1327 - The Was And The Will Be

Poets and Storytellers had the prompt: Memories & Dreams.

The Was And The Will Be.

Memories are a delusion—

They are so very tidy.

Memories are so deceiving.

They embrace us.  That’s why we

Hold them—

Our hearts embrace and mould them.

Grieving thus comes naturally.

A consensual collusion

With what can never be.

◊

Dreams are a comfort 

most infernal,

Useless without a plan.

Are they too just a delusion?

The universe mocking man?

Often.

But it’s not a case when

A fusion adds body to the dreams.

Once a dream becomes internal,

The gods withdraw, or so it seems.

◊

1574 - Off One's Tree

 The Sunday Whirl has a set of words, for a Wordle:
flutter, cage, hanger, cold, try, tree,
deny, womb, wish, finish, stray, eager.


Off one's tree.

When bold opportunity knocked
And offered to grant them their wish
Their hearts denied them a flutter,
Cold and rather brutish:
From womb—
The next stop is tomb.

They mutter
But most prefer it that way.
While their chosen cage is not locked
Few are eager to stray.

When bold opportunity knocked
And offered to grant them their dreams
They pulled the hanger door shut—
Caution hates extremes.
Why try?
Just to finish thereby?

Clear cut—
And most prefer it that way.
While their chosen cage is not locked
Few are eager to stray.
 .
---

© 2021  J Cosmo Newbery
---  

1566 The Red and the Yellow

 

The Red & the Yellow

They are more than just supporters,
They cheer the circus on;
Cowards or just stupid?  They crow
The madness of King Don.
He tweets—
They leap up from their seats.
They know
The carnage he can bring
To the democratic quarters
But, yellow, they just stand and sing.
 .
---

© 2012   J Cosmo Newbery
---

1205 - Alone

Alone

The noise of the sea is a constant,

The wind just comes and goes;

The spray comes off the wave tops,

The sand runs through the toes.

Alone,

A chance to think

And hone,

To stop the headlong

Forward pace;

To recognise

That life is not a sprint,

And really not a race.

    .

---

© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery

---

1204 - The One-Walled Cage

The One-Walled Cage

Ceaselessly, you prowl side to side,
Restrained in your comfy coup;
Lamenting the woes of yesteryear
While reveling in them, too.

Inside
Is joined to outside.

It's clear this truth, as such, appalls.
But there will come a time when you must decide
To step around the walls.
    .
---
© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery
---

1198 - Lilliput II

Lilliput II

Why am I amongst aliens?
Who are these people?
Why are their values so foreign?
They lead me to weep 'til the dawn
(Sleep, tragically forelorn)
Wherein I lament the lost dreams
As a new dark ages begins,
Fear trumps vision, it seems.
   .
---
© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery
---

1196 - I Call Bullshit

I call Bullshit

It seems that’s bull, as in bully.

The phrase is meant to point out lies
That others feed to us,
Things they’d prefer we didn’t spot,
Rather than to discuss
The facts, where it seems they're not exact.

It’s not a weaponised way to hit
Every comment, all replies—
So, now, I am calling bullshit.
   .
---
© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery
---

1195 - The Last Frontier

The Last Frontier

The facts

Will never change

A mind,

Those numbers,

Graphs and words—

They just bounce right off

The boney wall,

Ignored, or worse,

Misheard.

So how

Can we

Be allowed

To call,

To convey

Our deepest fear

For the future of our kind,

To get past

The guarded ear?

   .

---

© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery

---

1192 - Something has gone terribly wrong...

"Something has gone terrible wrong" 

LNP Party spokesperson, election night.

There is some comfort in knowing

That fear and greed and hate

Does not have the capacity

To win our main debate.

It's sad

But it was all they had.

And a pity

That they could just condemn.

But the end result was showing—

We're more mature than them.

  .

---

© 2018 J Cosmo Newbery

---

For the international readers:
In Australia, the LNP are the repository of
right-wing religious extremists
and use the colour blue. 
Largely Republican in outlook.

The ALP is the left-wing progressives,
sometimes called Socialists
but a badge worn with pride here,
and use the colour red. 
Largely Democratic in outlook.

