Humor

Detour

Detour
A Jackpine Sonnet

My way or the high way –
but by which route,
the four-leaf clover,
the new roundabout,
or the old flyover?

Who cares when there’s
only one bridge open
to cross the river
and that one with
two lanes closed
and the traffic flow
now reduced to single
file and an endless
nose to tail.

Amazing how often
our modern roads
need repairing
and how seldom
local motorists are open
to sharing and caring.

Comment:

Summer, holiday season, tourists in from all parts – add them together, and what do you get? Road works, of course. Construction. Old roads being newly tarmacked. Detours. And not a clue as to how to get from a – z without following a million arrows, none of which fly straight to your target.

As the crow flies. But no crow I know flies like this. Unless he’s discovered a supply of Newfoundland Super Screech with the power to lift an aircraft off the ground, not to mention to loop-the-loop with all the passengers safely wearing their seat-belts. Australia – here we come. The Antipodes, remember!

Earlier, of course, it was pothole season. And we all remember that. Now it is summer caravan and trailer time. This morning, as I was driving past the RV park, three half-tons pulling caravans pulled out ahead of me and three more tucked in behind. Now I know what it’s like being a thin slice of ham or cheese between six crusty loaves of bread.

Ah well, one-stop shopping. Get out – one stop – pick it all up – and get back home safe. That’s the way to do it, as we have done before!

Earworms

Earworms

A meaningless collection of notes
swarms into my empty head
swimming round and round
like clustering tadpoles.

The ebb and flow of that mysterious
music clumps on and on, tight in
 my mind and will not let me go.

Earwigs, some call them,
those senseless repetitions,
day after day, night after night,
awake and asleep,
old tv adverts, short clips
of classical music or popular songs.

They are wheelbarrow songs,
hedge clippings, dead flowers,
crass grass, broken branches, weeds,
repetitive memes of meaning,
a syndrome of stuck songs destined
for the garbage dump and ritual burning
in the hell of an eternal turntable turning.

Comment:

Word magic from the Mikado – “My object all sublime I shall achieve in time, to make the punishment fit the crime” … And in this case I would tie the criminals who invented these ‘ballads, songs, and snatches’ to the stake, with earphones that endlessly repeated all the nonsense we hear day and night, so much of which sticks in the turntables of our brains turning round and round as we toss and turn in our beds at night. Just a case, I suppose, of hearing music while there’s no one there.

And how many earworms did you pluck out of that first paragraph? I can count six, maybe seven. Then, my mind may be very different from yours. Perhaps your mind isn’t in the outrageous Wilfred that mine is. Don’t get that joke, do you? And why should you? I guess you don’t remember Ray’s a Laugh, Round the Horne, Mr. Dimwitty, or Wilfred Pickles – and why should you.

Passent les jours et passent les semaines / ni temps passés ni les amours reviennent / sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine – click on the link for the English version (my translation) and click on this link for a slightly improved revised version.

Yes, as Apollinaire says time flows on and by – or, after Heraclitus – you can never step in the same river twice. More important, perhaps, for those who worry about their past thoughts, words, and deeds – you can throw the stone into the pond, but you can’t control the ripples.

FIFA

FIFA
A Jackpine Sonnet

elbows on the table
my hands clasped around
this soccer ball
I call my skull

its global reach
the totality of all
I hold and know
and understand

past games
long forgotten
gone the skills
of which I was so proud

my life the circumference
of this paneled circle
wrinkled and peeling

the ancient onion skins
of old corruptions
newly found

Comment:

Moo calls this painting, which he forgot to sign, Crater with Creatures. He thought it would be a good painting for this circular poem that also goes round and around like the creatures in the crater. Wild thoughts, they are, gnawing at each other as they circle. I had to tell Moo what FIFA meant. At first, he thought I had written FIFI, the name of his cat. No, I told him, it’s FIFA, not FIFI, and that’s why I call my skull a soccer ball. “But FIFA isn’t corrupt,” Moo said. Well, that made me laugh. “I wasn’t referring to FIFA as being corrupt,” I explained. “The corruptions are all my own.” “But you aren’t corrupt,” Moo exclaimed. “Think of them not as corruptions, but of little errors, little sins, the little mistakes we all make in life.” “Oh, those,” said Moo. “Nobody cares about those things. They are all little nothings, best forgotten.” “I usually do forget them,” I said, “but once in while I pick at them like I pick at a scab, and then they all start bleeding again, or flaking away like thin layers of onion rings.”

