Closing my curtain
I shut out the night
And the fireworks
Celebrating something
but precisely what
I am uncertain.
While beyond my drapes
The dark
patiently waits …
The Dark
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Monthly Archives: November 2015
Poem by an Unknown Soldier Written During WWII
In honour of those who fought and died for freedom I am re-blogging this. Kevin
Today’s post is a little different. As Rememberance Sunday, I thought I should post something topical, something that will allow us to remember those who died, and what they fought for.
_________________________
Stay with me God, the night is dark!
The night is cold; my little spark
Of courage dims, the night is long.
Be with me God and make me strong.
_________________________
I love a game; I love a fight.
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward. I love life.
_________________________
Life with its change of mood and shade,
I want to live. I’m not afraid.
But me and mine are hard to part.
O unknown God lift up my heart.
_________________________
You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
You saved Your servants, all Your work
Is wonderful. Dear God; you strode
Before us down that dreadful…
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Penelope’s Complaint
Don’t give me all this stuff about sacking Troy.
You have been shacked up with some girl or boy!
You spin me a line
About men turned into swine.
I am sick of hearing of Circe
And your struggle to be free
Of her.
I’m fed up with affair after affair!
As for that painted nymph
On a plinth
Calypso
No doubt she let you go
When she saw how you guzzle your food
In a manner most rude.
Or was she a prude
And was it your language so crude
That caused her to shout
And throw you out?!
Be off once more to the sea
I want to be free
Of thee!
—
Penelope – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope
Circe – http://www.greekmythology.com/Other_Gods/Circe/circe.html
Calypso – http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/calypso-odysseus-greek-myth/
Odysseus – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odysseus
Lotus
I have wandered long
battling strong
waves
that have dragged comrades to their graves.
Now on this island I could stay
for lotus takes the pain away.
Those who eat of the flower
lose many an hour
in sweet dream.
Penelope is far.
The star
shines above.
I see love
and peace.
My journeying could cease
here.
Yet I fear
the gods
who rob
men of peace.
No, my wanderings may not cease.
I must to my deck.
The island now a mere speck
on the skyline.
I must trust to the divine
who rule
we mortal fools.
“La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John Keats
I have long been intrigued by John Keat’s poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (“The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy”).
“O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
‘I love thee true’.
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lullèd me asleep,
And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing”.
VR
Is man’s destiny to slowly fade away?
to be lost in perpetual play?
The gosimer thin thread
in his head
breaks
and he takes
a step over the abyss
to wallow in bliss
where machines dream
and Alice is not who she seems.
The sun rises.
There are prizes
For the movers and shakers.
To be caught in a movie maker’s
dream,
a scene
from which there can be no escape.
As we roll with the never ending tape.
(The above was prompted by an article in yesterday’s Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/07/artificial-intelligence-homo-sapiens-split-handful-gods).
Fruit
The fruit grows within easy reach.
How simple to take a peach
Or plum.
How delightfully does temptation come.
The juice turns to gall.
Better to let the fruit fall
or be gathered by other hands.
But desire commands
us to pick
and sip.
The devil’s tune seems sweet
and once our feet
begin to dance
We have no chance
To stop
but must waltz until we drop.
My lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is moving and well worth reading. Kevin
Lord AlfredDouglas, nicknamed Bosie, was ayoung aristocratandpoet, the youngest son of the Marquess ofQueensberry. He looked like an angel: fragile, with averypalecomplexion,blonde hair and blue eyes, but often appearances can be deceptive and this case was no exception. The story of his relationship with Wilde began in 1892. Bosies’s cousin, Lionel Johnson, had lent him a copy of “The Picture ofDorian Gray“, and after reading it “fourteen times in a row” he wished to be introduced to the author and so at the end of June 1891 Lionel Johnson accompanied his cousin in Tite Street and introduced him to Oscar Wilde. At the end of June 1892 Douglas needed Oscar’s help, because he was being blackmailed. Oscar, thanks to his lawyer George Lewis, solved all and since then they started to date…
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Silk And Lace
Silk and lace.
Those legs.
Her face.
She leaves
not a hair out of place.
Amazon Improves the Integrity of the Customer Review System
Image from ShutterStock.
AMAZON IMPROVES CUSTOMER REVIEWS
What makes customer reviews helpful to other customers, and thereby also helpful for sellers, businesses, authors, and even Amazon?
It’s when other customers can trust the review system. Without that trust, reviews become utterly useless.
BOOK REVIEW CHANGES IN 2012
Amazon made its first major improvement to the customer review system in late 2012.
That’s when Amazon blocked and removed countless reviews from probable friend and family members of authors.
Whatever Amazon did in 2012 was highly effective—perhaps not perfect, but definitely effective. If you watch indie community forums regularly, you know that on a weekly basis new authors complain about missing reviews, and it almost invariably turns out that the reviews were left by friends or family members.
Prior to the Great Purge of 2012, Amazon’s customer review system had been getting out of hand, with the problems publicized in the WSJ…
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K Morris - Poet 