Michael Batchelor's Blog, page 13

Art

You can’t teach art
Period
Its an instinct
A feeling
Put on paper
Or canvas
And those who try to teach it
Are trying to reduce it
To a formula
To mathematics
And that’s the best way to
To kill art
To fuss over the placement of
A semicolon
Or the angle
Of a brushstroke
Or the meaning of a
Blue door
That the writer just decided
To make blue
For no particular reason

Why?

There’s enough
Food
Water
Land
Medicine
And education
To go around
And yet there’s
A scarcity of
Food
Water
Land
Medicine
And education
And I’m afraid that
I don’t have the solution
But I suspect the problem
Is greed

Grammarly

I have this program
On my computer
Called Grammarly
And when I write a poem
It tells me the tone
It believes it to be
Whether it’s
Confident
Joyful
Optimistic
Appreciative
And other
Vague and pointless
Buzzwords
And I just find it funny
That a computer’s telling me
The feeling of a poem
And now I'm laughing
Because I've typed this in
And Grammarly has said
That this poem
Is joyful
With a big smiley face
Next to it

Well
Maybe the robots aren't
Taking over
After all

I Couldn't Think Of An Intelligent Title So Here You Go

I'll tell you what
The rich people tell you they’re depressed
But at least they
Can pay for ways to
Outrun it
At least for a while
The poor people
On the other hand
I’m afraid
Are shit out of luck

The Space Between Lightning & Thunder

They tell me
To live life to the fullest
To skydive
To bungee jump
To run through the streets of a foreign city
But when they come home
They never sit
And smell the rain
After a sunshower
Or watch the clouds change shape
Or the sun
Shining through a swaying tree
On a quiet afternoon
So while they’re running through
The streets of their life
I’m sitting here
Spacing it out
Enjoying the little winks
Of nature
Appreciating
Life just as it is
Uncomplicated
And free

Superstitions

Open an umbrella inside
Pat a black cat
Walk under a ladder
Don't knock on wood
Rip up a four-leaf clover
Break a mirror
Step on a crack
Eat spilled salt
Put old shoes on the table

And then wait
For all the bad things
To not happen

Playground

Sing while stuck in traffic
Throw the clothes into the laundry basket
Ride every floor in the lift at the office
Ice skate with the trolley at the supermarket
Jog backwards up a hill
Drink while doing your taxes
Read a book in the doctor's office
Cook without measuring ingredients

Treat work like play

Peering Over The Neighbour's Fence

Why am I sitting here
Feeling bad
About not working a job
I don’t want
I don’t want to
Fix cars
Extinguish burning buildings
Save lives
Sell houses
Teach kids
Arrest criminals

And yet here I am
Feeling bad

Maybe it’s not the job
I want
But the money

Curmudgeon

I've become
A 32-year-old curmudgeon
Sick of crowds
Loud music
Weightless talk
And until now I’ve always felt guilty
For being their idea of a party pooper
But that ends today
I love what I love
I hate what I hate
That's my right
I don't apologise

Ego Death

It’s funny
Some people walk around
Behaving as if they
Own the world
Control it
But they can’t change the tides
Paint the moon green
Chop the top off Everest
Or get a shark to sing

So, at the end of the day
Nobody owns the world
No matter how much money
Or land
Or boats
Or ego
They have

And they pay for their ego
Like the rest of us
With death