0144 Clickety
Clickety.
The old-fashioned slide machine you thought that
you'd abandoned long ago
suddenly goes clickety out of nowhere, and throws up
an image you didn't particularly want
to remember. And you wonder why
it's still there, and why now, and why then?
I was cast as the visiting celeb in Midsville, when
all I wanted was to drink it all in
without being anything except
a privileged observer, fly on the wall, tourist with a visa. No dice. So
I had to do the things that go with a paid ticket which
they don't tell you with the invite -
I had to meet the local press and TV. That was
part of the deal. I felt that
the egos, maybe even careers of others
depended on my unscripted performance. Who was
this stranger in the town? Who was I, for that matter?
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0009 God's New Year Hangover
I’m wondering –
with, I trust, due circumspection
with respect to these holy, mighty matters
yet with the open mind
which He has risked mankind and me with,
whether He keeps a tally
or even an annual journal
of mankind’s cavortings around God’s Christmas…
and how mankind approaches
God’s seasoned, ordained New Year,
His holy, spirited Hogmanay.
Does He receive intelligence,
flights of angels pushing their way -
or unaffected, for who knows? –
through cyberspace, the ether, as it was
and is and ever shall be,
bringing news of how the Good News
went down this year;
the statistics, perhaps, of how many
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0024 There is here; outside, inside
My wrist rests on the desk’s raised edge;
fingers splayed on black and silver ‘mouse’ –
(did anyone tell those focussed scurriers underfoot,
they had a new relation?)
And the whole world of mind
from whatever there may be to know
of the divine and universal things,
law behind laws, love beyond loves
awaits, out there, awaits, in here
to meet these touching fingers, hesitating on the mouse
as if holding some real, passive pet
that yearns to know the world…
I still can taste the breakfast marmalade,
sweet but sharp; it is enough;
but in a few hours’ time
the whole world will be tempting me with taste.
Warm in a hoodie; the radiators have woken with a faint vibration
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Ssshhh...keep This Quiet.ish...
I shouldn’t really be telling you this
since it was told me by a brother Freemason;
but hey! what’s the point of a secret
if you can’t tell it to anyone,
or write a best-seller about it? …
it seems, this guy says,
that the descendents of Jesus and Mary Mag
who are now spread over all the world
though no-one knows until we do their DNA
(maybe that tomb will yield it? we live
in exciting times) –
They converted to Muslims, since
that was the ultimate disguise;
and also they could move around more freely
in the Middle East, OK?
They were the founders of the Hashishim,
the secret society of assassins
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Epiphany
January 6 is coming up –
end of the ‘twelve days of Christmas’:
scrape up the Christmas cards –careful
to note addresses where they’ve changed, and
the people who sent to you this year, when
you didn’t send to them..
out with the tree before
it sheds any more needles,
box the decorations into the loft;
yet not an end, but a beginning,
as Eliot might have put it; a cold coming they’re having of it;
they’re still some days away,
the way harsh; the land, strange;
the camels finding harder tread than sand..
for devotees and followers in their footsteps
we’re curiously incurious about that myth
we love to love – is it because
we fear to look too close?
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Being human has its side effects (read the small print)
Where are the great myths of our age –
hiding truth within their all too human stories?
In their absence, scientific research
has wondrous tales yet to tell…
Jon, the renowned professor of psychology
and not averse to self-examination and experiment,
took Paxil – Prozac’s cousin – for eight
adventurous weeks.
In week five – ‘the world changed’…
his heavy work load, his insecurities
as an untenured professor,
vanished like magic; changes which he’d wished
to make for himself for years,
happened overnight – he loosened up,
he lightened up, he accepted his mistakes
and did not dwell on them –
who would not want to be a Prof like he?
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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That poem
It was a day much like any other.
Too many letters to open right now;
The phone pipped and bleeped and hissed
as it recorded too many requests
to read here, go there, answer these questions,
be interviewed;
why did you write this poem,
did you mean – ten lines
of prosaic speculation follow, about some mere
two words; wouldn’t this poem
be better without the last two lines?
please read my poems and
return the manuscript with
your extensive comments…
(the invisible PS reads ‘I’m just
as good as you, and younger, and, moreover,
more in touch’…)
the occasional face peering
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0006 Saraswati
The name means
wisdom. Perhaps
we should leave it there. For
the human mind loves
to bring the heavenly
down to earth; then bury it:
maybe not wisdom, did they say –
who worships wisdom in these foolish days?
Maybe a goddess then?
We’ll name our greatest river
after her; that will help men
to remember wisdom
which flows from heaven
to the tops of the unreachable snowed
Himalayas, flows down and nourishes
the earth that nourishes the seeds
that yield the plants
that bring life to men
who meet together on her banks
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0282 A Necessary Art
There's art history, and there's the history of art.
Art history, you can learn anywhere these days;
the history of art's some other, thrilling thing, a life-blood
pumping its heart intensely as if it were a matter
which it is of course, of life and death..
and who will tell you, except those who lived it through,
who will tell you - except perhaps old men;
while the students yawn, stop taking notes,
and wonder if the chick back there
is up for it?
Who will tell you that the truth is savage,
and the world hard earned,
and art, painting, poetry,
a matter of life and death?
Who will tell you, for instance, how after 1945,
when war ended, and 'peace'
was the threat of nuclear annihilation,
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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A little grammar is most becoming, it becomes a man...
And in case no-one mentioned this to you
on those hot summer afternoons when
you could hear the sound of bat on ball, or
ball on racquet, or foot on football, or
just people enjoying themselves out there
beyond the half-open classroom window –
a little bit of grammar can open your eyes,
open your mind, make you curious…
take for example the word ‘become’..
many centuries ago the ancient Brits
got it from some ‘Germanic’ tribe,
and it meant, to come to a place,
be somewhere, go somewhere…
and later it acquired the sense of something
developing into something else, and
being recognised as that –
‘she’s become a real beauty, hasn’t she? ’
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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