Oh, How It Hurt

Oh, how it hurt

That refusal

That rebuff

Cut and wounded

I withdrew

Licked my wounds

Plastered my sores

Bandaged my cuts

My bruises cold-iced

My shame . . .
Yes, in truth,
Perhaps it was
More shame
Than a broken heart

 Pride undermined
Ego squashed
That doesn’t help
Because
There is more shame
In it being shame.

 I see that now …
And am ashamed.

William Blake … ‘Mired in Sin and Shame – Original Sin’

Drunk in Charge

Photo by Harrison Haines on Pexels.com

 

Tell me, ossifer am I drunk,
Am I sipped as a newt;
Is my peech slurred, and jisdointed,
Do you drink I’m cute?

I only had eight piny tints,
Two friskies and a gin;
My tongue it’s full, my stomach dry,
My thirst has given in.

So when she offered to whet my wizzel
My stomach rose to meet me.
It told me not to chiss a mance,
It struggled to defeat me.

And soon I found myself committed,
As she scraped me from the floor.
I’d Rossed the Crubicon indeed,
I’d never done that before.

I’d never never, ever ever,
Been so dunk before;
Now I’d thrown fortune to the sinned,
Shown caution to the door.

I thought that I had scored, you see,
For though my shemory’s mady
I’d never even kissed before
So how could I defuse the lady?

She trapped me in her squeegee arms,
Offering more gin and sin;
Plied me with her cheadly darms
Till my pillwower gave in.

She meld my hind in threepest drall,
My soul it hoared to seaven;
She took advantage of my age,
I’m nearly sinety neven

So, occifer, please keat me trindly,
I’ve never dreen bunk before.
I promise I’ll not gain astray,
I’ll embellish you for chevermore.

 

Stop the world I want to get off

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Pexels.com

Stop the world I want to get off

 

Stop the world I want to get off;
Incarceration does not suit me;
My home a prison;
My life is given.
Inertia rules, no remedy.

Four walls do now a prison make
And cabin fever is setting in.
On my study walls
Depression falls
Since holding you became a sin.

It has to be this isolation.
How can I live missing so much?
So please I ask
God speed this task,
I’ll give forever for just a touch.

 

A Polite Notice

Photo:  WHB … ‘No Parking’ – Devon 2019   ©

I beg your attention,
Please read and take note.
I kindly request,
And this you can quote:

That before you park here,
Leave your car and depart,
I ask that you notice,
Think of me, have a heart.

Allow me my right
To come and to go.
Do not box me in,
Do not cause me woe.

For if you ignore me
And fasten me in,
I may well take a hammer
And commit a great sin.

G.K.Chesterton: ‘Wine And Water’

 (Poem No.47 of my favourite short poems)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 – 1936), was an English writer, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, theologian, biographer, and literary and art critic.  He was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches and weighing over 20 stone (130 kg).  His girth, perhaps in part due to his great fondness for wine,  occasioned a famous incident when he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw  “Look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England.”  Shaw retorted, “To look at you, anyone would think you have caused it”.

Wine And Water

Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,
He ate his egg with a ladle in a egg-cup big as a pail,
And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and fish he took was Whale,
But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,
And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
“I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

The cataract of the cliff of heaven fell blinding off the brink
As if it would wash the stars away as suds go down a sink,
The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink,
And Noah he cocked his eye and said, “It looks like rain, I think,
The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip mine,
But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod,
Till a great big black teetotaller was sent to us for a rod,
And you can’t get wine at a P.S.A., or chapel, or Eisteddfod,
For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God,
And water is on the Bishop’s board and the Higher Thinker’s shrine,
But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

To reinforce Chesterton’s delight in the drinking of wine, I quote a verse from another of his poems on the same subject . . . 

“Feast on wine or fast on water,
And your honour shall stand sure …
If an angel out of heaven
Brings you other things to drink,
Thank him for his kind attentions,
Go and pour them down the sink.”