A Verse for Jeffers

When man is ruling
with an iron fist,
it's time to become a little
anti-humanist.

A (Not So) Simple Truth

Either everything's Holy
or nothing is Holy.
And if the only thing Holy
is your Holy Book,
then you, my friend,
are wholly
a holy crook.

People are Stupid

People are stupid,
people are stupid.
I'm here to tell you that
people are stupid.

People are reckless -
people are pointless.
I'm here to tell you how
most people are feckless.

One minute we have it,
the next one we lose it.
People are crazy
and we all abuse it.

We walk to the car,
drive to the mountains
only to go cycling
and then go pint-ing or stout-ing.

We drive to the market
buy food then cook it,
when we could go out
and get others to do it.

We shout at each other,
sisters and brothers.
Say one thing then
turn and do another.

We decry cruelty -
say that it's faulty,
but then overfish oceans,
eat steak every Tuesday.

Because people are stupid.
People are stupid.
We are a pestilence
and we are ruthless.

People are stupid,
people are vapid.
And if the world wants to get on
it better squash us while we're napping!

The Country in the City

I grew up in the country.
There, you grow up easily
as an ear of corn:
you are as tall as the sky,
and time is only measured
by the engorging of berries,
in the birds' chirps and cries.

When I was in my twenties,
I moved to the city: prosperity
waited there for me. Frequently,
I'd look up at the buildings,
which seemed to gaze down on me,
steely as a mountain crag
looms above a valley.

But one day, I saw a weed, freed
from between two slabs of pavement,
grabbing at the sky in its up! up! up!
of never giving in. I too looked up.
It was then I started to notice the man
picking the scattered cans, like fruit,
the old woman watering her small patch of garden.

I looked up at the elevated roofs.
One caught my eye in particular:
a pebble-dashed rough-shod flat.
I climbed the stair case to the top,
walked to the edge and surveyed, and at that
I saw, on every building, others staring out,
their arms flung wide open, their faces facing the sound

of the Sun up above, pouring down.
I too opened my arms; I opened my mind,
and the rays struck like a bolt the rod of my spine,
and my heart became light; my mind became sight.
I went down to the street, bought a pitchfork and some soil,
planted trees and shrubs and herbs on roofs:
the city's skin now a spurt of leaf, its blood a glug of oil.