Sunday, June 22, 2014

723 : A scientist goes exploring...


A scientist in the Southern Pacific
Was given a warning, specific:
“Those girls in grass skirts
Are all terrible flirts;
But touch, for a death most horrific.”

The temptation was too much to withstand
But things didn't go quite as he planned.
The girls trussed him and staked him
And then slowly baked him
Over hot rocks in the sand.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

722 : A fellow had bought a device...

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.
She provides the first line,
The rest is up to us.


A fellow had bought a device
Intended for husking brown rice.
But he altered the setting
Then added some netting
And found the sensation quite nice.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

721 : A woman who offered ‘a la carte’...

Sunday Scribblings had the prompt ‘pastry.
This is a bad prompt for me:
There are too many naughty connotations.
But I wasn’t about to let that stop me.


A woman who offered ‘a la carte’
Was viewed by the men as a tart.
While the term is not nice
They would still ‘have a slice’
Before the time came to depart.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---


720 : The Meeting

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #166) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are: 
dark, praying, tarot, dancing, seduce, creature,
gun, plague, penny, blood, levitate, dreadful, kiss


The Meeting

It was a normal meeting:
Hats and coats hung up,
Tables and chairs arranged,
Drinks distributed,
A pentangle drawn in blood…

But today would be different
Very, very different.

◊◊◊

The room went dark
The odd red spark;

The creatures vile

Who dribbled bile;

The serpent’s hiss
The sulph’rous kiss;

The dreadful smell
Of pits from Hell;

The dancing souls,
The flaming poles;

The tarot cards,
The cutting shards;

The naked fawns
Seduced on lawns;

Levi-tated
Corpses mated;

Souls, if any,
For a penny;

Palms well greased,
Plagues released;

The faithful sing
A praying ring;

No guns repel
The team from Hell.

But lights disperse
This demon curse —

Once comes the sun
The party's done

And so they went,
To parliament.

◊◊◊

And so it was, 
Dear reader,
The quietest Liberal* 
Party room meeting
In many a year.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

*In the Australian sense,
Liberal = Conservative = Republican.


Saturday, June 21, 2014

719 : I Awoke One Day

dVerse had the prompt ‘repetition’, 
with a villanelle as a possible form.  
Ok, here’s a villanelle.
Pity I missed the cut-off by four hours.


I awoke one day

I awoke one day and you were not there
The world, once warm, was now cold and bleak
You’d gone away and I knew not where.

The emptiness overwhelmed, hard to bear
I framed some words but couldn’t speak
When I awoke one day and you were not there

It was natural, I suppose, to feel despair
But it hung upon me, like a leaden sheet:
You’d gone away and I knew not where.

Without your laughter to fill the air
Life was dull, no longer sweet,
When I awoke one day and you were not there

The table now has an empty chair
And meals have lost their sweet mystique.
You’ve gone away and I know not where.

We instinctively feel life should be fair
But the evidence for that is rather weak.
I awoke one day and you were not there
You’d gone away and I knew not where.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Thursday, June 19, 2014

718 : Sharing the Cake

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: intrigue, connive, vehement.

And Imaginary Garden with Real Toads asks for a Herrick's Stanza.

So...


Sharing the Cake.

It never fails to intrigue me
How some folk will connive
To corner more than their fair share
And then thereby deprive
The meek,
The fair,
The slow,
The weak,
Of their
Portion of life’s posting
And to rashly ask why this should be
Will earn a vehement roasting.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

717 : A certain old harlot of Suva

ROTFL had the prompt "Domestic Appliances".

A certain old harlot of Suva
Thought she was some kind of a groover;
She entertained all the boys
With a selection of toys
That she ran with a secondhand Hoover.

She played out her role as a whore
Then rolled over and started to snore:
There, tattooed on her bum,
For those who’d just come
Was ‘Pay on your way out the door.”
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Sunday, June 15, 2014

716 : The Absolute Pits

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #165) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

wish, porcelain, split, cliff, whistle, rip, chimney,
habits, drilled, six, fortunes, drink, pit


The Absolute Pits

Where have we come,
Where chimneys are viewed
As prettier than windmills?

Where we rip coal from
The bowels of the earth
To burn, to pollute
To increase the fortunes 
Of an arrogant few.

Where the ground is drilled,
The rock is split
To release gas to burn
But to make the water
Unfit to drink.

Where we think 
We can pollute 
With impunity
And just wish away
The consequences?

Where dog-whistle politics
Drives us relentlessly
Towards the edge of the cliff
Of survival.
Where we are encouraged 
To gaze at the horizon
And ignore the precipice
Before us.

Crystal decanters, 
Fine linen cloths,
And porcelain tea services,
Mean little
If you cannot 
Breathe the air
Or drink the water.

Of the seven deadly sins,
Six are nasty enough, 
Bad habits for the owner,
But greed, 
Greed has a wider impact—
Greed hurts everyone.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---








Friday, June 13, 2014

715 : George and the Dragon, the remake.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: crisis, gripe, stall.

Not sure why I went down the dragon line.
Perhaps it was due to the comments to the previous post.

With a guest appearance by Miss Osner's dachshunds.


George and the Dragon
An alternative account.

They left in a fanfare of enthusiasm
With laughter, cheers and snickers
Some people threw long paper streamers
Some women threw their knickers.

The group consisted of a gallant crew,
Each ready to do what they must,
They had tents and beds and socks and pans,
And a hose, to settle dust.

Their leader was a well known knight
On a beautiful snow white horse.
He thought he was God’s gift to man
And to the girls, of course.

The rest of this merry but motley band
Was a bunch of erstwhile rebels;
A banker, a dancer, several accountants
And two dachshunds called Oskar and Pebbles.

