On Writing Poetry

The process of writing this stuff is a bit of a black art. Sometimes it just comes into your head, from deep in the subconscious. Usually you recognise the topic as one you have thought about for years. Suddenly it takes poetic form.
At other times, it is a more conscious effort, or a combination of the two.
Usually, the bulk of one of my poems just appears, in a few minutes. Then it is tweaked, to correct rhythm, etc. This process usually takes an hour or so. Sometimes, it is longer. 'Uphill Drive to Copt Oak' was fiddled with for nearly a fortnight. Looking back, it is an ambitious poem, so this is not that surprising. The final version is longer than the original, and has a different title. I think it is vastly improved. The process of actually working at a poem was new to me.
I have recently been reading online about the technique of poetry. It has been quite illuminating. I hope to improve as a result. I have also been reading the work of established poets. I am impressed by Robert Frost.
The sound of poetry is very important, and I have learned to read them aloud. I do not think poems can be translated from one language to another.
There is a tension between meaning on the one hand, and sound or form on the other, in poetry. This is absolutely central. This is especially true when a tightly defined form is chosen, such as the Shakespearean sonnet. It is not surprising that few read these today, and I doubt anyone composes them. A tight formal structure leaves little room for manoeuvre to express heartfelt ideas and feelings. The modern way is to adopt a free style, which uses the elements of poetic form rather liberally, without compromising the expression of meaning too much. This is a real improvement in my opinion. Nonetheless, I experience this tension in almost everything I write.
It is rare when meaning and rhythm and rhyme and alliteration all fall beautifully together. When it happens, it is a Eureka moment.
Sometimes poems come to me in bed in the morning. These seem to be different in nature to those written at other times, more from the subconscious, less an artefact. I call them 'morning rhymes'. Ingerland is one, and Getting High another. Most of them do not appear on here. I am reluctant to tamper with them too much at later times, for fear of spoiling their spontaneity.

Crisis in Syria

How else than by a heavy hand

Can be ruled a divided land?

Here in milder spaces we

Are ignorant of other places.

We spout a lot of stupid crap,

Echoing media's moron rap

About a set of fool's ideals.

Meanwhile a kind of covert power

Over our lives maintains its lour.
In the real reality

We have no more democracy

Than those who live across the sea.

Our greasy leaders rake the cash,

And rule us by our own sad choice.

Birdsong at Midwinter

What is Christmas without snow?

I miss Jack Frostes icy show.

Cold come, kill off norovirus

Before it sickens all of us.

On Christmas night I heard birdsong:

I think the climate has gone wrong.

Who needs a Mayan 'pocalypse

When weather's turned as weird as this?

The rich folk in denial are,

Can't stand to be without the car.

Oil barons pay for scientist's lies;

The wealthy speak and truth soon dies.

In childhood I played in the snow,

But now it seems so long ago.

The world seemed much more innocent then,

As it just does when you are ten.

Norovirus is the name of the bug which causes epidemic winter vomiting, which was in full flow at the time of writing. Things have changed a bit since I wrote this. It is as if the Almighty is slowly working his way through a backlog of requests for Christmas snow, without noticing the expiry dates.

Some seasonal haiku

Bushes are blooming

In December it rings strange -

must be climate change

Fukushima leaks

We will eat no more sushi -

radiation fear!

No snow at Christmas

It is wet rather than cold

though my mind is chilled

Walking the pavement

Rent-boy is staring at me

with intent eyes

Where did this lot come from? 1 and 3 are obvious, today.

2 must be the connection to Japan, and shows what I think about in connection with the place. I've never eaten sushi, but I think sushi restaurants have disappeared, and it's a while since I saw those little trays in the supermarket.

The last puzzled me, till I remembered recently skimming a book about the history of the Leicester Highfields in a bookshop. It was full of recollections of the past, including 'sentimental reminiscences' about prostitutes. It stated that male prostitution wasn't mentioned by the people, and this long-forgotten experience of being stared at by one of them flashed into my mind, where apparently it has lurked since. They are very rude people. The only other men who stare like that are suspicious coppers and punch-up artists.

