The Shortest Meeting

One fine day in the forest

The animals gathered for a meeting,

They all did, from the smallest to the tallest

(Except for the Hippo, who was home eating).

They all seemed rather peeved;

You see, the Squirrel of all people

Had asked them to assemble,

And the summons was ill-received.

The Bear looked quite cranky

And had only honey on his mind,

“What is this hanky-panky?”

Demanded the grouchy Vulture from behind.

The Elephant lazily slouched

Sipping a pail of water,

While a surly Gecko grouched

As the summer sun grew hotter.

The Owls were asleep, without a clue

And the Possum was playing dead,

Though he probably would be in a minute or two

Because the Python was eyeing his head.

The Squirrel leapt on to a rock

And squealed for their attention

“Please, my friends, let me talk

If I may have your kind permission.”

The Jackal sniggered at his words

As soon as they’d been said,

But the kind and tolerant Birds

Encouraged him to go ahead.

“There is an issue of grave importance

That I wish to discuss…”

(Sadly he couldn’t finish the sentence

As he developed a bad case of hiccups.)

He bounced around making strange sounds

And tried to regain his thread,

But not a soul from Bat to Bloodhound

Could understand a word he said.

Gasping and choking, to the ground he sunk

And squeaked to the Elephant, “Give me your water!”

The tusker flew into a rage, and whipped the poor soul with his trunk

You see, he’d misheard “water” as “daughter”.

So ended the shortest meeting in history

And the other animals all lived a long and happy life

Because they had learnt the moral of the story

That being,

In future fits of hiccupping

At least don’t ask to borrow the Elephant’s knife.

Colours in the Sky

Huddled in their brittle caves

They watched the twilight come

They watched the waters and the waves

They watched till they were numb.

Fingers clawing at the sky

And the nightly wind that blew,

They saw the dust and omens fly

And knew the end was due.

Cries and quivers reached their ears

The Nations had assembled;

The rising tides would hide their tears

But what if their caves crumbled?

Huddled under the melting sun

They waited for the night

They waited for the blood to run

They waited for the light.

Clever the kings, but ever they knaves

And so the flags were hoisted high;

And only they who crouched in their caves

Saw the colours in the sky.

Childish Fancies

When the thorns were picked
From the paths we trod
And we had no shoes to fill,
When the wind and light
Were slaves to our fancy
And our dreams were ours to kill;

Love and beauty were petty farces
Reserved for merry fables
And pain was but the pithy realm
Of toes stubbed on tables

When death was a quaint oddity
(We were born immortal
And made our plans hence)
It all had purpose, colour and sound
And the grass was always greenest
On our side of the fence.

The rapt hours we spent
Lost in a firefly’s blinking mystique
The outcasts we laughed with
Without censure or critique

Splendid dreams of night
Earnest dreams of day;
Have all our childish fancies
Fallen by the way?

Our forever dissolved so quickly
Our never came so soon;
When was it that we stopped looking
For the witch flying past the moon?

Deja Vu

What is that light, I wonder?

As the fog clouds my eyes;

Is it whole or asunder,

Atop that mountain of ice?

What is that noise, I inquire?

As the forests thicken in my path;

The crackling of a fire,

Or the bubbling of a bath?

What lurks, what crouches, what glides?

On the edge of my sight;

What whispers on those jagged sides,

And cackles in the night?

The boughs are gnarled, the woods twisted

And puddles drain away;

The change of wind is resisted,

And a humid breeze holds sway.

At long last the trail dwindles,

A welcome sight for man;

But it ends in fearsome circles,

For alas, it’s where we first began.

The Wordsmith

Walking the night-black moor

He was the zephyr in the meadows,

He was the amalgam of chance

A continuum of moon-shadows.

Playing the midnight flute

He was the music of the ages,

He was the footprint of the dawn

The wisdom of the sages.

Climbing the evanescent hills

He was the scent of the flowers,

He was the dew on the ramparts

An echo of bygone lovers.

Dimming with the stars

He was the early fall,

He was a waking dream

The reason for it all.

In a shroud outside our sight

He was, is, and will be

He is chaos, death, life, serenity

The wordsmith of continuity.

Rome

The scarlet sun is aslant

On the frothing ocean’s edge;

The doomed sailors chant

As pledge begets pledge.

There has come a shivering blight

In dissent’s dying meadows,

And as dawn sheds off night

The soldiers become shadows.

The bridges will fall,

The walls will crumble;

The merchants are gone,

The kings are humbled.

The fires will forge a new day

Oh, but Rome burns today.

To the sleepy summer glades

The insidious blight has spread;

Like the plague descend the blades

And discontent is dead.

The mountains will stain

The rivers will dry;

They are listening for the rain

But they hear a battle-cry.

The bridges will fall,

The walls will crumble;

The wolves will call,

The thunder will rumble.

The fires will forge a new day

Oh, but Rome burns today.

Rome burns

Today.

China

A flicker of stealth

No more,

A shimmer in the dark

Was it more?

The smug, glowing edifice

Now in night’s shapeless orifice;

The long, paved drives,

Finally free

From envoys and their wives;

The wrought iron gates

Had long seen off

The last of the motorcades.

The copious cellars

Drained,

Polite goodbyes

Feigned.

As the marble hallways emptied,

And boudoir-doors were shut;

The masks slithered off, unhurried

And treacherous coats were cut.

The waters had changed colour

And they swam deep,

And as the night settled around

The charade was laid to sleep.

Dragonflies

On a warm summer’s day,

They rode on a lazy breeze;

Floating, gliding, darting, banking,

Diving, spinning with ease.

Their soothing buzz filled my ears

As I drifted off to sleep;

Steadily the afternoon ebbed,

And dusk began to creep.

I woke with heavy eyes,

To the murmurs of the dark;

And alone in the night so stark,

I missed the dragonflies.

Crystals of Sugar

Crystals of sugar in their asymmetry

Lay scattered on the table,

It seemed to me like divine geometry

The foundation of our fable.

Like kite-strings they tugged on the sun rays

That crept in through the window,

A twinkle leapt off a crystal edge

Another shinnied up from below.

It suddenly seemed that summer

Was a charade for their appeasement,

It seemed the sky they lay framed against

Was in fact their stately raiment.

Thoughts began to coax me

Of the gentle harshness of the crystal plane,

Somehow the story of eternity

Lay in that miniature domain.

I brushed my fingers along their grain

And felt the roughness of our creation,

Overcome by a cool shiver of curiosity

I had to look within.

I felt certain I would unearth

An unforeseen but expected veracity,

But a stark white wall suffused

And I found a strange opacity.

They clung to that turbid mystery

As the day progressed,

The hunt for our history

Would have to be laid to rest.

And I was left to wonder

How many such worlds pass beneath the eye

How many loiter out of sight?

And then the crystals took their secrets

And dissolved in the light.

Apsolunius

Apathy, solitude, lunacy and genius

Stealthily prey on a chosen few;

How wickedly they deny them

The vindication of their worldview.