1190 - We Never Learn

We Never Learn

Nothing
In this world
Is constant—
Change
Is the normal state.
Things begin,
Mature
And decay,
Create
And recreate,
Again
And again
And again.

This way
Mistakes
Of yesteryear
Can be the shadowy
Blueprint
For tomorrow's
Brave frontier.
  .
---
© 2018 J Cosmo Newbery
---

1161 - Buying The Grinch

Buying the Grinch

Forget the story history tells,

Consumption’s now the game.

So what if your budget’s bust

To avoid that grinchly name?

So buy.

Do not ask why.

You must.

The ads have told us so—

Cash registers play Jingle Bells,

Merchants whisper Ho-Ho-Ho.

 .

---

© 2017 J Cosmo Newbery


---

1016 - Confected Outrage

Poets United Midweek Motif : News media

Confected Outrage

The media. It's called a medium 

because it's neither rare nor well done. 

Paraphrasing Ernie Kovacs

In a flow that just increases

Comes outrage, lies and sting.

The owners, sad, are unabashed,

Money, not truth, is king.

Fake news,

The twisted views

Rehashed

Not really

News at all;

Just a stream

Of opinion pieces

Meant to shock

And appall.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

1011 - The Dark Ages

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

meander, nameless, oafish.

The Dark Ages

When trolls meander on the land,

Breaking things as they go;

When the nameless backroom overseers

(Who really rule the show),

Pretend

That they alone defend—

Have fears.

Nothing can be for sure

When the oafish are in command;

No-one can feel secure.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

1005 - The Walnut and The Carpetlayer.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

gloomy, haunted, intense.

The Walnut and The Carpetlayer.

To all intense and porpoises,

With what we think we see,

Our brain is haunted and possessed

By ghosts of what could be.

Our minds invent, when so inclined,

Expressed images, filtered raw

Not gloomy, just fractal corpuses,

Like Lewis Carroll saw.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

1002 - The Magician

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

dazzle, erupt, flimsy

The Magician

When they erupt 

Onto our stage

They dazzle us 

With jewels,

Hypnotise us 

Like foolish chooks

with their verbal tools.

Flimsy,

Insubstantial whimsy—

It hooks.

It hooks because we are game

And, even knowing the damage,

We buy it all the same.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

998 - The Second Estate

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

raspy, shifty, painful

The Second Estate

They give us unctuous, shifty lies

And we lap them up, whole.

Not raspy, these are silky smooth—

Words that paint a tromp l’oeil

To fool,

Fool in a hope that you’ll

Approve

Of their deceptive act.

They get rich by this enterprise

And that’s a painful fact.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

989 - Mental Turns

Poet’s United Midweek Motif : Nostalgia

Mental Turns

Nostalgia plays 

Its siren song;

We fall 

Beneath its spell.

We reconstruct 

The past and smile

At stories it can tell.

It’s false,

This bright and mental waltz.

Futile

And quite pointless because

Wistfully hopeful, we long

For something 

That never was.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

974 - To a Christian who mocked a Haggis

To a Christian who mocked a Haggis

You are a disappointment, Trevor;

You and your high ideals

Of religion and of heavenly choirs.

Surely you know how it feels

Receiving

From the disbelieving

Satire

And yet you pretend to spew

And laugh as if it’s so very clever.

Would JC agree with you?

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2017

---

962 - Stuffed and can't be stuffed.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

tempting, specific and snuff.

Stuffed.  
And can't be stuffed.

That flame,

That light,

Is quickly snuffed,

For no specific reason.

Just lots of things 

Conspire to quell

The heart

This festive season.

I see.

But why just me?

You?  Well—

It’s tempting to try 

To make you see

But in the end 

I can’t be stuffed;

The fight is just too big for me.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

---

953 - Not Just Denmark.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

to use the three words of the week in a composition.

The words this week are: 

halting, far-fetched, and gamy.

Not Just Denmark.

Is the Armageddon ahead?

A bit far-fetched, perhaps,

But is there a way of halting

The successive mishaps

That seem,

As if a dream,

Salting

A wound we can’t ignore:

The gamy smell of something dead

Pervades the corrider.

.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

---