"cuthbert" poems
King James demands a Scottish play
and believes in witches three
Look close and see they are the fates
that set our destiny
I can't write about his mother
or the ****** of her clerk
One whisper about Darnley
and we'll all be out of work.
After that unhappy business
about Essex and the Queen.
I won't risk another incident
no abdication scene.
Keep the text, in time to come
it will prove rare like gold
I kept it shorter than King Lear
your attention span to hold.
Dec 18, 2011
Dec 18, 2011 at 3:07 PM UTC
You're daring enough to have ventured into the night,
he sounded delirious in the wispy light.
Half a mile across the lagoon
moondrunk Ridleys in ghostly shadows
would be digging holes in the sands
to lay their lives for posterity
away from the phosphoric melody
leaving the orphaned to find their way
once the shells cracked under silica.
They look like a procession of mourners,
the man whispered between strokes of oars
sloshing the rising tides of the channel
his deft hands rowing the fastest
cutting across the half mile to Cuthbert Bay.
The night ripened enough by that time
unfolded the crawling shadows from the sea
slowing time in frameshot motions
of rows of celebrating marchers.
Dead of night the stars were burning out
and I called out to the boatman.
To this day I don't believe what I heard.
None was ever ferried back by the boatman.
Apr 22, 2018
Apr 22, 2018 at 8:07 AM UTC
"I bagged this one
out in In-di-A!"
...the braggart's boast.
"It's a very rare
( these days)ALGERNON!"
And indeed, an Algernon
bares his teeth
above the roaring fire's
mantlepiece.
He looked startled as
he had been shot just that second.
"The head is splendidly mounted
complete with handlebar moustache
...& monocle.
One feels that one could
pop next door and there
would be ha ha...the rest of
Algernon
sticking out the other side.
The glint in the eye
the sneer just so
...right.
"And to the right of the Algernon
is a genuine Cuthbert.
Again from 1901 or there or
thereabouts."
"It is indeed a perfect specimen of
the good old chap..."
the white rhino brags yet again
of what he calls his baggings.
White Rhino's
collection of colonials
is the envy of
all the other animals.
"Some more hot *** old chum?"
But the White Tiger
puts a paw over his glass.
Declines.
The fire's flickering
leaping up the wall.
The shadow making
the humans almost
come alive
as if the Cuthbert
could turn to the Algernon
and say
"OH...I SAY!
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 10:11 AM UTC
With her grandchildren on the seashore
where the sky has mingled with sea
a rumbling she hears over waves’ roar
this was the beach she was supposed to be!
The boy rained kisses her eyes had poured
she was breaking so breaking within
cut her bones the splintered dreams
couldn’t take it the girl of eighteen!
*Though parting for now will be in your reach
when the full moon makes tides wildly rough
please be that day on the Cuthbert beach*
passed thirty years to cross the gulf!
She doesn’t regret wonders to this day
if really the boy caught the moon
standing alone on the crags of the bay
hearing the gulls’ mournful croon!
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 10:04 AM UTC
Compline bell rings,
cloister dark except
where lamp lights up,
salva nos, Dómine,
vigilántes, custódi nos
dormiéntes,
moonlight on cloister wall,
I finger the stoup,
holy water on fingertips,
Hugh thin faced
fingers after me,
touched me she said
touch me here,
Dom Peter walks
the stone slabs,
cork lined boots,
black cowl,
I stand in the choir stalls
near the wall,
lamps switched off,
darkness and chant begins,
plainsong unison,
enter me she said
I am as a church to be filled,
the world's your ship
not your home Therese said,
I gaze at the monk's head
before me silhouetted
in the semi dark,
our Lady's statue
high above lit up
by a single light,
the abbot walks the aisle
with young Cuthbert
who holds holy water
in a sprinkler,
show them by deeds
rather than words
Benedict said,
I stare at the Virgin's stillness,
alma Redemptóris Mater,
quæ pérvia cæli porta manes,
a world in darkness
out there beyond the high windows,
silence after prayer,
complete stillness,
pax,
Compline.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 4:23 PM UTC
“They are an inexhaustible spring of delight. Their diversity corresponds to our most varied moods, from the state of quiet content in which all we ask of art is entertainment, exquisite rather than deep, the exuberance of animal spirits, the consciousness of physical and moral health, to melancholy, sorrow and even revolt, and to an Olympian serenity breathing the air of the mountain tops. The comparative uniformity which we notice between them at first sight disappears with closer scrutiny. The feeling is never the same from one to the other; each one is characterised by a personality of its own and the variety of their inspiration shows itself ever greater as we travel more deeply into them.”
Cuthbert Girdlestone
Mozart and his Piano Concertos, 1939
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 8:42 AM UTC
C-"Come baby come" that,s my soul calling
U- Unconditional love in my heart its flowing
T- Take my heart baby L.O.V.E is its code
H- Hold it with care its the 9th wonder
B- Because its the only archive that your heart is treasured
E- Every tourist come looking for it but like a
R- Rite it is protected in my blood streams
T- Taking it to another level and romance is its interest rate
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
On the face of a tombstone there
I saw an epitaph made for evermore,
its letters eroded and worse for wear
and covered by moss that grew long before;
the trees’ roots twisted around its base
to nudge the old stone out of plumb line
and wrap the tomb’s body in wooden embrace
while draping it all in verdant vines:
The permanent stone turns slowly to sand —
a world without end that brief time spanned
Oct 10, 2024
Oct 10, 2024 at 7:04 AM UTC