Best Paltry Poems
I could see the virus approaching so why couldn't he?
But he had to keep investors happy and save the economy
On his watch people in their thousands, died needlessly
The U.K. had a spiralling death rate, a preventable tragedy.
He didn't listen to the top scientists, they have said so
I hope he doesn't try and deny it and say he didn't know
Care home residents from hospitals sent home to die
A ring of steel around the vulnerable, seems that was a lie.
Denials and lies seems to be a politicians stock in trade
Many have looked on in horror at the decisions he's made
Lockdowns were implemented but sadly too late
While the virus was spreading at an alarming rate.
He said " no more lockdowns, let the bodies pile high"
His advisor said he said it and of course he'll deny
The Bereaved Families for Justice, want a public enquiry
A waste of taxpayers money because he governs with impunity.
He stood in his doorway clapping with a smile on his face
What he offered the NHS 'heroes' is nothing short of a disgrace
They were offered a paltry rise of a measly one percent
Many put themselves at risk and are now struggling to pay rent.
These pandemics are nothing new and this one won't be the last
It's a shame that he and other leaders didn't learn from the past
Politicians are sparse with the truth, and they often deceive
But please make up your own mind on who you want to believe.
Written on 25th May 2021.
It's up and down and twice around
With an ample side of snark and leeks.
And an assortment of lies divided by pi,
To find this thing I seek.
I searched my bedside dresser
In the hope to find it there.
But not to be, so I was forced to see
If it was in a box beneath the stairs.
The box was bare and empty
Which did not aid in my relief.
As i was lo' to explain, why it no longer contained
My most cherished held beliefs.
But I digress and that aside,
I looked beneath a bedroom chair.
And where I thought... my valor ought,
I found just a wisp of empty air.
Undaunted by this troubling news,
I remembered a desk that I had bought.
Where I found a mortal slice of wasted life
But still no sign of what I sought.
So undeterred, I left the room
To explore the very nature of my soul.
Where I was forced to roam with no one home
And found just a bigger hole.
I then paddled through my memory
To bring to bear both time and space.
But the fog of age is a paltry sage
And would not expose its hiding place.
I remember not too long age
When It had been my ardent guide.
I'm not afraid to tell, it had served me well
With no providence denied.
But with many years of gross neglect,
It had become a shadow of my past.
And something so grand without a plan...
Is never meant to last.
So my search proved vain and fruitless
But I attempt to soldier on.
And in my despair, I turned to prayer
To question where my love for life had gone.
The End
*Dedicated to those just having a bad day.
*I will be posting my cartoon 'Bob's Your Uncle' on my homepage. A new one will appear every second day or so.
In our lives, we’ve been rendered feelings
in varying degrees of happiness -
prickles of gladness
derived from such events as those
of tasting victory,
of making someone smile, of giving aid,
of basking in the company of friends and family.
And who cannot remember the euphoric bliss
of his or her first romantic kiss?
Eventually our recollections of contentment blur.
Sensations once so strong become
as paltry as the particles of sand washed
again and again by waves of time.
However, fond remembrances
are never totally repressed.
It’s what we keep of them that keeps us strong-
. . . . that keeps us going on.
It’s our human lot to be
longing for an unfurling of fulfillment.
And for far too many, joy is elusive,
coming but in bursts before it fades. . . .
Life and lessons gleaned from it
all point to the way. but
who of us will ultimately know
the joy that sweetly stays?
For PD's 100 in a ROW contest --3
A sparrow the image
And she lonely seeks out food.
From the bushes and recesses
For a hopeful waiting brood.
And the cosmos spins around her
And she seems a trivial thing
But the Maker of the cosmos
Knows her lot, formed her wing.
A sparrow the image
And the day seems cold as death
But the Keeper gives her wrapping
And a cheerful singing breath.
And she greets the paltry sunshine
Of a birthing winter's day
With assurance that her Keeper
Sees her through to flowering May.
A sparrow the image
The dark days still abound
And tooth and claw and slander
Wait for her on shadowed ground.
But she finds her way to Zion
And a nest within its walls
And quite certain Loving Deity
Knows of each her flights and falls.
(Consider Psalm 84 and Matthew 10)
How deeply Ameinias loved you
The beauty that your face adorned.
The adoration you thought your due
The love of youth you lightly scorned.
As consolation a sword you gave
A paltry gift for such devotion.
You did not care for grief so grave
Derision stoked the devastation.
That sword robbed him of his life
In bitter despair he cried in tears,
"May you one day feel the knife
Of unrequited love that sears!"
In the pool you saw a boy so fair
Felt the fire kindled in your mind,
In awe at such beauty you did stare
Love that will so ensnare and bind.
To seduce this boy in tender kiss
you found reflection in the pool.
