Distangle fangle from the yore
To ken the roots of yon afore
And see whereof they tread

A roguish minstrel, cowlish clad,
With spritish garb, a-prancin’ mad,
Bridged east the river bed

He came a prancin’ oh did he,
As like the wind with a fiddle-dee-dee,
As like as like a clown

He waltzed and hopped and twirled about
Whilst passing through the old redoubt
Unto the midst of town

Children flocked to hark his air
Resounding from the market square
Pervading every nook

They waltzed and hopped and twirled about
From all around the old redoubt
To chance a better look

He shimmied left, he darted right,
And marveled at the wondrous sight
As wee ones danced along

He raised his pipe, began to play,
And all about began to sway
Enchanted by his song

“Come hey, come hence, come fiddle-dee-dee!”
His call was as the roiling sea
That pilfers from the dunes

Now with his ducklings all-in-tow,
He swift bridged west the river’s flow
Beguiling with his tunes

Applied the minstrel to his pipe
And nary tot nor guttersnipe
Were wont to be unled

The wee ones went unto his tune
That vexed the waning heart of June
And to the mountain fed

And all of them are dead

The boldness of a beauty fair
To conquer love, to take his bow
And loose his arrows in the air
To watch them fall to strike a blow
On one with who one's love would share
To watch them fall beneath the blow
And gasping for a breath of air
To stand and take a final bow
So falling to a beauty fair

John Keats
Didn’t write any Tweets
Nor ever undertook
To post on Facebook

Percy B. Shelley
Sailed the Don Juan to sea
Where a monstrous storm seen rarely
Robbed Frankenstein’s Mary

His friend, Lord Byron,
Watched the beach with his pyre on
And then, on a whim,
He went for a swim

William Shakespeare
Loved his wife so sincere
That he willed her when dead
His second best bed

Sir Wilfred Owen
Wrote a **** spiffing poem
And he might well have wrote more
Had he outlived the war

Robert Frost
Got hopelessly lost
When for giggles and a laugh
He took the wrong path

Emily Dickinson
Needed hope to cling on,
So for lack of lucky heather
She clutched an old feather

William Blake
Saw the tiger, too late,
And he felt a cold shiver
As it ate his liver

I gazed upon a weary field
Where wayward seeds had blown,
And plots were laid and borders sealed
Beneath a golden crown,
And rising from a ghastly host
Of unkempt thorny briar,
On writhing mist a fallen ghost
Lit up a spectral pyre.

Cold shivered flames shot heavenward
Convulsing time to freeze,
The fertile land was drowned in mud
And clouded with disease.
Across the field a battle raged
Beneath an orange flare,
Old roots entwined as limbs engaged
And tussled for the air.

In eager rows defenders fell
Supplanted by their foe,
A mud draped rug of pod and shell
Buried the ground below,
And racing upwards in a spire
To reach Heaven's domain
They sought to steal the sun's bright fire
To use for their own gain.

Fresh saplings withered in the heat
That scorched the living soil,
And ashes rained down like a sheet
To form an acrid pile;
The sweet decay of rotting limbs
Pervaded like a shield,
As evening sang her doleful hymns
Across a barren field.

A damsel, fair with braided hair,
Her beauty wild beyond compare,
Came bustling to the summer faire,
Her petticoats a-flowing;

She settled there, upon a chair
And watched the young men stop and stare,
But none of them would dare to dare
To coax her with a-wooing;

In her despair, she gasped for air,
No one it seemed would know or care,
Her beauty hid a deep despair
That she was not a-showing

And unaware how to declare
The secrets that she dare not share,
The damsel left to who knows where,
And no one is a-knowing

How came a damsel quite so rare,
With beauty fair and braided hair,
Alone with no one's love to share,
Her petticoats a-flowing

A darkness crept into my waking crypt,
Its tendrils coiled to grip my tortured throat,
Till retching, retching, gurgled on a rote,
Prostrate, held in its clutches, tightly gripped —
No eye perceived this devil as it slipped
From day to blackened day inside to gloat;
An instrument was I to sound its note,
A plaything used, discarded, broken, stripped —
The world became a window; The outdoors
Turned alien; The beast remained inside,
Content to keep the prison of my mind —
From time to time I dared unto the stores,
        But ever on returning I would find
        The nightmare waiting where we both reside.

Thy mother's bounty bundled in thy swaddling
Took up the cry to capture mine own craft,
And taking arms, thou plundered of my coddling;
Enslaved, I toil to serve upon thy raft.
Thy word is law, thy captaincy commanding,
I sleep not lest I miss my master's call;
Thy will is served, thy drudgery demanding,
Through foul and fair I weather all thy squall.
Thy institution has me fear the looming
Of pirate vessels, renowned for their shrift,
Majestic sails billowed in handsome pluming,
Looting thy spoils and setting me adrift.
Surrendered now unto thy vasty sea,
I dread the day thy heart will mutiny.

