There are lots of things that are black and white,
Like zebras and Newcastle United, they are a good team and get their fans excited.
Penguins are mostly black and white, but some have coloured plumage too,
There are quite a few different types you can see them in the zoo.
There are lots of crows, from rooks and ravens and the black and white magpie too.
Undertakers wear black and white, and waiters often wear the same,
They are both just playing the formal dress code game.
Snooker players wear black and white when you see them on the television,
They are brilliant when you watch them they play the game with such precision.
A while ago there wasn’t any colour just black and white TV,
So, watching other sports just wasn’t so easy.
There are so many things, I could go on and on,
But luckily there are other colours that can make a rainbow that stretches into the sky beyond.
The world goes on with so many colours in many different hues,
From yellow and purple right through to shades of blue.
But really, we all know that there is wrong and there is right,
Things should all be so simple its really black and white.
In the depths of bloodied water
Laying in the sludge of misunderstanding
Where the mud of history buries itself
War awaits us all
Disguised and deeply present
Buried in the marrow of timeless sentiment
Hidden in the sediment of vile undertakers
Employing the caskets of our children
To testify in shallow graves and markers of hate
War is the ghoul of our fallacious goodwill
The pacemaker of our alienated heartbeats
The vision of our counterfeit purpose
The throttle of our fearful lives
Running off the energy of ignorance
No longer can I wait
To cross a peaceful shore
Nevermore, nevermore
Evermore
The streets are deserted,
not a single soul is about
even the winos and street bums
are nowhere to be seen.
There are no cars on the road
or any planes in the air
it’s so eerily quiet
you can even hear a pin drop.
We’ve all finished panic buying
and capsuled ourselves within our homes,
peering cautiously out of the windows
of our temporary prisons
as now and again
an ambulance screams by
- With a police car in tow,
to pick up another casualty
of this virus we cannot see.
It’s Apocalypse Now
as nightly
the government reels off the latest grim
figures,
the health workers are working flat out
- and so also are the undertakers!
Nobody can see an end in sight
and we can only pray
the virus doesn’t claim us next.
Good morning, bonjour
is it AU or EU
I've had a undertakers dream
That I cannot tell the difference
Mr Bishop can you give me your Latin leadership
I regret my misunderstandings
French is such a revoir
Tell me the difference between
AI or EI
My progress is transfixed
between the real and sought after
Departed poems in a gray post-dated heaven
clatter wings together like hens in a jailers coop.
Words never die, they bury themselves in
heaps of dry leaves, distant laughter scatters
the sadly said.
Muse-makers wear plastic rainhats
that flutter like bats in the sunlight.
Words have to be tied together
or they sink alone in an empty fish bowl.
Japanese girls in designer Nike's
skip over words completely and we all hear.
Silk flowers in China teacups sail a deep blue ink.
The poets speak in tie-dyed riddles,
in dribbles between the loosely connected.
Atop a mountain, goats bray,
love-sick donkeys harken with their heavy hearts.
Legions of cock-hatted rhymers are born again
to confuse the world with their simplistic sounds.
Writing for all the long dead letters
is an art for baby fingers and painted opera singers.
Undertakers gather; their electronic ankle-beepers
sing within freshly dug sonnets and odes.
The deceased travel on, spinning a gray language,
they are silk moths weaving tinsel rainbows
that by chance
speak words still wet from closed lips.
if an atomic bomb is dropped, the cockroaches will survive.
we might not make it, but they will. They always have.
during the ice age, during the pandemics, during Armageddon.
they have the inside track on how to outlive everyone.
roach motels will take on a new meeting
you will have roach designers, roach engineers, roach undertakers
no one will scream "ooh!" when they see a roach
roaches will become the mayor, governor and president
if you are the only person who survives, enjoy the cockroaches.
your doctor, dentist, pharmacist and teachers will be of this species.
they will push you under a microscope to figure out how you survived.
remember not to squirm and smile pretty.
The drunken man tried to relax
But his stomach hunger for more snacks
He filled his mouth up
Then got the hiccups
And ended up in the undertakers sack
People’s hearts, ah, I thought they were filled with friendship and dignity.
A few well placed daggers, here and oh, yes , there!
Have given me pause, to wonder...did they ever, honestly care?
Or.....Are online relationships but a mystic fantasy?
Filled with misplaced trust, love, that cease in ultimate misery?
Oh, they weep, when death takes another away.
