Clearly the last issue did not provoke enough people to send letters, so this time we have room for readers’ poems!
Rights
What’s right about everyone’s rights stealing mine
What’s free about what cannot be spoken
Am I the only one who finds it not quite right
That my “rights” are wrongs but “theirs” are alright
We are being cabined cribbed and summarily defined
By what others dictate on speaking one’s mind
Time for the sleeping to wake up to what’s happening
Time to see the encroachment for what it is
Appeasement to one or two whilst reducing the many
Loss of hard won liberty loss of good sense
It only takes disagreement an argumentative mind
Any place any time anyone can now cause offence
Setting you up for a fight that’s been picked
Give us a break please but no “you’ve been nicked”
Does not a majority have a point of view to be heard
And can this not be spoken without regard
To letting others huff and puff and insist
That their rights trump your rights to even exist
What happens next don’t kid yourself “this” is enough
The thought police following and that will be rough
Minorities manipulate and mess with majorities
With media rhetoric and mass media incursion
Fifth columnists not a few spread their wholesale diversion
If you can’t see it coming you’re not thinking not looking
Dictating to you as law about what you must do
far exceeds telling you what you must not do
and way in the distance a tiny voice not yet heard
that unwanted or manufactured child crying
from clinic from petrie dish from surrogacy
‘what about my rights doesn’t anyone think of me’
James Verner, May, 2015. Copyright
From ‘Fragments from a life’, a book of over 40 poems
James Verner is a theatre producer, entrepreneur and poet. He says, “The poems cover a wide variety of subjects, grand-children, spring time, observations, quirks of modern living, humour, human rights, Easter, dying, people, travelling, rain and much more …”
Please email him if you wish to reproduce this poem: jamesjackverner@gmail.com
Creation?
Creation begs the question,
How came I so refined?
Did such sophistication,
Just happen undersigned?
Did space and time self manage,
So perfectly aligned?
Did light and dark appear,
By luck and chance combined?
Did every tiny atom,
Create itself a glue,
To stick to other particles,
That also made some too,
And by some secret language,
Make sure all cell-life knew,
That they would make the universe,
By forming, bang on cue!
By all their thinking efforts,
Did atoms form a plan,
And brainstorm evolution,
To one day make a man?
But first they found a conscience,
And development began;
A complicated set-up,
To resist, respond and scan.
Did cell life form in structures,
With features quite unique;
And prototypes emerging,
As something rather sleek!?
With super-charged receptors,
(Like ears, so to speak),
And flexible and thinnish skin,
… So contents wouldn’t leak?
The mission thus successful,
Did atoms then contrive,
To set about inventing,
And bringing stuff alive?
A billion different species,
NOT all that would survive,
And climates, skies and weather…
Ensuring life would thrive?
Some types were just made static,
And some would move around.
Some things would fly above them,
And some go underground!
Some life would walk the planets,
To earth and sea be bound,
But later they were modified……..
For several species drowned!!
Did then these new formations,
Imagine greater scale?
Things had to work in cycles,
If life was not to fail.
So, did they summon systems,
And all that would entail…?
Boy! ….. things were getting tricky,
On this reproductive trail!!…
Did clever little atoms,
Become a world of stuff,
Hot and cold and tepid,
Prickly, smooth and rough,
Vast and microscopic,
Fragile, porous, tough:
From huge galactic stratospheres,
To belly button fluff??
Creation had a crisis:
Her thinking cells were beat!
If she hadn’t self-invented,
Then, she’d have to see defeat!!
She looked at all her beauty,
This amazing complex feat,
And saw in just one moment
That her thoughts were incomplete.
She’d thought that it was foolish,
To believe that she’d been made.
But this was far more senseless,
… This “self-evolve” charade!!
She mused and looked to heaven,
And there she saw God’s hand,
With soil beneath his fingernails,
Stretched-out to tend the land.
Right there she heard God’s heartbeat;
She recognized the thud –
The rhythm of her seasons,
The sense of all her good.
She wanted then to shout it,
And only wished she could,
That she’d recognised her maker
….. and she finally understood!
By Juliet Dawn
Juliet Dawn is the worship leader and songwriter daughter of Roy and Brenda Taylor. She has released several albums and also writes poetry. Of the 100 or so she has written, she has sent what she calls “a powerful yet tongue-in-cheek dismissal of the evolution theory – it’s a great tool for people to pass on to sceptics/non-believers for whom this subject is a stumbling block.”
Permission is given to use, copy and print this poem as long as Juliet Dawn’s name appears with it.