Cirrhosis Of The River

Photo: WHB … R.Thames mooring – 2016

I name this boat ‘Cirrhosis’

It’s part of my neurosis;

And when at last it sinks

I’m finished with the drinks.

 © WHB . . . Originally published on this blog in 2016

A Seattle Limerick

‘The Pox Devil’ – WHB, 2018

 

‘Single man with toilet paper seeks woman with hand sanitizer for good clean fun.’

 

An old hooker who lived in Seattle,
Developed a cough with a rattle.
Yes, she had caught a chill,
And began feeling ill,
And soon knew she was losing the battle.

So she took herself off to the docs,
Who gave her the worst of all shocks,
When he said to her, “Dear,
It would seem to appear,
You’ve contracted a dose of the pox.

If you do not want to be dead,
I suggest you spend less time in bed.
It’s all much too risky,
So when you feel frisky,
Take one of these tablets Instead.”

 

 

 

The Cough With A Rattle

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

An old hooker who lived in Seattle
Developed a cough with a rattle;
Yes, she had caught a chill
And began feeling ill,
And felt she was losing the battle.

So she took herself off to the docs,
Who gave her the worst of all shocks.
When he said to her, “Dear,
it would seem to appear,
You’ve contracted a dose of the pox.

If you don’t want soon to be dead,
I suggest you spend less time in bed.
It’s all much too risky,
So when you feel frisky,
Take one of these tablets Instead.

 

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

 

John Clare – ‘I AM’

[  # 74 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

 

John Clare (1793 – 1864) was an English poet.   Born in Northamptonshire, he was the son of a farm labourer, who became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and for regularly expressing sorrows at its disruption.   His poetry underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is now often seen as one of the important 19th-century poets.   His biographer, Jonathan Bate, states that Clare was “the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced.  No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self.”  Many of his poems are filled with a joy he experienced in nature and the countryside.  Sadly, however, for the last 25 years of his life Clare suffered from mental illness and was incarcerated in a mental institution.   In this wistful soul-searching poem, described by some as “one of the greatest poems of sheer despair ever written”, Clare spills out his desolation and detachment from a life which he would dearly love to have lived . . . 

‘I AM’ . . .  by John Clare

 

I AM! yet what I am who cares, or knows? 
My friends forsake me, like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.         5
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss’d.
 
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem         10
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.
 
I long for scenes where man has never trod—
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,         15
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.