Friday, July 31, 2015

807 - Acceptance


Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Acceptance


Acceptance

Should you?
I mean really?
Do you just accept cruelty
As if it is the right thing to do?
Suck it up, as they say?
Where is the self-worth in that?
When someone tries to impale
A loved one
Like a beetle to a corkboard
With over the top
Underhand
Callous
Words.

Words chosen to hurt,
To wound,
Fatally perhaps.
Words chosen to pierce
The self esteem of the receiver,
The beetle,
Words chosen to win the war
At all costs.
Over-egged.
Theatrical.
Pyrrhic.

Should I accept that?
Accept that it is just
One of those things?
That done is done?
Move on?

I have a problem with that.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

806 - Tedious, Tedious and Sad.


Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: tedious, waste, reflect.


Tedious.  Tedious and Sad.

I could tell that you were lying.
Your voice gave it away—
Reflecting the conflicts within,
You had a role to play.

I know
But not why it is so.

Akin 
To Sisyphus’ climb,
To understand the underlying
Is just a waste of time.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Sunday, July 19, 2015

805 - The Boxer

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #208) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

tilt, astray, breeze, awake, bruising, hamper,
instinct, cracks, spirit, staggered, smiled, angle


The Boxer

Does he lie awake at night,
Planning his fights?
Licking his lips,
Anticipating
The next bruising encounter,
The next windmill
Worthy of a tilt?
Planning the next obtuse angle
From which to attack,
From which to crack
Society’s spirit,
To hamper collaboration,
To fan and magnify fear,
For personal gain 
And communal loss.

Boxers fight win.
Or lose.
There is no compromise.

It is depressing 
How easily we are lead astray
Guided down the dark, dank alleys
Of fear and distrust
As if unsure of what is right or wrong
Like a Reichstag flag
Fluttering in a light breeze.
Observers are staggered
That our moral compass
Is so readily deflected.
Or ignored.

Does he lie awake at night?
I suspect so.
I wonder if, lying there, 
He smiles,
Dreaming of his wins.
And our losses.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Friday, July 17, 2015

804 - Sad, Sadder, Sadist.


Sad.  Sadder.  Sadist.

It’s unlike you,
To be so cruel.
Uncharacteristic.
Not
What I have
Come to expect.
What really
Makes you tick?
Drives you
With words
Like knives
Who
Dissect
Precisely,
Deep and cold.

While I,
Helpless,
Like the village fool,
Watch it all unfold.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---



Sunday, July 12, 2015

803 - The Cabinet Room

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #207) presents a list of words
that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

witches ear dolls heartbreak branded scorpion spells
ball werewolf resurrection alone blind hunted


The Cabinet Room

When everyone was seated
The Leader took the stand.
“We need a three word slogan
The crowd wont understand,
We need to choose it wisely
So fear and greed are fanned!”

The witches stopped their chanting
To cheer what he had said.
They knew the power of nasty spells
To activate the dead
And practiced it on plaster dolls,
Or so it has been said.

Beside them sat the spineless ones,
Quite blind to all they saw.
Untouched by heartbreak or the grief
They'd bestowed upon the poor.
They just branded them as terrorists
And showed them to the door.

A nasty group of suited men,
Assassins, up for hire,
Were resurrecting past faux-pas
To feed the hateful fire
With a passion and a venom
A scorpion would admire.

They strangled babies in the woods,
Drowned puppy-dogs in sacks;
They bit the balls of new-born cats
They slept on beds of tacks.
They trained so they could go alone
But hunted best in packs.

A jolly fool grinned from ear to ear,
And then naively asked  
“Do the poor drive ‘round in cars?
And could the port be passed?”
Meanwhile, ignored by everyone,
A poodle strutted past.

But everyone within the room
Knew who ruled and why.
The boardrooms here and overseas
Demanded they comply,
And when told that they should jump
Meekly asked ‘How high?”.

The meeting was coming to an end,
The zombies gave a cheer,
The Team of Oz then stood and vowed
To snarl, to spit and smear.
Then, as they broke to venture out, 
A werewolf howled in fear.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Friday, July 10, 2015

802 - Shenhua, nicht wahr?