The other trigger was reading someone say that haiku shouldn't just be about nature, that that idea was causing stagnation of the form in Japan, so they have started writing urban haiku. 

Not sure these are great haiku, but they say that doesn't matter! Well, some say that.

The Highfields book is available locally, and was compiled by HART, a local community association. Its other unmentionable is the City Council doss-house in Upper Tichborne St, of which there is a picture, with no accompanying text. You can read about the antics of its denizens in my poem 'Drunkards of the Dosshouse'. http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/drunkards-of-dosshouse.html

Regularity is Required

How in life to order bring?

Clarity of thought to gain?

Still meditation is the thing,

To wash my mind clear of its pain.

Steady practice is what's needed,

Siren calls must not be heeded.

Twice a day to quiet the mind,

Is the way to freedom find.

It's so hard to tame the spirit,

Restless roaming of my focus,

What I need to keep me at it,

Keep in mind contentment's locus.

On a related theme: 

http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-holy-spirit.html

http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-weight-of-world.html

Season of Goodwill

A cautionary tale concerning the dangers of overdoing the seasonal tippling. The narrative voice is from the female point of view. Any resemblance to a popular song is purely coincidental.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,

You tried to impress, by lighting a fart.

Then you threw up in the sink

And put it all down to high jinks.

Then when, you swore at my mum

You'd the nerve to maintain, it was in fun.

When she said you were rash,

You just jeered at her moustache.

When you tripped over the cat,

You just blamed him, for being fat.

I said, you were an arse,

The whole thing was just a farce.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,

You tried to impress, by lighting a fart.

This year, I may turn queer,

Unless I find someone better.

See also: 

http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/christmas-shopping.html

Christmas Shopping

And so this is Christmas, the traffic is jammed.

Last minute shopping, the roads are just crammed.

Ambulances flash past in a blue glare,

As desperate shoppers succumb to despair.

Time is against them, they step on the gas;

In such a hurry, they may have a crash.

The fumes are increasing, as is the road rage.

Frustration is building, it feels like we're caged.

The season of goodwill just isn't much fun,

And the curse of it is, it's only begun.

Based on my experience of trying to get home tonight (Dec 19th), which involves driving across the City Centre. God knows what tomorrow will be like. 

P.S. it was worse.

We're All in It Together

Just as the PM has said.
What he failed to explain is that we aren't all in it to the same depth.

The rich are in it up to their toenails.
The middle class and businessmen are in it up to their ankles.
The workers are in it up to their waists.
The unemployed are in it up to their necks.
The sick are in it up to their eyeballs.

Schooling in Connecticut

In Yankee land the law's a joke,

It's all too easy to get a gun,

The gunman gets high on some coke,

And then he has himself some fun.

Pursuing some peculiar grudge,

He lets rip and the bullets fly;

Unless his aim is quite misjudged

They strike their mark and children die.

Michigan has a law just passed

To let you take guns into schools.

Its people must be very crass

To vote for such a pack of fools.

An Uphill Drive to Copt Oak

As I ascend the mist grows thick,

Against the screen its tendrils lick.

I flick on headlights, but still can't see.

It feels like freezing cloud to me,
Which of deep murk seems guarantee.

The frost clings white to all the trees,

An eerie landscape of unease.
As I maintain my fogbound climb,
All things grow more encased in rime.

Ice binds to holly, hedge and lime.

Change comes when gloom was at its worst:
I'm in a sea of light immersed!

Then through to brilliant sun I burst,

So swift it feels quite strange at first.

Before startled eyes the view expands;

The icy scene glows palely grand,

A glistening winter wonderland!

My journey to work, from Leicester to Whitwick, has shown me a beauty I didn't know this county possessed. It is caused by the unusually steep hills, not found in the rest of Leics. Today was quite exceptional.
Leicester was cold and gray, and very tiny snow particles were falling as I set out. As I climbed up toward Copt Oak, one of the highest points in the county, the fog grew steadily thicker, and nearly the whole landscape was white with heavy frost.
Suddenly I burst through the top of the clouds into brilliant sunshine, a hilltop vista of brilliant white trees, fields and hedges. Awesome!

