Conkers.
Brown brilliance
Tree gems hidden in green.
Frozen tears of a woody god
Falling.
Conkers.
Brown brilliance
Tree gems hidden in green.
Frozen tears of a woody god
Falling.
It’s the season
To make William the Conker jokes.
Laughing until we are hoarse.
That old chestnut.
Eric Peter Hughes
With a gentle laugh he did enthuse
His sister, nephew, nieces, Mum
After all, he was brother, uncle, son.
He was half a biker, hippie, smoker
Disappearer, loner.
And half a carer, porter, nurse.
For years his dog came first.
What if Uncle Peter
Had not been bullied in teenage years?
Had had more encouraging peers?
What if his creative, artistic bent
Had been nurtured to fulfillment?
Talents left to grow wild
From this once talkative and contented child
It could have been so different.
Yet remember not that other half.
Remember instead the gentle laugh,
The calming manner, twinkling eye,
The way he spoke to you and I,
The loyal care he gave his Mum.
This uncle, brother, son.
Cinquain:
Elegant words.
Poetic perfection
Five lines, twenty two syllables
Of verse.
Sitting in a meeting
Welsh bloke talking
Time is fleeting
Lilting, yawning,
Been going on since early morning.
Weary, dreary.
Yet far from here
In other places
Boss is stressing
Stamps and paces
Time is fleeting
Heart stops beating
Ambulancing
Blue lights dancing
Not so drear, shouts of “Clear!”
Panic, yelling, screaming, bleating
Time is fleeting
And in the meeting
Someone complains about the heating
Heavy eyes and tepid tempers
Dormant egos attempt a doze
Hollow people, stuck in treacle
Talked out, ear drought
Famine fish in desert
(trout)
Brains have taken such a beating.
Time is fleeting
In the lowest, darkest room
Grey-tiled, antiseptic tomb:
Sticky silence lost.
No beating on the granite bed
No heating here, just cold instead
No meeting for the gathered dead
Time has fled.
A song I wrote inspired by the events described in the book of Joshua just before the destruction of Jericho. I was especially intrigued by the effect that Gibeath Haaraloth would have had on a fighting force made entirely of men. The tune idea came from Talking Dust Bowl Blues by Woody Guthrie.
Joshua had been around,
Scouting out a foreign land,
Standing there right at Moses’ side.
He’d walked the walked for forty years,
Laughed the laughs and cried the tears.
Ready to be the leader and the guide.
And God said:
Be courageous and be strong
Don’t be terrified.
You’re going to have to lead them in this land
So speak the law and do not turn aside.
They cross the Jordan at first light.
The water piled up right out of sight.
Walked across completely on dry ground.
Some kings came up to fight a bit,
But when they heard ’bout what God did,
They shrank away without a sound.
And God said:
Be courageous and be strong.
You have to be circumcised.
Although your enemies are at hand,
Go cut your foreskins off with flint knives.
Feeling sore for a day or so,
They marched on up to Jericho:
It’s walls so thick: it would be a rout.
But God told them to get quiet,
March with trumpets and the ark,
On the seventh day everybody shout.
They were courageous and so strong.
They followed their instructions.
Jericho’s walls came tumbling down
And they completed it’s destruction.
I feel sorry for E
It’s such a loner
Always on the edge of a word.
Never fully included.
It used to be magic
But now it’s been relegated.
To a split digraph.
Less wizard, more mathematical.
Just a sub-section of a more important grouping.
An operator that makes a long vowel sound.
Only to be dropped
When a suffix is found.
E is not very musical.
You don’t find it much in wind or brass
Nor in the rhythm section of the band.
And in the key of E, there are too many sharps.
Unless you are a guitarist.
As for vocals, well…
If I sing a song, a song was sung.
So I know I sang a song.
All the other vowels have a go on the mic.
But not E.
Unless it’s karaoke.
All the E words are going.
Is being short for ‘electronic’ enough,
When email becomes Gmail
and Ebook becomes iBook?
And in teaching, even ‘Excellent’
(which is full of Es)
has been replaced by Outstanding.
I guess some things have their time
And then diminish…
They have a good run,
But then they finish.
It seems unfair to me:
It’s not nice to see
Like a slowly withering tree
Or a graze on the knee.
I say don’t mistreat the E
It is the letters’ honey bee
So pay the E its fee
And let the E be free.
You be my razor
I’ll be your face
You be my starting gun
I’ll be your race.
I’ll give you a distance
But my wrinkles may trouble
You can set me going
And shave off my stubble.
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