The Back Door

Gallery Back Door – Photo: WHB 2019 ©

Disused since Golgotha
Defaced by ignorance
Scorned by the whole-some
Earning only derisive mirth
Unwelcome and Unwelcoming
This un-entrancing entrance
Inaccessible access
Faded to a depressing
Off-putting welcome
As resonant of hope as
Hades’ Tunnel of Love

Once undoubtedly
New and hopeful
Promising Portal
Someone’s pride become
The neighbourhood’s malediction
And the future’s disillusionment.

 

The Evils Of Money

 

THE EVILS OF MONEY

 

Or … as Chaucer would have said …
‘Radix malorum est cupiditas.’

Give me more –
I’ll spend it
Take it away –
I’m stressed.
Plenty by far –
I’ll lend it.
Show it off –
You’re impressed.

When lucre
becomes an obsession
Then life
Goes out of the door;
When penury
hits with depression,
I cry out –
What else is life for?

It’s not having
That is the obsession
It’s Loss that
Has brought on this fear.
What has caused my affliction,
My spirit’s constriction,
This stifling addiction,
and without contradiction,
It is knowing that now,
Somewhere and somehow,
I’ve breached my limit,
Dismantled my spirit.

For to my great cost
I have completely lost
That winning ticket.
For, Jiminy Cricket,
I know now I can’t win it.

I’ll never be sane
Not ever again
For I never will find
or retrieve peace of mind
That small slip of paper
That fortune creator
That millionaire-maker
That few extra quid
That from me was hid.
I by fate was denied
‘Agonistes’ I cried.

Oh. Let me now lie
Where the poor people lie
And let it be said,
‘He was grossly misled.’

May it say on my grave
‘He, to lucre a slave,
by its loss was enraged.
He’d rather be dead
Without his Mercedes,
Just pushing up daisies
In the gardens of Hades.’