Same journey in Autumn:
http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/unearthly-glow.html 

Ingerland

An ancient land once drenched in blood,

Now has turned itself to mud.

Its murd'rous people once so proud,

Now are merely drunk and loud.

No more do they of glory dream,

Now it's home to the silent scream.

Its muddled people lost their way,

Now they for past mistakes must pay.

Their forebears conquered foreign soil,

Not knowing this would England spoil.

The middle class despise blood kin,

Not seeing they're next for the bin.

Bullshit baffles brains in Britain,

Now this country's quite a shit 'un.

I look round with open eye;

Is this freedom's land I spy?

Is it progress that's been made,

Or is it just a land betrayed?

All those who dream of better times

Are deemed guilty of thought crimes.

A sly and secret power that grows,

A circle whose cup overflows,

Has ground the natives down so low.

"Bullshit baffles brains in Britain" was a popular expression when I first arrived in England 30 years ago. Also popular was: "The bosses treat us like mushrooms; they keep us in the dark and feed us bullshit." These expressions are no longer fashionable, but it is not because things have changed for the better.
This poem came to me while I was lying in bed one morning. I jumped out and scribbled it down. I spent a half hour rearranging the sequence of the lines, to try to inject coherence, and that was it.  Don't ask me what it means. Ambiguity is perhaps inherent in the subject matter. Are the questions in the second verse ironic and rhetorical? I'm not entirely sure.

A Merry Jape

The DJ's like to have a laugh,

But lying is their actual craft.

They mock and sneer,

And inflict fear;

Their callous fun costs others dear.

Suffering is their favourite joke,

Which frankly makes me want to boke.

They are humourless psychopaths,

Whose cruel, deceitful, pointless gaffs

Don't deserve the light of day.

When their pranking causes death,

Their hubris takes away your breath.

They wriggle and writhe,

And tell more lies

To try to shift the blame away.

A response to current events, the death of a nurse highlighted by the media. Aussie DJ's pulled off a 'prank' by pretending to be the Queen and the Prince of Wales, enquiring after the health of Kate Middleton. The humour escapes me.

Of course the two Aussies are not alone in this disgusting behaviour, as the radio station's owner pointed out as he wriggled and writhed.
A psychopath is unlikely to be able to distinguish between cruelty and humour, as he simply won't understand humour and will have to try to grasp it from the behaviour of others. He sees someone say something nasty and others laugh and applaud. So he will say something even nastier hoping for even more applause, and be baffled when it is not forthcoming.

Liverpool Care Pathway

The Liverpool Care Pathway

Sends the useless mouths away.

If you're taken really sick

It can kill you off quite quick;

And it makes a lot of dough

For all those who're in the know.

Crippled babies or old folk,

Can be swiftly made to croak;

For they'll never be of use

To the rich who rule the roost.

They could cut the deficit

Even more if throats were slit.



Mark 2 now, after a bit of fiddling about. Sounds better to me.

PS 13-07-13 The news claims this is to be phased out, due to abuse. Apparently hospitals were given financial incentives to use it. It involves killing them off by withdrawing fluids so they die of thirst. 

Even in Death, You're Not Safe from the Police

I am dismayed by the latest outbreak of investigation of the long-dead, the case of Cyril Smith. The political motivation of Mr Danczuk (Labour MP for Rochdale) who initiated the affair, is obvious. He is trying, successfully, to deflect attention from more current cases, which fall closer to home. Why are the police pandering to him? It is obvious that it is too late to prosecute Mr Smith, and that he is not in a position to defend himself. At the time of the accusations, they were dismissed as 'uncorroborated'. Why should this conclusion have changed? There is no valid reason. Spurious ones have been invented by the police, which merely illustrate their lack of any genuine concern for justice, and their indifference to the correct use of public funds.

