And the Dead Tree Gives no Shelter

Photo:  WHB … 2019

 

The tree had fallen
Rotting remains now
As the rain 
The wind 
devour its bark
Dam its life stream
Yet still it nurtures life 
Home for beetle colonies to breed
For fungi to succeed

Rotted matted carcass
This sorbate matter
Feeds a frenzy
Of insect life
Foreign matter
Now acceptable
Powdered matter
Now both home
And sustenance
Renewable energy
Nature’s liturgy

Life in Death
To turn a phrase
That has to be
Nature’s best call
Perpetuating the present
In the past
Creating a new future
In an old landscape

N.B.  The title of this poem is taken from T.S.Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’.
‘1. The Burial of the Dead’, beginning … ‘April is the cruellest month …’

The Curious Case of the Cubist Clown

Photo: WHB – 2019

An unknown nocturne plays
without provenance 
Realised in a Narnian dream
to be read by hearsay
its undisclosed lineage
a mystery

White-garbed musician
guitar akimbo
Draped
casually at ease
on a cubist chair.

In melancholy mood
his arpeggioed chords
gently weeping
to me
the silent onlooker
the uninformed audience
for his deft and fretful
Brazilian saudade

Braque-ish cubes
predominate
Harlequin or Clown
checkered grand master
or imminent coulrophobia

And why white
Why the mask noir
the dense
Intense context
Where only silent space
listens
his rasguedo sonorous
in turn
soothing and somnolent
then
fraught with flamenco tension
or on fire with gypsy fervour

And the shadow figure
skulking
hurrying into the background
A sinister threat
escaping from
a mission accomplished 
or fleeing
bearing yet more grief
to some renegade de-briefing

The message missed
Significance lost
Theories advanced
Debated
Discarded

The clues must be there
too dense to unravel
I need a history

I think too
I see hidden faces
The game players’ cabal
linked by name
or by my imagination

In my desire to crack the code 
I stumble and abort my search
Defeated for now
But not for ever

I would be delighted if any viewer of the above picture could provide clues to the artist and or to his/her subject.  I have had no direct access to the original painting (print?) but an intriguing story was woven around both the painting’s subject and its acquisition by the friend who allowed  me to photograph the above which is merely a copy of the original. 

 

A Glimpse of Paradise

Photo:  WHB – 2019

I paused as I passed
Just a glimpse
in a miniscule
slice of time
Held in a bubble 
About to burst
A sense of the bizarre
The freaky
Outré and offbeat
Unreal yet lurid enough
As though I’d seen what I should not see
Felt what I had never felt

That entranced moment brought
Mirabile dictu
An exotic pain
That carried with it 
All meaning
The key to my existence 
The reason I was here
And nowhere else
Why I would live forever 
In the collective memory
Of the universe
An imprint
On the Tablet of Time

Book Swap – Red Renaissance

Photo: WHB … In a Devonshire Village – 2019

Book Swap – Red Renaissance

Why not? 
The phone now silenced
Calm contemplation
corners the kiosk
The urgent queue
becomes now
The Silence of the Library

Culture creep
now succeeding conversation
Cerebral centre for sure
Telephone Exchange
gives way to
Book Exchange

A new purpose in life
for the
candid kiosk
Lifeline for the lonely 
Book Barter 
brings back to back
book for book
blood red fervour
to the village

Once the life saviour
Now given
to silent contemplation
Shilling meter
and B button gone

Silence Of The Lambs
and Passage To India
now broadening 
Lost Horizons

Gormenghast
and Shades Of Grey
fostering Fantasy for 
lonely locals

A Rebirth for
communication 
Red Renaissance
for both Book and Booth

 

Poet Manqué

Photo by Martin Péchy on Pexels.com

You may not yet know it, 
But I am a poet. 
I wait for my muse to inspire. 

I try not to show it, 
Hard work, I forgo it, 
My verses, not cheap, but not dire

So, call me a fool, 
Say I’m not cool, 
But of rhyming I never will tire. 

It’s my trade’s greatest tool, 
And while others may drool, 
I’ll do it until I retire.

 

Mirrored Hope

Photo: WHB – 2019

Ornate
The frame
Impounding
My world

Silver gilt
glistens
Holding
My framed
Existence in its
Reflected copy

How
I wish away 
My life
In exotic scenes

Imaged opulence
Amidst
A morbid
Decaying life

I ask no more
Than for an echo of my future

In my next glimpse
To come to my rescue
And transcribe
My defeatism
Into a reassuring future

No man
Can live for ever
But
To the end
He can deny
That thought

 

Postbox Blues

Photo: WHB  … January 2019

A victim of
the email age
Now little used
My lonely lot

Now disengaged
Now cast aside
Now otiose
And left to die

Surplus to need 
The need for speed
My busy days
Have been and gone

Bustle and throb
Of vibrant life
Have passed away
Now ceased to be

My history
Of want and need
Of purposeful
Incarnation

Depository
For all junk mail
Dead detritus
Torn off waste 

Pariah now
The street’s reject
Too slow to match
The call for speed

Demand for pace
The need to know
Have caught me up
And let me go 

Have brought about
This timely end
So pass me by
And do not fret

As life now fades
My mission done
To desuetude
I now descend

ReplyForward

A Time For Laughing

 

Laughing lasses, Mirthful maids, 
Giggling girls and Merry misses.

    Life is long, Time for laughing,
    Merry moments, Chat and chaffing

 

Joyful jesters, Blissful belles, 
Fun figures and Fierce Friends.

    Life is here, but Time is passing,
    Let’s have fun, Let’s keep laughing.

 

Jolly japes for Blissful babes, 
Jocund jollies and Dizzy days.

    Let us sing and Let us dance, 
    Life is short, Let’s Time enhance. 

 

Mobile Woes

Recent Newspaper Image

Some people, they will never learn.
You see them there at every turn;
While eyes pop out and fingers burn,
For the next trendy phone they yearn.

Never to them the thought occurred
Just how silly, how absurd;
Shouting to make their voices heard,
Essence of the fervid nerd.

Mobile fastened to their ear,
Showing off their costly gear;
Heedless lemmings without fear,
Only YouTube can they hear.

Unaware of what they tread on,
Constant news is what they’re fed on
By Facebook’s Twitter they are led on
Towards approaching Armageddon.

More of them each passing day,
Keeping the real world at bay.
Intent to have their telling say,
Let the world around decay.

Perhaps it’s me who should be mocked,
As in that on-line world I’m locked. 
For, oh, just how my world is rocked, 
When my access to the net is blocked.