A poem is a form of expression
which patterns a thought
to naked emotion,
and then clothes it with words.

I cannot recall
any regrets consequent
on having said "Yes".

I have lived in interesting times
I have endured many different climes
Much of my life has been bizarre
But now, calling me from afar,
I begin to hear those compelling chimes

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
How shall we live alone
that once depended on
a heavenly father who defended us
and now is made superfluous?

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
What can replace
that heavenly grace?
Can ear or hand or eye
supplant its mirthless majesty?

Perhaps it’s not that god has gone
but rather god has been
replaced by many other gods.
Unholy gods, ungodly sods,
who offer no exemption
from time-past sin’s redemption,

but just provide a shining light
to illumine a fearful night,
colonized by miscreants
and similar recipients;
and what remains in that confusion
is nothing but a vast illusion.

There is no plan, there is no haven
to escape from images engraven.
The trumpet that was played by god
is merely a connecting rod
to nothing but a shooting star
a sound drowned by Satan’s guitar.

So often the god that we thought great
is ******* of no more than hate.
We see them in all walks of life
with gordian knots that lack a knife,
or weavers of a nautical shroud
more shocking than a mushroom cloud.

I would choose to have it gone
that secular phenomenon,
that we might build trust up again
far from the place where corpses reign,
to somewhere safe for everyone.
And now I vow my verse is done.

Words are not enough.
Those that are not meaningless
may simply lack importance
or else be capable of
myriad interpretations.

Let us set aside dissimulation
and deception by flattery.
Let’s put an end to empty words
or unctuous, or sanctimonious,
holier-than-thou, obsequious,
intended-to-deceive euphemisms.

Words that were the greatest boon
to civilization: that made it possible
for humans to engage in dialogue,
to see inside each other’s hearts,
to identify each other’s needs
and substantiate our own,
took on, eventually, another role.

Time it is to recognize
how words have now become a tool
for scoundrels to dissemble.
Time it is to liberate the human heart
from language that holds us in thrall.

Time it is to reconnect
with our humanity.

We laughed when we built castles in the sand.
We laughed through the tidal disarray.
We sang with joy when the new-born babe arrived
We sang with grief when she was borne away.

But who is laughing now that all is gone?
Who is singing the last song of all?

Whose is the last laugh?
Who plays the last trump?

The words I use are no better
Than those of any other poet,
But the spaces between the words . . .
The spaces . . . aah, those are my poetry.

He was my only son.
I held him in my arms,
I dandled him on my knees,
I taught him all those things
his mother had ignored.

And there were gaps
of which I grew aware.
All that I wished for my son
was poured into my love for him,
And I was alive to failure
to provide much that was required.

But through the years of gain and loss,
of triumph and disaster both
unexpected and quite unexplained,
my pride grew seamlessly
as I always did my best
and was repaid in myriad ways.

And there has now evolved
a subtle but yet distinctive
alteration in our relationship:
a clearly visible but well-defined
role-reversal as he reveals
embarrassing concern for my well-being.

Apparently, I have now become
The child of my son.

When that which once
did touch my heart
and left it
torn in shreds,
then sought
to reappear
and readdress
the trespass
it had wrought,
I first believed
the end had come
and nothing good
remained,
but common-sense
prevailed
and though
still pained
I took the path
of least
resistance,
half-shrugged
one shoulder;
half-filled
the bucket
of my vanished
dreams.
Half-shrugged
the other
shoulder
and said
**** it!

Do not plant a rose bush
in the shadow of an oak
and expect to see a beauteous flower.

Instead exult in the beauty
that is the mighty tree.

I believe in the power of positive thought
I believe I can affect the future and that
the natural course of events is not immutable.
I reject the normalcy bias which assures me that
because it has never happened, it can never happen.
Sometimes life’s greatest lessons come from the
most unanticipated experiences.

And yet,
and yet . . .

My favourite Scripture Ecclesiastes assures me that
what has happened before will happen again;
what has been done before will be done again;
and that there is nothing new in the whole world.
Resonance of the “history repeats itself” dictum
whose lessons Santayana warns us to ignore
at our peril.
Whereas
my favourite history teacher “Tinny” Newman
had a more appropriate prescription:
“History does not repeat itself, historians do.”

How do I reconcile these apparently conflicting beliefs?
[Silent screams]
It is a precious lesson to be learned.

