Poetic Illusions of Love

I love you not after the style
Of Rupert Brooke or Poe
Who savor the pain of forsaken loves
That pretty and youthful shine then go
Into night and corruption
Leaving a rosy afterglow
Consumed by a dream
Of what may have been - No

I'll love you in the summer days
Of endless company
And feel your loving hand in mine
As you walk close to me
No matter where the road may turn
No matter if the wind blow cold
Still love within our hearts will burn
Still your loving hand I'll hold
Still the ancient promise true
That you love me and I love you

Ignorance

I don't know why I came
I don't know when I'll go
I refuse to take the blame
For the things that I don't know

I will reap as I sow
But there's no label on
The bag of seed that I have sown
'Till ev'ry seed is gone

All gone and there was never one
To tell me what to choose
To tell of all that may be won
To warn of all that I may lose

Now I wait and ponder
Hidden fates out yonder

Changes

Your father's wealth owned by yourself
I guess it is your due
My father so poor could set by no store
And what now am I to do?

But yearn for the time when man in his prime
Will ever be renewed
The worth of man will exceed that which can
Be counted or be accrued

Then we shall all be - permanently
Suffered jointly to stand
Though wind be blowing and water be flowing
And mountains be turning to sand

The lost race of man reclaimed once again
Moved by gratitude true
Shall turn to the one that shines as the sun
Thankful that all is made new

Mr Boltzmann's Brains

Mr Boltzmann's Brains
Applied dynamic'ly
To problems of complexity
And Secondary Laws
Discerned the flow of heat to be
Leakage of complexity
An increase of entropy
Implying a first cause

Mr Boltzmann now in conflict
Bends his brains to extricate
Lifelong hero Darwin, Charles
From ascent upon petard
Bravely does he cogitate
Inwardly does remonstrate
Seeking to avoid the fate
Of acknowledging a God

Eureka !!!

If the sum totality
Of orderly cosmology
May merely be assumed to be
An illusory charade
In dimensions yet unknown to we
An excess of entropy
May yet explain the panoply
Of order found in ours

In spite of imbecility
Displayed through inability
Of Boltzmann's brain to retain
A grasp upon reality
Still rather would the Boltzmann brain
Believe that all within contained
By ancestor was not informed
But sprang from nothing fully-formed

Boltzmann's brain is celebrated
Quite why is not apparent
Since brains are random-generated
Quite devoid of talent
In the vast and lonely spaces
In-between the stars
Boltzmann's Brains without faces
Are more numerous than ours

How did Mr Boltzmann know
The sturdy explanation
Allowing atheistic order
To replace creation

How did Mr Boltzmann know -
Perhaps his Brains told him so

South Bank Present Imperfect

Limpopo-coloured Thames
Reflects the sky and is blue
There's a beach around the reach
Where I'm sure it is true
That gentle waves surge and die
And one can swim and drink gin
In a tropic approximation
Of the dream I am in

In a more prosaic scene
Here where pigeons fly
Greasy, great and grey-green
Reality passes bye
And the litter misbehaves
Where muddy water licks
And the pebbles in the waves
Are remnants of ancient bricks

Misplaced Elysium!
Now pigeons are closing in
To intercept a fallen crumb
On its way to the litter bin
Across the face of the sun
Shadows of airliners pass
Amid dilapidation
Oh for a rosy glass

Refutation

Hey my brother, let's join forces 'gainst the father
Look what I have taken, you can have it too -
I will give it all to you.
Sell to me your birthright, it will all be alright
Lay down the heavy burden - look and see the view
You were always the organised one
Come be the moon to my sun
I know you want it too ...

Go away, for it is written - this is all I say to you
And many are the faithful who will say it too
Who will love the father just as I have done
And I will call them brother
And He will call them son
And they shall have your birthright
After you are gone ...

Abel's Prayer

Please grant me passage to return
To where I've never been or seen
To streams of water and a tree
Within your garden green

I will never eat therefrom
Nor covet that which is not mine
Accept an orphan in your home
Of happiness sublime

I am weary of this place
I long for one I've never known
As grey days and years have passed
Homesickness has grown

Now I stand and cry without
And beg the cherub 'still the blade'
Let me return and live within
The garden you once made

"Soon you sleep my precious son
Soon the pain will pass
Soon when all is overcome
You will wake at last

Then you will wake and find yourself
Where you have never been or seen
By streams of water and the trees
In my garden green"

Photography

I looked upon the wall

And there behind the glass

I saw the image on the film

Where the light fell in the past

Glowing from the captured face

Light and beauty lit the place

Though now the candle rendered dark

Still on the wall I see the mark

Contextual Amnesia and The Impossibility of Empathy or Why Are People So Stupid?

I wished that I could write a book
With this title deep and true
But I have only half an hour
So this will have to do ...

Contextual Amnesia

I notice that I soon forget
Previous situations
Especially those in which I met
With painful limitations

When I was a poor man
When I rode upon the bus
Drivers of cars and velocipedes
Made excessive fuss

The cursed bus was in their way
The cursed bus blocked out the day
Behind the cursed bus to wait?
Not blooming likely mate!