Moo looked at me, long and hard. “You are just like a world cup soccer team manager,” he told me. “First you pick your nose, then you pick yourself, then you pick your best friends and put them on the team. But that’s not corruption. That’s the way of the world. Everybody does it.” “Not everybody,” I said. “That’s because not everybody is a soccer coach,” he replied.

Good old Moo. Such a world wise philosopher. I remember when he had his index finger in plaster. “What wrong with your finger,” I asked him. “It broke,” he replied. “How on earth did that happen?” “Someone punched me in the nose.” “Well that shouldn’t have broken your finger,” I said, amazed and rather doubtful. “It was in my nose at the time,” he sighed. Que lo creas tú.

Questions

Questions

Jackpine Sonnet

each time you see a shooting star
a child is born or an angel falls
swarms of them in certain seasons
when our planet sails through
the meteor belt and rocks burn up
as they fall to earth through air and fire

written in the stars they say
and everyday I read my horoscope
to see what lies in stall
or rather what fate will me befall

warmth and love perhaps yet what
do cold unconscious planets know
about this life that people lead below

Eros Agape Philia
Jupiter Mercury Venus Mars
who knows what ancient
Greek and Roman gods
still play at being gods
among so many drifting
shifting shooting stars

Comment:

So, Moo is back to painting, at long last. Last night he painted two paintings to celebrate his return to a lovely clean, neat, washed, rearranged workshop desk that a certain KTJ tidied up for him. He was so happy. I could see him bouncing up and down on tip-toe, trying not to fall over with excitement. He even got to wash his brushes and ensure that all the remaining ones were solid and good.

“Back again,” he sighed. And that’s exactly what he painted. Of course, in the course of time some of his paints have dried up and a brush or two needed careful separation, fine squirrel hairs from dried paint. But with a little elbow grease and a lot of luck everything came together.

This time, I had poem that fitted Moo’s painting. It explores the idea that everything can be found in the heavens. Fray Luis de León phrases it this way –

Es más que un breve punto
este bajo y torpe suelo comparado
con aquel gran transunto
donde vive mejorado
todo lo que es, lo que será, lo que ha pasado?

Is it more than a brief speck
this low and clumsy earth compared
with that huge universe
where lives in betterment
everything that is, will be, and was?

Well, what a load of questions and all based on 16th Century Spanish Neo-Platonism. Yet old as the system of star reading is, people still read their daily horoscopes. Well, some people do. I guess they think that in the same way that the moon rules the tides and pulls them this way and that way, then the moon and stars rule our bodies – we are, after all, 95% water – and pull us this way and that way.

But hold on a moment. Nature or nurture. And what about free will – libre albedrío? Are we ruled by the stars? Or do we have free will to do as we want in this little world of ours? Good questions. What we do know is that certain people think they can do whatever they want, with no repercussions or consequences whatsoever, while others understand that certain societal norms and rules are there for a purpose. Oh dear – the eternal question. If the stars and planets know what we will do and when we will do it, can we speak of free will or are our lives pre-determined!

I guess Moo’s painting is more than a Who’s Who Zoo and more a who did what and with which and to whom zoo combined with when and why did they do it. “Alas, if thy mother knew it, sadly, sadly would she rue it.” And now’s the time to De La Rue it – so get out those playing cards, shuffle them carefully, read your fortune, and let’s see what is going to happen, and how, and when. Or you could read tea leaves, Viking Runes, or the lines on the palm of your hand. Speaking of which – question – what is the first sign of madness? – answer – hairs on the palm of your hand. Question – what is the second sign of madness? – answer – looking for them. – and you did, go on, admit it, you took a little peek, didn’t you. I know you did – it was written in the stars, and in the Tarot pack, and … and … and …. did you find one?

