Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Out riding, lightly pedaling
shall still thoughts which percolate
From the workday’s din deafening
freed to calmly meditate
Shall grant rolling latitude
from our life’s churning grind
Fellowship with solitude
when gliding unconfined
Cycling tempers motorized indulgence
ushers us in to quiet effulgence
An insightful article on the Obama phenomena:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175816/
inspired this verse:
Unfounded self confidence
in pompous presumption
pretending at omniscience
while shows up compunction
His baritone oratory:
Delivery alluring
while hollow declaratory
doesn’t come across assuring
Stands with those on Wall Street
against the pitchforks
His White House found effete
fast fizzled fireworks
His bringing us cool pure fantasy
in hollow cowardly drama
“Change You Can Believe In” alchemy
darkly deepens nation’s trauma
How did we turn so immobile
erstwhile engaged citizens
indulging pursuits puerile
with baffling indifference?
Bowled over by his locomotion
hawking his brand of self-promotion?
+)
-‘change you can believe in’ = Obama’s election campaign slogan
-citizen = there can be no democracy without informed & engaged citizens
-compunction = uneasiness or hesitation about the rightness of an action
-pitchforks = I’m the only thing between you and the pitchforks”, the President told a gathering of big bank CEOs on April 3, 2009:
edited 04/17/22 0900
Just keep cavorting, gushing
why should anyone blush?
Over obstacles rushing
evading Death’s near brush
Time is such a rigid knave
flows without adjournment
continuity’s mere slave
knows not of discernment
“Saving time through efficiency
watch me, watch me, always I’m!”
Then wasted in proficiency
by rush to save yet more time
Thence such time by rushing saved
gets squandered & wasted
While the moment rarely craved
barely sensed or tasted …
Tirelessly our hapless Tongue
so recklessly wagging
Keeps hurling havoc far flung
bragging, ragging, snagging!
Our self-righteous racing Mind
contentiously nagging
How unrestrained we’ve opined
in pursuit unflagging!
Let our Hearts be more than pumps non-excitable:
The place where we live ‘tinderly’ ignitable
+)
‘tinderly’ = interweaving ‘tinder’ with ‘tender’
His pompous, facile verbiage soars
while lying through his gleaming teeth
The figurehead lets us down while scores
his Beltway knife loosened in sheath
His faux ‘Change You Can Believe In’ brand
once seductive consumer pitch
now shown up as empty, stale & bland
still serves the powerful & rich
A President so crisp & elegant
coolly projects noble sentiments
but were his soaring speeches eloquent
helpful for those in drab tenements?
One shameless, specious scheme of bait & switch:
Saying versus doing without a glitch
+)
The Beltway = metaphor (from it’s D.C. locus) for the Power Elite
From turgidity no rest
while life’s journey thwarted
Grab hold rigidly with zest
hurry, get it sorted!
So wake up, go & aspire
or find your life wasted
Do so before you retire
or suffer lambasted!
No peace found in breathless rushing
or pride felt from slack-jawed gushing
Hooked on voraciously soul sucking screens
in their eerie sheen ubiquitous
Been had by corporate marketing schemes
To celeb culture obsequious
No flirtation. Hit hard on
by forces hellacious
in consumer-tech’s brash con
its pursuits vexatious
Our culture predaceous, duplicitous
a future crashing in crassitude
in a society iniquitous
we languish feebly in lassitude
Been trading snug solidarity
for barbed & smug insularity
Lives desiccated deprecated
desecrated by vanity
Human habitat depredated
with hubristic profanity
Most could surely have been averted
yet why do we not feel ashamed?
While a few moved for change concerted
most found wanting – but not all blamed
Too weak to act, lost heart, guts & shirts
Temperatures & oceans rise
Serving on children our ‘just deserts’
heaped in gleaming china of lies
Looming starkly dark
on lonely heath
hear death’s howling bark
with growling teeth
Warm colors faded to bleached
erstwhile joy jaded to sorrow
Voices chalk on blackboard screeched
as we cower from the morrow
Outlook cruel, bleak
no place for the weak
+)
heath = here: earthly life
Through fully opened sluice
words gush profusely
wave follows wave obtuse
ashore diffusely
Conveyed in smarmy smooth style
modulated, attuned
words customized to beguile
glibly, quickly communed
Words mindless of direction
locked in obduracy
empty of much reflection
pound in profligacy
If you take to heart much of what blurts
then you shall receive your just deserts!
+)
just deserts = (idiomatic) punished in a manner appropriate to one’s actions (plural only & indeed spelled ‘deserts’ while pronounced as if ‘desserts’)