The mountain's spine does shiver
At the first kiss of the quake,
And the wayward roving river
Sends a shudder through the lake;
The birth of Spring plays fanfare
To rouse the fledgling flowers;
And thee, embraced, released despair
That trembled from thy towers.

What shook thy strong foundations,
Like a quake unto the mountain?
Were thy wayward contemplations
Like the lake unto a fountain?
As Winter spreads her wedding gown
And the weary flowers wither,
Let thee embrace thy walls of stone
And what peace they may deliver.

I look the last this land I leave behind —
Timeless as water, bountiful as sorrow,
Abode today, a memory tomorrow;
Her contours etched untarnished in my mind —
How sweet our first encounter; how unkind
That time which man is wont to beg and borrow
Brought forth this bitter twilight ere a morrow
When all our self-same sunsets will have shined —
    Henceforth sunrise shall tarry ere it greets me;
    The midday sun shall cast a sterner gaze
    As paths unknown reveal their hidden troves;
    Home is the sacrifice for those who journey
    Without return;  We venture through the groves
    Of doubt and fear to set our lives ablaze.

The crash of crystal breaking at a party
Draws jeers of laughter from the self-same few
Who claim, when morning comes, they never knew
Of idle boasts that grew to plans more hearty,
And pressed, would say from him we stood apart.  We
Were bold and brash but unlike those who slew
The *******, and the dark skinned, and the jew,
We upheld values of society.
The coward hides in plain sight in a crowd
And adds voice to the clamour, not as one
Who acts alone, subverting evil schemes,
But like as one so small, so ill endowed,
That when the hardy revellers are gone,
His empty life holds nothing but their dreams.

Son of Zeus-Ammon,
How thou reined, arrayed and reigned!
Thy name lives anon.

Words Be Thy Will, Free'd
Owing Naught To God Or King --
    May Death Renew Thee.

Love weighs on the heart,
Music lifts the soul —
Life is à la carte,
Morsels of the whole

Spring to each romance;
Summer in the sun —
In the autumn, dance —
Let winter never come

I walked by a small cottage church
As a large wooden box
Was carefully unbundled
From a waiting automobile

I do not know who was inside
But I have thought about that soul
All day long

I hope you lived a life
Worthy of your mourners praise
For they will sing of you today
And tomorrow
They will go on living
And yours will be an epitaph.

Witches at your door —
With Frankenstein and Batman?
Candied gifts galore!

We that are born,
Born unbidden unto turgid seas,
Born of the fruits of flotsam folly, or
Born of the jumps for jetsam joy

We that are young,
Tossed in an ocean of a mother's tears,
Lost in the moment of a mother's loving eyes,
Eyes that forgive all sins

We that are weak,
That fall upon hard times,
That fall prey to sharks,
That fall to pray upon our knees

We that lack wisdom,
To recall our own creation,
To accept our own destruction,
Or accept ourselves for who we are

From our youth we gain wisdom,
From our weakness we gain strength,
And through all of our days on this ocean voyage
We are proud to be what we were born to be

Human

As I pond-
      er the stream
              Of life, I brook
                       Our oceans
             Lost, our rivers
        Unexplored, estuaries
   Untravelled, tributaries
      Unseen; our courses
  Diverged,              our ways
Parted like                  the Red Sea,
    We drifted                on the tides
   Like ships                caught on waves
Carried on                   torrid floods,
     Riding the             cascading torrents
       Over strange      uncharted waters,
       And yet if our     paths ever flow
             To meet in some channel
                   On a distant shore,
                       Expect no tears,
                            No weeping,
                                  I won't cry
                                        You a river

Would that a recollection could expire;
Not in the fuzzled hedgerows of old age,
But here amidst the furrows of a sage
And active mind -- A rustle of attire;
A scent, familiar, quickening desire;
A voice as soft as silence on a stage --
Unbundled straws like kindling to the page
That sets this enigmatic heart afire --
Would that I could entreat vacuity
To bar a thought, to keep it squarely shuttered,
Preventing it from creeping back inside --
The vacant plots might cleanse my memory,
Might numb an ache and leave a mind uncluttered --
The healing of a vast unfeeling void.

