819 - Past

Haiku Horizons has the prompt ‘Past’.

The past is no more.

The future, but a promise.

Eat, drink, be merry.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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818 - The Garden

Blood Plum blossum, Chez Newbery

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #214) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

worm, stop, here, speak, amber, chirping,

deal, easy, rot, foster, me, secret

The Garden

The garden calls me,

Speaks to me

In the easy words 

Of love and life.

There are no secrets here.

Life is full,

Full of growth and regrowth.

Death is here too.

For every start there is a stop.

Things grow, bloom, die and rot.

The malady of life.

Only to repeat.  

And repeat.

A melody of sounds—

A chorus 

Of the chirping of small birds

And the harsh calls of the large.

But a melody of colours too—

Greens, ambers, reds, blues,

A melody of life.

The fittest survive.  

Or the lucky.

Magpies stride, imperious, 

Hands behind their backs.

Worms don’t.

Wrens watch from the side.

Possums sleep,

Dreaming of the new growth.

A recurring pattern

That fosters understanding,

Helps us to comprehend

The larger cycle

We all must face.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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817 - No Man's Land

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #213) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

lucid, wine, stain, puzzle, foreign, superior,

feckless, dumb, chiseled, hollow, luminous, winner

No Man’s Land

A foreign land men should avoid

Unless they love derision,

Is that dark hell-hole of ridicule—

Daytime television.

Why it’s watched is a puzzle itself,

Its shows are hollow spleen,

But what really does the poor men in

Are the ad breaks in between.

Here we seem some superior wife

Mocking her feckless mate

For his attempts to clean off stains

Without using Stainabate®

How could this ham-fisted semi-ape

Not know the ‘stained-tie test’

Where it was clearly shown Stainabate®

Cleaned cleaner than the rest? 

All the ads depict men the same,

As dumb and chinless wonders,

Where women sip a glass of wine

While pointing out their blunders.

The women there are all portrayed

As lucid high achievers

While the men are all unshaven clods

Who dream of beer and beavers.

No Chesty Bond® with his well chiselled chin

Will grace the screen, off-peak,

Just ways to have the best luminous lips

To sneer and still be chic.

But nowadays, when roles are blurred,

And both sexes cook the dinner,

Ad revenues are in decline

And everyone’s the winner.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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816 - Mistakes

Sunday Scribblings 2’s prompt: mistakes.

Mistakes

When mistakes are made

We look outside for reasons

When they are within.

◊

Assumptions are flawed:

One plus one does not make two—

In binary maths.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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815 - Demi-God

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were: kneel, nasty, purr.

Demi-God

Sometimes friendly, sometimes surly,

With a hint of feline smirk,

These furry little assassins

Are nasty bits of work.

They know

The status quo

Begins

When you house becomes their run.

A truth you should learn quite early,

They’ll kneel before no-one.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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814 - A Leaden Haiku or two.

Haiku Horizons has the prompt ‘Lead’.

Something of an ambiguous word when taken out of context.

Here goes:

A Leaden Haiku or two.

All paths lead to Rome.

So they would have us believe;

Mine leads to the world.

◊

Politics is dire.

Where have all the leaders gone?

A depressing void.

◊

We think we’ve found gold

But mistake weight for substance.

Just lead.  Heavy.  Cheap.

◊

To turn lead to gold—

The alchemist’s holy grail.

But they all died poor.

◊

Full of fancy words,

She lead me to think she cared.

Harsh words killed that thought.

◊

Leaden clouds gathered.

The storm swirled around itself—

A whirling dervish.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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813 - Pot Black

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

She provides the rhyme word, this week it is “pot”.

The rest is up to us.

A politician from a blue ribbon plot,

Thought the poor were an overpaid lot.

But when caught with his snout

Sucking the public purse out,

The kettle turned and winked at the pot.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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812 - The Boat of Pigs Fiasco

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #212) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

escape, way, veins, feast, torn, broke,

generate, engine, laugh, sack, ghost, empty

The Boat of Pigs Fiasco

Incorporating The Hunting of the Nark.

An Agony in three Fits.

Fit the First.

An abbot, a bishop and a ghostly choir,

We’re crewing the ship of state.

“We are a broad and most liberal church

But give preference to our mates”.

