K. Morris's Blog, page 569

A Latter Day Dorian Gray

I am sick of plastic grins
And half-hidden sins,
And those who wink
And think
I do not see
What they see
In me.

Shall I spend my day
(Like Dorian Gray)
Gazing at a portrait
I hate,
Because it ages not,
While I lose the plot
And myself enfold
In arms that are loathe to hold?

In the attic of my mind
I find
Skeletons that given half a chance,
Would dance in the bright day
And give the game away.

It is plain to see
That it is me
Who holds the attic’s key
(Though I can not wield the knife
That...

The Great Wall of China

Those who control
And patrol
Are accepted
(not rejected),
For they prevent disorder
By protecting the cyber border.

Who needs Mill
When you can shop
As you will.
And the chop does fall
On those who look beyond the Chinese wall.

—

On BBC Radio 4’s “The World Tonight”, which was broadcast on Thursday 3 August, an interviewer asked a number of Chinese people what they thought of their country’s heavily restricted internet. (In China Twitter, Facebook and Google are banned and government appro...

Reading for All

Being blind and unable to read print, I find the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech facility a huge boon. For anyone who is unaware of the text to speech facility, when activated, it reads aloud books where the author/publisher has enabled speech. While the reading voice is robotic, it has improved over the years and (in my experience) once the reader becomes lost in a good book, it is easy to forget that a dalek is doing the reading!
The majority of books in the Amazon Kindle store have text to...

Whispering

The breeze
Whispering in the trees
Does please me so,
But when people whisper on the train,
I am driven half insane,
For I wish to know
What makes them whisper so …!

There Was A Young Man Named Daniel

There was a young man named Daniel
Who kept a springer spaniel.
When it grew dark
He would bark
In time with his springer spaniel

My School Days

My thanks to Sally Cronin for publishing my guest post,, “My School days”, in which I describe my time at the Royal School for the Blind (in Wavertree) and the period during which I attended Saint Vincent’s School for the Blind (in West Derby). Both schools are located in the city of my birth, Liverpool. For my guest post please visit, https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/smorgasbord-guest-post-my-school-days-by-poet-and-author-kevin-morris/.
To find out about Saint Vincent’...

Pawn

There is no need for the confessional
For she is not a professional
And ‘tis such a little thing
To pawn one’s ring,
And you can, I am told
Buy back gold,
But what of other things?

The Timeless Power of Public Clocks

Ever since I can remember, clocks have held a fascination for me. As a child I would sit entranced listening to the ticking of a wall mounted or grandfather clock, The hypnotic tick tock combined with the movement of the pendulum transporting me to another world.

During my career I have worked in Westminster, and when the office windows where open, and the wind was in the right direction, the chimes of Big Ben reached my ears, . I feel lucky to have heard this historic timepiece, not merely o...

Dice

When playing Russian Roulette
There can be no denial
That a man may be lucky for a while,
And yet
As the chamber spins
His sins …
Skins against skins.

One may throw the dice
More than thrice
And avoid the shot.
On evenings hot
When the wine flows
Temptation grows
And only a strong man can resist
Perfume on a girl’s wrist.

There Was A Young Lady Named Goose

There was a young lady named Goose
Who’s morals where rather loose.
It was her delight
Of a summer’s night
To tease the bishop, who was somewhat obtuse …