Residing there on long forgotten shelves,
Down disused aisles in basements dark and dank;
Neath libraries where books can write themselves,
Where endless quills and ink pots scrawl and clank.
A dusty tome, it's cover worn with age,
Withered corners, dog-eared, blunt and battered;
Adventures told on every fading page,
Some folded down to mark the days that mattered.
A life, as told in some biography,
The tale of one who lived and loved and died,
Their name now long consigned to history,
One book that keeps their story safe inside.
        An epilogue: Lest anyone forgets -
        The subject of this tale had no regrets.

I saw a shadow, short at first,
And growing like an endless thirst
It snaked along across the ground,
It stirred no earth nor made no sound

And looking up towards the sun,
Observer of our world's dismay,
I saw an obelisk begun
To flee its orbit of decay

It raced on down like sleet and ice,
A keen and freshly sharpened knife,
It slashed the wind and roared aloud
As through the air it drove and ploughed

And fixed its glare upon one spot,
A small and meagre barren plot,
Where formed a shadow, small at first,
But growing like an endless thirst

Until the two became as one,
Where children played upon the floor,
And dust arose to block the sun,
Those children gone forever more

Dark summer days
            when woe is full in bloom, when men of mettle
            bend beneath the load of doleful doubts, backs
            broken by the gloom, heads drooping low from
            stress and strains untold

Rake up your strife,
            rake troubles in a heap, uplift the rug,
            sweep sweep the grime below, and in a sack,
            stuff all the ills you keep to bursting, till
            the sack must overflow

Trundle your woes
            down to the market square, set out a stall
            and hawk to trade your wares.  Like-minded folk
            are cloistered everywhere, imploring you
            to give your sack for theirs

Well friend, would you
            exchange for the unknown, or else relent
            to take your own sack home?

O'er shingle tossed on raggèd shore,
In awe I gaped that vast array
Of gleaming waves, a teeming store
Of natures bounty in the bay,
Reflecting with each crest and trough
Mosaic fragments of the sky
That echoed on the high-flung bluff
'Neath where stood I.

If God e'er laid a dint or breach
For beauty's sake, this land divine
Is refuge when the storm winds preach,
When rains flow like communion wine;
Each pebble strewn, yet seemly placed
In knitted weave, as tho' on high
A seamstress sewed her pattern, traced
To pleaseth I.

Oh any heart but mine rejoice
To taste this salted spray;
The longing of mine own device
Lays far beyond the bay.

To stand beneath the mizzen-mast,
Upon an isle of polished teak,
Surrendered to the winded flax
Wild-dancing round with every creak;
From port to starboard, fore and aft,
No land, nor ship, nor blot on high,
Wouldst dare encroach the mindful craft
That carries I.

What yearning heart has heard her call,
That siren? Oh the sailor's sea,
In beauty does she rise and fall,
Enchanting is her melody;
Too deep her eyes of coral blue
Wherein she takes, as is her wont,
Unwary souls to charters new,
The Lordships and the débutante.

*And unto her, when wearied age
Makes breathless every sigh
And bones become a prison cage,
Will answer I.

So many hands
            make light of evil deeds, and silken cloth
            can ne'er hope to dissuade the rising tides
            against the planted seeds of poisoned mind
            and venom-coated blade

The mighty bear
           once blessed with honeyed lips may rue the hive
           unleashing its tirade and fear the swarm
           of many pointed tips that sally forth
           with busy stinging blade

How many winds
            have blown, how many rains have fallen here,
            how oft am I betrayed?  How many hands
            will know the crimson stains that fall upon
            the folly of their blade?

The wisest die
            and some may choose their end, yet wiser still
            is he who knows his friend

Poor Spider!  Engineered her nets
To cast among the eaves –
And now her silk supports the nests
Of enterprising thieves!

A Roguish Bird with yellow smock
And beak like crooked spear
Crept up upon the wing and took
His pick of all her gear –

Poor Spider! Crawling home to scour
Her bastion torn to shreds –
She sets to task , and in the hour,
Hangs dew-kissed curtained webs!

Some scars never heal —
Like dormant snow-capped pathways,
Secrets to conceal.

His flabbered jowls were hung aghast
Beneath his slobbered liver lips
His bulbous eyes were overcast
By burly brows of stewardship

An overbearing egotist
He stood apart from infidels
Compassion dealt with belt and fist
Disdainful with no parallels

And there upon his lofty dais
In garments fit to drape a throne
He glared with bulbous eyes ablaze
Upon a ragged danger zone

A misbegotten anarchist
Audacious with his sweet implore
To strike a flaming catalyst
Emboldened by his quest for more

A sobering thought
The death of an alcoholic

Not some bridge-squatting ***
Unkempt and unclean

A family man
With a good job
And a mortgage

But no liver

A long weekend
Waiting for news
    "Not looking good"
            "Deteriorating"
        "Just a matter of time"
  "It is done"