And perhaps my belief that the power of my thought
is sufficient to alter the course of my life
is merely another example of
the Ecclesiastes’ “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”.
[If there’s a telekinetisist in the house, will you please raise my hand]

At one time I could not recall experiencing anything
that I had failed to envision and
this had always enabled me
to make due provision
for any nasty aftermath such as the
problems involved in leaving a slippery bath.

Thus it was with an absence of concern
that, having suffered a really bad fall,
I immersed myself in a bath and then found
I could not escape at all and this stimulated me
to reflect on other instances
where prescience, or the lack of it,
had failed to intersect.

How do I recover these memories?
[Knee ****!]
It is a potential hazard.

Saddest of all is not what is or what might occur
so much as what might have been.
What we do not realise, or are reluctant to accept,
is that we inhabit the world we deserve.
Returning, equally reluctantly, to my thesis,
and returning to Scripture, we are told that
one generation gives way to another
but earth abides, and I cannot decide
if this is a cause of regret or one of delight.

And when I am told
in wisdom there is grief
and that increasing knowledge
will also increase sorrow,
I’m tempted to set it all aside until tomorrow.

Okay.  Oy veh!
I’ll leave it for another day.

The loving tree that we plant in each other
is the blooming tree
we carry in our hearts.

And the branches can reach out
when we are long gone.

For years I have suspected that I may be living
in a parallel universe.
This is a suspicion that has been reinforced
over the decades
by the continual depletion of my contemporaries.

And now I must ask myself:
if it is indeed true that I am on a different continuum
of space and time from all those others
who have formed a part of my existence,
then perhaps I am also responsible for its decline.

If, by the power of my thought,
by the essence of my existence, I am the progenitor
of the series of catastrophes, calamities, and cataclysms
that continually clapperclaw my world,
then perhaps I can also bring a sense of calm.

And if I do not choose to do so,
if I allow, by my own negligence,
that catalogue of crime to be unleashed
against a helpless world,
then am I not the culprit?

It is a chilling thought.

There we were
on the grass
legs threshing
and thrashing
fondling on the grass
stroking on the grass
hands searching
and seeking
and finding . . .
Stop it you fool
now you’ve scratched me!
Should have cut my nails,
should have been gentler.

I held her hands.
I gazed into
her eyes
and willed her strength.
I smiled.

The merest flutter
of her tremulous
fingertips
suggested she had
understood.

Her eyes, though open,
were unseeing.
Yet I knew
we had a meeting
of the souls.

“Stay with us,” I willed.
“Stay with us;
we are not ready
to let you
go”.

Was there an echo
in response
from her fingers?
Or was it wish
fulfilment?

And did a smile
linger on those
frozen lips?
Unlikely. . .
She was gone.

Poetry is like
the stars one cannot see
in the daytime.
It is a sense of fright
in the night.
It is metrical
but does not need to be
symmetrical.
It is knowledge
that precedes sentience
but lags behind
sensitivity.
It is fuelled
by consternation
and ****** by
flocculation.
It is ambiguity;
it is obscurity;
it is enigma.

Thomas Carlyle said
the present is the living sum total
of the whole past.

Now, when I look back
over the history
that is the sum total
of my life,
there are aspects
that are hard to
fathom.

There are black holes
where one might expect
to encounter
a white hole’s event horizon,
while other events
have apparently failed
to intersect
my preferred boundaries.

Arithmetic’s never been my strength
and I suspect that
at one stage or another
I may have
put a decimal point in
the wrong place.

. . . in our search for immortality
we must not forget
that
all flesh is grass.
It’s better to die
having made the journey
than to stifle
one’s advancement
in the embrace
of adventure unfulfilled.

My five syllables
Are followed by seven more.
Is this a haiku?

Eternal peace I sought, in eternal solitude.
Yet eternity is timeless and it is endless.
When we talk of killing time
We are suggesting an end of eternal life.
But we are in it; we are of it;
We cannot end it; it is part of each moment.
It will, by definition, continue evermore.
What a comforting thought.

In a fast-food establishment
I sat before my plastic tray
of great hamburger,
crisp French fries
and quite delicious chocolate shake.

When all at once
I did espy
A pudding man, with pudding wife
and their two doughy children
stuffing their pudding faces.

