Although I have called it New Poetry its practitioners have been active for many years. Written by several hands it forms a whole. Romantic in nature, in that it embraces rather than reduces experience, it contains more than a degree of philosophy. In fact it contains a great deal of philosophy. It is not afraid to demonstrate thinking.

The short lyrical poem below concerns itself with time, the justification of day to day events and actions, understood through a computer’s processes. The computer, now ubiquitous, provides present-time rather than past-time. The nature of time has ceased to be determined by events.

Between Moment and Event

Recollections at the window

Darkness at the door,

A spent cigarette,

A dried up memory bank-

A laptop lying purposefully in the grass.

In between the moment is the event

The wood is riven by foxes

Whimpering with cloven paws

The newly accommodated beaver

Rakes up a new home

The water vole scurries into infested water.

In between the moment is the event

Reproduced in the computer

Action and moment have ceased

Action and intent no longer connected

Time and thought perpetually adjusted

Hollow rain signifies emptiness

A blank screen eternity.

2.

The second poem presented here concerns itself with the nature of disagreement, comparing familial discord. The rhyme scheme hewns the words suggesting great depth of feeling. Its apparent clumsiness is a sign of its integrity.

As They Grow Older

As they grew older they grew further away

Withholding their love

Remote, with apparently little to say

No words, no tears, no kind of stuff

Falling from their distant lives

Living with new thoughts, lovers, wives.

A troupe of sons, gambling with time!

Alexander was a rotten son of a brilliant father

Misled by a mother’s lies

Into an oedipal outrage. Spurred free roulette game online to violence, rather

Then be a man he became a legend, pursued by biting flies.

Betrayal often leads to success,

The betrayer a psychological mess.

The love of a child evaporates

Evident in the lives of kings

The urge for power saturates

Ignores duty, gratitude, those kinds of things.

But hell! So what?

We once, objects of their beaming infant smiles, received such a lot.

OK, Richard 1 left his father to die alone,

John ripped the money from the dead man’s purse,

They then fought each other for the throne

Making a family feud undeniably worse.

Throughout history, the mothers taking new ambitious lovers

Caused greater angst amongst whole generations of brothers.

Families are rarely friends: brother fights brother

Sister quarrels with sister, battling incessantly,

Despising each carefully chosen lover

Examining each other critically.

The success of one initiates gloom,

A show of brilliance, a thunderous rain-wrenched boom.

Compared to great and legendary figures

Our problems are played out beneath a dimmer light

We drown our thoughts with liquor

Squabble like screeching bats in the night

No grabbing of swords, fastening of armour, beribboned horses,

Our mundane arguments have tiny causes.