At the haberdashery and milliner’s
insouciance on display
Models’ eyes as cold as ice
about to ruin your day
eccentric
mischievious
quirky
sensations
insouciance
splashed
in
glimpses
of complicated
offhand
fashions
witty
comical
coherent
counterpoint
so
unnervingly
curious
in exaggerated
nonsensical
carricatures
seething
teeming
augmented
elongated
elaborations
absurb
amusing
into
rough-hewn
reminders
I accept you for what you are, what you’re not and who you’ll become . I want to know your thoughts so we can ponder collectively. I want to feel the warmth from your embracement giving me comfort and security. I want you to seek refuge and shelter within me. I want my name to loop in your mind just like yours does to mine . I want to mean something to you. Not the remnants you discard when you’re satisfied. the days you choose to ignore. the neglected sun you loathe when you sense the heat yet you crave for it during torrential downpour. Futile is what I am . I cant be the sun on a rainy day neither the moon on a somber night . I want you to yearn for me only then will I unveil my facade of insouciance and portray vulnerability. I’ll wait for you to say the words because saying it myself will only paint my canvas as the jest but when you speak it sounds ever so pure and cathartic I almost regard it . Till then I’ll observe you closely paying attention to even the smallest of freckles or blemishes hoping that one day you’ll choose me.
Her day is passed in sweet insouciance,
my own debilitated by this pain:
I lack all satisfaction: no disdain
is motivating her. No piercing glance,
no hurtful word, contemptuous, askance,
perturbs my consciousness. Against the grain,
she wounds me by her kindness. Grace’s stain
contributes to my woeful circumstance.
Some harshness on her part would help it end.
Without hostility, I’ll never mend.
Yet something drives me on, when things get tougher.
Through knowing her, I’ve learned of The Sublime,
Uniqueness in Normality, and I’m
reminded of love’s vigour, and can suffer.
INSOUCIANCE
interstellar
interest
&applause
serene
surreal
prolific
&genteel
from
dark
&ominous
deep
shadows
influenced
by disaster
a recurring theme
of
tsunami
a catastrophe
enlisting
a monumental series
of tradition
decimated
narratives
from inception
a
focus
on release
a fusion
working together
opportunity to
conceive
to present
a different order
to
be different
to pauses
&
think afresh
Inevitability
David J Walker
This is how I turned 20
With plenty of time left to
Opine its wastings awaiting
The sun to set
The weekend to come
Christmas
Birthdays
Summer vacations that
Race past the calendars edge
This is how I turned 30
Looking over a shoulder
To see who is catching up
Who is making up
For past mistakes and
Begging for retakes for the many
Wasted opportunities
This is how I turned 40
Feeling the changes
To my body and
The beliefs scattered over
The spectrum of
What is or
Is not to come
This is how I turned 50
Bracing for mortalities
Callings
Hoping that believing
May facilitate the stalling
Of recompense
On the final tabulation
To come and, oh
Tipping is encouraged
This is how I turned 60
In quiet contemplations
reflections
Concerning the reality of or
The days of coruscate refraction
that belong only to me
Is this how I will turn 70
in the insouciance
of what will be
is the outcome inevitably
predictable
What on earth did I do to deserve this fate ?
From my insouciance I awoke much too late.
'Tis to Tomi now in exile on the Black Sea
Augustus in his wisdom has condemned me.
Julia's company and that poem where I erred
Removed me from the leisured life I much preferred.
And now my sorry assize I needs must thole
With only my wife's tenderness me to console.
This crude and inclement clime I must now call home
Sequestered so far from my distant beloved Rome.
Surrounded I am by dull furs and guttural sounds
Where in my mind life with bright togas and verse abounds
If I am not to lose my precious muse
Their language I must learn and use.
Caesar hopes me to have metamorphosed
From sophisticate to rude yokel indisposed.
Yet my Epistulae ex Ponto plead for his mercy to contain
Hopes for my return to Rome, though that all looks in vain.
If my poetry cannot soften his implacable heart,
Then perhaps others will appreciate my art.
