Twenty-three years of this aera done
Time again to readjust
Pledge to dump those dodgy drifts
For candid promises, we can trust
Resolve to change is vital
Turn a fresh page in our book
Owning up to our transgressions
That we lightly overlook
Celebration plans a great escape
Leaving old cloaks reassigned
Resolve to have a HAPPY NEW YEAR
Kind-heartedly inclined
Where the time goes don’t ask me
It has nothing to do with the sun
It gets light and dark and cold and hot
But time gets a very short run
Many phases Interacting
Combine a vast palatial show
Unwary of what next to do
Even less of where to go
Don’t set your clocks to local time
Or sit there counting what has past
How many since you were not here
When you’re gone the figure’s vast
The future has no crystal ball
Because it’s made up as it goes
So just enjoy your contribution
As to why time flies nobody knows
Should anyone ever come looking
For a place where I might be
I can’t be found in friendless spaces
Being lonely isn’t me
I can be found in stacks of stanzas
I've written down more than a few
When thoughts came by insisting
Like I had nothing else to do
Lines arriving in the moment
Uninvited but persisting
Most of which I never understood
Too much entailing and consisting
So busybodied these invasions
Until that time when I could see
That there was no other reason
Just so many sides to me
I woke up feeling wakeful
Leapt straight out of bed
Not too far from midnight
With a niggle in my head
I’m told there is new meaning
Within the wakey-wakey folk
Adding credence to awareness
For the ordinary bloke
To me, it’s always been that way
Alertness on your street
A wary eye on all directions
Should the unexpected meet
Being ‘woke’ may well provoke
Much Confusion all around
Where all the angry sides confide
Bringing highest minds to ground
But most of all when bigotry
Is used to gag and choke
Snuffing out a person’s right to be
Under a ‘Law and Order’ cloak
OXFORD DICTIONARIES
ADJECTIVE (woker, wokest)
sometimes derogatory
Alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination: he's an activist and very wokewoke culture has moved into mainstream journalism my neighbourhood is a very woke area we need to stay angry, and stay woke
As an adjective woke was first recorded in African American usage in the late 19th century, meaning awake, not asleep. The contemporary meaning arose in the US during the 1960s, with the idea of being well informed and aware of what was going on in society. In the 21st century woke was popularized by association with the Black Lives Matter movement and by the lyrics of the 2008 song ‘Master Teacher’ by Erykah Badu, in which the words ‘I stay woke’ serve as a refrain.
More recently the word has been used in a more derogatory way, by people who oppose progressive reforms or feel that their advocates are unrealistic or interfering
Photo by Willian Justen de Vasconcellos on Unsplash
I found myself inside a space
Which I constructed in my mind
Full of sentimental stuff
Over time I let unwind
Many changes I concocted
Algorithms self-contained
Let them loose to be of use
In melodies unchained
Extrapolations fast and furious
Interposed my fractal dreams
Shapes and patterns overawed
Painting moving picture schemes
I looked at every possibility
Any other way as well
Reinventing me as I got bored
Eccentric visions? Who can tell
Fifteen billion years went by
Until here, I found my spot
A speck-like indiscernible
As I conclude my last full stop
Photo by Florian Pinkert on Unsplash
A subtle sense of movement
In a heavy atmosphere
A spark of rising energy
Allusive presence settled near
Engulfed in light illusions
In most unlikely apparitions
Dubious realities
Suggesting whimsical conditions
A visual game of hide-and-seek
Where all my senses heighten
The mass of mood is growing
As my limbs begin to tighten
I look about with curiosity
To see normality resume
Telling me - how when misguidedly
My senses rearranged the room
Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash
Who can prey on an Osprey
That raptor on top of the tree
Glides in on a life
With a mouth full of knife
With a map of eternity
Who can prey on an Osprey
Who screams with silent eyes
With a powerful scour
Coast in and devour
The unwary that live by their lies
Who can prey on an Osprey
With a clutch of reversible toes
The tiniest few
Of the largest can do
Like an eagle or owl might propose
Among the Traitors and Faithful
Grow the seeds of treachery
Betrayal covered in the pleadings
A hunting fest of butchery
“It isn’t me, I’m one of you”
Shouts a faithful piteously
Yet banishment is on their minds
Based on a price self-righteously
The pious trail is money bound
Intensely chasing one prize
A dog-eat-dogged killing spree
A blood sports trail of lies
The prize is big and tempting
Removing friendship from the mix
For the Faithful or the Traitors
It is a ceaseless trap of tricks
Picture by John TennielDriftling down the nature trail
Nibbling curious snacks
Fantastic dreams beyond the pale
Send you sliding off your tracks
Shrinking stretching as you wend
Distraction and mishap
Take care with routes that sweep you
Offbeat beyond your map
Of many things not understood
And masses more besides
If things are not the way, they should
Each explanation then collides
When snooping uninvited
Avoid that tedious distrait plot
Not put off by preposterous
On the other side of what?
