So, Dawkins,
BASE-jumper of rationalism,
ice-climber of atheism,
big-wave rider of naturalism,
I wonder…
do you ever
scale the heights of spontaneous belly laughs?
bungee-jump the bridges of self-deprecating chuckles?
deep-dive the murky depths of self-doubt?
or has your personal evolution
yet to take you that far?
The smell of sawdust
takes me to a time
you’d send me to pick leaves for the silkworms
after your tools turned on you
(usually the ratchet screwdriver)
my young ears safe at the mulberry tree,
brother’s mosquito gang
wheelieing up the laneway
for a smoke and 50cc tune-up
with their favourite neighbourhood oldie,
night-scented gardenia
mixed with varnish,
crickets and
Erroll Garner
illuminating the nightwaves
a long time ago
I learned to smile
and say, “No.”
when strangers ask
if I have children
gone the polite mask
as mental narratives unfold
comforting themselves
no need to be told
I’m done with the baggage of family
Two friends, two lives
one, a garden variety drama,
the other,
a monstrous horror movie
profanity
unfolding slowly
picking off joys one by one
like psychopathic forces of nature
stripping away
what should have been
for one so precious:
limbs like the wind, a planet-sized brain
that crazy infectious laughter
atrophied
by the madness of grief and disbelief
I could no longer watch,
even through my fingers
Concealed in the sameness,
its faded blue suit,
Clark Kent by day,
who cares, who cares to look?
But
out there
when darkness falls,
it’s kite flying
breathtaking riddles out of dayshadows
an infinite teasing of zetetic minds
unphysics exploding:
The Universe –
ultimate mystery man
In the end –
your Sweet Baboo:
just a 2-dimensional comic strip;
the apple of your eye:
a worm-infested core;
your shining light:
a sputtering
redshift Doppler,
fading out
in your darkest hour.
Down here in the lower Antipodes
lives a creature known as hoon,
despised by cultured societies,
it’s a dense disinhibited loon.
East, west, you’ll find it tripping out,
and moreso in the wet weather;
the inclement compels it to skid about
driving me to the end of my tether
Its odious exhaust and rubber pongs
are a regular occurrence at night
and the sonic boom of its rap-crappy songs
wakes the living and long-dead in fright
I’d love to pounce as it swerved by
and teach it a really good lesson
by assailing it with sounds of billy ray cy
and james blunt, 24/7
Its misfiring brain disregards my death stare
as it doughnuts into the the turn
it gives not a toss – why should it care?
when it’s got new rubber to burn
Are drugs to blame for this sorry tale
of a bogan so devoid of remorse?
No, it’s just an epigenetic epic fail,
unintelligent design, of course
This week, I’m delighted to feature guest blogger Richard W. Bray, author of ‘Laughter hope sock in the eye’s blog‘.
Spoils of Victory
The girl who showed (the dreary child)
With countenance both sad and mild
Was from a bloody land exiled
I’m told the nation of her birth
Is now a gory mound of earth
Warlords, weapons, wealth and worth
Unrestrained appetites will devour
And human beings will kill for power
Terror, torture, bloody towers
The weak and hateless are first to suffer
When demagogues urge us tougher
The meek will bleed; the rough get rougher
Life is fleeting, profits certain
And who is that behind the curtain?
Blackwater and Halliburton
It behooves the species to isolate
Those abject monsters who live for hate
Instead, we make them heads of state
To whom could we ever hope to atone
This fateful error bred in the bone?
Live, kill and die alone
Wash your hands, take a rest
Count the ways that you’ve been blessed
And struggle against all who would attest
That they drop bombs to make men free
While screen-addled drones like you and me
Consume the spoils of victory
© Richard W. Bray
Richard W. Bray is a writer and educator who lives in Southern California.
He has commented on several blogs under the names get real, fredo bush, aka fredo, like totally down, calpubserv, humeaudenparker, and perhaps a few monikers he has forgotten about.
You can reach him at laughterhopesockeye@yahoo.com
They bring cakes, smiling,
but there it is,
transparent in those quick glances
Like shots fired into the back of a retreating enemy
they reveal
what lies beneath –
a green glow in their empty hearts
a silent war
in this festering landscape that is suburbia
She cannot
look it in the eye
the same way again
its latest excess
an abomination
beyond excuses
Like the parent of a drug addict
she’s afraid to go downtown
lest she finds her Life
in that dust
on the streets,
lest she breathes him in.
180 degree tracking shot
an anguished cry
blue sky where the towers were
You believe in God: I don’t.
You believe the world will end; it won’t.
You think natural disasters a biblical sign
of prophecies realised; it’s all in your mind
Armageddon is imminent! Just another illusion
of humankind’s profligate self-delusion
All this stuff leaves me mourning inside
for a mother lost, and a brain unwired.
