Apes and Pigeons

I wait in a green grassy vale,
Among old Whitwick's tranquil hills,
Surrounded by both primrose pale,
And golden glow of daffodils.

I see two pigeons mating,
Atop a grey stone cross,
Erected in the name of
Remembrance of war's loss.
It's over in a moment,
They do not make much fuss,
Though she does perform some gentle pecks
Upon his handsome feathered neck.

They sit together grooming,
And seem a happy couple,
On top of a stone monument
Erected at great trouble,
By baldy apes who cannot keep
From marching at the double
Off to death's eternal sleep.
In nation's name but profit's cause
We blast our world to rubble.

The pigeons with their carefree coupling
Give our pretensions a debunking.
For all our solemn ceremonies
There are no signs of slaughter stopping.

Our feathered friends lead simple lives,
We part-smart apes get out the knives.
'Twas Voltaire said we are all mad;
But those in charge are mostly bad
And dangerous to know.
They spout about our country's cause
But they don't give a monkey's curse
For war and all its tragic loss;
So long as wealth still flows to them
They view destruction with aplomb.

I spoke once to a soldier girl,
And pointed out that she'd get shot at.
She said that that was quite the thrill:
A hero's tale which falls down flat.
When we look a little deeper 
She's really just a young thrill seeker;
She'll end up with her limbs hacked off
To serve the interests of some toff
Who owns an oil pipeline or two.

I'm not sure if the soldiers knew
(They did not even seem to care)
Their fight serves greed of a scheming few.
We also serve who only stare
Aghast at youths who haven't a clue,
And die for the red, white and blue.

To youngsters danger gives a thrill,
Not grasping that it is no game:
They may well have to really kill,
Or end up being cruelly maimed.

Young British blood has often stained
The parched dust of the Afghan plain.
This time it seems for little gain:
There is no more a world empire
For which to sacrifice such dire
Things as their youth and health or life.

I doubt the pigeons understand
Why soldiers' blood soaks in the sand;
But oftentimes it seems to me
They are far wiser beings than we.

The birds fly carefree cross the skies
From which our bombs rain down like lies
From lips of smirking fat cat's spies
Who call themselves our leaders.

It's my impression that we do ourselves a disservice by denying our kinship to the apes. 

If we admitted that we were simian, we would understand ourselves better.

Young people often have an illusion of invulnerability which persists until something bad happens to them 

Thatcher's Legacy

The Tories howl like hungry wolves,

Who scent the weakness of the poor.

Relentless pressure is their way

To hound the pauper towards the grave.

If he makes the slightest slip,

They'll suspend his benefit.

No end to their vile calumny:

They take an isolated case

And wield it like a battle axe

To hack at inconvenient facts;

Leaving a narrative of hate

Of those less lucky than themselves.

In freedom's name they stifle choice:

Controlling all the radio waves,

And also all the printer's ink,

Excluding the dissenting voice,

To stop the people trying to think

Instead of being indoctrinated.

They deify the Grantham witch

Who only ever served the rich,

And tell us that we must admire

A leader who was just a liar,

Forgetting how much she was hated

By all those whose lives she blighted.

She and Reagan transformed the rich into the super-rich, and the working class into the underclass. 
The isolated case was notorious at the time of writing: some strange man who managed to kill some of his enormous brood by setting his house on fire. It was all part of a devious plot to get welfare money. The Chancellor pounced on this atypical case to suggest sweeping cuts to the welfare system.
They also tried to use Thatcher's funeral to transform her into some kind of national hero. We were supposed to forget how she was hunted from office by her own party. 
 On a similar topic: In praise of free enterprise

Atheist Militancy: a Scientific Dysfunction

The Dawkester's fans spout their bombast

Even when they've not been asked.

So confident of supremacy,

They give no hint of hesitancy.

They warble on quite waspishly,

And help him ruin harmony.

Their certitude is such

They irk me very much;

They argue using faulty reason,

An imprecision that's displeasing.

Their leader's like a inverse pope

Whose role is to get rid of hope.

He does away with consolation,

Preferring dreadful desperation;

Weakens the comfort of belief,

Replacing it with hopeless grief.

He promotes social isolation

To a fast disintegrating nation.

Then he orders us to be happy.

By professing to be clever,

He pits friends against each other

With his half-baked faulty logic.

An uninformed nation

Gives him an ovation

For disinformation

About science.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely a coincidence.

