write all about it (12/July/18)

what should I write about
nobody knows
and nobody cares if I am merely counting toes,
what should I write about
world affairs?
world leaders with laughable hair
State visits I’d hoped would never occur,
soccer, tennis,
strawberries, beer
the winners, the losers, the grunts and cacophonous cheers?
what should I write about
the sky-scraping jackdaws
the un’cawking crows, rattling magpies, where the wind blows,
the end of the world
the rise of the Right wielding a left hand of darkness?
what should I write about
the weather again
whether Brexit’s a breakfast or yet more proverbial wind,
when it last rained
when it last didn’t or whether this still needs to rhyme?
what should I write about
the distance between
death of an innocent, death of a once upon dream
wings and prayers,
knock, knock, who’s there, it’s just me dressed as a bear
what should I write about
why I am dressed as a bear?
your guess is as good and probably better than mine;
what should I write about
a looming apocalypse,
poverty, terror, misogyny, bullies, bigotry, zombies?
something, old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue, something borderline taboo?
what should I write about
the more than meets the eye,
whatever floats your boat, whatever gets you through the night,
immigration, refugees,
oligarchs or aardvarks or sitting on a beach?
what should I write about
desperate measures, desperate times,
Desperate Dan or desperadoes, cones in hi-viz, yet more roadwork signs,
junk food, space debris,
epidemics, war and peace, climate change and rising seas?
what should I write about
the price of oil
fat-cats and homelessness, victors bringing home the spoils
how the West was won
or how to make a paper plane and fly into the sun?
what should I write about
that anyone would read
that time and tide will wash away before you even see?

© 2018 robert greig

no one read (28/June/18)

I wrote a poem today
that no one will read

not even me
it’s not finished, will probably likely never be

so why did I write it?

good question,
and one for which I have no answer one way
or the other
needless to say it began with all the best intentions, an almost-plan, an itch of direction, some words even rhymed while others scanned, syllables slotted in place until soon before long clarity turned from translucence and into resigned opaque…

I have to confess to parallel lines

one atop
the other,

like so…

which is all good and well but it was maybe a little too late as it managed to dodge and evade all attempts to impose any pattern or logic, beginning or end, reason or even I’ll say it again, any rhyme, an unruly child, a duck that won’t quack, a sneeze that won’t sneeze, but then again…

no one will ever read it anyway so why should I care, what’s all the fuss all about…?

I could lose it among an equally unruly, unquackable, unsneezable pile of unfinished scribblings growing accusingly ever-taller, but then again….

years and years later I might stumble across it’s muttering and grumbling between some dog-eared paper of anonymous ilk then what would I do, could I in all conscience consign it to oblivion….?

I wrote a poem today
that no one will read,
clearly this wasn’t it……..

© 2018 robert greig

stochasm (23/May/18)

what’s life but a series of terminal moments with one more terminal than others….
it’s still May… nearly June… half way through the year already… listening to a record from 1980, inspired by hearing a willow warbler in the garden this morning… how did that happen then?… I’m behind the lines, whatever happened to me it’s too late to change now… the clues in the stew, read the floating vegetables as they hubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble… put your left leg out, your left leg in, and with any luck you’ll still be standing… I wrote a thing this morning, now what was it… oh yes… sleep, as elusive as a sheet of sound… … the firmament is far from firm you know, fomenting discontent as it does…
I’d like to end now with a little, idyll, I suppose you could call it for want of a better word though I’m sure there’s plenty, I can’t seem to find anywhere else for it, then I’ll followed by a dramatic pause (re: stage notes)…

catalepsy wakes
flotillas of driftwood
by a nestings of snakes
beside rivers of sticks
where boats fell asleep.

: dramatic pause :

© 2018 robert greig