     In another news story, this time from London, we are told that: "The Met chief also told MPs that the investigation into the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal had so far cost about £2m." Another easy smear campaign against the long dead. Surely the Met chief should  be asked to refund the taxpayer the cost of this pointless 'investigation'. Aren't the police complaining that budget cuts are forcing them to reduce essential services?

     Shortly before all this nonsense broke out, the media were highlighting a failure to investigate widespread current child abuse in the North of England. How easily they have allowed themselves to be deflected! It's all very sad.

Dark Disdain

Why do cyclists show no lights,

Even on a wet dark night?

They whizz right through the murk and rain,

Treat their safety with disdain.

For sparkly belts they do not care,

To be unseen seems like a dare.

They're happy in their gloomy clothes,

To blend right in to the shadows.

They'll be OK for quite a while,

But then they'll greet Grim Reaper's smile.

No matter how they twist and writhe

He'll hack them down with his sharp scythe.

Smoking

Smokin' gies ye cancer,

It won't make ye a dancer.

Ye'll cough and choke,

And maybe boke,

And go tae Hell much faster.

It makes a rotten stink,

Sae foul ye cannae think,

It's CO2

Just goes right through,

And turns yir blood tae blue.

A while since I wrote this, I wasn't sure whether to put up something written in the Lallans, but here we go. Must be feeling bold.

The info about high Co2 levels in smoker's blood comes from a crime novel by Patricia Cornwell, in which autopsy results are discussed, and it is unclear whether the vic was asphyxiated or had just been having a smoke!
Don't remember the name of the book.

'Boke' is the Scots equivalent of 'puke'.

On a related theme: 
http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/smoking-joy-for-life.html
http://stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/smoking-in-rain.html

Unearthly Glow

I swoop 'cross a land that's glowing strange,

Unlike the world I've come to know;

The normal scope of greens and greys

Filled out by yellow, orange, and brown;

An alien planet named November.

Even in mist and pouring wet,

This world shines with beauty quite unearthly.

Behind my glassy shield I mellow

And enjoy this 'horrid' day

In an unexplainable way.

These yellow leaves so luminous,

They almost mesmerise;

I know they are soon to blow

Across the cluttered ground,

Their brilliance sadly fleeting.

What fortune to see what so few will,

Penned as they are in office or home,

Or harried by delivery schedule;

For soon the gathering dark and cold,

Will take stark and lingering grip.

Best make the most of now,

In an alien dissonant glide;

'Stead of whingeing 'bout the rain,

So as to British 'style' maintain.

Sheer luck I'm not soaking at the bus stop.


I hope it's clear that this glowing rainy day is being enjoyed from behind the windscreen of the unsought company car I commute in. I am lucky enough to have a late start, hence drive in light traffic at a bright time of day, round 10:30. It's been a remarkably beautiful Autumn, due to the absence of high winds, which usually blow the leaves away.
My route up the A50 is fast and picturesque even in winter, very different from commuting across the city to Narborough as I used to, which was a hard grind of endless gear changes and red lights.
I'm actively working at being 'in the moment' when I drive, rather than engaging in unpleasant rumination, as was my former habit. This is in the spirit of The Weight of the World
an earlier effort, which represents the result of many years deliberation.
It's a strong tendency in this country to complain about rain as though it was some ghastly ordeal, even if we've only been exposed to a few seconds of it.
Not a good idea, as you can talk yourself into a blue mood by such habits.

The Cretinising Influence of Snobbery

Few things have been more pernicious and corrosive in our era than the explosive growth of snobbery. As economic inequality has increased, more people have had the opportunity to look down their noses at others, and have usually taken it.

      If there is any group more toxically insecure than the newly rich, it is the newly middle class. Desperate to cling to status, they despise those whom their grand-parents would have seen as neighbours, though not necessarily as friends. This process has been analysed in a popular book “Chavs – the Demonisation of the Working Class”. Of course, in reality it is the non-working class who have suffered the most. Computers and automation have rendered the services of the less intelligent surplus to requirements, and they have been demoted from working class to drongos and layabouts.