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: aloof, temporary, whole.

Australia and it's idiotic government edged 
closer to mining our most fertile 
agricultural land.


Shenhua, nicht wahr?

When will we learn?
Learn that short term profits
Are a temporary thing,
Learn that we cannot eat coal?

When will we learn?
Learn that we must manage
The whole world;
For ourselves,
For our children,
And their children.

It is a sobering thought that
In one hundred years
The planet earth will have 
An entirely different crew
To the one that consumes it
So greedily today.
What will we pass on to them?
A living planet?
Or a picked over carcass?

When will we learn 
Learn that there is no benevolent 
Father figure 
Protecting us;
That we must protect ourselves.
Learn that those who sit aloof 
In the leather chaired chambers
Have no interest in us,
Or our planet?

When will we learn?
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Thursday, July 09, 2015

801 - A Sleeping Baby

Haiku Horizons has the prompt: calm.

A sleeping baby,
A window of peace and calm—
Good time for some tea.

A sleeping baby,
Not a worry in the world:
Complete innocence.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Monday, July 06, 2015

Vale Sir Percy.


Sir Percy Bysshe Silly
(Paul Martin)

? - 2015.

I started this blog in 2006, 
at the behest of an acquaintance,
to teach some manners to a poetic upstart
who was making a nuisance in another realm.

As is the way of such things
we ended up fighting a poetic duel for the hand
of the fair mayden, Cora.

Neither won.

A dark horse, or rather a dark dog, K9,
stole the day and the prize.

Life is like that.

Percy was part of my life.
Always will be.
Adieu.


Sunday, July 05, 2015

800 - Prickly Reflections

Haiku Horizons has the prompt ‘thorn’.


We all have some thorns.
We all have flowers and fruits.
Harvest carefully.

◊◊◊

Rose may have thorns.
If you change your perspective—
Thorns may have roses.

◊◊◊

Thorns are not too bad
If they offer protection.
Brer Rabbit agrees.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
---

Thursday, July 02, 2015

797-799 - Whores Day Trilogy, 2015.

Whores Day, July 2nd.
Whimsical reflections.  
There’s nothing to be sombre about.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants
to use the three words of the week in a composition.
The words this week were: obedient, somber (sic), and raspy.



797 – Pasta Puttanesca
“Harlot’s Spaghetti”

Some sauces require expertise
But puttanesca is really a breeze.
It’s easy to see 
The whore’s pedigree:
Easy to make and so quick to please.

◊◊◊



798 – Sexual Dragons
Curiously today’s Word of the Day 
at Dictionary.com was “Dragoman”.  
But, no, I wont translate.

Do other animals also have whores,
Females who run sweaty stores?
And how do they arrange
Their rates of exchange?
Something that Google ignores.

What of the raspy dragons we find
In books of the mythical kind?
When dragons are scarce
Can whores flog their wares
Or are the he-dragons not so inclined?

And the question that continues to vex
Is can a dragon really have sex?
Do they have genitalia?
Is there a gender femalia?
The books are coy in these respects.

It’s hard to imagine
As the beasts are not slim;
Sex needs planning,
Not an action of whim.
And at the climatic high
Does the she-dragon cry:
“Oh,  Brothers Grimm! Brothers Grimm! Brothers Grimm!”

And can dragons be experimental?
Are they rough or sometimes even gentle?
Though a blowjob could earn
A third degree burn
In a nether region that’s quite sentimental.

◊◊◊



799 – The Lady in the Red Coat.

A scarlet woman
Was the term once used
For a woman who,
Shall we say,
Was often used.

Dressed in red
Often with leather boots
They stood to the side
Both in view
And in the shadows.

“The Redcoat are coming”
Paul Revere got it quite wrong.
(Or so I’ve heard.)
They seldom do.
Just their clients, it’s said.
But that’s what they paid for.

The oldest profession
According to who?
Or to whom.
Purity in language
If nothing else.

They have been around,
In both senses,
For quite some time.
More compliant
Than obedient.
Money for jam.
A receptacle
Of convenience.
 .
---
© J Cosmo Newbery 2015
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