Atheism has no basis in science at all, contrary to the pronouncements of certain notorious persons. Science is about testable hypotheses concerning observable entities. God is neither well-defined nor an observable, so science has nothing to say about the matter.

The dogma of materialism is no more scientific than any other religious theory. 

Pretentious Guff

I read some odd new verse today;
And yet I'm told they make it pay.
Pretentious guff devoid of meaning,
Seems to be the modern leaning.

They eschew the old virtues:
Rhyme, assonance and metre
Are the sounds they do not choose.
Relying on imagination,
They despise alliteration.

Wading through the language like a beater,
Startling the reader with their prose
Which seems to have an overdose
Of structureless modernity.
I think it's called 'free verse';
The price feels right.

If anyone thinks the last verse is a bit 'free verse' itself, I reply:

'consistency is the bugbear of lesser minds'. 

Daffodils Revisited

I wandered lonely as a cloud,

Into the kitchen where I saw

My flowers looking none too proud;

Especially my daffodils.

In their little pot they sag

Upon the crowded window sill.

Sufficient water they've not had,

Nor potting out into more dirt.

My treatment of them is so bad

It's a wonder they have not been kilt.

Could be they'd thrive with more attention,

But a drop of water's all their gettin'.

Were I as rich as Wordsworth was,

I too could wander cross the land,

Spend out my time for no great cause,

And live in some place much more grand.

My plants I'd treat with loving care -

Or would I merely sit and stare?

    I reread Wordsworth's superb "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (aka "Daffodils")when it came up as 'Poem of the Day' on www.poemhunter.com. Someone on there claimed it was saying that leisure and laziness show man at his best. I replied that it was about a man of the leisured class fighting the characteristic ennui of his kind. When bored out of his skull, he replays the memory of the daffodils. Of course, it is the description of the daffs themselves that accounts for the popularity of the work. We are exposed to it as children, when we aren't old enough to really understand it. It is a much edgier work than we are told. Look at the first line in isolation. How jolly is that? If he had called it "A Refuge from Melancholia" it might have been better understood.
    Recent scientific research has suggested that the best treatment for depression is a brisk walk in the park. Wordsworth was centuries ahead of them. In his day, few people had too little to do. Now there are millions, and his idea of taking refuge in nature is very relevant.

    Re-reading it made me wonder if anyone has written a poem about daffodils in English since. He is a hard act to follow. To try to match him on his 'home ground' would risk buffoonery; a different approach was needed. I thought of my tiny pot of wilted miniature daffies and off I went.

     Naturally he is more concerned with precise rhyming structure and metre than I: the taste of a different century.

The Sixties

The Sixties were a time of hope,

As people did naively grope

For something better than the past,

Nailing red colours to the mast:

Not seeing the frosty feet of clay,

The underlying brutality.

The Soviet Union was a con,

Yet where are we now it's gone?

The thuggish greedheads range full free

And force the people to their knees.

No ideas challenge them today,

No fear to curb their self belief.

The worship of the Golden Calf

Is back to give us endless grief.

On a similar topic: jimi hendrix

Youth's Wild Passions

The time of youth is of extremes:

They lurch from wild hilarity

To gloom of great intensity,

Then down to depths of ennui.

This roller-coaster of wild passion

Is not we middle-aged folk's fashion.

We take a much more even strain,

Avoid the wild extremes of pain,

And frenzied bouts of tooth-gnashing.

Youths talk so fast it's hard to follow,

Yet their ideas seem often hollow;

As though it matters what brands you wear,

So long as you don't go about bare;

Which at times they almost do,

Even when it's freezing, too.

The initial g in gnashing is meant to be sounded.

When the Ice Wind Blows

Britain's like a 'frigerator,

Said the Ayurvedic doctor

To my friend who had the flu.

Wrap up warm, was his advice,

This long cold snap is not too nice.

I see young girls who shake and shiver,

Wearing scant more than Lady Godiva.

Why won't they put on some more clothes?

You need warm hat and coat and gloves

To feel OK when the ice wind blows.

A bit of a struggle to get this to rhyme. 'Godiva' is a weak slant rhyme the way I pronounce it, but works quite well for some English people. 

I saw some 14 year-old's going from Whitwick to Leicester to the disco, during the worst of the recent freeze. They were wearing sleeveless tops and hot pants. They were bright red and shaking like a leaf, and complaining bitterly about the cold.