Repost - In the Mourning

Kerry, at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, invites us to write a poem as an open letter.  

I wrote the following two years into Obama's first term.  Nothing has changed.  

Certainly not for Bradley.

In the mourning.

You won me over when we met;

Your silver tongue and golden speech

Filled me with hope, a sense that change

Was really there, within our reach.

But now in the cold and morning light,

I see that it was but lust

And not providing a warm embrace

As a loving engagement must.

Two years on and we have more wars

And Guantanamo is still supported,

Bradley rots in a solitary cell

And cluster bombs are still exported.

Desire was there for better times

But moral issues have been evaded.

Israel continues to flout the law

And sovereign countries have been invaded.

My eyes are open to what I’ve lost,

It’s tomorrow and reality is dawning;

In black, I regret what could have been

And I don’t respect you, in the mourning.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXXI - False Prophets

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #97) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are: 

discipline, pieces, stealing, heroic, moment, fly, 

prophets, limits, gazing, patience, tears, sublime

False Prophets

Stealing the right to be content,

With both their book and sword,

There are no limits to how they try

To draw more folk aboard.

Gazing up, they wait the moment

When word comes from their Lord

And like the ‘lost boys’ they will fly

To their sublime reward.

Heroically viewed by their peers,

The discipline is strong;

The pieces of their text renew

The commitment of the throng.

And so they shed their salty tears

And sing their patient songs

But every day the sun breaks through

To prove these prophets wrong.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXX - Poor Reception

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were heave, ponder and valid.

Poor Reception

The message was quite short on words,

All texts these days are brief.

He pondered what it really meant:

The conclusion gave him grief.

Was it valid, what he inferred?

The words required belief—

But when he learnt their true intent

Heaved a sigh of relief.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXIX - The Cage

The Cage

A glorious creature, restrained,

In a box of steel and wire.

The keeper attempts to engage

But also feels her fire.

Her eyes 

Show a hurt, beyond disguise.

The cage

Is a vile place to dwell.

She murmurs the growl of the pained

And paces 'round her cell.

She was not his, she never was,

Never even could be.

He had the power that would assuage,

Put things as they should be.

And so, 

He sadly lets her go.

The cage

Swings open in the light.

She steps out and then, after a pause,

She walks into the night.

He watchs as she lopes away

And merges into the wood.

While he stood for what seemed an age,

In his heart, he understood.

Wet eyed, 

He turns and walks inside.

The cage

Now empty and unneeded.

He senses that he too, in a way,

Is now unimpeded.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXIII - The Song Weaver

One Single Impression had the prompt 'Embroidery'.

The Song Weaver

The fabric’s rich and intricate

With depth that few acquire;

While on their own the threads are weak,

As one, they form a choir.

No bolt of cloth, a duplicate,

The warp and weft aspire

To make a cloth that sings of love,

Embroidered with desire.

The couples come into his rooms

To buy the cloth, displayed.

The fibres match their entwined hearts

Ornate and yet handmade.

They leave with fabric from his looms

And, while he’s duly paid,

He never gets to ever see

What final song is made.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXII - Old Havana

dVerse has the prompt 'write about a place'.

Old Havana.

An inner courtyard, draped in green;

A cooling, private place.

Beyond, the city is all go,

While trapped in time and space.

The people there seem cheerful:

Some swell with pride to show their cars

While others ensure that they are seen

With gaudy hats and big cigars.

The ghost of Hemmingway

Sits ever at the bar

While a pianist plays requests.

Outside,  a band plays in the park.

Music flows from every brick.

Sun sets. The people sit and talk.

There is a wall around the bay

Where lovers take a walk.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLXI - The Country Bride

Red Landscape by Russell Drysdale, 1945.

The result of an attempt at a collaborative poem with Frankie Jay. 

The Country Bride

The landscape was hot and dusty,

The birds refused to fly.

The lizards slept under shady rocks,

No clouds were in the sky.

The man sipped on a well-chilled beer,

A woman stood nearby.

The land and sky were open space

And yet they fenced her in.

She hated the house he’d built for her

A prison of hot tin;

She felt that she had been sent to hell

Without the fun of sin.

The weight of the sky crushed her down,

Pinning her to this place.

There was no way for her to leave,

No escaping the disgrace.

And so she did the daily tasks

While tears ran down her face.

He was used to the heat and dust;

He’d grown up on the land.

He watched as she did the laundry

But never lent a hand,

He sense that she was not happy

But did not understand.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLX - The Elephant

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were ‘cumbersome’, ‘morbid’ and ‘rampage’.

