Poems, good, bad and indifferent

The promised land has lost its soul,

Forgotten now its erstwhile goal.

Negating more productive toil,

Bad husbandry has stripped the soil

Of faith from out that fertile mead

Where freedom, justice were the seed

Which selfless minds had ably sown

Since when the desert winds have blown.

Dust-devils dance in senseless rage,

Swirled round by purchased patronage.

They’ve dried the sap of upright plants:

Tall rectitude is all askance

Resolute Integrity,

Altruism, Probity

Are withered now; those soaring reeds

Replaced by sere and stunted weeds:

Misrepresent, and Avarice

Double Standards, Rampant Vice,

Dissidence, and Deep Unrest

These thrive in shallow soil the best.

Bound by thorny scrub of laws

Its shade distorted to their cause;

Reckless of their neighbours right,

They alone to spread their blight;

Sucking dry with matted roots

The nourishment from sounder shoots;

Divert the constitutional dew

From healthy plants, alas too few!

Blowsy blooms on weeds abound

Rotting when they touch the ground;

Unbeautiful, sterile, set no seed:

For beauty they have neither need

Nor feel, but underground their spread

Is stoloniferous instead.

They think that beauty can be bought.

They drop no seeds of selfless thought

Upon this graceless, arid plain,

With rocks of bribery overlain.

Yet, even in their deep unrest,

Hope is not stilled in those who’re blest

With thought for others and the cause

Of justice. Selflessly, they pause,

Await the man who not content

To reap, in one four-year event.

The total crop of shrivelled grain,

To leave the land bare once again;

Thins out the scrub, roots out the tares;

Ploughs to the groundwork of the first

Progenitors; will slake the thirst

Of rain-parched land with spirit more

Than letter basis of the law.

Will raise such healthy crops again,

Whose fruitfulness increase amain.

Will leave his heirs a prospect fair

Instil in them a studied care

To keep in perpetuity

All here content, in health, and free.

My journey has brought me to the shoreline of your mind

To show a land so fruitful and so fair that, with my own combined.

Shall compass all the world.

This shore presenting new and yet familiar scenes

As if each viewpoint shows another aspect of my own demesnes

Enhanced in beauty and in form.

Here thought matches thought, and yet together greater.

Each making each a further thought creator.

And promising a lifetime’s pleasure to explore

Beyond this shore lie mighty hinterlands.

Danger and excitement and delight are there

With misty hints of strange, exotic strands

Of mountains, forests, fields and marsh and mere.

But guardian of all this land

Stands the cold, forbidding tower

Of Independence:

Silent and sure and steadfast in its power.

Prepare for siege.

I will not say I cannot be repulsed

But for my very life, though it may take it all

I must assail this citadel of your soul

To share the land beyond

As you may mine.

By every art and artifice.

By subtlety and subterfuge.

By wearing down and watchfulness.

By thought and trust and tenderness.

Until defences broached, the walls are down.

The struggles and the tumult cease.

And I have pierced your citadel to the core:

Then we, as equals, both shall treat for peace.

Little pigs are not put off

By anything that’s in their trough

They gobble up all sorts of stuff

And never cry they’ve had enough.

Without a word of thanks to you

They’ll wander off when they are through

To where their big, fat mother sow

Wallows in her muddy slough.

The law

Is drafted more

With lawyers' fees in mind

Than for the good of humankind

Clarity is not the aim

Obfuscation is the game

Put two meanings in every line

Both are argued with logic fine

To an inconclusive end

Leave verdicts open to appeal

Lawyers then can always steal

More lucrative bites at the cherry

The deeper the truth they bury

To justify these fees they earn

They say:

Just look at all we have to learn

By way of tort and precedent

Disbursements and contingent

Malpractice, petitions and pleadings

Of negligence, lien and proceedings

Amicus curiae, certiorari

Stare decisis, a likely story

But then if the law was simpler and clearer

The truth of each case would come very much nearer

There would be no need for elaborate pretence

It would just be a case for common-sense

If you were as old as I

You'd know what joy it is to spy

The yellow stars of celandine.

They mean another spring I've seen.