1203 - Crews Control

Crews Control

At a distance it is a lovely blue,
A vessel displaying a certain grace
It glides serenely through time and space,
Indifferent to the actions of the crew.

Like children fighting for the best position
Of cabin, top bunk or at the Captain's table;
Greedy, ignorant and quite unstable,

They are suicidal acts of self-coition.

Arrogantly, the crew have not yet assessed
The ship's unconcern with their petty fights,
As it powers onwards through the nights —
Will it become the next Mary Celeste?

A hundred tableaus in a hundred rooms
Meanwhile, not far up ahead, disaster looms.
    .
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© 2019 J Cosmo Newbery
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948 - Divide and Conquer

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week are: 

vapid, adjoining and bouncy.

Divide and Conquer.

The world comes to us through TV:

Talking heads give vapid chatter

And cover up the things that matter

With bouncy echoes of page three.

We accept what others want to give;

Fed warm pap, served with distain.

Discounted as they know we will remain—

Expected to exist but not to live.

I hurts to accept the bleeding truth:

We have permitted idiots to rule us.

So they, in turn, feel free to fool us:

Did we not choose them in the booth?

As, on all horizons, disaster looms,

We watch TV in adjoining rooms.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2016

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768 - Old Flames

Old Flames

Where do flames go, after they die?

They, who glowed to brightened our day,

Just disappear with scant ‘good-bye’—

Where do they go when they go away?

Is there a divide they must traverse?

Lingering briefly as a wisp of white

To swirl and twist and then disperse,

Like ghosts that slip into the night.

Where do flames go when they go out?

They were so real, with warmth and grace,

It’s hard to think they are not about,

They must live on in some other place.

But our Heaven wont suit them well—

Perhaps old flames just collect in Hell.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2014

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529 : Nocturne II

This is a rework of the previous poem.

I had tried to do an hexasonnetta, a form

which uses 6 syllables per line, and found it clunky.

I have reworked it in a 8/6 pattern, keeping the original rhymes,

and am much happier with it.

Nocturne II

The evening twilight is bringing

A stillness, without grace.

No fleecy jacket can erase

A shiver that is tingling,

And the birds have stopped their singing—

It seemed so out of place.

As the light is quickly fading,

The sense is of despair,

A numbing chill hangs in the air,

And shadows are parading

A sadness that’s all pervading,

It’s more than most can bear.

And, with the fading of the light,

The darkness of the night.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXXIII - A Song of the Moment

Sunday Scribblings has the prompt 'Moment'.

A Song of the Moment

The heart bursts forth in glorious song,

As the sun, embracing the dawn.

It’s as warm and rich and sweet and strong,

As the inspiration from which it’s drawn.

But the heart and brain are oft at odds

In this song of inflated proportions.

The heart will try to ignore the prods

Of a brain that counsels caution.

There comes a moment of leaden pain,

When wild exuberance is slowed,

When the heart concedes to the brain

And chooses the other road.

That doesn’t mean the dream was wrong

Nor stop the heart from humming it’s song.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CCCLXIV - Sonnet to a Young Niece

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Caz, aged about 25 in 2002, with Colin the Camel.
She had the degenerative disease, MELAS and died in 2006.
Don’t talk to me about ‘intelligent design’.

dVerse  had the prompt 'beautiful sadness'.

Sonnet to a young Niece.

She was a sweet and chirpy young kid,
As normal as any you’d find.
She found delight in all she did
She was happy and bouncy and kind.

Once the hormonal tides started flowing
They triggered a relentless decay;
At the time we weren’t to be knowing
Of the calamity coming her way.

She endured her lot, with good heart,
As her systems fell to the fault;
She knew pretty much from the start
There could be no other result.

She smiled as the malaise dragged on
And then, one sad day, she was gone.

.

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© 2012   J Cosmo Newbery

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CCXCIV - Darwin's Finch

I was listening to a talk recently where the speaker used the line

"Like Darwin's finch, we must adapt or die".  It touched a chord.

Darwin’s Finch

On each island you will find a different bird,
Adapted to the vagaries of its habitance.
While they have no control of what occurred,
They’ve made the most of their inheritance.

Their families come from a  common thread,
Their surrounds have given divergency.
Their beaks and foods and even songs, it’s said,
Have been pushed by evolutionary urgency.

We, too, are confined to an island home,
Set in the vast ocean of intergalactic space.
As resources dwindle and populations grow,
Environmental impacts will  be commonplace.

In the New World, hotter, wetter and, oh so brave,
With what kind of finch will we share our cave?

.

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© 2012   J Cosmo Newbery

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LXX - The Case for the Negative.

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Laura Jayne at Pictures, Poetry & Prose poses a daily writing challenge.
The prompt for this poem was “The Beauty of the Rose”.
I sort of took a contrary view but a rose demands a sonnet.


The Case for the Negative

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name, would smell as sweet.*
Thanks but it’s not the name that’s on the nose,
It’s all the rosy problems that I meet.

There are aphids, thrip, moths and red spider,
Rust and black spot, catapillars hairy,
And the thorny branches can provide a
Most nasty wound to the unwary.

You often need to prune and deadhead them
To shape and otherwise try to train them;
And then worry if you’ve overfed them.
It really is a pain to maintain them.

Frankly, in the garden I am too lazy:
Ditch the roses, plant a daisy.

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© J Cosmo Newbery
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* Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet, (II, ii, 1-2)

XXXIX - Love Sonnet to an Enemy

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This week's writing challenge from Mama's Losin' It.

A Love Sonnet to an Enemy

O my foe, we have had our ups and downs,
Our battles, imaginary and real;
We’ve fought at length with tears and grief and frowns
With wounds so deep they’d surely never heal.

But to you I owe a sizable debt,
A most shocking thing to say, I know.
You’ve made me what I am today, and yet
I’m sure that you didn’t intend it so.

As quenching toughens metal, glowing red;
As stones give blades an edge to cut more true;
Your friction toughed me for life ahead
And drove me on to show what I could do.

O dear and lovely foe, hear me when I say:
You’ve done your best, now kindly go away.

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© J Cosmo Newbery

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XXV - A sonnet to a favourite word.

I have been interviewed by Lillie. I will answer the questions in reverse order so that they appear in the correct order. Bonus question: What is your favorite word? ◊◊◊

When I was asked for my favourite word I chose, with no trace of hesitation What I think is surely the most absurd Example in all communication. My word, you see, is quaintly double edged And most slyly deceptive from the start; Its values are perverse and coyly hedged. It firstly means divide or split apart. Straight forward enough, separate and lift. Visions come of satin, silk and leather. But calm your busom and don’t be so swift: Its second meaning is to stick together. To cut or to join, it’s hard to believe But my favourite word, of course, is ‘cleave’. --- © J Cosmo Newbery ---

IV - Ode to a soft cheese.

A local paper, writing about soft cheeses, suggested that they evoked visions
of being rolled on the thighs of virgins in the moon light.
Apart from probably being confused with Cuban cigars,
such imagery demands poetry.

Ode to a soft cheese

Can love be any more innocent than this?
The sublime adoration of the pure;
Silken smooth, the essence of all we wish
To be ours: virginal, white, demure.

Heady aromas carry us a far
To where, moonlight awash, visions vestal,
Roll and squash, legs a tremble; thighs ajar;
Food of angels on a plate celestial,

Heavenly cheeses, to make someone swoon.
The ladies then wash, their work is well done;
In bathed innocence they dance in the moon
Oblivious to the magic they’ve spun.

Beneath the trees, with my glass of wine,
I enjoy at ease what cannot be mine.

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No apologies. © J Cosmo Newbery.
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