Now my means have grown
And a modest car I own
The freedom it affords to me
Is not complete, I am not free
For in the hours when traffic rushes
I'm stuck behind the stinking buses

Pedestrians?  Equestrians?
Please don't make me laugh
They may go where e'er they will
As long as they're not in my path

Gentle reader please forgive
The foregoing hyperbole
Say not "my neighbor's just like that"
Ask rather "does the cap fit me?"

And so we pass to topics new
Wont you come explore with me
The plain impossibility
Of true empathy ...

The Impossibility of Empathy

Object if you will
To the gross insinuation
That empathy is not to be
Found in any situation
I contend, it's rarity
Is rarity to such degree
As to approach the apogee
Of true impossibility
Therefore I hope you will concede
In spite of ling'ring pedantry
That empathy is justly judged
Beyond the realms of normally
Accepted possibility

Can you remember how you felt
when you were barely two
And by parental edict
Wore ribbons on your shoe?

Can you remember how you felt
When you were nine or ten
And had to wash your face and hands
Then wash them all again?

Very few have the gift
Of recall with full clarity
Still fewer deign to take the pains
To apply their wit to charity

As long as such a state shall be
We shall see continually
The impossibility
Of true empathy

(There is a type of reader
Who likes to skip the fluff
Eshewing complication he
Skips down fast enough
To the chase, the punch, the core
And so we find him here
Awaiting our arrival
At the last frontier
At the pithy moment
At the phrase so lucid
Can't you hear him asking
"Why are folk so stupid"?)

Why Are People So Stupid?

I have a theory on this point ...

There comes a time bereft of hope
When empathetic souls can't cope
The fault is not with you or me
It's rather with mortality
For hidden deep within the soul
Lurks an ever-growing hole
A warning of the hole to come
In which all are one

"The grave awaits and I'll not give
One second of my life to live
To any other single one
For it all will soon be gone!"
Thus our logic un-refuted
Shows why people are so stupid

But ...

We who better know
Are happy to compassion show
For the plenitude of Father
Will last -we know - forever after

The Haunted Hunters of the Hollow Lands

Haggard, worn, tired, forlorn
With weary tread and heavy head
But watchful eye in spite
The Haunted Hunters of the Hollow Lands
Marched throughout the night

Barren, cold, shattered, old
With blackened plain and primal rain
But hungry yen in spite
The Hollow Lands of Hunters Haunted
Mouldered through the night

Dark, hiding, furtive, sliding
With mournful soul and steadfast goal
But cautious hush in spite
The Hunted Haunters of the Hollow Lands
Watchful through the night

In the Hollow Lands the hunting of the Haunter
In the Hollow Lands the haunting of the Hunter
The Hunter is haunted, the Haunter is Hunted
Both by each are broken and stunted
In the Hollow Lands

Once was no Hunter and none were hunted
Once was no Haunter and none were haunted
Yet since the Hunters' first kill
The haunting and hunting were destined to fill
In the Hollow Lands

Now Hunters and Haunters keep score
Of the casualties of the war
'Till none but the rain
And none but the plain
Of the Hollow Lands remain

Euphemism

The smallest room is quite capacious
For it must contain
A phone, a dog and wellingtons
And access to the drain

Eternity

In an English meadow a gentle stream was dammed
A rippled silent mirror filled the rolling of the land
Variegated hues of green reflected on its face
Along with blues and whitening clouds and all was is in its place

Birds sang and swam and subtle fish glided in the deep
Onward-rushing time stood still and Chronos went to sleep
Though you and I will live and die
Though empty aeons pass
Forever more the ripples play
Upon the mirror mid the grass

We may pray to live as they
They who do not mark the pass
The petty avalanche of sand
Within the hour-glass
He who made all that is there
He who made it fair
Who made it ever timeless, new
Intended we be timeless too

So hand in precious hand with you
Beside the mirror in the grass
Upon that day when all is new
We will watch the aeons pass

No Last Goodbye

Jesus went up to the Father
As those belov'd looked to the sky
"Surely he shall come again - as you beheld him fly"
Thus was it said to them after
And was not a last goodbye

Before I knew there was a you
Before you knew there was an I
He came to live and then to die
Before we loved each other
And feared that one may fly
Yes before we feared a last goodbye

Should we be sundered from each other
It shall not be a last goodbye
For another went before
And decreed that love not die
And but a very little after
Love has wept, a brighter eye
Shall greet a much beloved other
That there may be no last goodbye

Politics

I went to where the countryside

Changed colour on the map

I walked along the borderline

In the atlas printed black

I wandered in the forest

And searched upon the ground

Among the leafy litter

No border could be found

All the birds and squirrels

Didn't notice when

The countryside changed colour

And then changed back again

But the changing of the colour

On the map is clear

And those that are not dead o'er there

Are fleeing over here

At the border on the map

Now painted on the road

The men with uniforms and guns

Relieve them of their load

And herd them to a common place

The people of the hated race

Delivered from a sudden death

Dying at a slower pace

With the birds and squirrels

I stand and wonder why

The lines and colours on the map

Mean they have to die