Ah Narcissus, how did you miss
Loves sweet embrace in waters cool.
You killed yourself in deep despair
Unrequited love that burn until,
The body that once was so fair
Transformed into a dancing daffodil.
So listen young lovers, hear my plea
Be careful when young love you scorn.
Remember Narcissus, when in spring you see
How daffodils the chilly earth adorn.
A new wind blows I can but see
A hidden depth to agony
A coming drought of faith again
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
To know beyond the veil of life
My purpose here, for what my strife
In your sunshine and in your rain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
Your love to know and ever share
To cast off fickle bands of care
And trust you through the fires of pain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
To right life's wrong on human kind
And lead with patience too the blind
To the fountain cleansing our stain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
Nor with the flatterers here join
For paltry praise and rusting coin
Against thy grace and truth's domain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
Kingdom's crumble, silent the word
Love shot down, a featherless bird
I hear anew sins rattling chain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
But let me hold your cross still pure
And stand with you forevermore
Where thunders roll and floods are fain
O Lord, let me not seek in vain
When the snout of lush abundance is full and flowing,
when all prey and creature-kind spill upon the verdant swards,
then it is that I worry night and day,
for the stoat, fox and hawk are at work,
they scythe in the whelm and nimiety, they hack and harrow.
The kits and chuckling’s are many, the light too bright;
for then the foragers forgoing fright, are palpable and open.
The long-eared nibblers, hairs on scattered rodents laid bare,
they scutter, skitter and twitch much in the open
greatly prone to be pounced upon;
their paltry pelts all unhidden, and being many,
and not running, they are huddled; yet not strong.
If this slew not ease, if the grabbers not falter,
if the singled-out dither, the glut not wither,
then the green snake will climb to where nestlings hutch -
they all so easily plucked and quickly snatched.
I worry for the wee brown birds; mottled shells still unhatched.
I fear a winnowing, withal a harsh hazard of gorge and sate.
I fret for the freshly delivered, the teeming,
the newly produced, all the bounding bounty
for those too easily found and so, arrived too late.
Ballroom dances delight in rain,
While humdrum glances from windowpane.
Years passed, two scores plus some,
Destroy not, my childhood fun.
Amusement possesses nary a care.
Paltry peasants can don professional wear,
So kick off your leather attitude.
Gift yourself this interlude,
For vanity seeks vanishing laughter.
Waltz the puddles, now and ever after.
Something in this life
Does not accommodate us
Knowing
A purpose beyond mere living
Does not encourage us
To linger long in our inch of life
Above the paltry start of dust
Above the cancerous bleed
Of common pain
And I shall not celebrate this
Nor let go of the string of bliss
Though it slips and slides
And tear into my veins
I know I am better than
The clay
From which our life began
Because of something more
That faith alone can clutch
And hope alone can know
So when others ask
The reason for the ritual task
Of life from day to day
I in a deeper wisdom bask
A confidence
Of one who willing prays
A sense primeval
Of a corrupt upheaval
Veiling my belonging
In the wealth of who I am
For I can feel the fingers still
On the outline of my dust
The knee beside the little hill
Of space, his face bowed upon my crust
The mouth my throbbing lips embrace
The kiss of life upon my breath
The abnegation of void
The vacancy of death
And then to see
To know the first behold
The glory of who I am
The mirror murmuring with gold
The sheep above the lamb
And I will not relinquish
What grace has furnished
For me to see
Beyond the mess and mesh of flesh
Beyond the iniquity of a wretch.
My love for you is a creature, a solid breathing
Entity, a mangled creation of shadow-black flesh
And the thread-like interwoven muscles of my
Bleeding excuses…
The paltry reasons I put up with your countless
Slights, insults, depravities, are its backbone,
The eyes are mere sockets, the hollowed out orbs
Where my intuition has failed…
My love for you stalks at my feet, its hot breath
Warming my Achilles heel, the weakness that lets you in…
I cannot escape you…I cannot fool myself into hatred,
Though it’s just a thin line away,
I cannot shake off this damnable love, no matter how much
It hurts, no matter the knives of white-hot agony that stab
My heart, no matter how you choke me with your ropes
Of lies and deceit…and you, how you repay me,
You pick up the shards of my shattered dreams, so much crushed glass,
And grind them into my weeping wounds, you spit on
My flailing hopes as they flap on the ground like crows
With tattered dragging wings…you murder me with a smile…
And all the while my love for you clings to my hem, bulldog determined,
Digging deeper and deeper into my melting soul, penetrating the bone,
Burning brands of linked sixes in my marrow
Soon I fear it will bite so deep it will sever me in two, and leave me,
A mangled maimed malcontent dying slowly in a pool
Of my own pathetic longing…my own self destructive love
Paltry poetic presidential prattlings on poultry playing
cockalorums chasing chickens, censured to castigate the cockerals,
tricky tray turbo turkey tidbits tentanize the titillations;
wild wispy winds whisper worldly wasted wiry winsome wiles
dancing delights deluding delicate demigod domiciles,
twittering tweets teasing tenacious tantalizing tongue twisters
residing riddled rattled ransom rasping revolving roars,
minority middle men meltdown midst macrocosmic mayhem
Washington's wonderland weeps wreckage within waiting walls.
