Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
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
Indulge fantasy, discard reason!
Rich times in planet plundering
our Species’ finest fracking season:
Boundless bludgeoning, blundering
Greed brought upon us final defeat
raiding, rustling & ransacking
Soon no livable ground at our feet
as planet sending us packing!
Who but our own sweet Humankind
shall leave so much garbage behind?
Humans hardly benign
perhaps not evil
while by will or design
still just primeval?
As when in jam exigent
without known precedent
why’s our response negligent
cowardly hesitant?
Is planet Earth merely God’s petri dish?
Humans his experiment with death wish?
Stolid Sweden 1950:
Grandma daily read the news
Life then was safe, sane & nifty
even so she ‘cried the blues’
Bemoaned through ages old persons:
“What’s it coming to this world?”
Alarming how quick it worsens
changes nakedly unfurl!
These days no longer perception
It’s here: Impending Collapse
way beyond aging’s deception
For humans its ‘bugling taps’ …
In sleep your chest
exhales, heaving
So calm at rest
full in breathing
Rising, falling
without compel
Captivating
like peaceful swell
Safe at anchor
in rise, in fall
Absent rancor
in port of call
+)
swell = large, calm (non breaking) waves, following a gale or storm
Background music obtrusively
coddle days flap unflagging
keep on churning elusively
prodding, nagging then sagging
Been seeing our hopes quelled
though flashed fleetingly
tantalizing til knelled
then fade cheatingly
If on our life’s path we’re dawdling
what on earth are we modeling?!
edited 06/21/22 1010
Arms faded & scrawny
flabby our middle
Many years since brawny
now mostly twiddle
Life has turned middling riddle
shows on faces craggy
screeches like mistuned fiddle
in melody draggy
On downward trajectory
our course & cause abstruse
Where’s a clear directory
for those of us obtuse?
Why be effete
scurrying eyes down
on tender feet
in self-absorbed frown?
Down blind alleys
in another fray
Same old sallies
just another day
On craven path
indulged, too well fed
still silent wrath
keeps racking my head
Is life really worth living
if of self we’re too forgiving?
All this dogged insistence
that we’re so deserving
of a prolonged existence
is getting unnerving
In language
so languid
Why languish
so anguished?
Living until fifty
would likely be nifty
While in the seventies
plenty can go wrong
There accrues penalties
for living that long
Even if nursing vain hope
in starry-eyed sanguinity
ain’t the far likelier scope
to end up in ‘penguinity’?
While what time left just rolls on
until earthly life is gone
+)
-‘penguinity’ = (license) the endearing inclination to believe in a swift take-off – even after in perpetuity having frantically been flapping one’s wings and still found oneself stuck on the ground