We are the Robots

October 16, 2019Life, poem, Poetry, Science, Science Fiction Poetry, science poetry, speculative poetrybiology, DNA, poem, poetry, robot, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Poetry, science poetry, selfish gene, SF, SF poetry, speculative poetry, TechnologyThe Cheesesellers Wife

Wetware software hardware
how hard do we have to be?
Programmed by the stochastic chatter of evolution
form fitting function,
almost.

Self replicating semi-autonomous robots.
purposed by deoxyribonucleic acid,
the software exists to
protect itself
not us.

Rain on the moor

October 12, 2019beauty, England, exmoor, Life, poem, Poetry, weatherEngland, exmoor, Life, poem, poetry, rainThe Cheesesellers Wife

Here on the moor
Rain closes you down
Takes away the horizon
Soaks and settles
Creates hazards
Can flood and kill

Rain lashes at the face
Stinging like needles
Sends cold tendrils down the neck
Seeps into all things
Deepens bogs and fords
Hides the path from view

A rainy day on the moor
Be it drizzle or a squall
Leaves you slipping and tumbling
Heading for shelter
Dripping at the pub or tearoom door
Grateful for the warm and dry

Friday Poem: I am!

October 11, 2019Friday Poem, poem, PoetryFriday Poem, I am, John Clare, poem, poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;

My friends forsake me like a memory lost:

I am the self-consumer of my woes—

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life or joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;

Even the dearest that I loved the best

Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod

A place where woman never smiled or wept

There to abide with my Creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

by John Clare

And somehow the ocean

October 9, 2019Azores, Life, nature, poem, Poetry, Wild lifeazores, dolphin, dolphins, nature, race, wildlifeThe Cheesesellers Wife

Sun glints pierce my eyes
as we hit another wave
rise
slide into the trough
the apogee
our horizon is limitless
oceanic expanse
seemingly bereft of life
the unharvestable blue
then the cackle of dolphins
arrests our attention
away from the discipline of waves

Snub noses pierce the surface
laughing beeps beckon
closeby
then further into the swell
we hesitate and a challenge is issued
repeatedly
until we speed up and run alongside
then within
an enormous crowd
of joyous fellows

Crow castle

October 5, 2019history, poem, Poetry, Wild lifecastle, crow, history, Kidwelly Castle, poem, poetry, Wales, wildlifeThe Cheesesellers Wife

The north east tower is crenelated
with argumentative crows
black scrawny scribbles silhouetted high
against an evening sky
scattering upwards as we ascend to the roof
swooping possessively while we linger
they are the true posessers of this place
winners after centuries of fighting

The monument below may celebrate
a Welsh warrior princess
but up here crows
celebrate the sky

Friday Poem: The River’s Tale

October 4, 2019Friday Poem, poem, PoetryFriday Poem, Kipling, London, poem, poetry, prehistory, rudyard kipling, thamesThe Cheesesellers Wife

TWENTY bridges from Tower to Kew –
Wanted to know what the River knew,
Twenty Bridges or twenty-two,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:-

“I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I’d have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.

“I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent’s Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in –
And that’s where your history-books begin!”

by Rudyard Kipling

Adolesence

October 2, 2019children, poem, PoetryAdolesence, childhood, children, Life, poem, poetry, teenagersThe Cheesesellers Wife

It seems as if your chest is stuffed
with copper wire circuitry
heated to intensity
words do not work
boys grunt, girls cheep
days fly past and last forever
you never feel in control
veering off into agonies

It’s in the stars

September 28, 2019Life, nature, poem, Poetry, weather, Wild lifeclimate change, dawn chorus, environment, global warming, hope, poem, poetry, starsThe Cheesesellers Wife

On a freezing cold night
we wait for the stars
but clouds have stolen them
just as the songbirds are now gone at dawn
so the stars hide from our death spilling lives

As the planet warms
nature shuns us
and hope is lost

Friday Poem: A Psalm of Life

September 27, 2019Friday Poem, poem, PoetryFriday Poem, Longfellow, poem, poetry, sands of timeThe Cheesesellers Wife

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,–act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

‘Fossil poetry’ in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine

September 26, 2019poem, Poetry, Science Fiction Poetry, SF, speculative poetryfossil, poem, poetry, published poem, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Poetry, SF, SF poetry, speculative poetryThe Cheesesellers Wife

I’m delighted to tell you all that my poem ‘Fossil Poetry’ is published in the forthcoming issue 76 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine.

Thank you Tom and Michelle!