

Wispy snow whispering, 'Go!

Go unto the cruel summit!

Go unto the multi-voiced echo!

Go!

Go unto Lidl's, it closes at nine!

Go!

I stay.

Shuddering in picturesque contentment.

Frozen to the spot not by majesty

But because I am, literally, bloody freezing.

　

　

Thou hast a volcano, saith my conscience.

Nay, said I, I don't know what you're going on about.

Thou hast a tempest, saith my conscience.

Again, nay, said I, thou is surely mistaken.

Thou hast a typhoon, saith my conscience.

Look ere, I said, I'm trying to get things done here.

Thou hast a chasm aching where love should be, a downwards spiral into decrepitude, a putrid grove where love should be, a mirthless, worthless, stinking pestilence-ridden dead thing where otherwise you might have raised upon thyself the trappings of a soul, thou hast the charms of a warthog, saith my conscience.

How rude, saith I, and in any case, I have enough trouble without you banging on about it.

My conscience doth speak no more.