Loosely based on Lewis Carroll's - Alice meets the caterpillar
Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash
What I learned when learning
About failings of limited ideas
How the human psyche is suspect
Concealing its deep-seated fears
No such thing as always
Happily, we’re not all the same
Not sadly stuck in a wallow
Giving credence to bigotry’s claim
Question honestly every opinion
Self-righteous has never been true
As a rule, we should always explore
Why back then is thankfully no more
Winter mornings lacking impetus
Movement sluggish slow
Icy rain relentlessly
No wish to get up and go
Inertia weighing tediously
As if trapped beneath my porch
Neither in nor out untangling
Like flat batteries in a torch
I try to peal a happy feeling
But the skin of joy extorts
The cracking of cold fingernails
As the whole shebang contorts
Oxford English Dictionary
Velleity:
Slowed down and suspended
Until a message is received
Waiting for the perfect time
When the dormant are relieved
Disguised as something other
On ice, on the back burner
A place of being in between
Like a transient sojourner
Being overlooked unnoticed
In a passive form accepted
Unlike the herd of life’s profusion
Where tracks of now are intercepted
Photo by Worachat Sodsri on Unsplash
Improvement evolving
To upgrade or enhance
Usually, it takes some time
One won’t notice in advance
Sometimes it’s not discernible
Maybe something rearranged
Can be difficult to recognise
As many things have also changed
Improvement is progression
Gaining strength in transformation
Not giving less, creating stress
Like backward states of conservation
Improvement is the way of things
Careful tests will show how true
Beware of proclamations
Declaring everything is new
Don’t look too long at the ceilings
They’ll only get in your way
For ceilings are the gates on high
Without another word to say
Ceilings trick you into seeing them
With sculpted carvings and arrays
Be mindful of how the beauty dupes
Without another word to say
Pay no mind to ceiling hindrances
They'll steal your eyes with high display
Distracting all your well-meant thoughts
Without another word to say
There’s a poem drifting in my air
It hasn’t landed yet
I’m lifting off my titfer-tat
Allowing access to my net
There’s an atmosphere implying
An urging very strong
If only I could write it down
I could push it all along
No matter how I try to group
A Prescience - not quite there
If my foresight gave me afterthought
Then riposte I would declare
Hasalsedow is lurking
On shady sides of well-lit roads
A shadow moocher with a shifty hook
Filling shadow bags with loads
Attuned to shirking silhouettes
Who writhe to keep the pace
Hasalsedows hook shadows up
To slink away without a trace
Hasalsedows at dawn break meet
On the gloomy side of light
Stacking shadow-boxes stuffed
Preventing shadows taking flight
You may think the shadow's shaky
Counted out and in a pack
But shadows slink through tiny chinks
Unrolling home, they soon get back
My made-up word 'HAS AL SEDOWS' (anagram) is Shadowless
He wants to do what he wants
She wants to do what she wants
Wants are what we want the most
When considering détente
Life is weighing up the wants
A trade of who wants what
Those who want the lion’s share
Make sure the kittens want is got
Those who see their wants supreme
Scatter little but the crumbs
Voraciously must have it all
Leave smaller needs to suck their thumbs
Remembering how good it was
To sit in comfort there at night
Peaceably beside with book
In the warm glow of the light
No meddlesome distractions
In that homely place to be
Simple words brought other worlds
To be at one and free
Striding hungry in the twisting turns
Consuming each enthralling play
The hallway clock a faint reminder
It was the closing of that day
Sitting in the now
right now
as normally I will
Big enough
for everything
Plenty much to fill
Stopping in and staying out
With everywhere to go
As long as now stays
here with me
I’ll enjoy forever’s show
As a part, I am constituent
Affecting every now
I can’t pass by
the state I’m in
My moments disallow
I wrote this down and left it there
A now thing way back then
So if you’re reading this right now
Then now is happening again
If the future hasn’t got here yet
And the past once then is now
Then all our there’s
Exist somewhere
Though I can’t tell you how
Hamish got up early
With many things to do
Cleaning teeth and washing face
He was going to the Zoo
So exciting was the thought of it
He rushed downstairs too fast
Slipping on a couple of steps
Now with one foot wrapped in cast
Six long weeks of lumpy limping
On crutches going to school
No football running jumping
No splashing in the pool
Hobbling around the garden
Talks to squirrels laughs with crows
Knowing too much rushing slows you down
Everybody knows
Photo by Akram Huseyn on Unsplash
The cat among the pigeons
Spinning wildly all confused
Spitting feathers shredding fur
Signs of giving way refused
It seems the carried messages
Were delivered by mistake
To a cat who’d ordered pizza
Who preferred an oven bake
Eventually it all calmed down
Misunderstandings in the fray
The cat accepted tolerantly
A freebie pigeon takeaway
Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash
Descended leaves of summer
Settle listless in the lurch
Ready to replenish
Since sloping of their perch
They once were life collectors
Passing sustenance all found
Until the rays and shorter days
Left them flailing on the ground
That sums up all life cycles
First, we live until we die
Doing all we can or need to do
There is no reason - don’t ask why