And carry-on as good undertakers, they!
Yet the sun rises each day forever and shall, for the living,
And for many a day.
May we honor our friends gone to final rest!
But supporting the living, should be our quest.
10/15/2021
A lonely coffin, bleak and bare,
with only undertakers there.
The vicar, saddened by the sight,
envisioned everlasting light,
and prayed a lost and loveless soul
could find salvation and be whole.
She didn't care about the scene -
and if the churchyard trees were green,
or wintry branches, void of life -
she only knew she was a wife,
a mother, granny, aunt, and friend.
The loneliness was at an end,
and now with parents, siblings, pets,
her tears were over, no regrets.
The vicar turned and walked away;
he'd three more funerals that day...
written 2nd January for Emile's Winter contest
Humans are supposed to be, Mother Nature’s caretakers
but it seems like, they just want to be undertakers
as all of our breeding, increases human population
that only leads to, Mother Nature’s destruction
Humans have become like, bacteria in a petri dish
forever spreading, with so much, human density
like being in a fishing net, just wanting one wish
to get out of this place, the human rat race
This is a give me everything world
a million takers for every giver
this is why mankind's wells are running dry
the givers are dead or dying out
soon there'll be nothing left but takers
clusters of walking excuses for human beings
looking to bleed out the last of the givers
then capping the wells of life
with the bones of their dried out excuses-
Virtual silence commands
that with masks
our voices be silenced to whispers.
And the body language of touch
denounced to elbow knocks.
All sensation denied but codified greeting.
Show me love with no embrace or kiss, nor touch.
Virtual silence in hospitals as loved ones die
with no comfort from family or friends,
all human virtues robbed.
To robotic machines has man condemned himself.
His end not marked by any funeral. No vigil either
as by undertakers we are whisked away
to an unknown final resting place.
Monitored by cameras we view departures
as near to us as virtual monitors can allow.
With virtually no farewell touch of dust
which in pain we cast all to the grave,
a vain hope which afforded us closure.
Will this virtual funeral give us rest
where our beloved die and virtual shadows replace people?
Solitary sun in sapphire skies,
beams its rays upon Earth's radiance.
A tepid breeze flows between
daffodils and bluebells, gently rocking.
Spring is in the air,
yet streets remain silent.
Masked men in green suits,
bearing arms, patrol -
perturbed by unsought peace.
Anticipating unauthorised motions,
they wander past eerie emptiness -
sleeping theatres, picture less cinemas,
sober bars, childless schools and unfit gyms.
Silence is disrupted by military vehicles
occasionally startling their comrades.
Echoes of continuous coughs,
hidden behind closed curtains,
prevent even the obstinate ones,
admiring scents from rousing roses -
whose petals are not idle in isolation.
Industry of death is thriving -
undertakers undertaking, grave diggers digging.
Crematoriums fighting coffin carpenters -
whose sympathies are disguised by greed.
As humanity evolves into ashes.
In the midst of clean air,
mother nature smiles,
bathing in tranquil purity of serenity
the only fire burning is the sun.
Silent One
Simple Musing
22 March 2020
Foxtrot for dances or horses?
Both I suppose.
Who does it better?
Comparing them would be
Like comparing onions to Lazy-boy-recliners,
Comparing lima beans to undertakers,
Comparing lavender to unicorns,
Comparing poetry to poetry.
It simply cannot be done.
Can I have this foxtrot, Mr. Horse?
While the lens-man was busy
Discovering my gastric landmarks,
I looked up to a square sky through an oversized window,
A colonial leftover.
I squinted one of my eyes, pinched by no fewer than four gloves;
Three on my head and one on my face,
Covering half of my other eye.
And the sky, though square in shape, looked spectacular
When seen through warm tears.
A heavy cloud sailed across and
Vanished beyond the folded borders, then I saw
A falcon in the blue frame, with a picture of my woman in its claws,
And flew away, beating its wings triumphantly.
I struggled to cry out in vain, for
There was a snake in my throat.
Bird droppings hit the window glass.
The lens-man pulled out his one-eyed snake, and
The gloves too released me and turned themselves
Into white aprons with impish eyes.
Before I walked out of the wretched room,
I looked back and smiled,
For the undertakers and their snake
Didn't know I had stolen a poem from them
Which opened for me a door of utterance of my love
To my woman waiting outside,
Whose gentleness no bird can spirit away.
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