Scott Langston's Blog, page 6

A triolet in iambic pentameter – an apology

I’m so sorry it had to be this way

My intention was not to cause you pain

Perhaps we’ll feign again another day

I’m so sorry it had to be this way

But leaving is easier, as they say

Than being left, lost and wounded again

I’m so sorry it had to be this way

My intention was not to cause you pain

 

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A nonet – Tired of being tired

Tired of being tired

She’s tired of being tired

She doesn’t want to give in to

This core state of being

This anti-life she leads

But there’s nothing left

To keep her here

No more hope

This must

Stop

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So the prompt was “A darkest hour poem”

It doesn't get much worse than this
Unsmiling face and empty kiss
No solace here, my darkest hour
A stark moment when love turns sour

Peering into the abyss
It doesn't get much worse than this
A little death; this love was our
Brave new world, a call to power

Delicate, a brief Spring flower
Fading in my ivory tower
It doesn't get much worse than this
Ill-advised dreams fail in darkness

So here it is, my darkest hour
Nothing left now, hope's meek cower
My ending nears, an anti-bliss
It doesn't get much worse than this

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Glorious

Glorious, they said, aloud

Head held high, saluting, proud

A victory march, again

More lies broadcast by his pen

Reality disavowed

His job done, his public wowed

No silver lining, this cloud

One more End-of-Days omen

Glorious, they said

Take a look back at fields ploughed

With all that hindsight allowed

Think too what will happen

If we abstain once again

And clothe ourselves in that shroud

Glorious, they said

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Words

Words capturing feelings

Like drawing the Mona Lisa

With hopscotch chalk

On a gravel path

Whilst the model grimaces, coughs

And rearranges herself

Finally leaves, as clouds mask the sun,

Dances in the rain

And returns, soaked and uncooperative,

To scowl at the artist

And even then

Just as the outline form seems right

The rains wash eveything away

Other patterns form and reform

And the hapless artist

Can only watch

And drop is useless tools to the ground.

 

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This – from 12 November 2005

I received a link to on online diary website I had forgotten I ever joined. It has taken me back to Viet Nam…

Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ is beginning to sound  recognisable, although he probably never envisaged the  distortion from the amp or the effects of the whammy bar…. I’’m also getting to grips with a jazzy version of ‘Happy birthday’ for Munch’’s big day in only three weeks’ time.  Two already – …hard to believe.

I’m teaching full time now. So the book is grinding to a  halt. Who am I kidding? It ground …ages ago. It’’s not  really a writer’’s block – -more a writer’’s apathy. This  project is in danger of slipping out of sight and mind. I  just can’’t get to it.

Sometimes I just look at my daughter and I think, ‘’That’’s  it. I’ve  achieved. Anything else I do from here on in is a  bonus.’…’ And it’’s not a bad thought.

Thoughts on this, 12 and a half years later…

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is still on the agenda. Guitar lessons have been revived as I invested in an electric guitar for my mid-life crisis.
The book – The Year of the Monkey – never got back off the ground after a return to full time teaching. Other bits of writing, as this site is testament, do surface from time to time.
Munch is now 14, and I still look at her and think the same thing.

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Sunday

Coaxing Sunday morning flames

From a pre-laid fire

Dawn’s feeble rays

Glistening on flowing water

Cascading

Its never-ending journey

Boy and cat doze

Stirrings and purrings

Sofa-greeting the day

 

 

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Snowflakes

Snowflakes swirling at lamps

Like Vincent’s stars

Blue black skies

Replete with unimaginable uniqueness

An infinite array of different

Settles on the ground

In homogeneous perfection.

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Christmas

We’re back in Saulzais for the holidays

As another year draws to an end

Shedding my workaday malaise

We’re back in Saulzais for the holidays

Forward looking or reflecting on yesterdays

Darkness to forfend

We’re back in Saulzais for the holidays

And another year draws to an end

 

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A poem for a goddaughter

This, your first communion,

Gives no assurance of celestial reunion

It’s a yoke you choose to wear

The empty promise of unheard prayer

Its tenants and rituals offer only confusion

I’m feeling tarnished and somewhat complicit

In this indoctrination, this illicit

Eight year old’s promise of servitude

An abuse of childhood, crass and rude

This institution is humanity’s deficit

This s no tool of education

This is simple subjugation

This supplication to the divine

Subjecting the child, a crime

Colluding in foolish fabrication

Perverse, this virgin creed

A cloak for mankind’s greed

Grown of nomadic superstition

Deaf to rational petition

Not a solution, not the one we need

A god who needs your pledge of devotion

And delights in such frivolous commotion

Lifted not a finger nor cried

For all the babies which today have died

He feels not, cares not, lacks emotion

This ritual, this cultural veneer

Superstitious nonsense to mask the fear

Of no purpose beyond that which YOU create

You have no need of divinity to make you great

You life, you can learn to better steer

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