They soon encountered a serious glitch,
A crisis of the nastiest kind:
In the rush to mount the expedition
They’d left their cook behind.

So what to do?  They’d a dragon yet to find
But still they had to eat.
But none have ever entered a kitchen
So had no taste for heat.

“If I have one gripe”, the banker said,
“It’s the lack of decent cheese” 
“Who needs a cook to prepare your meals
If you have bread and ripened bries?”

“I smell burning”, an accountant claimed
“Is someone trying to grill?”
“Well, it’s me!” a large and scaly dragon said
Have you writ and filed your will?”

“Yikes!” the band exclaimed in deep dismay
“We never saw you sitting there!
Please don’t flame grill our wretched team
It would be terribly unfair!”

The dragon was loath to stall his feast
He fancied a nice barbecue;
The team were not so keen with this
And pondered what to do.

At last they talked to the dragon’s team
And a deal was finally forged;
A simple vote then settled the deal
And the dragon was well fed, 
By George.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Monday, June 09, 2014

714 : The Observer

The above photo (or something a bit like it)
was the prompt at The Mag.
Made me think of spying.


The Observer

In the field of diplomacy
Things go on that we never see,
In back rooms and transit vans
Wires are tapped and photos scanned.

We watch them
And they watch us
The only time there’s any fuss
Is when they catch us doing it.

They hack into our lines 
And then try to find
Evidence of morality failure,
Useful for the creative blackmailer.

We watch them
And they watch us
The only time there’s any fuss
Is when they catch us doing it.

It’s not always a glamorous job
It’s enough to make a grown spy sob
Listening to the President’s wife
Rambling on about palace life.

We watch them
And they watch us
The only time there’s any fuss
Is when they catch us doing it.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---




Sunday, June 08, 2014

713 : Miss Quoted.

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.
She provides the first line rhyme word,
The rest is up to us.

Miss Quoted.

A fellow was trying to write
A poem, on a girl, at night.
While his notepad was raw,
He fell out with the law
As his poem wasn’t polite.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

712 : Hearts and Flowers

In response to but not entirely meeting an
 “Imaginary Garden with Real Toads” prompt.
Image provided by a friend.

While they are a gift,
The heart is in the sending,
Not just the flowers.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

711 : The Sum of a Beach

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #164) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

muffled, sizzle, back, language, numbers, single,
right, power, existence, stomping, hello, place


The Sum of a Beach.

At a time when existence is one of recurring waves of despair,
despair for our humanity, our planet, our future,
the beach is a place to put it all back in perspective.

You hear it before you see it,
Approaching it
Through the scrubby bush,
A gentle muffled noise,
Like cellophane scrunching,
Then silence.
Again the noise, 
Then silence.
Labouring through 
Loose dry sand
You trudge on, 
Until the scene 
Opens before you.
A broad expanse of sand,
With waves breaking along it.
Children, running to and fro,
Squealing with delight,
Racing in and out of the water,
Building sand castles
With tunnels 
And moats,
And stomping on them 
To the delight 
Or sometimes 
Dismay 
Of the budding architects.
Laughter, the common language.
Dogs, wet and excited,
Rush up to say “hello”
Then gallop off to chase
Flocks 
Of disdainful gulls,
Or balls,
Or children,
Or each other,
Running right into the waves
And galloping out again,
Dripping both salty water
And the foamy 
Slobber of excitement.
Seaweed in long strands,
Like strings of pearls,
Litter the high tide line.
Cuttlefish bones,
In numbers 
To numerous to count,
Litter the sand,
Like so many 
Abandoned surfboards.
The crazy kaleidoscope of beach life:
Hats, zinc cream, ice-cream, 
Parents in whatever shade they can find, 
The well tanned and the well cooked, 
The sizzle of the BBQs, 
The swimmers bobbing in the water, 
The surfers wobbling towards the shore, 
A single yacht, far out on the horizon, 
Appears frozen in time and space, 
But probably isn’t.

All the while
The waves,
With a understated power,
Break and retreat.
Break and retreat.
The rhythm of life.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---



Saturday, June 07, 2014

710 : Two Halves

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: bond, grumble, painless.


Two Halves.

What is it 
That creates a bond,
A bridge, 
A meeting of minds?
What permits 
An intersecting
Of Souls 
Of different kinds?
We agree
That it’s not easy.
Reflecting,
We grumble 
But accept 
It’s not painless 
But see beyond
To where 
Memories 
Are kept.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---

Sunday, June 01, 2014

709 : The New Day

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #163) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

sturdy, scent, propel, chase, terrain, fluid,
paving, launch, countless, field, lean, jovial


The New Day

Some people fall from bed.
Some people crawl from bed,
Reluctant to leave this padded field of dreams
For the, they say, cold terrain of reality;
They're happier to stay in their feathered bed
With sturdy little legs (on the bed)
And generous padding and woolly embrace
(Still talking about the bed)
Rather than propel themselves into a new day,
Rather than to launch themselves upon
A, quite frankly, uncaring world.
They remain snug, comatose and curled
Like so many sleeping slugs
Found beneath my paving stones.
Others, of course,
(And they are hated by the first)
Burst from their beds,
Bright-eyed and jovial,
Eager to venture forth,
Liking nothing better than
To lean reflectively against trees
In the early morning light,
Cupping their hands 
Around mugs of hot fluids
(Not always herbal teas
Despite the aspersions made by 
Their less energetic 
And horizontal opposites)
They stand there,
With the hot fluids of their choice,
Watching the world unfold,
As the sun breaks through the leaves,
As small birds flit from bush to bush,
Chasing equally flitty insects,
As webs boast their jewellery of evening dew,
Absorbing the smells, the sights, the sounds,
Heaven seen,
Heaven heard,
Heaven scent.
.
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2014
---