Obesity, the modern scourge.
How did we encourage it,
I asked myself,
before the advent
of the fast-food chains?

Before the coming
of McDonald's and the KFC
how did we suffer
anorexia, bulimia, and diaphragm activity,
and so much mortal, morbid, disability?

And just to make sure
that we didn’t miss out
on these delicious fattening goodies,
they introduced the internet
and asked us to accept all cookies.

The shepherd is departed, and his flock
now wander on the fell,
or hide within the thickets
wherein the bleakest shadows dwell.

And when the black night fills the heart
with direst trepidation,
they know the purport of their loss;
the heartbreak of a nation.

So has it been, since time began
when leadership has vanished
and newcomers, that now adorn
the peaks, are simply planished.

Attend us shepherd from the grave,
we have need of your guidance
to keep us from a weaker hand
and ominous subsidence.

If he feared to do it,
he simply hid it.
He knew it must be done
and he did it.

Creation was an engineered design
and, if we are to believe the Scriptures,
planning preceded execution.
Since when there’s been no ceased attempt
to improve the initial configuration.

Biodiversity, extinction, reproduction,
new designs, new genesis, new formulation,
but who is the new engineer?
And what ulterior motive
stimulates the new creation?

The dinosaurs (and they were not the first!)
preceded the birds and the bees.
Nature needed no stimulation
beyond mankind’s ****** desire
To encourage or restrain procreation.

And now we have seemingly learned
by trial – but more by error –
how simple it is to fashion anew
an environmental disaster
with the portent of universal dissipation.

We have the statesmen and politicians
to thank for our lemming-like rush
to oblivion.  The next metamorphosis
may be the last – at least in human terms
without transubstantiation.

In linguistics
and in politics,
it’s a really small step
from creation to cremation.

I heard a voice within my head;
its tones sweetly mellifluous.
It filled me with such melancholy
as rendered speech superfluous.

Thus does my mind becalm my mood.
The angry prejudice disperses
all that lies misunderstood
and lets my brain construct its verses.

I wish I could shake that feeling of loss.
I wish I could recapture that moment of bliss,
that joyous acceptance of rapture
of halcyon days, beatitude, delectation,
euphoria and serenity.

To bathe in a basin of bliss; to enter a state of bliss.
You don’t seek bliss, bliss happens.
My spirit-ear listens; my spirit-heart feels;
my blissful search suffers, My spirit-mind heals;
Peace and infinity.

Why’d my train of thought
Halt before it got away?
It ran off the rails.

Poetry is like
the stars one cannot see
in the daytime.
It is a sense of fright
in the night.
It is metrical
but does not need to be
symmetrical.
It is rhythmic,
but does not
need to rhyme.
It is knowledge
that precedes sentience
but lags behind
sensitivity.
It is fuelled
by consternation
and ****** by
flocculation.
It is ambiguity;
it is obscurity;
it is enigma.

INDEBTEDNESS

Because you did not hesitate to give
Your heart and soul wholeheartedly to me,
Because you helped to keep my dreams alive,
And were wherever you had need to be,

I shall remember everything you said
And everything you did on my behalf,
It will remain for me the fountainhead
And be my beating heart’s oscillograph.

And reaching back across the passing years
Of trials and sufferings and loss untold,
I’ll not forget how well you stilled my fears,
A willing prisoner to your stranglehold.

Success had made no mark on him.
He remained the self
I honoured and loved:
the dichotomy
of arrogance and modesty
that required no forgiveness
because he was defined
by his own tolerance
of others.

Now he is gone,
but what remains
is the part of his life that
will forever be a part of my own.

A mournful
Waterfall
Of sound
A gentle
Susurration.

A sad cascade
Reverberates
In timeless
Melody
And tuneless
Tempo.

Disturbs
My soul
And disconcerts
My spirit.

Neurotics talk to their analysts,
Sinners talk to their priests
Hypochondriacs visit their doctors
Writers write.

I try to draw an angel
drawing on the wall
with wings outstretched

drawing patterns on my chest

painting the sun
in a trance
and drawing down the moon

I try to draw your face
from memory

Until I draw my final breath
death
shibboleth of shirt
worn outside the pants

Faith is belief without reason
Reason is belief tempered by doubt.
Faith is instinctual.
Belief is cerebral.
The vast majority of people
Prefer faith to reason.
Our choice of leaders
Bears witness
to this assertion.

