Some Men Find it Hard to Finish Sentences

Sometimes a man can't say
What he ---- A wind comes
And his doors don't rattle. Rain
Comes and his hair is dry.

"There's a lot to keep inside
And a lot to --- ""Sometimes shame
Means we ---" Children are cruel.
"He's six and his hands ---"

Even Hamlet kept passing
The King praying
And the King said
"There was something ---"

(Robert Bly)


Glasses of Wine

Can loosen the guy ropes
of convention
allowing a clearer vision
of the world

But it is like
tuning a distant
radio station
a narrow peak
easily passed and difficult
to retrace

One sip too much
and the world
is blurrier
than twas
afore ye started

(WRM)

Theory of Laddertivity

Things that get more
whey you're
aloft

Barking dogs
Talking loudly passing cyclists
Itches you can't reach

Things that defy physics
Flicked paint can
land on the inside
of your eyeglasses

Long awaited parcels
requiring signatures
arrive

(WRM on top of a long ladder in California)
(no more piss-taking!)

Wednesday Words

Open Plan

Homilies for families:
Advice-card on colours.

Catonic pinks/
Stainless-steel sinks.

Paranoid blues/
Blocked-up flues.

Catalepsy yellows/
Soft feather pillows.

Schizoid browns/
All day in dressing gowns.

Neurotic reds/
Extra wide beds.

Household paints
For Newly-weds.

(Alan Sillitoe)

Search for Love

Those that go searching for love
only make manifest thier own lovelessness,
and the loveless never find love,
only the loving find love,
and they never have to seek for it.

(D H Lawrence)

Urine

Might and inventor
This century
Perfect a disposal method
For male urine?

This unhealthy malodorous
corrosive staining carrier
of disease
A million gallons daily

Destined for floors clothes
Usually close to
The intended place
But not close enough

Such an easy task
Spacemen deal with it
But not earth men
Is it asking a lot?

(WRM)

The Leaky Faucet

All through the night, the leaky faucet
searches the stillness of the house
with its radar blip: who is awake?
Who lies out there as full of worry
as a pan in the sink? Cheer up,
cheer up, the little faucet calls,
someone will help you through your life.

(Ted Kooser)

Lover in the Aether

Available when I want you
living in all computers
but only I have the key

To my automaton's
ignition
user name
password
instant synergy

(WRM)

I Have a Little Shadow

I HAVE a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.


The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.


He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;

I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

R L Stevenson

Chairman William Say

Modern Communism like
Modern Christianity.
Forget difficult bits.

Communism OK, provided, have
Class distinction

OK have working class
Eight hundred million
Farmers with piss buckets

Pay for my apartment, car,
clothes, cellphone, restaurants,
skyscrapers, maglev trains

Copy the West
right down to the corruption
but don't tell anybody

Dining Alone

John Berryman (A favorite American poet of mine)

Dream Song 4

Filling her compact & delicious body with chicken paprika,
she glanced at me twice.
Fainting with interest,
I hungered back and only the fact that her husband & four other people kept me from springing on her or falling at her little feet and crying
"You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes have enjoyed, Brilliance."
I advanced upon (despairing) my spumoni.
-- Sir Bones: is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls. -- Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is she sitting on, over there? The restaurant buzzes.
She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong?
There ought to be a law against Henry.
--Mr. Bones: there is.

(J Berryman)

Looking around Restaurant Tables

Is she saying?
"why did I marry him?"
or
"Shall I marry him?"

Are they?
Cousins?
Sisters?
Twins?
Lesbians?

Do you remember
before the kids were born?

(wrm)

Diary of a Church Mouse

Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looksI nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my daysBehind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten roomWith two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;My jam is polish for the floor.
Christmas and Easter may be feasts
For congregations and for priests,
And so may Whitsun. All the same,
They do not fill my meagre frame.
For me the only feast at allIs Autumn's Harvest Festival,
When I can satisfy my wantWith ears of corn around the font.
I climb the eagle's brazen headTo burrow through a loaf of bread.
I scramble up the pulpit stairAnd gnaw the marrows hanging there.
It is enjoyable to tasteThese items ere they go to waste,But how annoying when one finds
That other mice with pagan minds
Come into church my food to share
Who have no proper business there.
Two field mice who have no desireTo be baptized, invade the choir.
A large and most unfriendly ratComes in to see what we are at.
He says he thinks there is no GodAnd yet he comes… it's rather odd.
This year he stole a sheaf of wheat(It screened our special preacher's seat),And prosperous mice from fields awayCome in to hear our organ play,And under cover of its notes
Ate through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that IAm too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents whoExcept at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I knowSuch goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival.

(John Betjeman)