Saturday, April 26, 2014

698 : A Drop in Time

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: Adept, Edible and Viscous.

The poem is based on one of the longest running scientific experiments.
You can read about it and see a 17sec clip of it dripping here.


A Drop in Time

A scientist took great delight
While, watching with his peers,
A coal-black glacial movement which
Dripped every thirteen years.

The pitch was in a funnel,
A thick and viscous goo,
It looked a bit like Vegemite
And was just as edible too.

The curator was a thorough man,
Adept and quite persistent,
But on his watch it dripped three times
And every time he missed it.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Monday, April 21, 2014

697 : A Bridge Too Far.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Built by migrants.

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #157) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

bones, twice, stolen, water, rocking, open, mess,

aches, bridge, sink, sway, limb, sharp.

The text in green is from the 
Australian National Anthem.


A Bridge Too Far

Australians all let us rejoice
For we are young and free
We've golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea:


Across the waters to our north,
In frail and rocking ships,
Desperate families on open decks
Make slow and risky trips,
Like generations come before them
Fleeing guns and bombs and whips.

Our land abounds in nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare,
In history's page let every stage
Advance Australia fair,

But this is no bridge to a better life:
They’re put into a cage.
A sorry mess, remotely placed,
To sink from sight, backstage.
A sharp and sad reminder
Of our leader’s Christian rage.

Beneath our radiant Southern Cross,
We'll toil with hearts and hands,
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands,


And there they stay on stolen time,
To ache and sway alone.
Not humans to receive our care,
Just limbs and flesh and bone,
Twice expelled from safe refuge
And nowhere to call home.

For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share,
With courage let us all combine
To advance Australia fair.


In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia fair.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Saturday, April 19, 2014

696 : Capricious Love

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: animate, impassioned and pervert.

Capricious Love
An Animated Affair

Impassioned, the accused asserted
His innocence of the crime:
Of having a lady for sport,
Of having a beastly good time.
For a lark, in a park.

In short, the case he presented
Was – “Can it be perverted
If the goat consented?”
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Sunday, April 13, 2014

695 : The Turning

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #156) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

swear, turns, chant, porcelain, limbo, wrists,
tumble, papers, gaudy, briefly, deeply, moonlit


The Turning.

It turns relentlessly, no purpose is shown,
A revolving collection of all that is known.
But in a small quiet backwater, tucked away
Things tumble, not turn, in strange disarray.


Life’s like a circus on set up on a field
Each tent has sideshows, slightly concealed.
Refined old ladies hold Chihuahua pups,
Sipping Earl Grey from porcelain cups;
Unshaven men who smell of old beer,
Sleep on flat boxes, beneath the old pier;
On the moonlit banks of a river we find
Lovers swapping fluids, of the bodily kind;
While in a police station, beneath a strong light,
A felon swears blue he’s been home all the night.
Fresh-faced youths, stand tall in the choir,
Chanting obedience but harbouring desire. 
There are sweet little children in gaudy pajamas,
Hearing stories of knights, in bright, shiny armours.
Disasters bestow unimaginable sorrow
Which the papers will cover, just briefly, tomorrow
Then sport is returned to fill the front page
And the victims dispatched to a limbo, off-stage.
Some folk feeling so unloved and unmissed
Pop poisons; or jump; or cut open their wrists.
Seniors embrace beneath the warm covers,
Much older now, but still happily lovers.
Guys on soapboxes harangue those who’ve neared
With views deeply held but generally weird.
Each life is different in how it is told,
No-one is certain how theirs will unfold.


While we each are different in how we are wrought,
The product of nature, reworked by our thoughts,
We are but a candle that briefly burns.
Coldly indifferent, the universe turns.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Thursday, April 10, 2014

694 : Wolverine

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: horrible, moody and listless.

Wolverine.

Listless, edgy, and on the prowl,
Moody in the extreme;
Lunar cycles make her howl
In a way that curdles cream.

She presents as an exhibition
But despite these outer looks
I have a horrible suspicion
She bites the heads off chooks.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Sunday, April 06, 2014

693 : A Bit of a Scrap

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.
She provides the first line rhyme word,
The rest is up to us.
For no reason in particular,
I kept the first two lines common.

A fellow got into a scrap
When found with a girl in his lap,
His wife wasn’t impressed
That the girl was undressed
And gave the old bastard a slap.

A fellow got into a scrap
When found with a girl in his lap,
His wife hit him again
When he tried to explain
The girl was just having a nap.

A fellow got into a scrap
When found with a girl in his lap,
“She was at a loose end
And she needed a friend
So I am just filling the gap.”

A fellow got into a scrap
When found with a girl in his lap,
His wife shot him quite dead
With a round to the head,
Saying “Nah, your story’s just crap!”
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

692 : All right, good night.

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #155) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:
barrier, detail, diamond, pleat, power, strap,
swing, suspend, tough, unit, waterfall, zip

All right, good night.

We don’t know
We will probably
Never know.
But we can imagine the details.

First Class, all diamonds, 
Pinstripes, pleats and fur.
They get the metal cutlery
And fine tablecloths.
Their pearls swing as they walk.

Then there is business class,
The people with real power,
Good cutlery too.
But a leaning to the practical
Frugal with their money
But not wanting to tough it out
In the economy class battlers
Back behind the curtain barriers.

And there, in economy,
People sit, packed in,
Elbows pulled to their sides,
Knees against the seat in front,
Tables down, with a tray of 
Soft inoffensive pap,
Befitting a plastic fork,
Watching equally soft,
Inoffensive pap,
On the video unit
In the seat in front.

Common to all of these
Diverse peoples
Is a shared destiny.
They waited together,
Albeit in different lounges,
The boarded together,
Albeit by different doors,
And now, strapped into seats
In a large metal box
Suspended in the sky,
They travel together.
After a fashion.

In a control tower
A message is received
Acknowledged and then
The channel goes dead.
Just a loud angry hiss
Like a waterfall
In a jungle,
A rushing sound,
Going nowhere.
Then nothing.
Zip.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Friday, April 04, 2014

691 : The Food Pyramid

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: gaunt, vile and decompose.

The Food Pyramid.

Overweight 
And far from gaunt 
Consumers to the core;
We publicly 
Label things as vile
While privately 
Seeking more.

At some cost.

Proportion 
Has been lost.

Fertile,
Whole food 
Will decompose.
While the junk,
The advertisers flaunt,
Will outlast 
The Pharoahs.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---