Where did it come from?  Where will it go?
I pose the questions, I listen for the answers,
and hear nothing but sibilance
in my defective auditory sense.
But answers there are . . . I know.

Nature has always given the response
That echoed in the nightfall of my soul.
It began in those excursions as a child
and gathered pace in wartime’s exodus,
‘midst shattering of peace and of belief.

‘Twas ever thus, to walk upon the Sussex Downs,
The Surrey Hills, the Essex flats,
To feel the wind upon my cheeks
The song of birdcalls in the air,
And life so full of radiance and joy.

‘Twas ever thus, the yearly trips
To Devon’s headlands and to Cornish beaches.
The voyages across the seas,
the sojourns in yet more distant lands.
Exultation with exheredation.

Decades of travelling, seeking the answers,
so much of the time forgetting the questions;
journeying hither and yon, tracing the clouds
following their dreams, and mine, on shimmering shores,
discovering the sweetness of life grown sour.

And through it all I have known love, excessively,
and never cautiously enough.  A spendthrift
wasting all the wealth of praise and acclamation
in luxuriant homage to his own dissipation,
sleeping with salvation and waking in confusion.

And now, the twilight of a life grown weary
in a constant yet inconstant search for answers,
at last gives way to calamitous acceptance
of the eternal verity.  Ex nihilo is nonsense;
we have no option but to embrace ex materia.

© Joseph Sinclair, May 25 2022

Many years ago
I had a dream.
I believed in innate goodness
and considered myself
an optimist.

Alas for Nature’s
nasty habit
of bringing one
face to face with
reality.

In sport
the arts
and politics . . .
Indeed
in every aspect
and area of my
existence
idols crumbled;
beliefs disintegrated;
hopes evaporated.

And now that dream is gone.

What a pity
there's no vaccine
for stupidity!

The diversity of peoples in the world
is like the diversity of instruments in an orchestra;
they provide different sounds
but they produce the same music,
and by collaborating
they enhance it.

Forget about your Sigmund Freud;
It’s something you cannot avoid.
To reach a time of lessening desires
And the quenching
Of those lifelong fires.

And you can keep your Alfred Adler
Against the stream a baffled paddler.
No harmonicist like Larry.
His musical skills were quite "verborgen"
He dealt with a very different *****.

Ill fares the land
Where statesmen do transgress;
Where sin soars out of hand
and honor does regress,
and we value honor
less and less.

What I really deplore and deprecate in our society
is growing evidence of the spread of iconoclasm.
It is not enough apparently to seek to improve
our own condition.  We are made happiest
by our ability to destroy the reputation of others.

Personally, I will never seek to promote my happiness
by denying other people theirs.
So don’t tell me I should be satisfied with my lot.
Don’t preach to the converted.

This is a mystery that has  me baffled ,
The answer's one I simply cannot see:
If I would be like someone else,
Who would be like me?

I honor the foreboding that appears,
The hesitancy it heralds in the call,
The inadvertent buttress of the fears,
Reluctance to acknowledge the outfall.

And, all the while, the heav’nly choir gives voice,
The prayers devout as any that were heard
But yet recalcitrant insistence on pro-choice,
Determined to maintain faith undeterred.

If words are inadequate,
enjoy the bliss of silence.

I am unrepentant.

Give me a sin to struggle with
I am one of the unconverted
who happily abjures all piety
and seeks no arbitrary grace.

Please do not express a fervent hope
That I be brought to shame
by my depravity.

I seek not salvation, nor do I wish
to control those heinous urges;
I shall fulfil my own distasteful destiny.

I seek not redemption but prefer
to remain one of the unregenerate.

I seek not forgiveness
For I have forgiven myself,
and remain unrepentant.

What can she know of love
who never love has known?

Don’t tell me . . .
nothing
lasts forever.
I reject it.
And so far,
so good.

Don’t ask me . . .
to escape
my situation
by moving
to another place.
I am already there.

Don’t deny me . . .
my right
to grieve
For it is
my weapon
against anger.

Don’t mock me . . .
and tell me
where
you think
I ought to go.
I am already there.

Ajbure confrontation.

You gain nothing in trying
to demonstrate your worth to another.

You may gain a world
if you believe in your own worth.