       Social snobbery has multiplied, but its damaging effects are possibly less than those of intellectual snobbery. Purely social snobbery mainly affects what parties people are invited to. It's probably true that it has less effect on occupation than it used to. Few jobs are now reserved exclusively for Oxbridge graduates, or the children of Guards officers. The pervasive intellectual snobbery, on the other hand, has serious effects on important decision-making. Quite often, the two will occur together, and are hard to separate.

       In particular, the perception that the less educated are culturally inferior has affected immigration and unemployment. The chattering classes prefer to employ a foreigner, over one of their own countrymen. It isn't only that foreigners are cheap, though that is a factor. It is also a matter of having contempt for the minds of the lower orders, from whose ranks the contemptuous have so recently sprung. The drunkest of Poles is seen as a better worker than a poorly educated English person. He does not carry uncomfortable associations the way a native poor person does. There but for the grace of God go we, but we don't want to think about it, so push them out of sight. Weirdly, in England it is politically correct to have race hatred for your own race, or at least the lower orders of it.

      Snobbery has had an extremely destructive effect on the arts, in a way which is relatively new. About twenty years ago, I saw a TV interview with Margot Fonteyn, in which she said that her favourite dancers were Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. It's hard to believe that a contemporary ballerina would say such a thing. The Great Caruso used to perform at the Hippodrome, along with jugglers and the like. Afterward he would enjoy a game of cards with them. Those days are gone. I saw an interview with an orchestral conductor in which he was asked what type of music he preferred. He said that he liked all types of music, and then reeled off a list of subdivisions of classical Western music. It's become fashionable for those in 'high-brow' arts to pretend that popular art simply doesn't exist, or even foreign arts like gamelan or Indian music. In so doing they cut themselves off from much that is brilliant and beautiful, but gain the vast consolation of looking down their noses at the rest of us.

       Intellectual snobbery affects decision-making at the highest level. It distorts the perceptions of and evaluations made by the powerful. Government ministers are prone to this, as they desperately seek 'intellectual respectability'. All such considerations detract from the objective weighing of the merits of an idea. Ironically, this reduces the quality of decisions to the same level of functionality as those of a stupid person. The effect of a lack of objectivity, i.e. the taking of incorrect decisions, is externally indistinguishable from that of a lack of intelligence. All forms of snobbery are cretinising influences, reducing bright people to the same level of effectiveness as oafs.
      For example, if an Army officer promotes a complete twerp to a captaincy, does it matter if he does it because:
   a) He is a nitwit himself, and doesn't know what he's done?
Or because:
   b) The promoted man 's great-grandfather was at the battle of Omdurman, and his sister is married to an equerry?
      The effect will be the same in either case, enhanced casualties.

Hallowe'en - or normal service?

On Hallowe'en the Devil walks,

Or so we're told by those who mock

Both humanist and Church's flock.

In New York they may think it true:

A hurricane went howling through.

Come ghosts and ghouls just once a year,

At other times we need not fear?

Then what is Gideon George Osborne?

A spectre who haunts the land,

He makes his ghastly demands:

A sacking here, a cutback there,

He drives the people to despair.

Far more than any apparition,

He spreads stark fear without contrition,

And rolls back the frontiers of the state.

He's the vehicle of rich men's hate.

For him it's all a jolly joke,

While those he ruins cough and choke.

The nation's debt gives him the chance

To lead us on a Devil's dance.

Murdoch's henchmen spread his lie

They care not if the poor folk die.

The Daily Wail expounds his views,

They hack at us and call it news.

Mental illness is now banned,

Depressed folk's stipends are shit-canned.

If they are able just to move

Their lack of fitness they can't prove.

The Iron Canceller is glad

Of things that make the righteous sad.

The poor are never poor enough,

The rich just pile up useless stuff.

Roadworks

The roads are never good enough,

They always find some other stuff

That must be placed beneath the ground

So streets are turned to useless mounds.

Just when it seems the work will end,

It's time to dig it up again.

