Though I am fond of
An eponymous song by the Rolling Stones
I have a lifelong dislike of dead flowers
Their brittle stems a stiff reminder
That everything we look upon
Is doomed
Month: October 2015
Indiscriminate Despair
A million subtle put-downs
In a thousand different ways
A wasted opportunity
Career path gone astray
A couple of promotions too
That went to someone else
With not as much experience
Nor vision, knowledge, skills
Adjusting one’s ambition
‘Til it fits within the norm
A lukewarm lover’s mission
To accept what still goes on
We breed another row
Of middle-rankers in our turn
Forgetting what we wanted
Was the change we couldn’t earn
Comparabolic Religion
Under the same Abrahamic rite
Why is it one tribe must shoulder blame
For all the ills our tongues in spite
May mutter, hiss, jibe, joke, proclaim
Can all those bearing guiding star
And shunned as less than fully hale
In truth be held as such they are
Accountable by any scale
From other creeds and careful groups
And once again, ill fated, mean
Cast out as ‘other’… Story loops
Unfit to mingle, foul, unclean
How are we in point of fact
In any way so different
When we all, with lesser tact
Live and die with base intent
Dogma and self-interest
Returning fellows to their clay
Here with darkness in our breast
We’ll charge along this alleyway
Now ignorance and cruelty
False, Godless words have spat to shine
We in our turn may twist and see
Of those whose creed does not match mine
Our own ideals overturned
With harsh contempt, disowned, decried
And know ourselves as those who earned
The scaffold built when first we lied
And chose to follow to this end
The unrefined, archaic lore
Hanging decisions on the bend
Of what worked once some years before
To weigh as wanting one who had
An equal claim to all the Earth
As we ourselves who in our greed
Conspired to steal more than our worth
Ah, Palmyra
We care more for ancient ruins
And destruction wrought on tombs
By whatever means they may
Than for lives that end today
While the blood and flesh and bone
Leaving everything they own
To escape the latest purge
Travel desert, sea and gorge
Those who voyage only land
On their uppers, close at hand
To the help they sorely need
Yet the politicians plead
Not to have to break their word
To the xenophobic horde
Those whose votes they barely won
From the hardened right, anon
Thus with bottle-necks and fence
We corral and harry hence
Workers that we sure could use
Grateful, welcome, unabused
Skilled and keen to integrate
To prop up our ageing State
In permissive company
Knowing just who let them be
As the fight takes to the skies
And the waves fill up with lies
We would throw away resource
Inconvenient and coarse
With no tally of the cost
Nor of what support is lost
Though our leaders might feel tall
While our borders stand, we fall
Katherine Shirley 