Seventeen years, our lives were spent,
cleaning *** stains to pay your rent,
hiking miles as humid summer sweats,
held you in my arms, till last breath.

The soil grows doggy bones,
heaven knows what earth has sewn,
eleven A.M. I had to let you go,
now pushing daisies, you're not alone.

Hush puppy, for now  
I'll join you someday, somehow
In the morning, I'll have a grin
 Tonight these tears trace down my chin

As a canine Abby, your years were long,
one-one-nine, till we rang the gong,
enduring length is now a sad sad song,
but you're strength helps me carry on.

Puppy grub, dark walks in the rain,
lucky love doesn't die in vane,
as I pulled up to scratched window panes,
my bad day turned alone to fame.

Hush puppy, for now
I'll join you someday, somehow
 In the morning, I'll have a grin
 Tonight these tears trace down my chin

My army snakes the mountain-tops
as fields and valleys rent,
The first to ever wear the crown;
laws of nature -bent.

Mother was my wife as well; she as me, a god.
Appearing again 'in-the-end'...
Apocalypse; I am the king
-******!

In the oppressive Shanghai hospital heat
My eighty year 'young' mother
Looks without speculation,
From her one good eye

The strokes have left their mark
What is the character for senility?
"I have to go now Ma; home to Mei Guo"
"Yes; hurry, or the Japanese will arrest you"

She's a fragrance
Bottled in my mind's
Peripheral scribes.
My tutorial on how to stand

And my spine is giraffe's neck or,
Fixed-be-not, the Pisa Tower.
And I'm bound to be lower
But she hits my back and stirs me forth.

Liquid paper, solid gold
She's a gas of dizziness,
Though a simpler boy
You could never find on earth.

She's a quarrel in a body,
Younger muse for my hoorah.
Like the Russians say,
Blood and milk. However, in the case,
Porridge and strong coffee.
My perfected
Oh, my tailored
Healthy diet for the mind state.

Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia

Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute.  But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute.  Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the ***-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.

With a Jewish religion and a German Queen,
Who has a clue where the Brits have been?
Mum’s clan were Huguenots,
Dad’s maybe Welsh.
Lots of Africans in our football teams.

Keep out those immigrants many do say,
Even those whose parents came from Bombay.
We’ve lots of patriots from Pakistan:
The younger generation, Brits to a man.

But some are Radicals I hear you say,
We should be sending them on their way,
Back to Asia where they belong,
To the tunes of a UKIP song.

So what is “British” we must ask,
For this is not an easy task.
Justice and Democracy I hear you shout,
Tiny islands with some clout.

Shakespeare, Beatles, Rugby Lions,
Churchill clapping foes in irons.
Let’s be glad that we are free
And settle down to a cuppa tea.
Paul Butters

茶


Cruciform character;  flowering daughter of orient Wisdom’s delight

A hymn to thee, beloved bush and Tree of Life, I raise.

May thy plucked leaves forevermore renew their gracious budding

Even as thy captured progeny produce, in death, thy praise

Like captive Hebrew exiles driven far from Zion’s hill

Loving still their Judge and punisher, recalling golden days…

In this cup of glorious elixir, infusing life with cheer

Asia’s attributes unveil, while I upon her marvels gaze.

Serenity enfolding, I forget all those before

In a rapturous caress I swiftly yield to her embraces

Nevermore to recall the ****** bean of Abyssinian lore

Ethiopian witch and desert hag, dark seed of nomadic races!

Now I hail the truth, whose leaf I love: L’chaim to the brew I adore

So sit with me and sip some cha. Let us kiss her myriad faces.

I scribe these lines in gratitude to that plant who soothes and inspires

Sweet Camellia, my love…  I read in the leaves
                                your ascending triumphant traces.

God saidst let there be light
And the Filipino queen, lip up the land;
An Asian lampstand.



©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane dedication