0293 Black, white, gray, color
Black and white are the magic of the drama
in the world of film;
gray, the poetry –
silver-gray of Paris; sunshine gray;
dark tragic gray of lovers’ partings
on the symbolic bridge, while the Seine
flows inexorably, darkly past like life and love;
who needs Casablanca in full color?
But there’s another gray –
the gray of exhaustion.
In 1945, a trip to London was a trip
to another race, of gray to unhealthy white
exhausted survivors, of the bombs
and doodlebugs and rockets,
of dead husbands, wives, sons or daughters,
broken marriages; bomb-shelter life drained of all emotion,
and almost too tired to welcome peace;
gray as the soot-encrusted buildings,
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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D e a t h
Well we don’t know do we?
You asked me to write something
about it and I said,
I have nothing to say…
maybe that’s a better place to start.
So should we keep a curtained silence
about it? Stuff cottonwool in that wound
that never quite heals, once made?
Or run down the street, knocking bang bang at all the doors,
shouting tell me about death… and
before that stranger knocks at your own door
and the face is strangely familiar, as if
you’ve been expecting someone, but
weren’t sure what they’d look like…
One thing is certain, in its breezy way:
you’ll be the one who knows least about it
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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that damn Cupid
...who or which is the main topic of this site
in any season, let alone this one in the Northern hemisphere,
as the hormones stir a young man's fancy
and an old man's mind...
It's difficult I find, being a poet, and a scientist by training -
you want finality in the experimental results
but you love the constant mystery and beauty of the world,
never quite reached, never quite expressed.
Take this Cupid. Not the actual one,
but the head of Eros, Venus' very active young assistant
obviously under general orders
but with a very free remit under his blindfold -
or so it seems to us who don't get to see
the universal script if such there be.
He's one of the few 'archaic' treasures of Greek art
neatly plundered for the British Museum
in circumstances not to be enquired into -
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Love and Poetry; Poetry and Love
and right now, I’m spending most of my time
on the two matters of which I seem to know the least –
love; and poetry.
maybe it’s good I feel like this; after all,
they’re two pretty big things in their way;
and if it’s frustrating that
I don’t seem to get anywhere,
or understand any more,
maybe that’s good too since
it keeps me at it
and out of harm’s way
as they say
let’s take poetry first – that’s
relatively straightforward:
one day I love the freedom
of the current situation – there’s no rules
except, the lines are short –
but even that, you can break
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0017 Sandy Claws, Avenger from the Ocean of Goodwill
The tale I have to tell, children,
is not a pretty one – so,
PARENTAL SUPERVISION IS ADVISED;
though on the other hand,
as moral tales should, it has
a happy Dickensian ending,
where, as moral tales should tell,
the last state is infinitely better than the first;
and perhaps, who knows, your parents
may even benefit from the telling
though, naturally, without mentioning the fact.
’Twas Christmas Eve. The Smugg family
were sitting around their fine dining table
made from wood from sustainable forests
in their photographable and photographed
Bahamas beach bungalow in its
gated enclave with 24-hour porterage and security,
about to tuck in to their Christmas Eve locally sourced
corn-fed free range hand-reared organic
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Sandy Claws, Avenger from the Ocean of Goodwill
The tale I have to tell, children,
is not a pretty one – so,
PARENTAL SUPERVISION IS ADVISED;
though on the other hand,
as moral tales should, it has
a happy Dickensian ending,
where, as moral tales should tell,
the last state is infinitely better than the first;
and perhaps, who knows, your parents
may even benefit from the telling
though, naturally, without mentioning the fact.
’Twas Christmas Eve. The Smugg family
were sitting around their fine dining table
made from wood from sustainable forests
in their photographable and photographed
Bahamas beach bungalow in its
gated enclave with 24-hour porterage and security,
about to tuck in to their Christmas Eve locally sourced
corn-fed free range hand-reared organic
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Pooh Bear learns about Enjambment
Pooh liked Autumn. Autumn means walking with a scarf round your neck and sometimes seeing your breath in the air like a silent conversation, and wet leaves underfoot and twigs going crackle or sometimes crack! which can be scary if you aren't holding CR's hand.
