Shame...

For Jobi and Bonds

I probably don't smell too good today,

In last night's crumpled clothing, stumbling, wan

And pale – as pallid as this broken dawn –

Back to my house (if I can find the way).

With clean-cut cheeks and tailored suit of grey,

The Businessman strides past – he’s clearly on

His way to work. Eyes meet, and then he’s gone,

To meetings, desks, and chasing higher pay.

The disapproval on his face is clear:

He’s got a job, responsibility!

He got no time for mates and drinking beer –

He’d never throw away his life like me.

            I drift to bed on joys he’s never tasted,

            And smile to think that it’s my life that’s wasted.

Oure Elvysshe Craft

Quelle surprise, another sonnet.

The alchemist, uncertain, grinds his lead;
Around the room, alembics fizz, and bowls
Of baser matter bubble over coals
That steam the room and bead his scratchy head.
He thinks of wiser minds, and men long dead,
Of failed experiments, and thwarted goals:
If such a quest defeated those great souls,
Should he just strive for simpler aims instead?
Why seek for truth in this quixotic art?
Why chase eternities of gold? Why fret?
With all before discomfited, why start?

Maybe he’s mad – it’s vanity, but yet –

He knows, with romance in his shaded heart,

The merest gleam is worth the doubt and sweat.

Why Didn't Achilles Simply Wear Boots?

I dreamt the first two lines. This is a first for me.

The rest was written in a morning.

So here we are: the Blank Verse Strip-O-Grams –

We bare our bodies as we bare our souls.

Available for parties, weddings, both

The kinds of mitzvahs, nights for stags and hens;

And also meditations on the pangs of love

(Dispris’d or otherwise); reflections on

This rare condition we call Life.

    Come! See the glittered tassles spinning, twirling

’Round endings feminine as dainty feet.

As each revealing garment shameless falls,

So fall facades of mythic similes:

The wanton allegories lost on those

To whom the Greeks are best known for kebabs.

But, like Patroclus, we are undeterred,

And also vaguely homoerotic.

    Come! Watch us smear the whipp’d cream of our hearts

Along enticing lengths of turgid meter,

And taste the saline woes that pump and grind

Through these artistic, tortured veins.

You’ve never had a feeling – not like ours,

For we are made of feelings, we consume

Emotions, breathe sensations, drink in sighs,

Then, squid-like, squirt them on the page.

    Pray mock us not! We are but fragile feathers –

Make not burlesque from this, our introspection!

Or if you do, just know that we will feed

Upon your scorn, because we know that scorn

Will make us stronger, better people, yeah?

    For this, our show, we ask but little fee:

Your humbled recognisance of our pain

Is thanks enough.  Or better still, show us

How we’ve affected all of you inside,

And give a little something of yourself

As you all pass the bucket by the door.

Time's Worst Statute

I walked with Pliny’s ghost down London streets,

Through Saturnalia’s new festivities,

To see how England’s current take competes

With bygone Rome’s ‘December Liberties’.

The spectre spoke of how he’d always loathed

That day’s inversion of the natural rules:

The nation’s disrespectful servants clothed

As masters, that vain Feast of Fools;

Of how he liked to hide himself away

From all the hollow noise and gluttony,

Attempting to escape, just for a day,

The parties and their cold monotony.

Then, as we passed a palace on the Thames,

We spied a file of hirelings on the march,

Bedecked with crested caps, and suits, and gems,

And all the pomp of some triumphal arch.

And when this haughty troupe had swept from sight,

The shade beside me sighed: “You’ve got it wrong –

We let our minions rule for just one night,

It wasn’t meant to be the whole year long.”

With shame, I cried “Oh how’d this come to be?

Whose father’s fathers sold our rights away?

Where did we sign? And when did we agree

That servants should behave in such a way?”

I walked with Pliny’s ghost down England’s lanes,

Through Saturnalia’s grim festivity.

We saw the Nation’s masters trussed in chains,

And with us walked the ghost of Liberty.