Pan Semi-Sapiens

Uncomfortably poised between two worlds,
We carry on as best we can;
Too smart to be a chimpanzee,
Too ape to be a sapient man.

The title means 'part-smart ape' in English. 

Taking Literature a Bit Seriously

On a long dark Russian winter's night,
Two men have settled in
To drink and set the world to rights.
They drink so much that it's a sin.

"Poetry is the only art!"
"No prose is!"
"Poetry!"
"Prose!"
Round and round it goes.

Too many bottles on the floor,
The debate's not friendly any more.
A flash of steel,
A spout of gore;
One ceases to feel,
The other to bore.

As the poet flees through winter's night,
With a heart that's sore,
He reflects that 'twas a cultured fight,
But his best friend is no more.

A true story, from Russia with love. For culture, that is. In Holy Russia, the holes in 

people's hearts aren't always congenital:-)
I told an English friend, and he said they must have previously fallen out over 

something more substantial, like the washing up.
"They're Russian!" I replied.

Dossing in the Rain

The dosser's face holds sour indifference,
As he sits in pouring rain.
He makes no effort to seek shelter.
Whence comes this show of dour disdain?

His blanket won't long stem the dampness,
And yet he's rooted to his spot;
While others huddle in shop doorways,
He seems careless of his lot.

A long wet evening lies ahead,
A steady downpour is in store;
Yet the dosser stays in place,
Not for him a sheltered door.

Poems on the Internet

I know why the caged poet screams
Surrounded by the vulgar dreams
Of those whose verses aren't coherent
Or depend on bombast for adherents.

In broken English, they keep blowing
About love, or vogueish politics;
Praised to the skies by those unknowing
Who give their trendy arse keen licks.

Enthusiasm it is they seek
Not skill, or truth, or acuity.
How could they make a deft critique,
Since they can't use the language fluently?

In our times there's a divorce
'Tween verse and skilful reason;
Broken apart by the dreadful force
Of ignorance increasing.

So the general public's grown indifferent
To the scribblings of the poets;
It's a golden age of verse production,
But the public do not know it.

They would have to sift a mountain of dross
To find a few nuggets of gold;
Of course they do not give a toss,
The notion leaves them cold.

On a similar topic: 

Translated Verse 

In Defence of Verse 

Morning Rhymes 

Hate

People like to think their hate
Is somehow more legitimate
Than the hate of those they hate.
It is the human race's fate
To cling to this deluded state,
Until it is far too late
To find our way through Heaven's Gate.

On a similar topic: 

the-hidden-hand-of-media-moguls 

San Fernando Valley

Orange trees gave way to palms.
Straight streets of van Nuys,
Were ruled across the Valley floor.
Once paved with aviation gold,
But not any more.

Porno brought a sleazy wealth,
Hoodlums filling the top shelf
Of your local video store
With tales of sex and gore;
But not any more.

Amateurs give it away,
On the public Internet.
Far too keen to play,
Too dim to ask for pay:
The dough's not in it any more.

So now decline has come to stay,
For the lines of sheds and cheap tract homes
Baking under the desert sun.
A hot bed of misery,
Palm trees full of rats
Scuttling around the American Dream.

The unemployment rate in Van Nuys (zip 91406), CA, is 12.70%, with 

job growth of -0.87%. 
Only one small commercial orange grove still exists. In the '30s, there

were thousands of acres.

An article on the decline of porn in LA county 

On a related topic: The prurience paradox 

The Inutility of Post-Mortem Celebrity

Another dead celebrity
That I've never heard of.
The media seems to love
To exalt the near-nonentity.
When they've passed beyond the veil,
Suddenly we're told to hail
Lives lived in a minor key,
By Z-list celebrities.

It's just a little late
To grant them recognition,
When they've met their fate,
And ceased from cogitation.

If only they could have made a splash
In the media while alive,
They might have made some useful cash.

Sad it is, but also daft,
That all we want to read of them
Is their epitaph.

Streetlink (a phone number)

"Seen someone sleeping rough in Leicester?
Help us to help them."
Or are we ratting them out to the cops,
And helping the bosses to clean the streets?
Rough sleepers can ask for help themselves
If they want to sleep between sheets.
Should Streetlink really be Snitchlink?
I'm not sure what to think.

Ecological Oasis

Stagnant, green and murky
Replete with drunken remnants
Of a lout's night out:
Cans and wrappers, even road-signs
Mix with the tangled weed
In turbid water free of motile life.
This new artificial pond
Holds little but trash and twisted fronds
Of unhealthy looking plants.
The dogs have had the moorhens
In Pete Soulsby's plastic tub,
Oasis of ecology,
Which cracked and split and dried right out.
So they had to start again with a new one.

Wrath of the Barber

"Have you been cutting your own hair?"
I shrink from barber's angry glare.
For murder and rape I could be forgiven,
But from this sin I can't be shriven:
I've cut my own hair.

A crime against all barberkind,
It's seen as outright scabbery.
Useless to hope he will not mind,
He views it as sheer robbery
That I've cut my own hair.

It was getting in my way,
So I hacked at it with scissors.
Driven to distraction,
I braved the wrath of haircut sellers,
And dared to trim my own hair.

I knew a day of reckoning
Must inevitably come.
I never met a barber yet
Willing to keep mum
About me cutting my own hair.