Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Small boys & girls darting on bikes
untiringly they explore
in streets, trekking on backyard hikes
“Watch me! watch me!”, they implore
Hover their ‘hood tiny voices’
Each moment full of movement
in Summer’s endless play choices
Movement fills every moment
Fully one with the moment
Life’s ultimate bestowment
When my spouse was enthusiastically on a raw food diet:
Dicing
mixing
fixing
whisking!
After peeling
with feeling
not done chopping
til dropping
Yes! resoundingly to: drying
No! abhorrently to: frying
Raised overhead her clenched paw
when serves another meal
Joyce to the world: “All go raw!”
She’s got you a raw deal!
+)
-go raw = here: a raw, i.e. uncooked diet
Rushing is so much fresh fun
as ‘my sweet life’ has just started
must have a great rat race run
for which I’ll fight lionhearted
Life ought not ask anything from me
exect to enjoy indulging!
Just love staying busy, can’t you see
cupboards, debt & midriff bulging
Out of breath, speech smattered
need to somehow find more time!
Heart & mind all scattered
got no time to waste on rhyme!
When twenty with insolent surety
did he dance on impunity’s floor
At forty untouched by maturity
At eighty wondering: What’s in store?
Rigidity gels primmer
Slender skills keep slimming
Gruesome prospects grow grimmer
Short term recall dimming
His a portrait that rankles
clownish in aging’s rust
Slogging up to the ankles
in Life’s circus sawdust
While squandering social security
in self-obfuscating obscurity
Phrases swift, glib, bouncy & cheap
cascade in bombastic profusion
pile up in bewildering heap
fueling cacophonous confusion
While the lucid sentence garroted
(amidst clamouring derision)
the cliché-like phrase pours parroted
heard as expression elysian
But who among us pays heed?
Let uptight linguists accede
In Ballard bicycle tires don’t puncture
Streets are ballroom smooth with curbs of foam
Cars wait politely at every juncture
Welcome to where electric bikes roam!
It’s where perennial tailwinds blow
and helmets won’t flatten your hairdo
+)
Ballard = the Seattle neighborhood where our e-bike shop is still located
This verse is about those among of us who routinely ‘report’, i.e. who monopolize what otherwise might pass for participatory conversation, and instead provide a mindless stream of unsolicited, tedious accounts of personal trivia. ‘They’ are those who indulge themselves in such fashion. ‘We’ refers to those among us who pretend to listen rather than speaking up.
Inane silliness they propound
oblivious of how they do bore
running colloquy’s ship aground
prop churning in air, bow stuck ashore
Brusquely do they choose to fail
noticing some snoring
while they sweat every detail
Hot air balloons soaring
We’re dragged through verbiage’s marsh
put-upon minds splashed numb
In knee deep slog, soaked & harsh
our hapless hearts splotched glum
While silently we’re imploring:
“You blabbering, boorish bum
please plug that oozing outpouring
grant us mercy! Try out mum!”
+)
prop = propeller; here: image of a grounded ship
Watch him, in comfy chair, swivel:
Pontificates, pronounces
Spouts such tiresome piles of drivel
ridicules & denounces
Regurgitates like a pup
one which hungrily licks
up the breakfast just thrown up
in never changing fix
You’d think had he his wits
he would’ve called it quits!
From the workforce now retired
but otherwise unexpired!
While in earlier years, prior
I had the fleeting notion
of hearing the Heavenly Choir
filling me with emotion:
that toiling away in the bike shop
would prove my life’s blowout puncture
The terminal ‘end of the line’ stop
with no transfer at that juncture
For now my mind keeps inquiring
although more & more misfiring
+)
the bike shop = my, at the time, place of work
Heavy breathing, hoarse wheezing
Lungs pumping, thighs in pain
Gripping handle bar, squeezing
Stretching the squealing chain
Guts, strength & stamina explored
Cresting the flat road my reward