Anywhere

Anywhere
Jackpine Sonnet

I knew you the first day
I saw you. I knew your heart
before you could open it up
and let me in. I knew your soul
before you allowed me
to touch its beauty’s depth.

Did I know you from another
life? I just don’t know. I only
know that I knew who you were
and what you meant to me.

Once I saw you, how could I let
you go? I reached across the bridge
that spans the ages and saw you
as you always were, clad in white,
shining like the Milky Way
across a universe of falling stars
and you the only one I wanted
to catch, put in my pocket,
 and keep safe in my heart.

Comment:

“Know thy self!” So easy to say, but not so easy to do. Sometimes it is easier to know others, to see them clearly, than it is to know ourselves. As Robbie Burns once wrote – “Oh would some power the giftie gie us / to see ourselves as others see us.” The mirror of the self, alas, is a fairground mirror, snatched from the hall of mirrors, and it is a distorting mirror that turns us into different shapes and sizes.

And what about the ways in which people change? Miguel de Cervantes wrote that “the most difficult role in the play is that of the fool, for he who would play the fool must never be one.” How many of us wear a mask, play the fool, and it is only the joker’s bells that are heard, the fool’s mask that is seen?

And we can change in so many ways. Heraclitus – “we can never walk in the same river twice.” Why not? Because we change and the waters of the river change and everything is in fluctuation and nothing stays the same, not even for one day. Nostra vita brevis est … and it is subject to change.

How do we change? Let me count the ways – but, like petals on a daisy or seeds on a dandelion, the changes are almost impossible to count. Guillaume Apollinaire also wrote about change. “Je ne suis plus là moi-mème, je suis le quinze de l’onzième.” / “I am no more myself. I have become the fifth of the twelfth.” How often do people say – “I am a human being. I am not just a number.” Yet numbers are what we turn into. Statistics. Figures in columns. Dates in note books. Telephone numbers. Number plates on cars.

Oh the joys of time. Today’s heroes so soon turn into tomorrow’s forgotten people. Seeds on a dandelion, petals on a daisy, ants beneath the traveler’s feet … change is everywhere. And one day, even you, might look in that mirror and no longer recognize yourself. So – know yourself – yes – but always prepare for change.

Windmill

Windmill
Jackpine Sonnet

When the scales fell from my eyes
I stood on them and wondered
what I weighed on the time’s great scales.

Miniscule. A featherweight.
A dandelion seed blown on the wind
that whirls the world through space.

Spiritus mundi – the great world spirit
inflating my lungs, each breath
a glimpse of the infinite
combining in my body and soul.

The sails of a windmill, my arms,
and the wind turning them,
dashing me down into the dust,
then raising me rejoicing to the skies.

Comment:

Moo said I needed cheering up, so he painted me a happy painting. “I know it’s not a windmill,” he told me, “but you can pretend it is. The leaves of the clover even look like they might be a windmill, and look, it’s got arms as well.”

“Thank you, Moo,” I said. My poem is a happy poem and it proves that the Black Dog of yesterday had been banished today, not by a happy dog, but by a four leafed clover standing beneath a shower of solver and gold.”

Intertextuality – texts speaking to texts. I wonder how many texts you can spot in this poem. I can count five, at least, and there are probably more. Milton Acorn, Miguel de Cervantes, Northop Frye, the Bible (not y Beibl Cymreig, unfortunately), Edmond Rostand. That’s quite the handful. Well, four fingers and a thumb, at least. Now all you have to do is spot the original sources which, blended, give my poem a saucy sauce of sorts. So, grab your AI and play hide and seek and see what you can find drawn from the dark recesses of my mind. Don’t give in too easily, now.

Mood swings – mood changes – Moody Me – Moody Moo – I’ll bet that you are Moody Too. Good mood, bad mood, who’s to say? We’ll leave that for another day!

Black Dog

Black Dog

The black dog leaps out
of the grandmother clock
and lands on my back.

His paws grip my shoulders,
then rake down my spine.

I try to shake him off,
but he growls, bares his teeth,
and won’t let go.

I love that clock,
its Westminster chimes,
the Roman numerals
standing guard
over the pointed arrows
of the hands as they march
round and round.

