Forget our inglorious isolation,
Hiding away from terrors unseen.
I see a golden Forsythia
Outside my window.
Sunny daffodils and little blue flowers
Of  unknown name.
Bushes are budding
And turning green.

Bluebottles and bees have been buzzing
As birds flock about
Flipper flapping everywhere.

A barren, frozen desert
Is being transformed
Little by little.
We still have biting winds
Just now
But in the fullness of time
Warmer climes will re-assert themselves.

For summer is coming
As it always does.
No worldly woes will stop it,
Nor they ever will.
Nature has endless patience
And determination.
Sudden Spring is but the start
Of better days.
Believe it.

Paul Butters

© PB 29\3\2020.

History is now being made:
One of the greatest plagues
Since Spanish Flu in nineteen-nineteen.
Self-Isolation is imposed
By those in lofty towers of power.

No sport, no pubs, no school, no restaurants…
Supermarket shelves all empty
From panic-buying shop-hoarders.
See that old lady stooping over her zimmer-frame,
Trying to spot any morsel that might be left.
A late-shift nurse cries openly
At the sheer selfishness of those
Who have left our stores a barren emptiness.

Our thoughts go out to all those victims
Of The Virus
And their families.
But also those forced home alone.
Are we not to walk in solitude soon
Even though we keep away from everyone?

Where will I go for Easter,
My kitchen or my bedroom?
We’ve been pushed off a cliff
Into a new lifestyle.
And it might last as long as
A Year.

Paul Butters

© PB 21\3\2020.

How can anyone live for Eternity
When Eternity never ends?
It’s an objective that cannot be achieved
For it’s immeasurable.
Year after year might pass
But we never get there.

Space is the same:
Fly through a galaxy cluster
And you find more space
Then maybe another galaxy cluster,
Another after another, after another
Into Infinity.

Infinite Eternity:
Skies with no end
Never Ending
Teeming with countless stars.
Impossible
Yet here we are
Incredibly marvelling that we can think
That we even exist
To see, hear and feel
A world
That’s nothing short
Of a miracle.
Paul Butters

© PB 16\3\2020.

Time to rhyme and shine
All will be fine
Give me some wine

I rarely do rhyming lines
Prefer lines of rhymes
Rhymes within those lines
“Internal rhyme”
At least in this time line.

The summer sun has been summoned
So don’t be glum there in your slum
Ignore the ****, have some *** and chat with mum
But don’t be dumb and talk with a plumb
Strum that guitar with your fingers or thumb
Let that music hum
Watch them scrum for a crumb.

Just can’t wait to get into a transcendental state
From words that have some weight
To lead us through the gate
To poetic heaven

Paul Butters

© PB 4\2\2020.

I love music
But can only sing flat.
And I can’t play musical instruments
With their baffling array of keys or strings.
So, I try to write music with words.
For I also love to write.

Distant misty hills beckon my soul
To fly amongst banks of swirling clouds
Then up into the stars.

The impossible mystery of infinity intrigues me:
Beyond, beyond, beyond, beyond…
Endless stories unfold before us
(Yes, you can come too!)
Eternity that has no horizon.

I love to love
My love,
For love makes the world go round
Or so I heard.
I love all plants and animals
And people too:
All that Mother Multiverse has spawned
And reared.

Love is all we need
They sang
And they were right.
So let’s get loved up
With lorra loving.
Feel that love.

For that’s why I write.

Paul Butters

© PB 3\2\2020.

Repetition is the best petition.
Drive that refrain into your brain.
It’s my mission.
Driven on by Stewart Copeland the musician.
Drums and dance
Send me into a trance.
Transcendental music
Any way you choose it.

Repetition, repetition, repetition
Just as potent as nuclear fission.
Sometimes, for me, it’s just too much.
As crazy as Screaming Lord Sutch.
Yet here I make a telling submission
About the power of repetition
As beautiful as a painting by Titian.
A composition to appeal to your cognition
To get you into a better condition
Without transition.

There are four hundred and ninety rhymes
Of repetition
And that’s not something from superstition.
But I’d better avoid a war of attrition
Even with your kindly permission.
It’s great to prance
And have a dance.
I’m glad you’ve given
This poem a glance
To give its rhythms every chance.
My aim is to enhance
And cut through the boredom like a lance.

Poems are music
Poems are Romance
So let’s advance
Then make a stance.
That’s my position.

Paul Butters

© PB 2\2\2020 (first line written 31\1 then notes made 1\2). Final line added 3\2.

We watch from space
Safe in our spaceship
As a small rock planet,
That has orbited it’s star
Over seven and a half billion times –
All those billions of its years –
Is peeled away
And eaten
By that very sun
That gave it birth.

Two and a half billion years before,
This star ran dry of hydrogen
And grew
From yellow dwarf to red giant.

Now, nothing is left of three of its worlds,
All engulfed by flame
As the sun grew
Into a giant ball of death.
All history is gone.
Nothing to show
For countless civilisations
That adorned the third planet.

But oh what’s this?
We spot a tiny spacecraft!
Must reel it in.
Examine it.

It has a name:
“Voyager 1”
Inside: a Golden Disc!
A Golden Record.
We can play it.
Images of hairless bipeds.
Ancestors from that third planet.
Sounds of animals and someone laughing.
Images of bipeds taking sustenance.
And best of all
More sounds
Of something called “Rock Music”:
A being called “Chuck Berry”
“Singing a song” called “Johnny B. Goode”.
For we have feet too
And it makes them tap.

Paul Butters

© PB 12\12\2019.