The Elephant

An elephant, with manners not nice,

Will rampage, if you offer advice.

Not only cumbersome,

They are exceedingly lumbersome

And are morbidly afraid of white mice.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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Ducking the Liebster!

Chhavi Vatwani very sweetly gave me a Liebster Award.  These things are not really my thing but I thought I would answer the associated questions:

What made you start your blog?
The need to put an impertinent upstart called Percy Bysshe Silly in his place.  Failed miserably and then couldn’t stop.

What does this award mean to you?
I’m flattered but am not really one for awards.  I get much more pleasure from honest comments.  Every so often I put up a poem that is not linked to any hub, just to see how many people find it.  Usually four.  Five, if you count me making my Mum read it.

What is your favourite candy?
Sesame Snaps.

What do you read? 
Spasmodically.

Your favourite book?
No one favourite.  Very fond of Terry Pratchett’s books.

Link and/or photo of the perfume you currently wear.
Do you really want a picture of Pesto Sauce?  Really?

A sweet happy memory from your childhood.
They are all sweet.  Bad things happened but, thankfully, I don’t remember them.

Four favourite poetry/blogging communities/hubs you visit often.

• Three Word Wednesday,
• Poets United,
• dVerse ,
• Sunday Scribblings ,
• Theme Thursday,
• Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, 
• Maths for Poets.

A childhood dream that you'd like to accomplish.
Miss Caldecott in Prep School but the age difference remains insurmountable.

Your life is going to become a script for a movie. Who would you like to play you?
Liza Minnelli

Book or a movie?
Book.  They have the inestimable virtue of not having a clod eating popcorn beside me.

You get to become a villain for a day from a Disney movie. Which villain would you be?!
The Big Bad Wolf.

Repost - The White Dove

dVerse Poets has the prompt "The Art of Letting Go".

This is an old poem that I have reworked.

The form is a villanelle.

The White Dove

A kind of peace returned to me,

Despite my inner soul laid bare,

The day I set the white dove free.

It felt as if it was meant to be.

Released and free, far from my care,

A kind of peace returned to me

I held my hands aloft to see

It taking joyously to the air,

The day I set the white dove free.

It settled in an old oak tree.

As I watched it resting there,

A kind of peace returned to me

It was as happy as it could be.

Children sang at the country fair

The day I set the white dove free.

Even though it was so hard to bear

I know I'd pleased a maiden fair.

A kind of peace returned to me

The day I set the white dove free.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLIX - The Map of Life

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads has a cascading prompt; 

we are required to write a piece where 

the lines of the first stanza become 

the end lines of the following stanzas.  

This had a folded-unfolded feel to it to me.

The Map of Life

Life Folded.

It’s like a fairy tale come true,

Filled with sunshine, peaches and whipped cream.

The house, the car, the well-trimmed lawn,

The trappings of the modern dream.

Life Unfolded.

From the inside and looking out,

It’s hard to see the pathway through.

But from the outside, looking in,

It’s like a fairy tale come true.

The fourth estate conspires to sell

The story of the endless stream—

The ads tell us that life should be

Filled with sunshine, peaches and whipped cream.

We are seduced by this froth of life;

Too late some niggling doubts are born:

Is success truly displayed by

The house, the car, the well-trimmed lawn?

But once aboard, how do you leave?

The treadmill quickly picks up steam

We find we’ve sold our soul to pay for

The trappings of the modern dream.

.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLVIII - Fashion Backfire.

A sequel to the previous post.

In that post I recounted how I tore my trousers, doing good deeds.

This meant that I would need to wear 

suit trousers until I bought some new ones.

There were problems…

Fashion Backfire.

I am embarrassed to report a wardrobe malfunction,

Where  checked shirt clashed with some pants with stripes

And the dissonant junction distressed a woman, well dressed.

These types prevail in cases, style based,

And I was taken to court for the crime of bad taste.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLVII - A Lifting Experience

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were ‘backfire’, ‘embarrass’ and ‘taste’.

Earlier in the week, I helped unload a truck. 

Not my job but happy to do it. 

My trousers tore when I squatted down

to lift a box.

A Lifting Experience

No good deed goes unpunished.

The gods will see it so.

Charitable acts oft backfire

In ways we cannot know.

Too late, we taste the gall of fate,

Retire to our private world and,

While more embarrassed than we'd have wished,

Are still glad we lent a hand.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLVI - The Rising

Sunday Whirl (Wordle #94) presents a list of words

that we must incorporate in a writing piece.  

