DODGE THE DAILY BULLET
[Found Poem from The Daily Beast, 3rd February 2025, by Yasmeen Hamadeh]
It is hard to dodge the bullet daily
when dallying with discombobulated reports
from English-speakers around the Globe.
Efforts to dread downsized federal agencies
where The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Ugly Duckling
transmigrate into the white (pink/orange/grey/black) elephant.
Musk in the air of the Department of Government Efficiency
dismantling Education by executive order
while officials ruminate, shift and shut down functions
mystical as unspecified statutes.
Brainstorming abolition and release of re-evaluated futures,
nothing excluded from a white house of executive nothings
before breakfast.
Radical indoctrination underway like an episodic Soap
where bubbles bobble in social media bathtubs daily.
Sadly, K9 upgraded to K12 infiltrating school ideologies,
employees placed on administrative leave by the dozen,
cracked eggs dripping dropsy fluff as feather down ghosts
clucking no more like boiled soldiers dunked.
State protocol and programmes dismissing top marks
for children’s formative years without further guidance.
Disciplinaries distributed among personnel – by letter, on Friday;
full pay, benefits, indeterminate sabbatical downsizing bureaucracy.
The weighty wardrobe snags in Congress, pending dismantling
by an act of vandalism, leaving the Emperor fully clothed.
Meanwhile, caught red-handed with fingers in the till of federal payments
who dares bite the bullets ricocheting beyond the Gulf of Mexico…
A beastly Doge sinks into the lagoon of short memory:
Is there a Doctor in the House?
NEW YEAR AGES DISGRACEFULLY (Open Field)
It’s fun and happy bright with counting years
and every one is new and one year older
with time to wrap up colours/styles outgrown
diaries brimming
unplanned dreams.
It’s time for nursery, school and holiday clubs
he’s working all hours
she has days to kill
speech therapists
psychologists social workers
Routine is like a military campaign:
place America, Far East, China, Ukraine.
The Lakes flip over
didgeridoo-brash and interesting.
Gold stars are lined up on the mantelpiece out of reach at ceiling height
new strategies, books, courses
perambulations in public elephant
tortoise giraffe crocodile
Crisis talks parcelling out Palestine between warring factions
staff off sick with stress, carers ricochet
across no man’s land of unexplodeds.
Severely trained professionals in large numbers, action plans, records,
preferably fit and muscle-enhanced with a smattering of Maths and English.
Calm calm calmly gaining a clutch of GCSE’s, BTEC, Uni acceptance.
Christmas like clockwork
Easter like clockwork
Mothers’ Day, Valentine’s, family holidays, visiting relatives, supporting the frail, bereaved.
Headlines, Funeral Directors, flowers.
And one cute chicken fluff of smiles and pecking at the Tardis
or may the Force be with you…
Gold stars, GCSE’s, ‘A’ levels, Degree
no time for birthday, Mothers’ Day, Easter, family holidays, Valentines with attitude.
Home, hobbies, volunteering, long walks, nature, the garden, meals for two.
Red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, violet, pearl
Poetry
It’s a kaleidoscopic dodo New Year.
PIERHEAD SAIL STORM
Wide awake early Saturday morning
downing strong coffee to filter wakefulness.
Dressing higgledy piggledy for wind rain storm shine
jingling in a day like skittish craft moored in the harbour,
sprung mooring lines and jangling flags,
to cries of gulls and diving terns.
Jumbling along silent pavement to pier,
paying £1 untended entry, like arrows into the solent of annual dreams.
Boats banned, flimsy craft against Neptune's best
churning turning thrashing skimming spinning surf.
7am, stalwart souls armed with waterproofs and zoom lenses,
shelter beneath the blustery storm-drenched seat
while brave souls flap and fuddle layers, icy fingers and mobiles
for steamy distant wraiths at sea:
lost beneath a Bowderstone of prehistoric dark,
drenching slowly for the tacking, ready abouts and long reaches
of flapping sails and Hardy sorts,
dying of shame before The Needles.
Turning back, disqualified, or stately,
the 900 from East Cowes,
reduced miserably to 150
in the sailing club's annals for 2024.
Aged ex-sailors and ballast-encumbered strays
shiver, limping indoors for steamy coffee and breakfast,
while open top buses brave Alum Bay,
ski lifts closed for health and safety reasons
and screaming baby dinos chance the fiercesome breeze.
ARETHUSA AND ALPHEUS’S SACRED FABRICATION
Amusing to remember Olympus and Delphi, heat, shorts and cooling parts
burnt in the day’s adventures. Navel of the earth, or Oracle, were dalliances
beyond nymphic experience, giggling at postcards of the gods… and one
blushing phallus large as the warrior beneath.
The passion of Alfie, rolling light years around the Med, to settle to misnomers
of place and divine sparkle. Happy to drip gently beside the lily pond
of a walled garden, the gentle cooing of doves, and size of marrows.
Rett’s sincerest sadness, squelching beside dense willows proclaiming heatstroke,
as Alfie shivered beside a stream, watery clouds dripping enchantment
like a silent fountain, cool as noonday sun. Di’s boredom of green tresses skimming glades…
cut short the amorous streams of Elis, the dripping sweat of robust work with fishing nets.
Endowments required no cosmetic surgery, nor boob jobs. Rett gagging at 38D.
Clear-bottomed, clothes flung willy-nilly, weary eddies of Stymphalian wood, and little pebbles.
Counting depths for breath-holding hoariness was nourishing as spontaneously combusted water.
Delightful feet, a pair of knees, running waters tempted... A marsh harrier/kite flew overhead.
His passion grew like a fox in the dovecote. Exhausted, tetchy in despair.
Rock hard and craggy, a mountain covered with trees. Modesty dictated rescue.
Rett was breathing hard, Alfie all a-quiver. Wretchedly hounded by wishes, dripping azure
from disloyal body parts, as footprints vanished in squelchy mud and streaming rivers of,
hush! Love.
A lake of fate streamed biological urges, mingling with the goddess of bogs.
Dark caves of Ortygia flowed through their mixer shower. The gods of Mount Olympus
rolled around with laughter, howling at intros to elysian gas. Could hardly breathe.
How could the wisest of the age not recognise the misnomers of river, sea and mountain?
Fountain assuaged – repeatedly – in the Med. Stork nests of Delphi flapped wildly.
Alfie’s willow fountain merged with Rett’s irrepressible nature.
Silly, Dear Sis, the hunter-gatherer jumped in the drink and thrashed around
quenching his desire through ages of marital bliss.
How could a little stream merge with the sea and tunnel ever- after through the ages?
Alfie content to flow – by words and cooking treats – reminiscing her swimming days.
Rett thrashed in the ocean nightly in his dreams, dallying with the daily rag by day.
Pause-any-as... Wow! This oracle of bliss is pure fabrication.
Love's Floreloquence: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Meek, CT, Meek: 9798850867003: Books
Landscapes: Amazon.co.uk: Webb, Wendy Ann, Norris-Kay, David, Meek, CT, Meek, Norris-Kay, David: 9798851001659: Books
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