Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Comes dawn am wakening up
next to my wondrous wife
then sipping first coffee cup
still spared from thoughts of strife
At nighttime reading in bed
til nodding off, dropping the book
vigor to stay awake shred
dropping off to sleep in our nook
Fleetingly these life’s highlights
shields my heart from what benights
Truly it has been achieved
be it much belated
existentially relieved
by breakthrough elated
Been presumptive in perspective
each stodgy, rigid mistake
but since woke up, turned affective
much quicker now the uptake
This moment in this lifetime
whether in role calm or aghast
here & now is my showtime
in the part which I have been cast!
Long overdue to start my true role
old one been taking horrid a toll
Finding true peace of mind while with zest
hoping to show off how we’re ‘blessed’
struggling intensely to stay abreast
with those most elegantly dressed?
Are we lacking in discernment?
Won’t silly life usurp us
mire us in mundane internment
oblivious to purpose?
While acquisitive restraint much maligned
perhaps a journey of most wondrous kind?
How are we expected prescient
about all that’s devolving
when of context sorely nescient
whilst most values dissolving?
But who needs knowing
can’t we just keep going
conning, elbowing
pushing, and then crowing?!
Still ain’t there unsettling sense it’s bugling taps
that nations, environment are near collapse?
When was the most recent time
looking in a mirror
that whistles blew, bells would chime
when viewed ourself clearer?
For in its reflection
on close inspection
we shan’t see perfection
or mass affection
So what, in creation’s aviary
few get to sing like a canary
therefore being a bird ordinary
might perhaps prove most salutary?
The bewildered geezer
slowing on uptake
finds much a brain-teaser
in outlook opaque
Now bumbling, befuddled
way less done than watched
by no smartphone cuddled
His past badly botched:
Got to live long to gain insight
given chance to make things right?
Or just fake alibis airtight
his slim obit to bedight?
Gets close now to Eternity’s Trip
so little time left to get a grip!
Of pride an overdose
dense, too bellicose?
but would be grandiose
to try diagnose
Trying to philosophize
on the meaning of existence
is a frill that ossifies
best focus on co-existence
Try just belong
let’s not be headstrong
“To Get Along”
ought be our theme song
Listen closer to bird song
until our common swan song
The child’s mind is clearness
in unspoken dearness
in unbroken nearness
each moment as hereness
In the present time fulfilled
absent of pretension
mind by the most minute stilled
free from condescension
All in wonder of the mundane
in wide starry eyes ponder
not drawn to lofty or arcane
not off somewhere there yonder
Duck is a duck, no swan
no airs needing put on
How we whip up the batter
amidst spills & splatter
with clanks & clinks & clatter
shall tastily matter
May frantically fiddle
watching out for mistakes
by the sizzling hot griddle
shaping up the hotcakes
Can the essence be found, sweet or awful
solely in the eating of the waffle?
Came across these lines from a late-Elizabethan era madrigal ‘Now is the Month of Maying’:
“The Spring clad all in gladness
doth laugh at Winter’s sadness”
which inspired the following verse – though pretending that ‘Madrigal’ is the last name of a woman called Elizabeth, who is rather the one feeling gladness & sadness:
While flawless crisp days did excite
on frozen fields bucolic
since then worn thin Winter’s delight
in melting snow to frolic
Patient, fickle & demure
thus arrives next season
to brim with its own allure
clouded from all reason
Dear Elizabeth Madrigal
clearly the most innate thing
for such a thoughtful lovely gal
to join in laughter with Spring!