The words this week are: 

again, bust, enough, figure, fuss, go, interest, miserable, prove, straight, sweet, wish

The Rising

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
- Thoreau.

First light.  

The alarm is urgent

But I have been awake 

For some time.  

Lying and thinking

Of just what it would take

To raise the weight of the malaise,

The thing that is draped across me

Like a wretched leaden blanket.

Interest is an absentee.

I’m not bust, just not sick enough;

Under a lethargy that saps the wish to up and go

And that which should be sweet to me is not.

A miserable spot.

But slowly,

I prove that I can move again:

A straight no-nonsense figure.  

Tough.

No fuss.  

I wont complain.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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Repost - Roses are roses, violets are not.

"Roses are red, violets are blue

Sugar is sweet and so are you."

I beg to differ...

Roses are roses, violets are not.

"Roses are red, violets are blue",

Overused twaddle and clearly untrue.

Some roses are white, others are pink,

In Texas they're yellow, the worlds biggest, I think.

Violets are odd, with their own special hue,

Violets are violet and clearly not blue.

That sugar is sweet, I have to agree,

But that's where it ends, it seems to me.

The thinking is flawed, the analogy faulty:

Sugar is sweet but you are quite salty.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLV - Interstellar Cuckoos

I was chastened for writing too ‘deeply’ in my first attempt at 3WW’s

prompt this week, using the words ‘drab’, ‘pulsate’ and ‘tendril’.

So here is an extremely shallow response.

Premises:

1. Two of the words,  pulsate and tendril, have a real Hentai Cartoon feel to them.

2. A high proportion of (US) people think they have been abducted by aliens.

3. There are a disproportionate number of lawyers on the planet. 

Interstellar Cuckoos

The spacecraft hovered in the sky

And was invisible to the unaided eye,

It was on a mission through space

To propagate their race

Before their home planet could die.

Could die,

Before their home planet could die.

The crew scanned the houses for guests,

For breeding stock meeting their tests.

And these alien platoonists,

Like Asian cartoonists,

Favoured the ones with big breasts.

Big breasts,

Favoured the ones with big breasts.

In a drab little house out of town

Slept a woman in a pretty nightgown;

She was sweet and demure

And her dreams were most pure

When the spacecraft settled on down.

On down,

When the spacecraft settled on down.

Her nightie was pink and hand made,

And well suited to an innocent maid.

She also worn briefs

In the mistaken belief

That they kept the marauders away.

Away,

That they kept the marauders away.

They carried her off to the ship

Where she awoke in an alien grip.

When she demanded to know

Why they were treating her so,

They just leered, with the odd slimey drip.

Slimey drip,

They just leered, with the odd slimey drip.

Nine tentacles slowly undressed her,

While others just roughly caressed her.

As each made a move

On her feminine groove,

The others restrained and suppressed her.

Suppressed her,

The others restrained and suppressed her.

The tempo of the assault just increased

And reached its climactic release.

Once the pulsating was through 

And the tendrils withdrew

She was carrying the spawn of the beasts.

The beasts,

She was carrying the spawn of the beasts.

They removed all trace from her brain,

Before returning her home once again.

She awoke the next morn

With her nightie all torn

And covered with green slimey stains.

Slimey stains.

And covered with green slimey stains.

She couldn’t recall what they did,

So was surprised to be carrying a kid.

While she thought it quite odd

She assumed it from God

But developed an aversion to squid.

To Squid,

She developed an aversion to squid.

Nine months after the aliens first saw her

She gave birth to a small baby lawyer,

The net human worth

Of the population of earth

Was unchanged and the planet the poorer.

The poorer,

Was unchanged and the planet the poorer.

---

© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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CDLIV - The Dark Days

Three Word Wednesday requires participants

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

The words this week were ‘drab’, ‘pulsate’ and ‘tendril’.

A less dark (maybe) alternative 3WW entry is here.

The Dark Days.

The desolation seemed complete.

Drab, 

Grey, 

Unloved, 

Unclean:

The city is a gutted shell,

The fields devoid of green.

The gift of minds that would not meet,

The outcome was obscene:

Life that used to pulsate so well,

No longer to be seen.

◊◊◊

Time passes, 

Half-lives slip away,

Normal rules don’t apply,

The stage is set for a rebirth to happen, 

By and by.

Quietly, 

On an unmarked day,

With sunlight in supply,

A green tendril breaks through the earth

And reaches for the sky.

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© J Cosmo Newbery 2013

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