They care not for road users moans,

They just deploy more plastic cones.

The road 'improvements' never end,

The chaos drives us round the bend.

We inch and creep and curse and swear,

So late it moves us to despair.

What 'vantage could we ever gain

To compensate for all this pain?

We chug for miles past closed-off lane,

Yet somehow see no working men.

Lunatics in Collision

In the centre of Leicester, in recent times there has been a funny old beggar with a beard, who plays tunes through a child's plastic trumpet. At some point, I had realised that this man was not only begging for money, but also promoting some kind of deranged version of Christianity. Multi-tasking, in the modern style.

      On Saturday, I saw him putting away his stuff quite early in the afternoon, which surprised me. Suddenly he turned round and shouted: “It's idiotic! You are the ones that will perish!”. Or some such lunatic nonsense. I stared at him in bafflement. Then I became aware that he was shouting at the Hare Krishna people over at the Clock Tower, who were chanting and jingling their bells. “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” etc. They had him outnumbered. And they had an amplifier.

      Lunatics in collision. Or at least eccentrics. On this occasion the Krishna people were all Asian. Usually they are a mixture of white and brown. They were chanting away relentlessly, and seemed to have worn the old man down, possibly without even noticing him. They too are begging for money.

      Is there a relationship between lunacy and religion? Some atheistic people have thought so, but it seems to me there is a relationship between lunacy and everything. At any time, a certain proportion of humanity are suffering from mental illnesses, and they naturally interact with everything that the sane people do. Just in a different way.

The Weight of the World

The harshness of the world is there;

It bends our minds towards despair.

Yet since we cannot make things well,

Should we on all this cruelty dwell?

To ponder distant hardship's yoke,

Was not the way of ancient folk.

They knew naught of what lay beyond

Hearth and home and village pond.

To think too much on evil's banes,

Our brain's resources slowly drains.

To contemplate the tyrants' ways,

The groundwork for deep sadness lays.

In simple ways to take our shelter,

Protects us from the Devil's smelter;

Or else we might succumb to rage,

In fury we might quickly age.

So grant us peaceful meditation,

In Christian style or else in Asian;

Let joy infuse our total being,

A quiet refuge from sorrow seeing.

A friend recently told me of a new scientific theory that depression is caused by excessive rumination:
http://damiengwalter.com/2012/06/01/look-after-your-brain-they-dont-issue-new-ones/
 The brain becomes depleted of crucial chemicals and ceases to function well. There may be something in this. Older theories link depression to anger, especially at oneself. It has also been linked to unexpressed grief.
There is certainly reason to think that we think ourselves into depression, at least to some extent. If we think about positive things, we should be happy. Of course it is not simple. There is a genetic element, and pollution and dental mercury also play a role. Meditation certainly helps.

A Perfect World?

Today I heard someone say that the world is perfect, that all that is wrong with it is the greed and lust for power of mankind. The only cure is for us to obey The Spiritual Laws.
     But what are they?
     And what about rabies? Rabies has long troubled me, not because I am likely to catch it, but because it seems such an unjust thing for someone to suffer from. It destroys the brain, robbing people of whatever good qualities they may have possessed.
     I am not convinced that perfection exists among the Ten Thousand Things. The world of phenomena seems delicately balanced between chaos and order. Thermodynamics warns us that disorder is constantly increasing toward a condition of maximum probability (entropy). At the end of time, the cosmos will be a uniform brown sludge.
     Civilisation as we know it has existed for only a few thousand years among the 4,500,000,000 that the Earth has existed for. Advanced civilisation for only a couple of centuries. It is based on rapidly depleting mineral ores. We are living in atypical times, of transient character.
     Greed for wealth is one thing, but part of our problem is a greed for knowledge. Specifically for a grand scheme that we can fool ourselves means we know everything that matters. A kind of mental mastery of the world. Men of both science and religion have long sought this Holy Grail. It is a vanity, a chimera.
     We must learn to live with only one certainty, or we befuddle ourselves.
     This is not intended as a counsel of despair, but of acceptance.
     Recommended reading: Tao Te Ching.