But I hate the hound
that makes its kennel
in the clock, leaps out,
snaps at me, bites and claws,
and grinds me
down into the ground.

Comment:

The Black Dog was Winston Churchill’s name for the depression that came over him, and overcame him, from time to time. It used to attack me when I was a young boy living in Swansea. My grandfather would point at the clock and say “He’s in there. He’s coming for you. I can see him. It’s the black dog.” Well, that used to drive me crazy and whatever it was that set me off became twice as bad when the black dog arrived. Alas, now I am entering into my dotage and my second childhood, the black dog has re-appeared to trouble my waking hours. I guess it’s the mood swings. Happy one moment, miserable the next. The good dog appears. The black dog drives it away. Then the good dog reappears and all is well again.

Moo understands me and my patterns very well. In fact he painted two paintings for me – Twin – the one above and Niwt – the one below. You can see evidence of the good dog and the black dog in each of them. But which is which?

I’ll leave you to guess which is the good dog and which the bad one. Really and truly, they are two sides of the same coin – heads and tails so to speak. Moo tells me you can think of the paintings as a mirror image, one of the other.

It’s like mood swings – either my mind or my body flips the coin and one of the two dogs jumps out visit me. Luckily, after a bit, the good one chases the bad one away, so it’s all swings and roundabouts and all the fun of the fair. Until I fall off the Ferris Wheel or see my own shadow while riding on the Ghost Train.

Twin, of course, is Niwt backwards. Or is it the other way round. Dylan Thomas, my favorite Welsh poet, set the standard for word reversal. After all, the town of Llareggub is bugger all backwards. What fun we can have when we twist our words, double up on our language, reverse words and their meanings, and generally weave the tangled webs of linguistic double-talk. Oh the mystery of missed and mixed up meanings. But are meanings meaningful or meaningless? Now that is the question. And when you have answered it for meanings, start thinking about double-meanings and their twins – or should that be quadruplets?

Night Thoughts

Night Thoughts
Jackpine Sonnet

Alive, the house,
with creaks and groans,
doors, windows, floorboards,
all in the minor key,
soft and low.

Walls give forth a series
of squeaks akin to mouse songs
mouthed at midnight.

Who’s there? Was that
a footstep on the stair?
Nobody replies.

I wonder sometimes what sounds
my guardian angel makes
as he does his rounds.

Sometimes in the cool of the night
I think I sense the passing of his wings,
among those other things.

Comment:


Well, what can I say? Moo took one look at this poem of mine and said “Poor thing. You are in a Tiz- Was. Have I got the cartoon for you.”
“What’s a Tiz-woz?” I asked him.
“This painting is. And so are your Night Thoughts. You’d do far better to go to sleep and stop thinking, especially if you’re going to think such things as these. What’s happened to Blueberry? I thought you had persuaded him to look after the Night Bumps.”
“He got rid of those a long time ago. Anyway, these aren’t Night Bumps, they’re Night Thoughts.” “Well, if Blueberry isn’t up to the task, you’d better ask Roseberry to do it. Either that or you get yourself another cat. Or a great big dog.”
“I’ve always got Teddy.”
“You mean you sleep with three teddy bears?”
“Of course I do. You’ve never hear of a three bear night? This is Canada. It gets cold at night in the winter.”
“Idiot. You’ve got central heating.”
“Sometimes the power fails.”
“Then you need to buy Three Dogs. That will give you a Three Dog Night. One in each arm and one to keep your tootsies warm.”
“You’re not being very helpful, Moo.”
“I’m not meant to be helpful. I am a painter and I use my paintings to stir people up and make them think. If I wanted to help people, I’d be a Social Worker.”
“I can’t imagine you as a Social Worker. An Anti-Social Worker maybe.”
“Okay. That’s enough. Do you want to use this cartoon or not?”
“I do.”
“Then do so. And now I am going back to work. I don’t do day thoughts or night thoughts. I just paint.”
“And draw cartoons.”
“That too! That’s why I am a Moo.””

