Roz Kaveney's Blog, page 4

Poem randomly derived from reading the TLS

HOUSMAN'S FRIEND

A man so loved so easily admired
A leopard stroked her ribs against the bars
That furtip might reach fingers: like small stars
Electrostatic brightness. So desired
Thundered across their paddocks wildebeest
Brindled and widehorned buffalo and gnu
Did this for him but not for me or you
You'd think we'd get a soulful gaze at least
From big brown eyes. The tallest male giraffe
Would lick his parting, first lift off his hat
And drop. So loved was Prof John Arthur Platt.
It was recorded in a photograph
Embarrassing? Asked, he admìted, quite.
He only smiled at beasts to be polite.

I typed the first line of this as a comment in another context and suddenly...

PROVERBS OF POWER

Do not call up what you cannot put down
Get what you want but not the second thing
No deal is sealed until you wear the ring
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

There's no just rule for tiger and for horse
If love or fear's the choice best to be feared
Do not judge wise by colour length of beard
Power's won politely and maintained by force

First time as tragedy, the next as farce
They laugh and then they fight you then you win
Caught in a coverup is worse than sin
The Emperor's new clothes will show his arse

You lose you die your friends end up in jail.
Political careers all end in fail.

After the Bowie Prom

COVER VERSION for Amanda

Make it your own once more and make it new
That once was his or hers. Perhaps they're dead.
You hear their voice competing in your head
And love and honour. And you tear down too

That you can recreate. When I translate
Changing the language helps though in a mist
Of not quite yet the word. Funambulist
Trapeze tight walking taking what was great

Real time inventing yours a harder part
Getting what's loved each time both first and right
Performance knife you tread cut feet each night
Both yours and mine not greatest hardest art

Submit our music to another's voice
We sing out proud and humble in this choice.

This is probably all to do with Donald Trump

SHROUD

Fool's mate fool's mort so early in the game
eye's water sting that this is all we get
sand smashes spills from turned time glass. I met
our death upon Samarra road. My name
from under shroud bass spoke and yours as well.
Thought we had years. Polite I offered seat
Thick cloth makes bones perspire in end-time heat
Death labours hard and honest and his smell
More blood and sweat than mausolean dust.
This it? Above our heads the sky was red
with final fire. Suburban privet bled
black sap. High towers fell in gravel rust.
Death took our hands the world what might have been
Our work undone we burned we ate the green.

A picture poem

ISLE OF THE DEAD after Bocklin

Ruins so old that cypresses a grove
have grown. The island was not always there
the water rose around it. Stone scoured bare
of signs and busy windows. Some force stove
and sheared the sides away. A city stood
this is the last. One day it will be gone
under the cloud sea. Somewhere there is sun
but it does not shine here. Dark in the wood
some shrine in which veils serve the last faint god
but hardly worship. Hope's gone. Millions trod
streets hundred feet below. The bad the good
dust sea-dissolved in foam. It's here the last boat rowed
last coffin corpse. We reaped the death we owed.

A friend was talking about Keats on FB and this just came

FOR JOHN KEATS

By its persistence water carved that name
He thought would be forgotten. Drops as slow
As time when you are dying. When you know
One of the gasping breaths that seem the same

Is different because it is the last
Then you are gone and there is not one word
Left in your mouth. The bedside watcher heard
Silence and your death was in the past.

He thought his work forgotten. He was wrong.
Ironic time has used our loving tears
Refute his epitaph. So many years.
Among the English poets I'll belong

He also said. He went into the night
Not knowing which his hope his fear was right

A second

Halfcut we stagger. Blood storm in our eyes
hair slick and stinking. Something in our hand
we did not seize. The trumpet snarling of that band
raucous tears ears. Charged each of us denies

we were involved. There is no alibi
clears history. Our race our sex our class
some boy we liked who patted our firm arse
was monster later. Sometime you or I

accused and guilty. Also innocent
process our trial. All of us arraign
each other, point the finger for our pain.
We love we hate but mostly we resent

times we cannot escape because alive
some piece of work we do may yet survive.

Events dear boy. The dead rat in the roada bomb; the stup...

Events dear boy. The dead rat in the road
a bomb; the stupid random screw
derails career. Fathers a bastard too
a painter of repute. Nothing is owed

to reason. Fortune giggles turns her wheel
And yet we try we must to work it right
fire waits and after fire dead dusty night.
Sometimes our foe our own excessive zeal

justice that trips our feet. And sometimes sloth
We did not make that meeting. Or were late
Things turned to dirt on that specific date
angry or tired or something maybe both.

And yet we try. It is not through our will
Best comes. We hope we help it somehow still.

Current affairs

A CANDIDATE

Not the barbarians. At riverside
mounted with stirrups they are waiting still
patient and deadly, quite prepared to kill
but not yet bothered. When their leader died

went under grave loot with a slave or two
strangled they wept and shrugged. Perhaps their hearts
no longer in his war. They'd played their parts
later it seemed. Done what he paid them to,

Our Caesar who explained what he would need,
Absolute power to start. And all our cash
He made us slaves. Citizens felt the lash
or cross or cutting knife. Chanted his creed

It did not save us, But he'd save the town
cost us our lives, our freedome and his crown.

Third poem

FOR A STATESWOMAN

The perfect manner of the crocodile
faceted glinting eye that never blinks.
Somewhere behind the stare there's something thinks
old venom malice. Not so much a smile
though teeth are there and blooded. Maybe smirk
self-pleased and praised. And hungers not for blood
but bone crunch and she waddles in the mud
unresting. Values gold and pain and work
and armour wrapped around. In grids and swirls
hard leathered nodules nothing can bites to bleed
A tail that she can bludgeon smash at need.
And round the neck a perfect set of pearlS,
the queen of death she squelches through this bog
we made her queen believing her a log.