So here they are, walking together paw-in-hand down the path in Hundred-Acre Wood, and Pooh is humming a happy hum with words looking for it, rather like inquisitive flies that don't quite land on you, wondering if they should stay or not, and how the other flies feel if two of them land together...
'CR..' said Pooh, 'What's en-jamb-ment? ' It sounded like what happens when a wasp gets stuck in a honey jar, or perhaps a marmalade jar.
'That's a long word, Pooh...' said CR, wondering how to explain to a Bear Of Little Brain Yet Poetically Gifted, in the easiest way, when you're not too sure yourself...
'Well...' said CR at last, 'you don't really need it, Pooh, because your Hums all finish each line with a rhyme - so everyone knows just where they are....but suppose you get to the end of a line, and the line looks around like Eeyore does after a big mouthful of juicy autumn grass, and it can't see another line that wants to pair with it in a friendly rhyme.... then if you let it just go on being by itself - like Eeyore - and it's happy to be that way, if occasionally grumbly about it - that's called 'free verse'.
'So then you can just go on and on without thinking about when to stop... but then if you write it down so that other people can read it without getting out of breath, what 'free verse poets' do is like turning over the page of a book and wondering what's coming - like, is there a scary illustration on the next page, or a Surprise, or only a few lines and THE END - what these poets do, is to treat the lines the same way as pages, so that at the end of each line, you wonder a little bit more than usual, what's coming in the next line... instead of yawning and wondering if it's time for A Little Something...'
'I see..' said Pooh, in the way you do when you're a Very Polite Bear but don't really see, not yet anyway...
Then he remembered that poem by Rupert Somebody that CR had told him was an Extended Metaphor, which had that memorable line which the Poetic Bear could have written himself: '...and is there hunny still for tea? ...' though of course Pooh was always careful, himself, to have a line of hunnypots up there where you could see that the future was golden and hunny-coloured...
'CR...' said Pooh in that happy feeling when the brain seems to sorting things out for you, '...so if you wrote carefully in a book, '... and is there hunny still for tea? ...' you could write it with the first line
...and is there...
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Victimisation as threat and control
She’s the village’s Force For Good –
or that’s the flag she sails under;
news of distant earthquakes, floods,
famines, ethnic or other massacres
are her stoke-up calls…
she’ll soon be knocking at your door,
or coming up to speak to you at the WI
or after church…
knowing that you know she knows
you know the details of just how fortunate
she thinks herself, to have survived
that terrible childhood (details vague) :
so by extension, you should know yourself, and show yourself,
fortunate too… by giving to the latest cause…
Have her in for drinks, and her roving eye
will spot that electric towel rail you don’t now use
which would be just the thing which would alleviate
the widow Smith… Though, should that widow Smith
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0038 Why I'm ashamed of being British
It was so easy being a British child
in the 1930s:
everything was – or so it seems to memory’s
selective mind - so ordered:
how old was I, when I stopped
raising my school cap
(‘Don’t just touch it, Michael;
lift it! ’) to, not just staff at school,
but anyone to whom my parents talked
or who had talked (‘My, hasn’t he grown! ’
as if this was some personal achievement) to me,
or more likely, over my head, as I
shifted from foot to foot,
trapped in a grown-up world
of politenesses; which however
my mother loved and rightly
as one now raised in her station
from being polite to customers
in grandma’s terrace front-window shop
where homemade cooking was the income
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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0148 Dear Jenny Joseph...
Dear Jenny Joseph,
How are you getting along these days?
Now that you've hit our 'top poems' list?
I'll bet that, as a National Treasure
you're asked to give readings
at a minimal fee
with the request
'please wear a red hat and a purple cloak -
our members would like it...' aw shurrup...
I'm contemplating a parallel
to raise the status of old men
God knows we need it...
Where shall I start?
I guess the secret is
it's fun confounding expectations,
so, first on the list,
anything that labels you British - out!
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poem by Michael Shepherd
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