The risen light at Easington
Luminous clouds reveal
To actuate the distillate
Spinning through a crystal wheel
Setting out the day-lines
In multi-coloured points
To realise through other eyes
How flaring light anoints
Unshackled by the open mind
Tolerant of transition
To find a deeper universe
Through unbiassed exposition
It’s a cool 1640 night in Leiden, Netherlands, and French philosopher René Descartes picks up his pen… “I am here quite alone,” he writes, “and at last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.”
Epistemaphobia
Rationality
When the frost comes uninvited
To lay its cloak of bitter chills
I dream of fresh spring mornings
And returning summer thrills
Watch out for the flimflam
And all that drivel stuff
Purveyed by blabber stabbers
Who dribbles on with guff
Beware of jargon gibberish
Who flavours tripe with bunkum
The mumbo-jumbo jargonoughts
Who seeks a numb nut to succumb
Learn to be a fervent questioner
Treat unproven facts as claims
Malarkey often tiptoes in
Leaving truth rinsed out in drains
If you’re looking for reality
You might only find your own
For at the quantum level
It is situation prone
Left alone and not observed
Found wherever it may be
Fulfilling any scrutiny
Indeterminate and free
Vibrating in a movement mass
Of sound cooperation
Subjected to the laws of use
In shared cohesive combination
Why am I here I ask myself
On this crazy expedition
As if expecting clarification
Or at best a definition
Seeing how the large and small
Work their lives in quiet despair
They are there and I am here
A game of hide and seek aware
Many lives surround me
With many things to do
By accident, I stumbled in
But found reality hard to chew
On a seaside Sunday morning
In a prism of delight
Orange segments capturing
The arrival of the light
A sea breeze gusted gently
Rustles swaying to a beat
Sifting tiny granules in the sand
Too low to keep the heat
A melody of seagull chants
Sending messages below
All-pervading note like bells
To a laidback saltbush show
The grown-up conversation
Is no high point of convention
High minded haughty lordliness
Self-righteous intervention
The grown-up conversation
Whatever that may mean
Has more to do with badgering
With very little in between
The grown-up conversation
"Where all agree with me"
Telling jokes to friendly blokes
Over sandwiches and tea
The grown-up conversation
Let’s call a spade a spade
A vain attempt to call the shots
And squash the underpaid
Off you go as best you can
To get the Lion’s share
Show how well-prepared you are
To not become the turn-up spare
Second fiddles don’t do solos
Yet every player has esteem
A string quartet with less than four
Is one short of supreme
The status of the one on high
Demands the centre stage
Dressed excessively vainglorious
Surrounded by the minor wage
The rule of primo genitor
Is a first come well deserved
Bestowed in most important mode
In caricature best parts preserved
In the United Kingdom, we are subjects of a King who has no power to do anything for us yet we pay the monarchy great wealth.
His Dad was pure establishment
An established kind of guy
A cornerstone substantial
Who never asked the question why
He got along with his position
As expected, he would say
Doing what he could for money
Or as much as they would pay
Not at all a hurly-burly sort
Back office in the main
Which he held intact with staples
In a paperclip domain
Could push his pen most rapidly
Never needing to erase
Gave full commitment to his lunch
And teatime matinees
In writing out what just popped by
In early twenty, twenty-three
I found my page suspiciously
Had turned its back on me
Like waterfalls, the words spilt out
The page soaked wet with meaning
In a code of blurs and smudges
Shades and patterns interweaving
What I saw most pleasantly
Shapes and outlines formed arrays
Imprints full of expectations
Predicting better-weather days
— JOHN STEINBECK
Splashing in a word pool
Twisted meanings in a row
Trying hard to get direction
In a churning mixed-up flow
Confounded by the laughable
Discovered nowhere near a joke
Eavesdropping whispered voices
Doubting those who loudly spoke
In the hollow hallway dark
Where flaming torches blinked
As icy stroking fingers
Scratched-out messages indistinct
