The Epoch of Invincible Ignorance

 
(Not an opinion)
 
We live in the Cretinous Period.
Everyone’s allowed their say. The poor sod
who puts his expert nose to the grindstone
is obliged to overlook the known.
The right to have an opinion is God.
 
Divine is the tweet, the blog. So false news
is the religion that the cretins chose.
 
Sovereign Rain
 
God save our ungracious king
and all his lackey’s bling-bling.
For years I paid the point two
percent in tax that was due
for the upkeep of a Court
of jet-set scroungers. Abort
the royal babies, I scream.
The regal seal now amounts
to nothing save to stamp pounds
and save them from the tax slate.
 
So here comes Charles the Late.
God’s gift, but not for the poor
who can’t afford winter fuel.
The tax-payers are his Fool.
Thus, his billions* are secure
despite the kingdom’s decline
from a gold to a bomb mine.
Keep it in the family.
is the sovereign remedy.
As subjects swear to obey
the law of libel. Today
I hope it rains at a lick
leaflets, Up the Republic.
 
 * 24.5 billion in properties
(investments: undeclared).
   
The Privatisation of Hope

‘’It doesn’t seem right for me’’.
So, selfishness is moral.
 Everybody for themselves. All
those who haven’t a choice be
happy to know you are free
to wait until the right thing
comes along. Hope is the king.
 
Having no choice is no laugh.
You leave it to those who have.
Hope’s strategy is waiting
for what (mis)fortune may bring.
At best it will be nothing.
At worst it comes with a fee
from the reigning-monopoly.    
 
Big business is a choice
for the investors, it’s true.
But for the poor clients what’s new
arrives like a Santa Claus
who chooses products for you
even though you have to buy
a new sock to fit it. See,
 
what you get is wickedly
wrapped. And the stock choosers lie
is that it’s what you want.
And since there is no exchange
for dissatisfaction, you’ve got
what’s said to be top of the range
for a need that you have not. 
 
Poly Minuses
 
We love animals
but eat them.
We want to save the planet
but still guzzle petrol and gas.
We want to save energy
but the bike is still in the garage.
We love one another.
Don’t make me laugh.
 
Poly Pluses
 
People laugh a lot
But life is not a joke.
We, the misbegotten,
must lighten the yoke. 
 
Buzz 2023
 
Two thousand and twenty-three
is the year to give support*
to the Irish honey-bee.
Multinationals all import
the stingless battery sort,
mass-producing the prodhuit.
 
Give praise to the monks who thought
of hiving swarms in a tree
to make the combs sinners bought
by entering the monastery
and saved their souls. Now we live
only to save our money
 
Forced honey sticks to the sieve.
Buzz off refug(b)ees. You’re glue.
The hedgerows need our native
bee to swarm on flowers and give  
the flow of nectar its due
with green, white and yellow hue.   
 
*Senate Protection Bill due to go to parliament
 
The Red-Ink Plant
 
The mountain plant in my garden.
has berries for two turtle-doves.
And they don’t seem to have enough,
picking away, not seeing I’m
doodling notes, sitting in the shade,
improvising a serenade.
 
Replete, two settle at my feet,
their wings folded, so I can rhyme
an ode to love-birds, so discreet
their billing and coo are only
for me. I rock my chair in time
to the chortle, a chaperon.
 
But this loving doesn’t last for three,
and with a flap they’re off, flying
to nestle in the twin branch throne
of a royal magnolia tree.
Ah! the desolation is mine.
So I start on a threnody.
 
Ten Years without Rain

Survival in the Sertao, North-East Brazil
 
Desert plants
hold the water
they generate.
But do not touch
the cactus flower. 
Your blood will
poison the source.
 
Hope springs from
the spindly legs
of a gaunt mule
harrowing boulders
retaining old rain.
The waters
will break one day,
will break one day.
 
Grace is to cross
the dust on your brow
with a drop of sweat.
Your thumbprint
is the fossil
of rain-makers
past and the tap
to come. 
 
A furnace roars
in the mountain
giving birth
to its own body,
ashes
to ashes. Winds
will clear the air.
 
Distance
yourself from clouds,
and they will
rain blue gold
one day when you
have forgotten
about it.
 
Meanwhile,
the shared moment
is a dry matter,
the weeping
of stars.
Tears don’t come easily
in a drought
 
A Rotten World’s Redemption    
 
I wear a T-shirt with a banana logo,
and start my day with a baked banana on toast.
I won the Basho banana for my poesy.
And now live in a port town for banana boats.
 
O bananas are the bees-knees or is it wasps?
 
While bananas in their skins are always perfect,
when peeled and left to breathe their white flesh blackens.
I keep it’s coat on, though it looks like bilic jaundice,
until ripe to be eaten by a hungry child.
 
O bananas are the bees-knees or is it wasps?
 
Deformed bananas thrown into the port dustbins
are crawling with stowaways on the banana boats,
red scorpions from overseas hibernate in them
and increase and multiple in the rubbish dump.
 
O bananas are the bees-knees or is it wasps?
 
Out of the soft underbelly of bananas
Caterpillar-like grub parade, rotten to the core,
to fester in the detritus of live vermin.
Bumbles in swarming clouds descend like lotus
 
O bananas are the bees-knees or is it wasps?
 
Feed on the rot, either to make stings or honey
nobody knows for nature is not a pure science.
Yellow is yellow with stripes of black to cross it.
Beware, the naked eye could be stuck blind or stung.
 
 
O bananas are the bees-knees or is it wasps?