Life poems
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Thinking of an Afterlife
© Ivan Donn Carswell
When was the beginning,
in the fertilising, in the flower,
or was it deeper,
in the earth beneath?
The Cup of Life
© Archibald Lampman
One after one the high emotions fade;
Time's wheeling measure empties and refills
Year after year; we seek no more the hills
That lured our youth divine and unafraid,
The Reason Why Im Fat
© Ivan Donn Carswell
I thought my father was far too fat eagerly I told him so,
if he was offended it didnt show and I dont recall
where that strange conversation went. Now I know
he was offended as I am too, it is not a jibe to
The perfect cup
© Ivan Donn Carswell
We were born of tea, our mum could drink fourteen
cups a day, an awesome feat to try to rationalise,
beyond belief unless you knew where we had one
she would have two. The perfect cup, she said,
Gray Weather
© Robinson Jeffers
It is true that, older than man and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf
Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum;
The best days of my life
© Ivan Donn Carswell
What is it about Bryan Adams and his song
Summer of 69? Why do the lyrics linger? Was it
90° in the shade and the harbinger of the end
of the golden weather, or the impending closure
One of the Bo'sun's Yarns
© John Masefield
Loafin' around in Sailor Town, a-bluin' o' my advance,
I met a derelict donkyman who led me a merry dance,
Till he landed me 'n blanched me fair in the bar of a rum-saloon,
'N' there he spun me a juice of a yarn to this-yer brand of tune.
Denner's Old Woman
© William Cowper
In this mimic form of a matron in years,
How plainly the pencil of Denner appears!
Something to shout about
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Captain AJ Shout, VC, MC, MID (& bar), who died at Gallipoli
of wounds and was posthumously awarded the VC,
a rare and prestigious award for most conspicuous bravery,
could say, even in dying, it was something to shout about.
To The Gad-Fly
© George Moses Horton
Majestic insect! from thy royal hum,
The flies retreat, or starve before they'll come;
The obedient plough-horse may, devoid of fear,
Perform his task with joy, when thou art near.
General Joubert
© Rudyard Kipling
With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
He had no part whose hands were clear of gain;
But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life
To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.
To Roosevelt {2}
© Rubén Dario
It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.
Ready to step into life
© Ivan Donn Carswell
This morning, coffee in hand, standing at the kitchen
window thinking of things that need to be done
I contemplated the post with a lean at the front gate
which I should right one day and wondered why;
Rangipo Desert
© Ivan Donn Carswell
Whangaehu waters, hot-spilled from the cauldron
of Crater Lake, swirling mud-green from the cup
between Tahurangi and Pyramid Peak,
sulphurous, sibilant among purer daughters
Desires that you can only tame to know
© Ivan Donn Carswell
"Zipless sex" one cynic called
this festival of fornication,
this celebration of new-found sexual strength
and urbane honesty, of sex for sex as sex alone
Out of ideas
© Ivan Donn Carswell
If I dont write something good tonight I will sleep
without the comforting Canopus of deep believers,
if I sleep at all, and this light which ignites
my enormous poetic conceit and guides my muse
Suspiria
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Take them, O Death! and bear away
Whatever thou canst call thine own!
Thine image, stamped upon this clay,
Doth give thee that, but that alone!
