Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perspective. Show all posts

Perseid Nights

The gift of a science celestial.
It’s the atmosphere’s firework festival.
The night is a warm one, breath-catchingly clear
with the galaxy’s profile an ethereal smear.
Cricked necks and curses at errant headlights
as space detritus burns up in the heights.
But,

beware, beware
adoringly gawping,
star-strickenly fawning
ignoring the floor
and where you’re walking
‘cause you’re outside, right?
And on these humid Summer nights
your every step is beset by

slugs.
These slithy gherkins
lurking; determinedly
mucously marking their paths
Those hobos hopefully hunting
sustenance
by the garden fence
are often tragically reduced
to a smear
less ethereal and more entrails.

When we noticed all our potential victims
of heavy footed murder, we picked, toe-tipping
across the pitch-dark path, therein
turning eyes to earth and star-sights missing.

It occurred to me the verse of learning is hidden in everyday things.

For if we live for the spectacular
we risk that sickening crack you hear
when crushing Sluggy’s cousin
to oblivious oblivion.
Similarly,
if we diligently
avoid this genocidal killing spree
we miss all the good stuff.
With eyes for the earth
and cricked necks and curses at the errant soles’ hurt.

There must be equilibrium.

At the hem of the horizon
the cleaving beam of the valiant beacon,
halfway between there and back again.
This suffocating compromise blinds us
to both wonder and loss.

When faced with this decision
I find I’d rather play
a game of sluggish hopscotch
and watch meteors when I may.

I’ll give you back your even keel,
your solid, dependable lighthouse deal
I’ll reel
with my nadirs and zeniths instead.
For as long as I’m feeling

I know I’m not dead.

Garnering Respect

Iconoclasts
have come, at last
to save us from this drudgery.
This too-easy, this clear to see
hegemony.
But icons as they are say what
They want and not
the truths we seek;
brutally bleak, more earnest than just
freakishly banal.
Their hype and zeitgeist distort the swarm
redefine the form of normality.
Crudely mis-marketing misogyny and misandry
as pride.
Another cardboard enemy
a Goldstein drawn among us to deride.

A different one allows themselves to be
unformed; unsure; walks clumsily.
This unvarnished personality
without polished paid publicity is kept
as curiosity, held up as sideline eccentric
to reject
at will.

And they will.

Using nebulous concepts like
Standards, or
Breeding, or
Culture
as excuses to slaughter to the screeching of vultures
or whatever altar serves best the purpose being pushed.
And the person being crushed by such faltering disservice
does not stop being a person when you’re hungry for their blush.

Objects made of people will ultimately fail.
“Neither use nor ornament”; it’s the old wives’ sliding scale.
Old wives, old knives, old scores to settle.
Metal measures mettle but the meter always morphs.

Intangible out-fluences – diluting stimulations
Reactionary conflation of the story you would tell
Intrinsic expectation of how disgracefully you fell
from the pedestal they put you on, the one you didn’t build.
It grew beneath your feet in the instant you stood still.

Starlet in the spotlights, frozen, blind, wide-eyed.
Demanding penance for your daring to have a private life.
Sordid little details now publicly discussed.
Using terms like “unladylike” and “ashamed” and “disgust”.

Hold your head up high, dear; fear is something they’ve not earned.
Their weak attempt to dampen your flame that brightly burns
Is just a pissing contest. You’re treading on their toes.

The days of rule by bully-force are coming to a close.

The Dinner Ladies in the Chronic Canteen

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills"

Privy to knowledge that would make others squirm
We know how to be patient and when to be firm.
We sweat in the Summer and freeze in the Winter
but here is darkly comic. It's Irvine Welsh, not Pinter.
Our own peculiarities seem normal by comparison
to our regulars who haunt the place with dead eyes and abandonment.
Our unbecoming uniforms are shabby at their best
(and as there's nothing nice to say, I won't describe the rest).

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills".

For each and every script we cross, the most we can is done.
And amidst abuse, disease and death, that "thank you" is hard won.
We work to bones day in, day out and wake at four in the morning
from drug addled dreams from incidental exposure and professional doubts a-gnawing.
We face each day with optimism and a damn-strong caffiene crutch
to kick those clouding dreams away and whimsy into touch.
When an error costs a life we can't afford to drift along.
This is an "elementary service job"?
You couldn't be more wrong.

"The dinner ladies in the chronic canteen
serve up portions; big, small and green.
They dole out rations of little yellow pills
and smartie-count to pay the bills".