The Snowflakes Precision
What a cruel and un-compassionate fate you bequeath us
A million years of the mediocre and paltry garnish of faith and hope
Given for the consumption of these generations
How uninspired and habitually in denial
We have become
The lost worlds of dreaming
Left waiting
For better times and in a better place
Plied by consuming the majestic expectations
Of living
In the eternal wake of emptiness
What an unloving and unforgiving creation
We have come to exists within
Full to the brim
With uncompromising seconds
And not even in the grandeur of nature’s scenic beauty
Not in the snowflakes precision as it floats
No
Not unimagined complexity of form and chaos
No not even in a perfect chord
Does the merest or slightest of clues
Become existent or reverberate to us a voice
Which whispers to us of our truth
We are bereft of guidance
Untutored in this colossal magnitude and vacuum
Between the myriad stars
Tiny insignificant is this of our awareness
A planet a world
Part of an unending silence
So alone and so self absorbed
So material in the murderous evil
We have done to each other
So disunited in the dark reaches
So solitary
And yet we did not gather the family of man
No not even to look after of ourselves
The noise broils over in the heat
And spread out like wares along the street
The haze of crowd, the jungled feet
Fresh scent of soil and the aroma sweet
I see the bright cloths, and the fashion shows
The haggling voices and their temptations
The big Trelawny yams that twin footed grows
The paltry cents of private hesitations
The market is abloom and abundance tease
The native hunger from its native ease.
There is guinep, the same we cracked
At school, a single seed to feed a twenty pack
The hog plums and the apples red, stacked
Like a lean-to shack, melons dripping and the sack
Of cherry tomatoes besides carrots on the mat
Two orange in bags and the eggs in their flat
Cabbages plump and green callaloo fresh and fat
Mangoes early, and seasonings for the pot
The magic of eyes the sleright of nose, the taste
That tells us how much to know goodness we haste
And among all this passion of colors, this fragrance
Of fruits, I see a richer, sweeter elegance
Our people bright giving this place its romance
Women subtle of eyes, whose bodies dance
Like fireflies around a shaded lamp, and men bold
Though bent beneath their unforgiving loads, hold
Work sovereign and do not crringe from sun and sweat
The building is dingy with crumbling walls and parapet
But like the lustered fruits that in cadence to the call
Rise above the struggle turning back the ancient fall
B names Birthdays you can't deny,
I spells Insipid to tell how they fly.
R sings Rest on your laurels today,
T says Taste your cake with no delay.
H gives History of birthdays till now,
D Dares to grab all that birthdays allow.
A taunts, "You are Aging too soon,"
Y stands to Yodel a birthday tune.
Birthdays come and birthdays go,
but you seem to stay the same
This time, however, you've reached
one to make you cringe in shame.
50 sounds so much older than 49
Now you'll be hearing all the time;
("May I see your discount card?")
being carded as when you hit 21
only you won't be having any fun.
You'll turn your back, and feign
you didn't hear that hated refrain
But hey, in today's sad economy
we will accept any paltry gain.
"Do you want the Senior menu?"
"With your Senior discount, that comes to . . . "
I've already had 25 years of that, so welcome to the club! You have officially crossed over into the fastest growing segment of the U. S. population, and have attained status as a certified member of The Seniors Club of America!
D. H. Lawrence was a Better Man
I read about his snake
And was quite impressed with the
Alliteration and symbolism he used
To express that moment
As they met at the “stone trough.”
I appreciated his struggle with
The voice of his education which told him to
“Take a stick and break him now,
and finish him off.”
I too have faced the snake
And made a decision not so “perverse”…
or “cowardly”…or “honorable”.
The rattler was long and sleek
And glistened in her new skin.
I found her waiting in my tracks
As I returned across the field.
There was a moment as she flicked her tongue,
That I stood and gazed upon her,
Knowing what D.H. had felt.
Why was she there… and
How was it that we should meet?
My admiration was brief…
Shovel in hand…I struck her down.
It was the voice of my father
That said she must die…
“And truly I was afraid…”
Surely she would have struck me
Had I not seen her first.
And yet I questioned my decision…
Was it “paltry” and “vulgar…a mean act?”
I too shall think of the albatross…
And yet be watchful for the snake…
Again there will be a decision to make…
Having felt his “pettiness”…still I know…
D. H. Lawrence was a better man.