872 - Happy-Go-Lucky

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week are: Happy-go-lucky, ignorant and joyous.

Happy-Go-Lucky

We travel not for trafficking alone:

By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:

For lust of knowing what should not be known

We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

- James Elroy Flecker.

◊

Holidays?  Where are you going?

Uzbekistan.

[pause] Do you mean Pakistan?

No.  Uzbekistan.  

Oh.  Why?

It's time.

Alexander the Great went there,

Genghis Khan went there,

Marco Polo went there,

They have no excuses

If they are not prepared 

For a visit from me.

◊

People are ignorant

Sheltered from the outside world,

Ignorance is fear.

◊

An inner conflict:

Climate change is very real

But travel is too.

In a heating world

Flying is a moral question

But camels are slow.

◊

Taste other cuisines

Rub against ancient cultures

Spread understanding

See joyous people

From all corners of the world

One large family.

◊

And so we go.

Bags packed.  Taxi booked.

A long way from the caravans of old.

But close, too.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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A Poetic Interlude

Many moons ago, I read and loved

The Golden Road to Samarkand, 

by James Elroy Flecker.

Unfortunately, Flecker was one 

of the many talented young men

sacrificed in The Great War.

But I loved his poem.

Later this week, I too am taking

the road to Samarkand.

Never underestimate the power of a good poem.

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871 - Bits & Pieces

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week are: enchanted, fanatical and giddy.

A state of your mind:

To seek out the enchanting,

To avoid the dross.

◊

“Oh my giddy aunt!”

Swearing in a gentler age.

The intent’s the same.

◊

The fanatical—

They come from all the extremes:

Social outliers.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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870 - The Hall of the Damned

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week are: damned, babble and cherished.

The Hall of the Damned

The Hall of the Damned is seething,

There’s smoke and fire and din.

There’s filth and there is misery

And the only way is in.

In this sorry hall of agony

The place is fiendish hot;

The people writhe with endless pain,

And struggle with their lot.

They have no way of knowing

What lies beyond its walls

But babble on in endless hope

That it's a better place that calls.

In this verdammt and musty hall

All faint hopes are cherished.

As those who did not grasp a dream,

Invariably just perished.

But what if this depressing place

Was reality, in the raw?

What if this is all we get—

Just this and nothing more?

What if we knew we had one shot,

Just one crack at our heartfelt dream,

Would we be quite so tolerant

Of those who skim the cream?

In the darkened Hallways of the Damned,

There is smoke and fire and din.

Is it because we have been fooled,

To let the bastards win?

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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869 - It's sedimentary, Dr Watson.

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week are: unselfish, winding and amoral.

It's sedimentary, Dr Watson.

An hypothesis—

It’s like a kite flown on the wind:

It can crash to earth.

◊

That is how it works:

You launch your idea skywards

And others throw rocks.

◊

With no agenda,

All ideas are unselfish;

Proponents not so.

◊

You must take a stand,

You cannot be amoral,

Unless you are a rock.

◊

As far as kites go,

You build them with gossamer.

Using rock wont work.

◊

Knowledge is a path:

Winding, forked, heading for light.

But does it find ‘truth’?

◊

Truth is quite fluid

This year’s sphere of molten rock

Is last year’s flat earth.

◊

Yet, what is a rock?

Science agrees on one thing:

They make a good pet.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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868 - Not the sharpest knife

Not the sharpest knife.

A yobbo, let’s call the boy Steve,

Was a dullard, let’s call him naïve,

When faced with a review

Where a ‘thank you’ would do

Carried on like you wouldn’t believe.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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867 - Case Closed

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

She provides the rhyme word, the rest is up to us.

This week the word is ‘case’.

Case Closed

A guy felt he was up for the chase

Of a gangster’s girlfriend called Grace.

By the end of the day

He’d washed up in the bay—

As suicide, an open and shut case.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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866 - A Crying Shame

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #249) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are:

grace, join, yearning, silken, any, fire,

eggs, moment, skin, cell, light, boundless

A Crying Shame

First they came for the Socialists, 

and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, 

and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, 

and I did not speak out— 

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—

and there was no one left to speak for me.

- Martin Niemöller

Verse Two,

Lines five and six,

Of our National Anthem reads:

“For those who've come across the seas

We've boundless plains to share”

And come they do,

Yearning a new and safer life,

Any life really,

After we, 

And our mighty military,

Have rained fire,

Mayhem,

Death and misery,

Upon them in their homes.

Delivering moments of terror

And lifetimes of trauma

Through the machinery of greed,

Thinly disguised

Beneath a skin of righteousness.

But our silken leader

Tells us not to be “misty eyed’;

Code for “toughen up”,

Code for “they are not really people”

Graceless and lightweight,

He beats on an empty chest.

How long, I wonder,

Before those who point 

At our national disgrace

Are politely but firmly 

Invited to join the others

In a distant island cell?

As eggs precede chickens 

And chickens precede eggs,

It is the next logical step.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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