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Best Poems Written by Hatter Eggburn

Below are the all-time best Hatter Eggburn poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Old Missionary Kids Talk About Faith

At Chefoo Reconsidered we did speak
Of faith as something we as children held
To be most precious, with our parents’ fierce
Example holding us to sacred truths
But now as adults with accomplished years
We looked with cool detachment on that fire
And wondered if with tainted motives they
Flew us from homelands to a foreign field
With them to fight for faith against some foe
That now may seem to us imaginary
And in so doing wound our youngling souls
Yet all the same - some fire of faith persists 
Be it nostalgia for our Mums and Dads
Or maybe glowing remnant of belief
(Or did the love of Jesus never die?)
Thus in your writings, Andrew, and your poems
A light of kindled faith I feel, and warm
To its blessed incandescent rays as one
Who faith did sometime lose, yet seek again

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

The Flood

This evening in our flat there rose a flood
That made our rooms and entrance hall a lake
As unattended bath-taps churned the sud
Into a foaming torrent by mistake 

Our darling daughter whom we shall not name
Had nonchalantly turned those bath-taps on
Before returning to some film or game
Or following the social pantheon

Behind her mobile phone she lay enthralled
Forgetful of the steaming waters’ rise
Which overflowed in bathside waterfall
And blitzkrieged our apartment in a trice

Too late the cry was raised and taps were closed
And towels press-ganged as mops then stemmed the tide
And floors as clean as if they’d been steam-hosed
Emerged pristine as all those cork-tiles dried

“All’s well that ends well” - wrote of old the Bard
Thus did our flood not clean our dusty flat?
Sadly not all; for as those tiles turned hard
The margin of each one grew thick and fat

Alas our hallway and our bedroom floors
That once were smooth and level, now did change
Into a row of bumps, as slowly soars
From crashed tectonic plates a mountain range

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Watching the Perseids

Watching the Perseids 

Each year August eleven to thirteen 
We fly through a cloud of comet dust
In those few days 
Watching skyward patient in the dark
Shooting stars can be sporadically seen
Without warning and at random 
Smaller or larger streaks of light
Blaze fast across the sky and then are gone

I love watching the Persieds
Lying alone in a dark grassy field 
If clouds permit to gaze up at the stars 
Recognising old friends 
The Bear, Polaris, Cassiopeia 
Trying to stay vigilant 
For those unearthly wonderful flashes
As earth hoovers comet dust at fantastic speed

Some of the brightest ones burn red and gold
Even swerving in their smoking paths
Others straight pure and silver
No two ever the same
They say the same of snowflakes and it is actually true

For a fraction of a second 
The sky rips brightly then falls dark again 
Only memory gives time to think
On that brief light and form that lived and died
Was it even real or just imagined
I must wait to see another…

I guess our lives are like those shooting stars
From the cold eye of deep time
Our birth and death seem instantaneous 
Only a high speed camera would resolve
Changes in hue and path and luminance 
That from perspective of a grain of dust 
Feel like a lifetime 

I saw one shooting star that did not move
Just quickly grew in brightness then was gone
Predicted by geometry sometimes 
Meteorites come straight towards you
Not moving left or right across the sky
It might have even hit me
If not combusting in our shield of air 

How many human hearts have I burned up
Which flew as arrows straight toward my own?
Pristine unpierced and cold I lie alone
Staring in darkness at the sky 
Insects from the nighttime grass
Make forays on my skin 
Before they too are brushed away

But I can’t leave - till I see just one more
Bright signature of fire across the sphere
In this unbroken darkness,
Even the familiar stars
And planets looking back at me
Leave me always alone and incomplete 

14 Aug 2022

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Ode To a Toilet On a Mountaintop

I climbed a mountain in a land of sun
Of epic landscape and of sweet cuisine
But scarecely had my lone ascent begun
Than woke a silent urge for a latrine

Too long must I have lingered at the wide
And bounteous smorgasbord in the hotel
Time came for that accounting from inside
That urge, first faint, now grew to gastric hell

