Mid Life Crisis

My generation is fading
Older than history itself
Nothing to add to the drama
Dependent on others' help
Ailed by the human condition
Yet never in ruder health

Weekend

Saturday was lamentable.
Achievement lost in a frenzy of cold noise,
Tears to the fabric of a toga virilis,
Underwhelment.
Rainclouds of steel grey absorb and release,
Drenching aspirations and control.
Afar, hints of something brighter
Yearn for opportunities.

Sunday lit the hidden fire.
Under wet leaves, slept the tinder of creativity,
Novelty for which the appetite always burns.
Delicate metaphor melts upon an animated tongue,
Air itself tastes better.
Yesterday is gone with the passing clouds.

[After Just Before You Leave, Currie/Harvie 2002]

Lines on the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare

23 April 1616

Across these yester years, your words endure,
Blessed and cursed by inference,
Both mashed and savoured in the many mouths of strangers.

Twas upon your will that
Light took on a scent,
Perfumes sang,
Love's lament coloured the air.

Giveth unto yester years to come
a confidence to innovate,
sleepeth on the soft pillow of eternity.

You Can Imagine Anything

Tucked into a duvet
On the warmest summer night,
Reading books on criminals
In the dimmest bedside light,
Biting on her fingernails
Deep in concentration,
My wife is not aware of me...
But is my inspiration.

A bursary rhyme

Rent collector,
Tax inspector,
Don't believe a thing.

In the garden,
Beg your pardon,
Tie a piece of string.

So, farewell then, Victoria Wood

Let's do it,
let's do it,
do it even though it's naff.
Her jokes
of bald old blokes
and grannies always made us laugh.
So witty
yet gritty.
Dedicate a statue in the comedy city.
Let's do it,
let's do it tonight.

I can't do it,
can't do it,
can't compose a solemn ode.
Find the humour
in loss and tumour,
never let the grief take hold.
Let's be silly,
sing about a willy.
Dedicate a statue in Piccadilly.
Let's do it,
let's do it tonight.

In memoriam Victoria Wood CBE (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016)

Something to take your mind off it

Patient in the dentist's chair,
My mind goes wandering everywhere
And opens story-doors to find
Intriguing recipes behind.

Helpless in the dentist's room,
Forgotten characters resume
Their journey through my dizzy head,
Like memories of the widely-read.

Deafened by the dentist's drill,
I murmur of my own freewill
And metaphors anaesthetise
As I lie back and close my eyes.