Tag: poetry

Who once was thin
And then was fat
And now is Mr Thinnegen,

Harangued by news-hounds
At his door,
Meringued by brats at
Pleasure grounds,
Now is asked
With almost awe,

“Oh, tell us, sir, your greatest feat,
This fat to airy thinness beat …
Was it something cancerous?
Have devils come to dance with us?
Or was it just an act of will
Which disappeared your grocery bill?”

Though constantly in quite deep thought
On questions about Is and Ought,
And often neverendingly distressed
For creases that are not quite pressed,
The asking makes him gird his loins
And wonder how its clauses joined.

“Oh, well, you see,
I’m not as big
As I have been
Since all things that
Are very fat
Are only fat
When they’re like that.”

Perverse and strange, but palpable,
The reason seems quite wonderful,
And all who were impressed by that
Seek his views on other facts.

“Oh, tell us, sir, how has it been
We all eat strawberries red, not green?”
Or, “When will those who know have told us
Who’s to blame and on whose shoulders
Rests the weight of all the world? And,
Does he wear his shirt-sleeves curled?”

Throwing off the answers quickly,
Growing thin with each more sickly,
He answers questions everywhen
And how or where he comes on them.

He says:
“I am he who once was fat,
Who knew the truth of every fact.
I am he who now is thin,
Who knows the waste of questioning.
And I am he who’s at his end
To end all Ends, where questions
Have no fat to spend, where bodies
Made of skin and bone
Lie silent in the sick folks’ home,
And all that’s lovely, wise, and true,
Sips tea and wastes the afternoons.”

How do we sleep while our beds are burning?— Midnight Oil

This particular white-fella, rather podgy,
over-employed, committed unionist
and Nikon-owner, gets to a time of life
(not even thirty) thinking about superannuation
and which plan is best for safe retirement.

I cringe through the whole year,
complain quietly of terrible excess
in times restraint is hard to bear, and
manage some murmurings about “the Treaty”
— but that’s all. So, how do I sleep?

This far, I must admit, it’s been easy:
buffered by green suburbs, relative riches
and silence, I could not fail in ignorance.
Some excel in it, are proud to destroy,
build on the ruins, and have no fear to rest with bones.

I have slept by forgetting.
Without pills or drugs, dope or whiskey, to sleep
it is enough simply not to think,
as though a thought or word
would make the whole house burn.

Showing my palm to the watchmaker’s tongue
He licks the time-line right down
The crease of my present senses and

The clock stops just there.

Now, I take or leave god
Depending on the weather
And, like most of us,
Consume astrology in small doses
To guess at twists of plot in life.
As for clocks, there’s no mystery,
They are purely functional:
We tell them what to mean.

Like nothing else, these sudden stillnesses of love
Make me wonder,

Not what spring keeps the galaxy spinning,

Rather, how
In my watchmaker’s hands time dies,
How my stupid body lives!

The beds in this ward are for certain death,
for diseases even dear relatives fear and hate.
There are new lovers, though, as well as old,
who make a plan for paradise in this hell.
          When sun fell on a light sheet covering
one man’s ribs, where carers look
for signs of life, small movement, someone
had the idea for a garden.
                    Friends brought small bushes
that will be always green, signifying faith, endurance,
bulbs for sudden happiness, stones and pebbles,
showing some things never change.
          They gather there to make a prayer
of simple actions. Some to the God outsiders say
forsakes them, some to the hope small happiness
will last, they sing in whispers, put wishes to the edge
of lips, where a wind takes their words away.