And here we still are some decades on
the world’s still here, the sun’s still warm
we’ve agreed to disagree, (well, not you, but me)
on matters of religion and philosophy
as the years flew past my realisation grew
your heart is gold and like the adult me, you
just needed to find deeper meaning to life
than the earthly tedium of being mother and wife
so what does it matter to whom you pray
as long as it helps you survive the day.
Cheeky!
Stripping off in my kitchen
bendy legs
like salsa girls in the sun
ignoring
colourful skirts
blown up in the wind,
cheerful,
having fun
at times
we’re like babes
in the woods
but out in a boat
tethered together
barely afloat
hurricane-flayed sea
our dreams overboard
I cling to you and you to me
but calm will come
we’ll get our wish
and sunken treasures
amongst starfish
How witchlike a creature can I be
when the moth at a swipe digs its claws into me
and the blood in my veins cascades to the ground
and the thoughts in my head make no audible sound.
How witchlike a creature do I feel
when a table for two is a cannibals’ meal
and the eggs in the pantry go rotten inside
and the cow in the meadow eats its own hide.
How witchlike a creature do I seem
when the nightmare you chase is my sacred dream
when the pain in your heart is the pleasure in mine
when the warmth that you drink is a poisonous wine.
Everything is not what it seems
The smile on my face is the end to a means.
That man
hole-shoed, snot-coated
ferreting there
milk-eyed, maggott-bloated
whose upturned palms
putrid-toothed, hopeless-hearted
you gave no quarter
vomit-grimaced, joy-departed
because “he’ll just blow it on meths” –
That man
used to run the World Bank.
Brain of Einstein, blood of Kant
boil together, step on ant
mouth of Bertrand, eye of Plato
mix as if mash potato
add a little reindeer fur
create a new philosopher.
I love my two grown nieces,
my man is just divine,
I like prose poetry pieces
but moreso, poems that rhyme.
I love to eat red meat
while quaffing fine red wine,
dark chocolate is a treat
but not like poems that rhyme.
I like to swim butt-nude
at night in summertime;
it elevates my mood
but so do poems that rhyme.
I’ve slept out in the Sinai
dived there in summertime
but nothing could be finer
than dreams of poems that rhyme
I like to read Steve Pinker,
Mark Baker is sublime,
I like a critical thinker
but mostly, poems that rhyme.
I know Lew Carroll’s poems by rote,
Will Shake’s a fave of mine,
ee cummings get my vote,
‘cos he wrote poems that rhyme.
We descend
from the incinerating heat above
through the cool water,
speckled with sunlight,
and then drift
weighted, but weightless
in the silence…
inhale…exhale…inhale…exhale…
Sculptures of ancient rock conceal
and reveal
an extraordinary profusion of life—
I move closer…a pair of feelers
shrinks back into a dark crevice,
a clownfish nibbles
on a strand of my sunlit hair, the shadow
of a stingray passing overhead…
inhale…exhale…
Suspended in a living art gallery
of creatures, bizarre and magical,
we breathe in a vaudevillean kaleidoscope
of parrotfish, chocolate dips,
Picasso triggerfish, coral trout, pineapple fish,
swarming shoals of baitfish—the exhibition is endless…
inhale….exhale…inhale…exhale…
Life’s tensions
are expelled through the bubbles
of the deep,
slow
pace of breathing;
my senses are heightened,
but I am completely
calm.
Above the brain
coral, a horseshoe leatherjacket
on its side in a cleaning station, enjoys the nibbling
of the cleaner wrasse
in its mouth and gills…
inhale…exhale…
A cuttlefish sashays past,
eyeing me coyly,
displaying its fabulous
Mardi gras costume as I wave
my hand in its direction.
A saucy, painted red-lipped
morwong flicks past,
while a dugong smilingly lopes along—
an underwater burlesque
and Carnivale all rolled into one.
I marvel
at the phantasmagoria of the deep…
inhale…exhale…
The enormous,
gregarious Maori wrasse engages,
while the Neanderthal of the sea—
the prehistoric stonefish—sits unseen
and deadly on the bottom,
camouflaged as a rock.
The dark side is right here—
Look but don’t touch!
Don’t peer too closely into the nooks and crannies!
Don’t dive too long or stay too deep!
And always there,
on the fringes
of my consciousness, lurk
the sharks. Thrilling!
Inhale, exhale,
perhaps a little faster.
Low on air,
time to go, but we will be back
to explore the endless
beauty
and search for the elusive
weedy sea dragon.
Look up,
inhale
exhale
inhale,
and exhale,
surface slowly…
from my favourite place.
beeblu blog 
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