Tag Archives: writing

Extreme thoughts

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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?

Dad III

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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

Unspeakable

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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

 

Hoonhead

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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

Guest Blogger – Richard W. Bray

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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

Beyond belief

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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.

Wicked

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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.

Poems that rhyme

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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.