Tomorrow’s Words

Tomorrow’s Words


belong to another day
another experience
a different thought set

tomorrow’s words
new leaves
drifting from the tree
bright-faced
kites on a wind
we have yet to know

mini-kites they fly
and our eyes
cling on to them
while we stand
tethered
here below

itinerant drifters
they will not stay
they just fly away
notes on a wind
words of a song

tomorrow’s words
tomorrow’s song
yet to be sung

Comment

Some time ago, Moo painted this painting – Ephemera he calls it. He wrote a series of thoughts – in poetic form – then covered them over with paint. “Everything,” he told me, “is transient. Ephemeral. The poems you write. The paintings I paint. All ephemeral.” “What does ephemeral mean?” I asked him. He gave me his Bad Hair Day Moo Grunt – “Go look it up,” he told me. So I did.

Ephemeral means lasting for only a very short time, fleeting or transitory. Derived from the Greek word ephēmeros—which literally translates to “lasting only a day”—it is often used to describe things like a beautiful sunset, a brief childhood emotion, or a flitting dream that fades in the morning light. The true essence of the word highlights the fragile, impermanent nature of life, trends, and experiences, serving as a poetic reminder to appreciate moments while they happen. Thank you AI and Wikipedia and anyone else involved. Alas, some citations are as ephemeral as words.

Moo’s painting links with several themes from antiquity. Carpe diem – seize the day. Make the best use of the time you have, for time flits by in the twinkling of an eye. Ubi sunt – the central theme of time past – ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere – where are they who lived in this world before us -. This is an age old question that returns via Gaudeamus igitur – a song still sung in some European universities at graduation time. It also occurs in Villon – Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? Where are last year’s snows. This is the version sung by Georges Brassens.

While the past slips rapidly away, like scenery viewed in the rear view mirror of a rapidly advancing car, the future is always before us. Yet, in many ways it is as ephemeral as the past and soon fades into that rearview mirror as we drive along our chosen paths. The words of yesterday have gone. The words of tomorrow have not yet arrived. We can only cling to the words that we speak and hear now. Catch them if you can. Savour them. They won’t last long.

Outsider

Outsider

Outside their window
nose pressed to the pane
always an outsider

Cold rain turned
to sleet then snow
dark outside
inside fairy lights
the fire’s warm glow

I never cried
I accepted sleet and snow
just stood outside
watching the fire
the sparkling tree
gifts at the foot
children playing

I turned for home
my cold empty house
no lights no fire
just me all alone
my parents out partying
me left on my own

Comment:

Poor Moo – he’s been having a bad time. Winston Churchill’s Black Dog of Depression leapt out of the grandmother clock on the wall in the kitchen, draped itself round his shoulders, and wouldn’t let go. Well, that’s what he told me, anyway. Personally, I think he was silly enough as to check his pension plan on the stock exchange – bad idea. That descending red arrow is worse than the Black Dog and equally as likely to drag one down, down, down. Is there a rock bottom? Who knows. What I do know, from my own hard-won experience, is when it’s darkest and all seems lost, that’s when the you know dawn will soon come and the light will break through.

In 17th Century Spanish Mysticism, this is known as the dark night of the soul. Stick with it. Do not despair. That dark night leads to what the Mystics call the Via Iluminativa – the path of light that leads you back upwards, into your normal self and your daily life of sunshine and happiness.

Anyway, in a cri de coeur – a cry from the heart – Moo showed me this painting and asked me to write a poem, just for him, so that he could wallow in his sorrow for a little bit longer then pull himself out of the Slough of Despond. Bunyan – Pilgrim’s Progress – don’t tell me you haven’t read that? You’ll be on Santa’s Naughty List if you haven’t. Anyway, I offered him a hand to pull him out, but he said “No, not a hand. I want a poem.” And here it is. Moo on the outside, looking in. As you can see, he’s wearing Blue. So he’s a Blue Moo. Good job he isn’t from Kentucky – “Blue Moo of Kentucky, keep on shining.” If he was, he might never recover!

This poem is also dedicated to my good friends Ginger and Michael. They live in the Sunshine State and are never left out in the cold. Now, if they lived in Nova Scotia, they might become true blue Blue Nosers. As for me, I am just a reborn New Brunswick Herring Choker. And I think one of those two might be as well.