Gangly ghosts galumphing in our lives
Gamble
With outstretched knives and chives
Fumble and mumble
Encouraging us crates of lager to quaff and drink
Tomes of *********** for our eyes to dabble
Contaminated thoughts for us to think and slink
Trouble and rabble to double in the stable
Life we feed, mislead, lead and weed
As mistakes upon mistakes we apply, satisfy, supply and multiply
In our Creed
We modify and codify
Our liver cooking in an overdose of alcohol
Our lung choking and dying with nicotine
Our wellness and health we overhaul and stall
As debauchery and dissipation we redefine in a can of worms dustbin
In our lifestyle given to extravagance and waste
Dwindle, dwindle and dwindle
Devouring vats of sin in a haste
As the quality and standard of sane life gangly ghosts from us swindle.
Lumpers gather, clump, fuse, combine and meld.
Splitters separate, divide and rupture.
The Lumper's huge nuclear fusion bomb
makes bigger bang by fusing hydrogen
than Splitter's uranium fission bomb.
So where do your allegiances lie?
Is it fusion or fission, lump or split?
Do you focus on the differences
or else, put similarities forward
when deciding how to pigeonhole things.
How do you group, class and codify friends?
Overgeneralizing is risky,
it ignores individuality.
But overs-splitting can be dicey too,
with far too much variation to grasp
and hold while you consider your options.
It is more about what's on the labels,
than the size of your hands, nets or boxes.
ABOUT TIME TOO
Create a universe with space,
and stars and suns, then planets.
Add some life and watch it grow;
almost nothing to almost something.
Implant a need to change, evolve,
until finally one arrives at sentience.
We now have human, which thinks,
therefore it is, but often chooses not to.
Our very human need brings order into,
and from surrounding chaos,
or so we imagine. Hence years, seconds
and so forth will codify time.
This time is *very *important;
brought in to rule over us all,
while some changes of time
are turned into veritable deities.
One grand god is to be worshipped
when he grants us his New Year,
for joy and wild celebration,
and sundry bacchanalian pursuits.
But, dammit, an invented construct
starts whether we're awake to scream
or not, so this one thinking human
prefers pursuit of non-bacchanalian sheep,
and sleep ....
Alan McAlpine Douglas
SILENCE
You must expose your inner self again,
Must codify in words your pleasure or pain:
This poem will extract a part of your life,
Will cut experience free like a knife.
No past, no future; there is only now.
Now you try to write a poem, but how?
Glasses steamed up with nervous breath,
And the thunder if your pencil drops: death
Of your thought train - your oar falling in a pond,
Rippling for ever in your mind.
The silence is choking, you cannot call
For help. You sink or swim alone. No help at all.
Even clock-ticks would be a welcome measure
Of your time left, but there is no time, no pain, no pleasure
As the white paper yawns before your pencil.
You must learn to resolve this stress - no one to counsel.
Time crawls for you, races for another: inner strife.
You are the sole oarsman on this journey - your life.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Written for Paula Swanson’s competition BREATHE IN THE SILENCE