We cannot speak 'it'
Too soon for that
So we talk about 'it'
Without saying the words

You couldn't live without the *****
You couldn't live without a liver

So we have to live without you

Jiminy Cricket needed a sport
That little Pinocchio could play
He didn't like tennis, the shorts were too short
He didn't like skiing at an Alpine resort
He didn't like squashing in a little squash court
He didn't like pigeons or clay

He dreamt of a game with a bat and a ball
A game that could last all day long
Where all would be welcome, the short and the tall
Where language and creed didn't matter at all
Where it could be played from the spring to the fall
A game for both weak and the strong

He pictured a game that was played on the grass
That all the young kids could enjoy
Where boys stood around, there was no need to pass
Where scoring was easy and points would amass
Where no one would notice or try to harass
A mild mannered small wooden boy

With pencil and paper, he had so much fun
Designing his very own bat
He wrote down the rules so they'd know who had won
With six points for boundaries and one for a run
And proudly admiring the work that he'd done
He decided to call it *"HOWZAT!"

The Avon Bard served to inspire
Young Keats unto his Bright Star sonnet

The sea took Shelley to his pyre,
Bestowed with words of Keats upon it

Yet Keats wet not the widow's eye,
Nor counted clocks that tell the time

Yet Shelley drew no Bright Star nigh,
Nor flowered a tale more sweet than rhyme

So why I ask would any poet
Claim unto them another's craft?

If thou has not the wit to show it,
Pray, keep thine own words saved as Draft.

Addressee:
            Department Head of Creativity,
            HP School Of Rhymes and Poetry

Dear Mr Cole,
                              I write an ernest plea
To crave forgiveness for my little Tryst
For as you know the homework set by thee
Is overdue, the deadline has been missed

He’d done the work, the best I’ve ever seen!
You’d be so proud of all his clever puns
But then we had a visit from the Queen
She’d taken ill and suffered with the runs!

We let her in to use the lavatory
But then we heard her banging on the door
She’d run right out of toilet paper, see?
And ordered us to quickly fetch her more

We did the only thing that could be done
I hope you understand Sir

Signed,

My Mom

Her fabric wove from finest silken thread
Imbued with strands of sweet capricious fate,
Her footfalls echo sounds that mortals dread
As onwards, with her ne’er unchanging gait,
Since dawn awoke her with a small request
To witness all that was, and that will be,
She's journeyed forth with ne’er a pause to rest
And on anon she runs eternally --
Would that I could contrive to halt her stride,
Unwinding threads to weave another song
And meeting self, could overcome his pride,
Relating how and where he got it wrong --
        Should good advice from him be mine to take,
        I fear my doom, to live the same mistake.

You gave them all hope
When hope was their need
You saved them from the rope
And you planted the seed
That freedom was won
That the future was theirs
All the bad times were gone
There would be no more tears

And the planes overhead
And the boots on the ground
And the guns in their hands
Made a beautiful sound
And the women they cried
And their children ran free
And their men were alive
And life was as it should be

The years long dragged on
And the naysayers said
And the green men agreed
With a nod of their head
The future was signed
With a flick of a wrist
And one last hope resigned
And was lost in the mist

And the planes overhead
Took the boots from the ground
As the guns in their hands
Made a terrible sound
And the women they cried
For their children to be free
For their men to be alive
For life to be as it had been

And the women they cried
For their children to be free
For their men to be alive
For life to be as it had been

Rest peaceful 'neath a dusk-kissed brass engraving,
Atop the climb a stony path has reached;
Look down on all the troubles you were saving,
Thankful you rarely practiced what they preached.

Beneath the covers, secrets can be found,
A lovers' tryst, a war-torn diary;
Days shared between the sheets can't be unwound.

All tragedy begins on common ground,
An 'X' where treasure hunters dig with glee
Beneath the covers; secrets can be found,

And feeling backwards from the fresh dug mound,
Each wrinkled line forgoes the mystery;
Days shared between the sheets can't be unwound.

The scented trail is hunted by the hound
Back to the lair; amidst the shrubbery,
Beneath the covers, secrets can be found.

From tragic end, to start, the tales abound,
Unveiling footnotes set in history;
Days shared between the sheets can't be unwound.

From crater can be plotted course unbound,
To scribe the book of life's trajectory;
Beneath the covers, secrets can be found,
Yet days between the sheets can't be unwound.

