25 Saturday Feb 2023
Posted in Education, Language, Literature, Photography, Supernatural, Writing
Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart. Credit to the original artist, whoever produced it.
Are all forms of representation ghostly? Discuss.
29 Monday Aug 2022
Posted in Crime, Environment, Nature, News, Poetry, Relationships, Social Comment, Writing
Tags
agribusinesses, Amazon, habitat loss, illegal loggers, Man of the Hole, North Rondonia, pistoleros, sarampion, sestina, yams
The harbingers of the highway, strange men –
pistoleros? – murdered his tribe. Alone,
he raises maize and yams. He is the last
to roam 4,000 hectares; to survive
sarampion, flu, smallpox and the loss
of relationships, family and friends.
The agribusinesses have been no friends
to Amazonian rainforests. Men
decimate the land; their gain is loss.
This man has lived for twenty years alone.
With four, or five, some other tribes survive,
but human diversity will not last.
When the illegal loggers have, at last,
razed every tree to the forest floor, friends
of the indigenous will not survive.
Stripping rare plants that might have healed men
will leave us with dilemmas, all alone,
to face health crises; scientific loss.
In today’s world we experience loss –
loss of our souls; our languages. The last
man to roam North Rondonia alone
at least felt what it was once to have friends.
He knew the co-operation of men
was vital for tribe members to survive.
Without his wisdom, how can we survive?
No man is an island. All sense the loss.
Our planet is affected – even men
who murdered his kin. The effects will last,
impacting their families and their friends.
Doubtless their guilt should not be borne alone.
Corporations do not erode alone.
Immunity itself will not survive.
Time’s arrow can pierce foes and even friends.
The Man of the Hole, who suffered great loss,
knows his breath will be surrendered at last,
but he holds that in common with all men.
Friends of our earth, how shall we survive loss
of habitats and species? Fellow men,
look at this last man. He’s not alone.
A post of the poem I already published in February 2021.
‘The Man in the Hole’ was found outside his straw hut, dead in a hammock
and covered with Macaw feathers. He was aged about 60 and no foul play
is suspected at this time.
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in Celebrities, Humour, News, Poetry, Politics, Satire, Social Comment, Writing
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.
14 Thursday Oct 2021
Posted in Personal, Poetry, Psychology, Relationships, Writing
Tags
empathy, Goya, jealousy, Los Caprichos, quennet, rejection, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
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?
25 Friday Jun 2021
Tags
dustceawing, eawl-leet, hill-fort, holloways, Hran-rad, inosculation, invasion, Norsemen, petrichor, The Ridgeway
Who were these invaders?
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.
22 Tuesday Jun 2021
Posted in art, Education, History, Literature, Poetry, Religion, Social Comment, Sociology, Writing
Tags
anti-slavery, bas bleu, Belmont, Blagdon, Clapham set, Cowslip Green, Fishponds, Hannah More, Mendip Hills, nervous breakdown, philanthropist, religious tracts, Tyntesfield, Walpole
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.
24 Monday May 2021
Tags
Impressionism, komorebi, nystagmus, parasols, pixels, Pointillist
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.
23 Sunday May 2021
Posted in Fashion, Humour, Literature, Personal, Poetry, Psychology, Satire, Social Comment, Writing
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.
22 Saturday May 2021
Posted in Personal, Poetry, Psychology, Relationships, Social Comment, Writing
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.
24 Saturday Apr 2021
Tags
Avaris, hippos, Hyksos, neighbour dispute, revanchism, Seqenenre, Thebes
Extreme revanchism row with neighbours:
no statutory nuisance laws back then;
no one issued an abatement notice.
He was ‘the Brave’ – at war with the Hyksos.
It’s amazing what lack of sleep can do.
They just snapped over his noisy hippos.
A desire to cull turned to lust to kill.
We’ve all been maddened by a noisy pool.
The disturbance carried on the night air,
travelling from Thebes, up to Avaris.
Then his younger son captured their city,
almost twenty years into his own reign.
A little bit of poolside decorum
may have prevented an execution.
Users of swimming pools should roar quietly,
to avoid the fate of Seqenenre.
Candia Comes Clean 