Birth Of A Poem

Pen & Wash  … WHB 2019

This poem
and its ill-connected words
do not
yet exist

These lines
part-formed and immature
struggle for release
from their birth pangs
strain to express themselves
in meaning
to say what they want to say

Seeking existence
from the seed of an idea
knowing what is needed
but fighting for form and feature
longing to tell its tale and sing
to live
to feel
to be vibrant
cool and yet tense

Always promising more than it can give
allowing its feelings to weep
its thoughts to shudder and provoke
to breathe a bitter breath
to both calm and to excite

Above all
striving to be worthy
in love with what it hears
bringing meaning to an idea
and from its birth
to bring into the world
an infant ode
wanting
hoping
demanding to grow into
a thing of understanding and beauty

Tooty Fruity & The Imbroglio

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

The IMBROGLIO

I’m embroiled in an imbroglio, 
And, Yes, I am confused. 
Which way to turn I do not know, 
Perplexed, baffled, bemused.

She’s says that she will live with me, 
See to all my needs, 
If I will gift my house to her, 
The pool, the grounds, the deeds.

I think she’s asking far too much, 
And yet she’s such a sweetie. 
I’d like to give her what she wants, 
Listen to her entreaty. 

Perhaps I’m just an aged fool, 
Smitten by her beauty, 
But should I take a chance and swap
My world for Tooty Fruity?

Pastiche Poems #3

A pastiche, created in PRISMA, of a painting of my own of Venice

PASTICHE POETRY

Following on from my opening outline of Pastiche Poetry (see my blog of two days ago titled ‘Pastiche Poetry’ ), and my blogs of yesterday  ( ‘Pastiche Poetry #2 ) and the day before (  Pastiche Poetry #1 ),  here are yet more of my own efforts (you may call them concoctions or confections if you’d rather) which I have based on the well-known opening lines of six different poets  . . .

 To his Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell …

Had we but world enough and time, 
This coyness, lady, were no crime. 
But I must say, I’m getting bored
With my advances being ignored.

---

Tyger! Tyger!, William Blake …

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
Just be careful how you go
You’ll set the woodland all aglow.

---

Lines for a Christmas Card, Hilaire Belloc ...

May all my enemies go to hell,
Ah well, ah well, ah well, ah well.
I told them not to call my bluff
They wouldn’t listen, So that’s just tough.

---

She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron …

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
Would that she was as sharp and bright,
Instead she got the booby prize.

---

Mary Had a Little Lamb, Nursery Rhyme, Sarah Josepha Hale,  …

Mary found a little lamb,
She really didn’t know
What on earth to do with it,
Perhaps she’d let it go.

---

The Owl and the Pussy Cat, Edward Lear …

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
It wasn’t new, and right on cue,
It ceased to want to float.

Art On The Rack

tall and slender
thin and lean
what do such racked
such skeletal
figures mean

imagination extended
perception broadened
brought to brush and canvas
stone and chisel
bronze and rasp
unique reality
given expression
in the artist’s eye
and distorted vision

el greco
modigliani
giacometti
parmagianino

artistic differences
paralleled
in paint and bronze

fashion’s fad
now continued
on the catwalk

do my eyes
deceive me
with beauty
in the eye of the bewildered
creating
or perhaps following
fashion

emaciated
underfed
and stretched out models
tapered
taut
and elongated
in the artist’s vision

paraded to their public
asked to accept
an interpretation
allowing retrieval
of a larger truth

thus to become
stricken and striated
darlings
of a new generation

fêted now
as great and good
but fated still
to be misunderstood

---

The images at the top are, from left to right  . . .
El Greco:  ‘St.John The Baptist’ – c.1600; Oil on Canvas
Giacometti:  ‘Walking Man’ – 1960; Bronze
Modigliani: ‘Lunia Czechowska in Black’ – 1919; Oil on canvas
Parmagianino: ‘Madonna With Long Neck’
The bottom picture is of ‘Catwalk models’ – from Pinterest.

 

Stillness

 

‘Solitude’: Rydal Water, Cumbria, The Lake District, UK … Pen & Ink – WHB 1991  ©

 

 

This stillness and the beauty all around me

Bring with them peace and grace for which I yearn;

For here among the lakes and mountains resting

I sense my hopes and dreams will now return.

 

For now I’ve reached a time when life has bitten,

Reminding me of pleasures once enjoyed;

Since lost in cares and daily obligations

How Nature can supplant and fill the void.

 

Its healing powers I know and cannot question;

They bring delights I cannot bear to miss.

They sing to me of other loves and places,

And speak to me of other times than this.

 

 

The Double Rainbow

Photograph:  ‘Double Rainbow near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England’  – WHB – July 2009   ©

 

 When the double rainbow comes
In all its lustrous splendour,
Then will I sing of my true love,
How sweet and kind and tender.

Her beauty sings the sky’s delight,
Gently she shows her grace;
I love the light within her soul
Which permeates her face.

For me fond Nature’s miracles
Cannot describe suffice
The beauty which I find in her,
My love from Paradise.

 

Nature’s Evensong

©  Photograph … ‘Sunset’ – courtesy of Canadian artist, Alma Kerr

 

Sunset

and the soulful sound

of the sea

seduce my senses

in the calm

of this still summer’s eve

ripples roll gently towards me

from the red sun-kissed sea

silhouette sails

hug the horizon

purposeful gulls

tread the foreshore

forever watchful

while I

a silent spectator

scan the scene

evening’s tableau

serene

and yet wholly alive

entranced and awed

mesmerised

beyond beauty

by Nature’s evensong

its benediction

on a desperate world

 

 

 

 

The Torch I Carry

‘The Depths Of The Sea’ (The Lure Of The Sirens’) … Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1881)

I carry a torch for the ocean,
In her relentless swell I am held;
My light will see me to the foreshore
Where vast wave and mild ripple meld.

For though my love’s unrequited,
As I walk on the shore by the sea,
The sight and the sound of her motion
Bring solace and hope back to me.

For when I watch her crescendo
Its beauty and force I admire;
The sigh and the roar of her surges
Are those of a celestial choir.

My heart is in thrall to her passion,
Her awesome breakers I ride;
White horses call me ever forward
To meet the turn of the tide.

And when she is still as a millpond
My senses respond in repose;
My life consummates in devotion,
All yearning brought to a close.

Yes, the lure of the Siren defeats me;
I am snared by her destructive song.
I have given my all to her beauty;
Now only to her I belong.

MONEY

Design … WHB – 2017

(Poem No.32 of my favourite short poems)

MONEY

That money talks

I won’t deny.

I heard it once,

It said, “Goodbye”.

By Richard Armour

(Quoted from: ‘The Funny Side – 101 Humorous Poems – edited with an introduction by Wendy Cope.)

Richard Willard Armour (July 15, 1906 – February 28, 1989) was an American poet and author who wrote more than 65 books.   Two of his best-known quotations are . . .

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long,
has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

 Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people.

Beyond the Raindrops

Pen & Wash … WHB – 2017

 The storm arrives
And sates the air

I venture out
For you I dare

After the shower
I know where

Above the clouds
You have your lair

Beyond the Raindrops
I’ll find you there

Your beauty with
The rain you share

Your tears with raindrops
I compare

To your sorrow’s end
I offer a prayer

Of fate and death
I’m unaware

No disenchantment
Can I bear

Since that first day
You me ensnared

All else for you
I do forswear

You’ll ever be
My love affair