© C A Lovegrove
Midsummer madness!
Bald head browning, not quite burnt;
must remember hat.
First posted 20th June 2014.
Midsummer
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Author Archives: Calmgrove
Summer
one adder
does not
a summer make
as Aristotle
said not
First posted 9th June 2014.
Jobbing
© C A Lovegrove
Summer’s course is nearly run
Garden furniture guilt-trips
Rasp goes the sandpaper
Boing goes the tin lid
Slosh goes the paint
The paint is wet
And now it’s tacky
Drips smoothed out
And now it’s dry
Outside jobs are almost done
It just remains to gild the lily
First posted 8th November 2016.
Disbelief
© C A Lovegrove
Summer memories
of simmering heat and sea?
Winter disbelief.
Nine word story and senryu rolled into one (image: Broad Haven South, Pembrokeshire); first posted 24th January 2015.
Week upon week
© C A Lovegrove
Careful what you wish for.
A proper summer? Hot days
with wall-to-wall sunshine?
False memories of winter:
cloudy skies, gun-metal grey,
lashings of rain curtaining down.
Was it always like that?
Or were there blue skies in between?
And now we have week upon week
of parched lawns, diminished rivers, moorland fires and painful sunburn, sleepless nights and short tempers.
Bring back a touch of winter:
promise-crammed clouds of black and grey,
replenishing streams, greening grass,
dampening moorland, cooling skin
and brows. Blessed, blissful rain.
But – careful what you wish for.
First posted 30th June 2018.
Green
© C A Lovegrove
Sun-drenched summer swathes
of green fields now parched pale brown;
so come, welcome rain.
First posted 24th June 2014.
Very clear
One has to have
a very clear idea of them
to stay clear of any surprises
later on
Ensure the organization
you have selected prints out
and about an expert backup
(also known as “proof”)
that will help you
look into the shades, fonts,
just about any spelling flaws
and also the total design!
Besides this, a person
don’t need to
commitment
sort of collateral
in lieu of the actual
availed amount of the loan
and so, you like money
with reduce
A repost. Grateful thanks to the spammer who unwittingly provided this nonsense poem, an example of found poetry (aka spam poetry or spoetry); I’ve merely formatted it.
Faces in things
from early childhood
conditioned to see faces
of people, in things
Senryu about pareidolia, first published 21st January 2015
Crooked
There was a crooked man and he had a crooked house, and he really liked to grumble and to grizzle and to grouse; that crooked house – he’d planned to knock it down, demolish it, but the council said “You build it up, it’s time to finish it!”
The crooked man was in a rage, he nearly had a meltdown; “Why don’t I leave it as it is,” he thought, “until it fell down?” But while he stood as pleased as Punch and thinking he was clever, the house fell down on top of him: will it be finished? Never!
Moral: If at first you don’t succeed, give up.
Patronising
St George fought the dragon and killed it — or did he? Such doubt could make patriots go weak and quite giddy. Did he rescue a maiden and liberate a city – like Perseus, it’s said, in ancient antiquity? Or is it a myth, a tale for the gullible from powerful leaders who claim they’re infallible?
The truth is that George has a past that is murky: perhaps Cappadocia (that’s now part of Turkey) or Palestine claims him. Yes, Christian martyr — but slayer of dragons? Well, that‘s a non-starter.
He’s patron of England, the Knights of the Garter, Teutonic Knights, Reichenau, Gozo and Malta. He’s chief saint of Portugal and also of Genoa, of Moscow and Beirut and, yes, Catalonia. God help us if they all decide to go fight, for how will George know who is wrong and who’s right?
Yet it’s the far right who often invoke him, their claims of supremacy based on pure hokum. For they would now see saintly George as outsider, a migrant or refugee, sort of Al-Qaeda. To persecute him would elicit no qualms, he’d not be received with their welcoming arms.
A post in rhyming couplets to mark April 23rd, St George’s Day. First published on my Calmgrove blog in 2017 in the wake of an ill-advised Brexit
Patina
crimson paint peeling
brittle like a crumbling scab
on a wounded heart
Stumped
What should I write for
National Haiku Day? Hmm.
I’m completely stumped.*
* This, strictly speaking,
is a senryu, but let’s
not quibble, shall we?
Zenrinji 