Yet upwards still I climbed, in the vain hope
That somewhere on that rocky mountain range
A toilet would appear with towel and soap
And under that hard sun, my luck would change

Alas not so - on all those barren rocks
No trace of any building could I see
Only the birds and scattered alpine flocks
Of sheep or goats to keep me company

All hope was nearly gone - when on the crest
Of a high ridge - O joy to make one cry!
I saw my heart’s desire made manifest
A wooden toilet underneath the sky

Upon the hilltop, there it stood with pride
A simple box with hole and plastic seat
A pristine roll of paper at its side
I took my place, in happiness complete

At last the gastric turmoil could relent
At last the call of nature was obeyed
I did the deed without embarrassment 
Installed as king of all that I surveyed

It was a long-drop without flush or chain
After each movement - a short pause - then splash
How pleasant to relieve that nether pain
Upon that throne of wood - and pay no cash!

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Global Warning - Ode To Griff

His name is Griffin. Folks though call him “Griff”
He hails from universities of stone
Debate with him is as a smoken spliff
It leaves one’s mental faculties undone

For high o’er land and sea and distant isles
The eye of Griff doth wander wide and free
All he beholds, his intellect defiles
Dreaming disaster from the rings of trees

The seas do rise – we’re told – to drown our coasts
Though photos of past bays show nary a change
Griff terrifies the kids with tales of ghosts
That steal the frost from every mountain range

Beholding life, he see-eth only death
In forms of beauty, veiled catastrophe
That morbid gas in every human breath
Damns sinners to a lost eternity

But that dread gas – O Griff! How see-est thou not
Bringeth not death but life, that springeth green
The photosynthesis thou hast forgot
Is nourished by the thing thou call’st unclean

And so adieu, my ode to Griff is done
To that sly master of the shifting files
Of numbers spelling our Armeggedon
And yet behind that mask of doom – he smiles!

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Holy Fool

My God why did you forsake me?
I gave my life and soul to Thee
You went and threw away the key
My God why did you forsake me?

I gave my life and soul to Thee
But you could only die for me
Upon the hill of Calvary
My God why did you forsake me?

My flesh and blood have turned away
From me - O what a fool I played!
I was so sure that you were real
My God why did you forsake me?

I cannot play the game of love
But I can pray to God above
Though thy face I will never see
My God why did you forsake me? 

This world is just a ball of string
Dimensions weave and dance and sing
But I am still in love with Thee
My God why did you forsake me?

Details | Hatter Eggburn Poem

Collective Punishment

Our enemies the Philistines
As we were taught in Sunday school
Are extras in the battle lines
To die, as we were born to rule

What lovely racists we’ve become
Programmed to hate our nation’s foes
Eurasians and Mohammedans 
Can meet the fate our masters chose

The monstrous industry of war
Directs the western heads of state
To where the high explosives roar
To maim, bereave, decapitate

The talking heads can flap their jowls
And fill the hours on CNN
Exhort us all with dead-face scowls
On our  crusade to Bethlehem

Strausse’s secret spreads in whispers 
Humans never can be equal
No ceasefires but Zuklon crystals
Let our engines be our sequel

We are the essential nation
Pure supremacy’s our totem
Sweet self-righteous affectation 
Foreheads like a camel’s scrotum

White is right and might and height
In Europe’s garden of the gods
At Ragnarok we seize our right
To harvest souls and cocoa pods

Aircraft carriers parading
Empire power to all our foes
Who as humans masquerading 
Are consumed in Gaza’s woes

Queen Victoria’s amusement
Black Mass Joe the Totenkopf
Spin a mythical illusion
Of the ruled and rulers of

From their minuscule mind-bubble
Black and whitest certainty 
Suck and crush us into Anglo
Saxon singularity 

The man’s too big, the man’s too strong 
Till time sweeps all his works away
And light exposes right as wrong
And all his monuments decay

The peoples dance, the peoples sing
Unbroken continuity
Of common joy and suffering 
The language of eternity