A shadow in the bathroom glass.
What I see
Is the public me.
And when I pass
There will be
No me to see
Merely soulless glass.
Yet reflected back
In the verse I leave behind
Some may find
In my rhyme
The black
And white we call art.
Now in the mirror I see
The surface me.
And not my heart.
On opening my mum’s back door
I hear the rain pour.
I shall not romanticise
Rain or death.
Man dies
And some are left bereft
Listening to the rain.
I am delighted to announce that I will be reading my poetry at Ashburton Library in Croydon on Saturday 8 November at 2 pm. For anyone who is in the vicinity and would like to attend please follow this link for further information and to book https://croydon.events.mylibrary.digital/event?id=247174
I look forward to seeing you on Saturday 8 November.
There once was a great lover of Latin
Who had a job as a professional assassin.
Whilst reading great Virgil
He became very ill.
That’s what comes of reading too much Latin!
A couple of days ago, I came across this beautiful musical rendering by Lorena Mckennitt of Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. I am not, generally a fan of musical renderings of poetry. However, Mckennitt’s singing of the poem moved me
I am culture.
A vulture
In love with poetry.
A man
Of passing lusts
Who will be free
In dust.
An insightful article entitled “what it means to be human in an age of intelligent machines”, https://thepoetspeace.wordpress.com/2025/06/24/what-it-means-to-be-human-in-an-age-of-intelligent-machines/.
I think the author makes some excellent points. However, whilst artificial intelligences (AIS) can vacuum up vast amounts of data (the poetry of John Keats, William Shakespeare Etc) and produce a “poem” from that data, it does not comprehend what it is doing. Nor does it feel real emotion.
In contrast, the poet on hearing the song of the blackbird as the dusk comes down is profoundly moved. He feels sadness mingled with joy and the overflowing of his emotions leads to the composition of poetry. Whilst an AI may vacuum up the poet’s work and produce a poem based on it, the poem (and the other poems utilised by the AI in the composition of it’s poem) have, for want of a better word, been stolen. The AI feels nothing and comprehends nothing.
I am a fan of the short poem. Below is a brief untitled poem by Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864 Walter Savage Landor – Wikipedia.
—
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife.
Nature I loved and, and next to nature, art:
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
In the library I would look at books
And seashells, so near to shelves
Drowning in books.
At the time this seemed incongruous to me.
But now I see no incongruity
For the sea
Will, one day, sweep all this culture away
Leaving only shells.
An interesting article on how to revive our reading culture, in which the author argues that it is all to easy to blame technology when other factors are at work. To read the article please visit https://engelsbergideas.com/notebook/how-to-revive-our-reading-culture/
K Morris - Poet 