The Aged Smoker

He lifts his hand to take a puff,
Then starts to cough and cough and cough.
His face becomes a darkish red,
He looks like he may soon be dead.
As soon as he ceases to hack,
He takes another desperate drag.
He's dying for a fag.

Based on a man I saw sitting outside the Age Concern, in the centre of Leicester. They have a kind of 'smoker's garden' there.

At Attenborough

The River Trent is wide and deep,

Its swirling waters secrets keep.

Who knows what lies down in the ooze,

Below the turgid murky flows.

Scudding clouds bring light then shade,

As I stroll slow from glade to glade.

Between the trees I catch a glimpse

Of birds who doze or dry their wings.

On the towpath cycles hurtle,

I stand writing, then must scuttle.

The ringing bell fear-filled portent

Of speeding cyclist quite intent.

Apologies that are not meant

Spill from their curling lips.

People walk and idly chatter

Of business start-up or computer.

They fail to leave their world behind;

Mundane cares deprive their mind

Of the peace they came to find.

The Holy Spirit

Does Spirit flow from out to in,
Or lies it always deep within?
I'm not sure that I really care,
So long as it dispels despair.

If doctrine is the work of man,
Why don't we throw it in the can?
In silence we the truth shall find,
It is the fruit of quiet mind. 


In the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition, the Holy Spirit is injected into us by God, sort of like a doctor injecting a patient with a cure.
In the tradition of the East, it lies always at the heart of our being, and needs merely (!) to be uncovered by ridding ourselves of layers of illusion, through meditation etc. 

This is version 2 of this poem, which flows more smoothly IMO.
Line 6 might have said "flush it down the can", if I could overcome my aversion to Americanisation of the language. Of course it's still a bit Yankish, but 'can' rhymes and 'bin' doesn't.

This work achieved publication in 'Our Quaker Voices' a magazine of East Midlands Quakers. My first published poem! The big time beckons :-) 

Tea and Harmony

In the spirit of reclaiming poetry from the intellectuals, here's one that definitely isn't intellectual: 

Why do we sit drinking tea?

Is it really good for me?

Hired men of science make grand claims,

But profit is their actual aim.

A caffeine buzz is what we crave,

To turn it down is really brave.

To bond the group is the true goal,

It melds the parts into a whole.

So jealous egos fade away!

We hope that tea brings harmony.

Land of the Free

In the land where nice guys finish last,

Soft feelings are not quite allowed;

It puzzles me upon what base

They stand so arrogant and proud,

Wrapped in a flag so new.

They come from all across the earth,

And swear allegiance to a place

Which treats all foreign folk as trash,

And themselves as a master race

Whose blood does not run true.

Never let a sucker have a break,

And there's one born every minute;

But who in their land of addled pate

Of TV dinner and heartache

Can think a thought that's straight.

Cant is the wellspring of their dreams,

Deceit and greed are what they know.

All men are created equal,

Except for slave and redskin,

Poor greaser or quiet gook.


This might have been called 'Pale-face speak with forked tongue'.

The USA has never been a place of freedom, it was always a land of banditry, tax-evasion and slavery. And above all else, hypocrisy. The people who wrote the US Constitution were slave owners who went on to deport the redskins West of the Missouri, even though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The US ruling class has done many unspeakable things since then, in a similar vein. The US working class has never even had the right to live, never mind been granted freedom. They first responders to 9/11 have been treated as totally expendable, and so have the other clear-up workers who followed them, with enormous casualties from lung disease.
Why do people give it credence when they bang on about their silly Constitution and all the tosh that goes along with it? 'By their fruits ye shall know them'.

Smoking in the Rain

The smokers stand in pouring rain,

No cool act can disguise their pain.

What compensation can they gain

For cold, and passerby's disdain?

The water streams right down their face,

As they endure addict's disgrace.

Even on a wet dark night,

They stand their ground without a fight.

Driven out from the warmth and light

They rail at laws that don't seem right.

