Six Clerihews of the Moment

Tags

Angela Rayner, Boris Johnson, clerihew, House of Commons, Keir Starmer, Lynne Truss, Pm's Question Time, Rishi Sunak, Satire

Lynne Truss,

What an embarrassing fuss!

She confused the Baltic and Black Sea.

Does she have Geography GCSE?

Boris Johnson, PM,

from whom the Tory Party and the country’s troubles stem,

knows all about ‘tragic miscalculation[s]’

and is woefully inept at international relations.

Angela Rayner,

lover of the biker boot and trainer,

called the Conservatives ‘scum.’

Maybe, some think, she wasn’t quite so dumb?

Keir Starmer,

we’d be misled if we called him a charmer-

inadvertently, or not, the Scots crofter was hot.

His principled stand eclipsed the whole lot.*

(in some people’s opinion)

Jacob Rees-Mogg,

Princeling of Pettifog?

Is that a silver spoon in the pocket of your pantaloon,

or are you pleased to see us, that you may bestow a boon?

Rishi Sunak.

is giving us £200 back.

‘Now, don’t bite the hand that feeds you,’ he may say.

No, we’ll leave that till the Election Day.

Rejection

Tags

empathy, Goya, jealousy, Los Caprichos, quennet, rejection, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Wikimedia Commons.

Goya: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters from Los Caprichos

black mood patient endurance anguished thoughts

dashed hope

groundless expectation tunnel light silver lining?

suppressed frustration

wry smile forced laughter gnawing jealousy

daily grind

scarce empathy

gritted teeth

voluntary solitude

brittle persona

crushed spirit

low ebb

arrested development

black tunnel anguished grind daily endurance

groundless jealousy?

Summer’s Lease Hath All Too Short A Day

Tags

Autumn, decay, end of summer, every fair from fair sometime declines, momento mori, nasturtium, poignant beauty, Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, still life

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Hot? Well, it’s not!

Tags

Alexander Pope, Dryden, Matthew Arnold, universal greyness, weather

Wish it was. Fed up with the universal greyness that covers all.

Was that Alexander Pope? Dryden?

I’m thinking ‘Dunciad.’ Maybe it was Matthew Arnold- I forget, alas.

I know Europe is burning, but here it is day after day of grey

nothingness.

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Homesick on The Ridgeway

Tags

dustceawing, eawl-leet, hill-fort, holloways, Hran-rad, inosculation, invasion, Norsemen, petrichor, The Ridgeway

Who were these invaders?

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

 

Haunting the holloways, harrowed by hooves;

feeling our footfall fragment the flint.

Scanning the canopy’s inosculation,

we glybe through glossamer and squint in the glisk.

Dustsceawung is unavoidable:

dreams flit into smeause, like mice through a crack;

dilemmas dissolve through smoot holes.

Preoccupation is piffling to us.

We head for a hill-fort; spy on a settlement,

among the shadowtracks and shivelights

at the selvedge fray of a sown field.

After a shower, a pungent petrichor

permeates nostrils and a landskein

looms over the horizon, like smoke from their huts.

Soon it will be wolf-light; eawl-leet softens

and Heimweh’s heft hirples our hearts,

so we summon the sun wane

on the suthering tide, where we tied our ships.

May a spanging breeze freeze the salt in our beards!

Helmsmen, we long for the Hran-rad and home.

Hannah More (1745-1833)

Tags

anti-slavery, bas bleu, Belmont, Blagdon, Clapham set, Cowslip Green, Fishponds, Hannah More, Mendip Hills, nervous breakdown, philanthropist, religious tracts, Tyntesfield, Walpole

Hannah More by Pickersgill

A quennet for a woman who made a fortune with her pen:

 

fourth daughter   Gloucestershire born   Mendip Hills

poetic landscape

religious tracts   pastoral plays   Sunday education

nervous collapse

‘strange affair’    Bleeding Rock   jilted female

small annuity

bas bleu

Blagdon cottage

Clapham Sect

petticoat bishop

Cowslip Green

anti-slavery

bold philanthropist

strange plays   female education    pastoral landscape

religious rock.

 

 

Pando

Tags

adaptation, aspen, bryophytes, clones, cordate leaves, ldge pole pine, lepidoptera, Pando, Pluto, Populus tremuloides, ramets, rhizome, survival of the fittest

Image: Wikimedia Commons. USA Forest and Agriculture Department

 

 

Christ died on an aspen cross, woodmen thought.

Maybe that’s why, on slight provocation,

I quake and all my cordate leaves shiver,

so that I am known as ‘The Trembling Giant,’

aka Populus tremuloides.

Before men walked out of Africa and

when glaciers were scouring the planet,

I, Pando, was like a subterranean god –

not Pluto, but Pando, meaning ‘I spread.’

After flames have incinerated me,

my dormant rhizome will regenerate,

like resurgence of an old religion.

In times of trial, I just go underground;

in ideal circumstances, I can host

bryophytes; nurture lepidoptera.

I have the root of the matter in me,

but I share my vulnerability

with my multiple ramets – all my clones.

I haven’t flowered for ten thousand years,

in spite of a rigorous self-pruning.

See where black scars mutilate my white bark.

Invasive lodge pole pine may steal my light

and pocket gophers gnaw my root system,

but I sprout from this volcanic soil.

What I lack in diversity,

I’ll exchange for durability, for

we suckers just plan to stay together,

even when a highway runs right through us.

Master of the art of adaptation,

I will survive when all else is ashen.

 

Komorebi

Tags

Pointillist, Impressionism, komorebi, pixels, parasols, nystagmus

Wikimedia- Madame Monet and her son

Another leftover poem from my series a couple of years ago.

Komorebi is

a word for dappled light seen

under, or through trees.

The Impressionists caught it

in flickering strokes,

or in Pointillist pixels.

Women’s parasols

shielded them from nystagmus.

Wide-brimmed hats stilled the dancing

tones’ fluctuations.

Yet the bare-headed shimmer

and they scintillate

with the mirage of brief youth

and half-realisation.

Pointless Things

Tags

concrete operational, fascinators, list poem, pet hates, Pillow Book, Sei Shonagon, trout pout

I think I wrote this poem based on an entry in The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon,

which was a list of ugly things. I tried to bring it up to date with pet hates of the

20th and 21st century.

Juxtaposing hair

which is unkempt with fine clothes;

a fascinator

on a helmet-like mullet;

hand-made paper spoiled

by spidery handwriting;

low-cut brides kneeling

in front of praying vicars;

presenting logic to the

concrete operational,

who try to pretend

that they understand;

a trout-pout selfie taken

by a narcissist – tramp-stamped,

and no Spring chicken either.

 

 

 

Integrity

Tags

fourteen lines, graciousness, honour, integrity, Japanese poetry, visiting friends

About two years ago I was experimenting with using Japanese poetic

frameworks and was trying to paraphrase and utilise poetry from the Tale

of Genji etc, but attempting to re-phrase the little cameos in my own words. 

This poem seems to have been left out, so I offer it to you now.

Sometimes you visit,

unexpectedly, a friend

and you stumble on

evidence of graciousness.

No show is put on:

it is their habitual

way of doing things.

It reflects nobility.

Even if you were to spy

on them, you would find

they’d behave in the same way.

they’re true to themselves,

whether they are being watched,

or not.  It’s integrity.