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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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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?

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

◊

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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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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.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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796 - Tears

Haiku Horizons has the prompt “Tear”.

A quick decision.

Spontaneous.  Regretted.

We shed salty tears.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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795 - Jerk

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

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

The rest is up to us.

She had a few drinks after work

And then slept in the arms of a clerk.

She then dreamed of a life

As a happy young wife

But, alas, woke up with a jerk.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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Apologies to those who pronounce 'clerk', 'clark'.

Call it poetic license.

You could replace 'clerk with 'berk' but it weakens the jerk ending.

794 - That man Todd

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were: nervous, puzzled, and lump.

That man Todd.

The nervous will oft close their eyes

As the barber deftly applies

The edge of the blade

To the lather he’s made

And to move is considered unwise.

But one barber with a habit most odd

Would dispatch all his clients to God.

He would then disguise

Their bodies in pies

Which puzzled the homicide squad.

To his credit, the cops all confessed

That his pies were considered the best.

What brought them up trumps

Was the absence of lumps

And a sauce that always impressed.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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793 - Daintree

A potted haiku summary of a brief but very pleasant 

visit to the Daintree region of northern Queensland.

Daintree.

Wheels leave the tarmac,

The plane defies gravity

As we hold our breath.

The louvered windows

Of the tropical villa—

Quaint yet comforting.

It smells different

When rain falls in the forest:

Earthy.  Primal. Close.

An electric blue.

The brief but colourful life 

Of a butterfly. (1)

A walk on the beach

Followed by a lazy beer—

Could get used to this.

Let go of your home:

When in Rome (or Daintree)

Drink the local beer.

Warm cuddles in bed,

No need for any nightwear,

A gecko tut-tuts. (2)

The morning chorus:

The birds, the rain, the children.

I go back to sleep. (3)

Ancient wilderness:

Diversity worth a look…

What’s a little rain? (4)

The boat glides along.

On the bank, a crocodile

Pays close attention.

The cassowary:

A large lumpy sort of bird

That hides in the wild.

Cassowary plum

Betray the odd bird’s passing:

Fowl bowel graffiti. (5)

Unusual sounds

Of the unseen bush dwellers,

Oddly comforting.

Cape Tribulation.

The place an early Cook’s tour

Came stuck.  And unstuck. (6)

Holiday chaos—

That fateful, distant message:

“Gone into labour”. 

Technology beats

The tyranny of distance:

The coming of Grace. (7)

Good travel advice:

Take nothing but photographs,

Leave only footprints.

Dinner in the trees—

The jungle meets fine dining,

Daintree à la carte. (8)

The final packing.

I wonder what will be left?

There’s always something.

Familiar smells 

Welcome us back to our home.

The kettle goes on.

I know I am home

When I can kick off my shoes,

Order a pizza.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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1. Ulysses Butterfly

2. Geckos, a type of lizard, makes an odd clicking noise at night.

3. Neighbours had a crying child.  Felt sorry for them.  Nothing more.

4. No rain, no rainforest.  But warm rain.

5. The plum needs the cassowary to eat and pass its seeds for them to germinate.

6. Captain James Cook got stuck on a coral reef in 1770.

7. Grand-daughter, Grace.

8. Nautilus restaurant.

792 - Relationships

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were: Erect, Blemish, Lop-sided.

Relationships

Multi-sided

No relationship

Is a pairing of equals:

Different talents.

Lop-sided

Two unequal halves,

Although perfectly aligned,

Asymmetrical.

Open-sided

Life is like a dance—

Not a tango, more awkward,

Like a three-legged race.

Subsided

Just one small blemish

Can block out all the good points;

Out of proportion

Blind-sided

Fearing the unknown,

And sometimes knowing the known,

We erect fences.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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791 - The Woods

Photo by Oer Wout

Mindlovemisery’s prompt.

The Woods.

Life is seldom

A straight path

Through a copse of trees

To the light.

Reality meanders.

Shadows call.

Enticing sounds call you

Through the mists,

From the trees,

To come and visit,

Come…come…

Come away from the path,

Away with me…

Come…

Curiosity 

Abhors the normal.

Sirens of the woods,

Ulysses would understand.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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790 - Trust

Haiku Horizons has the prompt "Trust".

Trust only yourself.

All others must be suspect,

Experience shows.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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789 - Erectile Dysfunction

Mad Kane has a weekly limerick challenge.

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

The rest is up to us.

Erectile Dysfunction

They thought that the Rajah was mad

For building a solid gold pad.

This golden emporium

And fornicatorium

Used all of the money they had.

The place was built to rehearse

Karma Sutra, chapter and verse,

But the exertion required

Meant that the Rajah expired:

Premature ejaculation, 

Only worse.

 .

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2015

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