What a harsh grip this curse attains,

Upon its victims' craving brains.

It is based on seeing a colleague standing outside on a shockingly wet day as I arrived at work. I was unable to recognise him, he was so bedraggled.
'stand their ground without a fight' refers to their failure to fight the addiction, though they stand their ground tenaciously against the rain.

Reclaim Poetry

How did I get started on poetry? I went to something called a "story cafe" at Leicester Library, which was part of the "Everybody's Reading Festival". As it was convened by a poet, Jean Breeze, it attracted people given to poetry. So they poesied away, while I wrote prose. Gave me an inferiority complex. After a while, I thought "If they can do it, so can I". So I wrote a very angry poem, and showed it to a few friends. Easy-peasy. And that would have been that, except for some unlikely coincidences. One of my friends said he had been attending a "Social Inclusion Group" for depressed people, and they were writing poetry there. Their poems were all ferocious denunciations of Job Centre Plus. 'Great!' I thought. 'Poetry isn't completely useless after all.' Another friend asked me to accompany him to the Word! workshop. Word! is a local poetry society. I went along, and found myself writing more poetry, as previously blogged:
http://www.stephen-wylie.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/word-poetry-workshop.html

I had a bit of momentum after that, and carried on. Some other writers I knew started telling me off, saying poetry was uncool, they hated poets etc. Yet I found they'd written a few too, on the sly. Hmmm.
What's this all about then? Why has poetry got such a bad press, that it's become a kind of guilty secret?
I consulted my own prejudices against it, and found it was due to a distaste for intellectual snobs and pseuds, who have tried to make poetry their own. Yet at Social Inclusion, they are reclaiming poetry for the people. And why not? It's a natural method of expression, which anyone may use, just like prose. It doesn't have to be arty-farty or pseud.
      So I've hoisted the battle flag, and proclaimed "Reclaim Poetry for the People!" as my revolutionary slogan. I proclaim the people's right to rubbish rhyming and dire doggerel. After all, literary merit is entirely subjective anyhow, unlike golf scores. Why should people be mocked if they break into rhyme? Ordinary people are allowed to express themselves in prose without being sneered at by their 'betters'.

On Human Nature

A bigot is someone whose prejudices are different from yours.
A conspiracy nut is someone who believes in different conspiracy theories than you do.
An old fart is someone ten years older than you.
An alcoholic is someone who drinks more than their doctor.

The last is a long-standing medical joke, origin obscure. (If your doctor is Muslim, your liver could fail at any moment.)

Two Shades of Grey

Don't mention all the shades of grey,
Or frightened folk will make you pay.
They want things all in black and white,
Though part of them must know that's shite.

If you speak the truth they'll teach you rue,
Their blame may turn the air quite blue;
Assurance is that which they seek,
At raw truth they dare not peek.

The complex strains the people's brain,
Doubt causes them to flinch like pain;
Contention oft they dare not face,
The scoundrel's smile they treat like grace.

To bold men's lies they genuflect,
Submission makes them feel erect.
If you dare to break the ranks,
They'll sling you in the punishment tank.


Only after I had finished this outburst and was casting about for a title did I realise I had a name collision.
I couldn't remember the number of shades used in the title of a popular porno novel which is currently all the rage. All I could recall was my friends saying it was crap. (Of course we were jealous of the sales.) I didn't want to risk using the same number, so resorted to Google. I found a suitably hostile review. This informed me that the rubbishy book was not only porno but profoundly S&M, with emphasis on the joys of submission. I changed the last verse to include a 'nod' to the dirty book, which also evened up the number of lines. I called mine 'A Thousand ...' Then I had a better idea, and changed it to Two.
Of course, black, white and grey are all the same colour.

The Hawk-faced Man

Hawk-faced man in old suit

At the bar stands mute.

His thousand-yard stare

Is an unfocussed glare.

What does he see?

To ask I'm not free:

His eye meets no-one.

He wears photo badge,

Why I can't judge.

All night he won't budge;

Only his arm moves,

Up and then down.

Beer is his friend.