This year, I’m writing poetry for every word tasting in November. I’m calling it Povember. Today, a poem in the Anglo-Saxon style.
Well. We world-weary word workers,
sitting silent, swilling bean-juice,
tell our tales to Twitter’s press-gang,
feed Instagram our film-eyed food,
blindly bypass the fake-news book,
pin and post, perchance to chat,
type and tap on folding fruit-metal.
In honest hours we earn our homage,
tracing tributes, training lightning,
watering word-hordes with our bit-buckets,
moving memes for money-trimmings.
Bending our backs, we bring the bacon
we slice slowly from our selfsame sides
to feed the few who own the farmyard,
who give us a cut and call us cured.
In easy evenings we engage again,
recycling revenue, feeding retail,
feasting on culture freshly defrosted,
putting our pay in stuff-sellers’ pockets.
Trying travel, we trip advisedly,
braving boulevards of honking boxes,
crawling crowd-adders, unfaced contumely,
forfeit fluids, shed our footwear.
Requiring rights, we receive assurance
that folk are as free to fire at will
as to shelter from shooting and shout for help;
in case of conflict twixt coney and tiger
there’s liberty alike to lunge and bite,
and mole and elephant get matching mic-time.
Looking for ladders to leave a pit,
we find our forerunners frowning downward,
raising the rungs away from our reach,
telling us to take cliff-climbing classes.
Wit-stressed, we wonder what the future
shifts will show to shock our minds,
our smoldering wicks, the weakling world-smarts.
Tell us, translators of troubled times,
what elder enchanter or electronic prophet
can devise a wise to vanquish the weltschmertz!
Sesquiotica 