August 2011

[Benjamin]

sparrows fly from lands beyond all tears

where the hungry die

and stencilled faces

mark creation

of the living dead

and each dawn equates

with some final destination

but the hall of souls is not empty yet

and in this small corner of eternity

the victim surely is humanity

 

my city burns--

shields and batons flail

hatred seethes--

frightened horses and looters

clatter past

and I cringe at this suburban jail

with it's pearls of lights

and well-stocked shops

where no-one starves

and wonder

that the world is mad

[Larsen M. Callirhoe]

hi geoff, you seem to be articulating in mere words what i am not able to capture thru time yet. i mean your age brings you greater range of your vocabular use. something which i do is read and absorb all the words i can enrich myself with as i can. yet for some strange reason my mind can not remember every word i do come across. one of my favorite deceased baseball broadcasters recommended always carying a pocket thesaurus with yourself. and go thru it often. i love skip caray and harry caray for they were very articulate. skip was the one that recommended always having a thesauras on hand. i spell a lot of words wrong because of my stigmatisms. i always have blurry eye vision especially lately. very fustrating because sometimes i see perfectly fine and try to correct my typos. plus i suffer memoruy loss or my mind gets tired easy because of the brain damaged i suffered in a major car wreck in august 1996. but i really didn't want to get that deep into a convo about all that medical jargon.

 

 

just saying your poem reaches my soul's essence perfect tho i am a tab bit young to remenience that way. but anyway thank you for great read.

 

also i do jpurnery back like that often still like you mentioned in your poem writing like that but your perception is like fine wine that has aged. it just get more worth while readable but the people don't reach for it your type of knowledge, understanding, ancd wisdom asmuch being likely because the masses say they can't afford it. which is a cop out i know but it rings so true.

 

when i say can't afford it i really mean they don't really care or they don't have the time. it does take a lifetime to become more articulate nevertheless.

[tonyv]

An occasional poem to commemorate the recent unrest in London. It serves as an indictment of the absurdity of it all.

 

Tony

[Benjamin]

Thanks Victor and Tony for readind and leaving comment. These are just a few brief thoughts that came to mind as we watched London burn last month. At the same time, our news channels were showing countless people starving in drought ridden unhappy lands. It's difficult to enthuse about writing uplifting lines just now without a guilty feeling. B.

[Frank E Gibbard]

As your poem is partly about our country I share your pain which was visited upon my neighbourhood (should that be now just "the hood") in Ealing titularly formerly "Queen of the suburbs." Class act Geoff and, as I think I said elsewhere, contrasts the wants of some people in a comparatively rich nation and ones of true poverty. Equate looted plasma TVs and the famine/hunger & dire natural disasters in some lands. A well observed piece this for sure. Frank (steps off soapbox).