A crowd to me is a watery grave
Where chatter consumes the air;
Where sharks that circle with canapés
Are eyeing up the faire —
And I, the morsel they all crave
To drag unto their lair

Give me the deck of an ocean queen
When the daily feasting is done;
When the midnight sea flows by unseen
And the guests are all but gone —
Give me the peace of a night serene
And a place to be alone

Upon my life, upon my soul,
On everything that I hold dear,
For love of thee, my only goal,
To keep thee from a life austere

I swear to love, and love thee whole,
I swear to hold and keep thee near,
To guide thy hand as we two stroll
And keep thee safe from living fear

I cannot hope, but hope to see,
And keep thee safe in wedded bliss;
To make our vows in sanctity,
Upon the edge of loves abyss

Thy love, my love, gifted to me
When all the world has gone amiss,
Our pledge unto our family,
We seal it with a loving kiss.

Winds from the mountain sail in ‘cross the sea,
Tree tops are whistling a wild melody;
Time, the old fiddler, has struck up his bow
As Summer flees south with the waning Sun’s glow —

Lock up the windows and seal all the doors,
A red mist is rising on these hallowed shores;
Shelves full to bursting and no one let in,
A storm is a-looming about to begin —

Footprints still rest in the places we’ve been,
Faltering short of new pastures unseen;
Untrodden pathways lead yonder away,
Unto an horizon, unto a new day —

Mist hides the morrow that lingers in wait
To greet weary travellers who pass by its gate;
Night is the shadow that cloaks all in fear,
Dawn is the beacon to beckon light near —

Out from the mist, from the dark, shall arise
A halo of sunlight to brighten the skies;
Sunrise and sunset shall be bookends, no more,
For days long since borrowed, and days still in store.

"Yoo Hoo! Excuse me!" she said,
Warbling with trepidation,
"I wonder could you help me,
Only I'm blind, you see?"

Her timid voice trailed off,
Lost beneath the majestic roar
Of the waterfall;

"Of course ma'am!" he said,
"Take my arm and pray
Tell me your troubles!"

"Well it's all rather silly," she said,
"But I'm not long now for this
Life, and I so wanted to see,
Or rather, to feel this place again.
I was here as a young girl
You see, and I have such fond memories! 
My guide had to take
An urgent call, and now I'm
Afraid I won't have time for the tour!"

"Tell me," he said, "If I may be
Permitted to ask, were you able
To see when you were here before?"

"Oh yes!" she exclaimed,
"It was the most incredible thing
I've ever seen!  The destructive
Force of nature, an endless torrent
Of foaming waters cascading down
Sheer cliffs, the living color of
Smooth rocks gleaming in the sunlight,
And oh so many rainbows
Blazing in the spray, Sir I could
Imagine no place more wondrous,
More beautiful!"

"Well then," he said excitedly,
"You'll be pleased to know it
Hasn't changed a bit!"

"Oh thank you, thank you!"
She said, hugging him tightly,
"You've made an old woman very happy!"

The guide returned and he bade them
A fond farewell, and then another
Woman approached him.

"Well there you are darling," she said,
I've been looking for you everywhere!
I've found a guide who specialises
In narrated tours for the blind,
Are you ready?"

He looked at her with unseeing eyes
And smiled, "There's no need my love,"
He said, "I've already seen it and
It's the most beautiful place in the world,
And I want to remember it
Exactly the way I do right now!"

As I sit beneath the midday sun,
It too sits in a cloudless
Light blue sky

Behind to the left,
Away from the sun's glare,
The blue sky is richer and deeper,
Unbleached

To the right,
The constant babble
And raucous laughter
From a green and white marquee

And here I sit,
In the middle of it all,
Happy and alone

A football too sits here
On the grass,
Seemingly lost in thoughts,
Watching ducks on the pond

Soon the beer and wine
Will flow freely,
The gaggle of excited ducks
As the babble leaves the tent
To mock the afflicted

They will delight,
Kicking the ball,
Passing it around,
Laughing,
Shouting,
Screaming,
But to what goal?

Is that all I am today?
A football to be played with,
A childs toy for the babble
Who enjoy their endless
Gaggle?

They talk at me,
And all I hear is
QUACK!

Ban the burka or the bomb?
Ban the turban or the gun?
Ban the Bible or the gore?
Ban the Torah or the war?

Ban religion, ban belief
Ban San Frontièrs, ban relief
Ban the poets, ban free speech
Ban the people born to teach

Ban the children, ban the old
Ban the meek and ban the bold
Ban the weakest, ban the strong
Ban the music, ban the song

Ban the freedom of the sea
Ban ideals of liberty
Ban your birthright, ban free will
Ban excitement, ban the thrill

Ban all things with no misgiving
Ban the joyous gift of living.

Outwardly, the oak
Withstood winter, tall and proud --
        Long since dead inside.