Enchained as I am in this Hades of a living tomb,
My poetry must transform it into my Elysium.
Where Rome was once my sucus et sanguis,
Tomi must now serve as my grand palace
Insouciance rhymes with nonchalance
Enlist them both ~ lose your balance
No Supper
Round as a planet, dark as the galaxy
the interior looked like the last battle in Verdun
the early spring of 1914.
It had been a healthy preparation of carrots, beans
turnips, potatoes and meat.
Scorched earth tactic nothing was salvageable.
There had been warnings but human insouciance
ignored the smell emitting filling rooms
with the bitterness of a failed supper.
The last question is, can the frying pan be saved?
Screaming til my face collapsed, broken arrow’s here called
Dear God she’s so beautiful, a cascading insouciance befalls
Forensics yeah they’ll differ, no doubt say, it was inhumane
I don’t give a fig leaf, as the daisy cutter obliterates my pain
By
David Kavanagh
I heard her sing in joy and abandon
In a verdant, vivid vale of Kashmir,
An ode to the dawn’n glory of spring.
The sky, its clouds and color aflame:
The fragrant, resurgence of life anew!
On your wings my hopes and dreams!
I entreat you, please, do bear with me,
Hold me, help me thro’ life, to dance
With real love’n joy and insouciance!
My heart says the one’ll soon arrive.
Call him. I’ve waited years for him
With garlands of roses’n lilies, I wove,
From branches aswing in a graceful waltz
With drops of dew in the morning sun.
Paint these my hands with henna red.
Coiffure my hair with shining stars
For the handsome one. His flute I hear
From miles away. The breeze brings me
His words of love and enraptures me.
My soul longs for him and his love.
Call him, my friends. Call him for me!
ONTOLOGY
Water drips from the hairs on my arms, hands
held high to avoid contamination. I can’t wait
to begin. I guess this Adrenalin rush is what an actor feels
before he strides on stage. A nurse helps me don
my gown. I pull on my gloves. Surgeon, king of my domain.
Minions adjust the mirrored overhead light. I grasp my scalpel.
Fractured images explain the process to juniors. Jokey. Calm.
I’m floating on the easy insouciance of experience. My patient’s
elective surgery’s wasn’t serious. But my satisfied smile morphs into
emergency paddles. A flat line – cardiac arrest. Attempts to revive
him fail. I curse, jolted by this unexpected loss. Nothing to warrant
my sense of guilt. And how might I explain to his devastated family?
The theatre doors burst open. His wife, wild-eyed. Shouting. My
husband came to me in the waiting-room. Out of his body. Saying
you think he’s dead. Doctor, do something… Before we can hustle her
out, my patient’s pulse resumes beating. It doesn’t make sense.
Colour rushes back into his face. Nothing makes sense.
Diuretics and laxatives have been purging dysmorphic creatures
As they stage their grim delusion for glamour with anorexic features
They call it passion for fashion and yet walk in emperor’s clothes
Nearly naked and some in lines adorned from cocaine shred noses
Present fake breasts bum implants shrivelled Egos and botoxed faces
Like stick insect role models they struggle to portray any humanoid traces
The melt from the spotlight yet the crowd revels in mere bones and skin
A designer declares that ‘with those costumes you’ll look just as thin’
And so audiences worldwide dream of false beauty and are committed
To believe that without external appearances love won’t be requited
They purchase like sheep to the slaughter and starve for undying looks
And fail to notice the mercurial charade of the industry’s criminal crooks
05th November 2019
Insouciance, Arrogance
Haughtiness, Pride
I voted for 'None of the Above'
My Faith in the System's died
The foreign bird
I knew him well trying to blend in
Speaking the language too flawlessly
So, the embarrassment when he
On occasions, got it wrong.
It was not his mother tongue so
His speech was too slow and learned.
Made the language into disharmony
In a country where people speak
The tongue with a certain insouciance.
He, although people are polite, hasn’t
Got many friends they sense, I think,
His tragic loneliness like an echo
Of a country, he left behind that he
Instead of embracing his otherness
Tried to hide it.
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