“Only the blue blood pulses through our veins

We sup with Sterling spoons,

We piously quote from the ancient texts

And divert the State’s doubloons”

“Of course the other cheek should be turned

But some things we can't forgive—

The 'unnamed sources' mean that this ship

Is more leaky than a sieve.”

“The rabble point at us and rudely laugh.

We suspect a choirboy in the middle row

Is generating a more modern text—

That is why they mock us so.”

Fit the Second

The suspect choirboy wore his boyish grin

And often raised their ire,

“Why me?  There is a veritable feast of leaks,

Plus the pain of ‘friendly fire’.”

“Our engine’s stalled, fuel is nearly empty,

And our navigation's gone astray.

We‘ve lost our heart and all humanity,

We're a vessel in decay.”

“We’ve sacked our respected authorities,

We’ve stacked our Royal Commissions;

We’ve ignored our UN obligations

And our faithful have suspicions.”

“Your ship is sinking, taking hits both fore and aft—

So it flounders in an angry sea;

Its destination has never been divulged,

Well, certainly not to me.”

Fit the Third.

The Captain paced the tilting deck,
In Speedos and blue tie,
He already missed a near death date
But ignored the reasons why.

"We're doomed! We're doomed" the minor crew
Exclaimed like worried hens,
"There is no hope for this cursed ship,
It's the beginning of the end!

The Captain was not convinced of this:

“Come, I’m Captain, just let me steer.

I can control the steerage mob:

I’ll just ratchet up their fear”

It was a well known ploy, the choirboys were impressed.

But, committed, they could hardly scoff —

They cheered and cheered and oinked a bit

Before returning to their trough.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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811 - Thou Shalt.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were: enigmatic, gruesome, and irritate.

Thou shalt.  

We love rules.

Break them,

Occasionally,

Selectively.

But, by and large,

We love rules.

And are irritated,

Often irrationally,

When people break them.

Hey! You can’t do that!

Watch me.

We watch them,

Expecting the Gods,

Enigmatic and remote

At the best of times,

To smite them

For their insolence.

But they don’t.

Or do.

That’s life.

For the record 

I would like to add 

A bonus rule:

If you are desiring 

A good night’s sleep,

Do not do a Google search

For images associated with

Gruesome.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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810 - Future Imperfect

Illustration: Banksy

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #211) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

plaster, chill, rattle, drum, recede, scry,

thread, web, know, sin, cry, creek

Future Imperfect.

I

The old lady sits at a baize-covered table

To scry, to ply the art of the ball and Tarot;

What she sees chills her old bones

And, muttering, she hopes it is not so.

II

The village has an idiot, old mad Tony,

Who delights in low grade baloney,

Always rattling the spear

Of racism and fear,

A story that’s self-serving but phoney.

III

You can plaster cracks

You can draw together stray threads,

But the faults remain.

IV

The old lady put away her cards

Covered her ball with a sheet

She knew that what she had seen was a sin:

To demonise, to imprison and mistreat.

V

Leaders should attend—

The drums of decent people

Echo through the house.

VI

The lies continue

They do not cease

They do not recede

They build upon each other

A progression

A Web

Of deceit

One upon another

As if the new one 

Will distract us from the old

VII

They are cogs in a corporate machine

Who worships their money and Queen,

We are lead up a creek

Where humanity is bleak

And paddles seldom are seen.

VIII

The old lady stood and departed her tent

What she had seen compelled her to cry.

She could see that the story was horrid

But had no way to fathom out why.

IX

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the song of angry men?

It is the music of the people

Who will not be slaves again!

When the beating of your heart

Echoes the beating of the drums

There is a life about to start

When tomorrow comes.

- Les Miserables 

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Sections I-VIII

© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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809 - Sundry Haikus

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were: filth, addicted, and defiant.

Haiku 1.

We choose what offends—

One’s muck is another’s cream.

Filth is subjective.

◊◊◊

Haiku 2.

Addicted to gods;

Faith in fairies and voodoo—

Why do we need them?

◊◊◊

Haiku 3.

He stands defiant,

Denying the obvious—

The rich coal miner.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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808 - Birthday!

The first of August is the horse's birthday

in the southern hemisphere.

The first of August—

Give the horses a birthday!

(No secrets for them.)

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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