‘L’ poems
Brendan Martin
Lavender Beds
We heard nature humming busily
as we lazily watched the sky
naming cloud shapes childishly
as they slowly drifted by
In the distance swallows swooping
at speeds that seemed so fast
when they were rising towards the sun
it was as if a blinking second passed.
You pointed to some nearby poppies
with petals proclaiming flaming reds,
lucky weeds amongst the purple hues
of our world beyond the sheds.
“Just like us,” you whispered,
as we slowly turned our heads
and faced each other, smiling,
lying in the lavender beds.
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Latinistc Gems
My name is the same
as that famous old geezer,
the all conquering Roman,
Julius Caesar.
In my time space continuum
I eat chewing gum;
and I heard on the intercom
someone asking where I was from.
My doctor later asked me
how many I would regularly eat
or if I chewed them only
or swallowed them complete.
“I ate two Brutus,” I struggled to say;
he looked at me strangely
while walking away
I guess Latin wasn’t his
linguistic forte;
nor was comedy,
though I thought it was funny;
until he handed me his bill
demanding his money.
‘E pluribus unum,’
he pointed to the words.
And that is when I knew
that he was for the birds.
“Mea culpa,” I muttered
as I tendered my visa
he said: “you think you’re a smart ass
Mister Julius Caesar.”
“Not at all,” I whispered,
“but I learned something new,
I may not appear clever,
but I’m smarter than you!”
////////
Leap
There is no love in either of them; her and him;
or in those jagged sea cliff rocks
raking up the foam from every angry drop they cried
that spills upon the wind, rushing with a tide
unable to avoid any vitriolic spattered sprays
like diamonds in a rainbow haze
upon which we gaze, sometimes amazed,
hurling promises of love or vengeance
at the horizon or a waning moon
from where every stone looks soft, arune
all round edges, comfortably rough, worn smooth
until words reverberate with seaside powers
from another time, long before ours,
when others mourned with morning flowers
amid cries and bells, and a world asleep,
swallowed up, by a swirling deep,
calling lovers, to have faith, to leap,
into the teeth of jagged sea cliff rocks
no life now in their manmade box
no love in either him or her,
only a splashing in the silent glow
of an ocean full of life, and more,
with secrets and promises of a passion
we may somehow never know.
Brendan Martin is a member of Inklings Writing Group who meets on Tuesdays at 11am and Wednesdays at 7:30pm in the Annebrook House Hotel. Mullingar. Aspiring writers welcome.