Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
We hail from people who had to toil
through ages in bleak subsistence
on some miserly morsel of soil
eking out a grim existence
Disadvantaged
but they managed
Now to ‘consumer’ uplifted
infinitely more stuff
How human life has shifted!
Why can’t we get enough?
Careless years blown dissipated
lived ignorant of too much
Dull days closed down desolated
leaned too hard on booze’s crutch
I kept on churning on shallow laps
around & around & again
’til sounded inexorably taps:
Plainly mundane, nothing arcane!
For true happiness I’d sung in vain
ignorant of another refrain
Conversations smooth bubbles
shall easily puncture
burst on to fallow stubbles
at most awkward juncture
All while crashing comity’s concourse
rarely appears engender remorse?
At those pedestrian crossings striped
cantankerous drivers of ‘tanks’
impatiently stopped, while sometimes griped
about walkers’ deficient thanks
Obsequious must be walkers may
it’s in U.S culture, of course
prevailing attitude holding sway:
Need respect only size & force!
Thus most backward to yield
when we are the large-wheeled
+)
‘tanks’ = here: ever larger cars, SUVs et al
Eager to engender dialogue
anxious for us all to connect
Trapped in someone’s mulish monologue
in vain trying to interject
While most the time in vain
and for this I’m given flack
Am found rude & inane
by those haranguing their claque
Rarely have I found that such a bore
relinquishes his/her purloined floor
we trot them out to sound clever
Tending over-simplistic
so ties to truth they may sever
Quips misidentify
meager on meaning
may oversimplify
while good at preening
Cutthroat snappy
who knows how benight
Quick & scrappy
while rarely contrite
Along with other woke tag lines
the campaign ‘Black Lives Matter’
has seen taken down its yard signs
while White Lies still do smatter
Signs a snug way to get involved
while largely leave issues unsolved
Cognoscenti
with their acumen
twenty-twenty
us to illumine
Daze & frazzle us, and how
to the extent we allow
How come they know what’s what
that hangs on the wall
whether it’s art or smut
better than us all?
Heeding what others claim to know
may just end up as our owned woe
Haven’t we got quite the knack
for freely shooting the breeze
for endless boorish yak
above pizza dripping cheese?
I’d rather hold out for the arcane
hoping to get bit more evolved
than being dragged down in the mundane
by someone soundly self-involved:
Spottily bit snottily
naughtily or haughtily
Spouting loud & prolific
those quips brought up galore
be they seldom specific
can still inflict ‘earsore’
As quips propound they obfuscate
do not frame for clarity
but contrarily dissipate
lack focus on verity
While attempts quatrain verse
to cut to the core
to speak sparsely & terse
Such contrary chore …
… to fit into rhymed space
with some semblance of grace