Tag Archives: Liberty

Taking A Liberty

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by in art, Language, Literature, mythology, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Social Comment, Writing

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Another poem inspired by Prometheus Unbound

by P B Shelley:

Andromeda by Burne-Jones: Wikipedia

 

A wheel will come full circle, you will find.

The outcome’s in the etymology

of ‘revolution.’  Think ‘Animal Farm.’

 

‘You seize the flower; the bloom is shed,’ Rab said.

Heaven and Hell are one’s inner landscapes.

Give a man an inch; he’ll take a mile.

 

Liberty/ licence – where to draw the line?

Free expression/ censorship : who can judge?

Anarchy is based on casuistry.

 

Prometheus played with fire and was burnt.

Imagination versus tyranny.

He who is king over himself is free.

 

Cassiopeia took the liberty

of a frank assessment of others’ looks.

Say nowt if you can’t say anything nice.

 

Why did the Pre-Raphaelites feel free

to create soft porn from mythology?

Liberty bodices off; shackles on.

 

‘When tigers are unleashed, who controls them?’

said Diaz, while Dr Atl opposed

slaves’ exploitation by hacendados,

 

exploding guerilla warfare into print,

like lava from his beloved volcanoes –

but he still became a neo-Nazi.

 

So, I’m suspicious of all these Titans,

larger than life, whose words stream in the wind.

They’re the self-acknowledged legislators,

 

crying, ‘Liberty, equality… (Blah!)

prior to being overthrown – not by a coup –

yet everywhere men are free, but in chains.

 

Merton Abbey Mills

24 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Arts, Poetry, Summer 2012

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William Morris, who strongly opposed restoration

“If William Morris were alive today

he would turn over in his grave,” she said.

Reneging on co-operative roots,

weasly traders attempt to fob folk off

with cheap crazed pottery and Repro stuff

under bestriding Betjeman pylons

in the shadow of a silver Kaaba:

Sainsbury’s Savacentre.  Poor Topsy

would have topped himself to see his named pub,

a Riverside Free House, serving (slowly)

Pre-Raphaelite burgers and Liberty

Jacket potatoes.  Some spoof has written

under “Today’s Specials”: Leek and Cat Shit

Pie, £1.75 and Spinach and

Scrotum Quiche, £2.75.  Thick smoke

reminds one of past local industries:

snuff and tobacco.  Wading through potholes

one wonders at the willow-fringed Wandle

where fine printed silks were dipped by his hands,

dark, indigo-stained, like those large blue plums

which grew on the wall in his Woodford plot

in days when he rode through Epping Forest

in his miniature toy suit of armour,

looking for dragons to slay.  Now he knew

dyeing was an art and when the fierce floods

whipped the millwheel into activity

such as might have wrecked the very millhouse,

he may have thought his enterprise would fail

like the relationship with the beauty

who was such a burden to him.  But now

his Strawberry Thieves grace the punters’ ties.

“Have only beautiful or useful things”

falls on deaf ears, as past ideals take wings

and shopping trolleys fill with plastic junk

purchased from the monopolising store

which conserves workshops, but kills small growers.

Morris, you should be living at this hour.

England hath need of thee!  Here be dragons.

Textile printing at Merton Abbey c. 1890, from...

Textile printing at Merton Abbey c. 1890, from a booklet commemorating the 50th anniversary of the firm, 1911 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)