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Tag: Keatsian ode

The Edge of War: Keatsian (English) ode

Published on June 17, 2025

Let fly the cannonballs and fiery stuff,
release the fire arrows in the night!
They don’t already know it, but enough
is more than quite enough. It’s time to fight.
What good is mere diplomacy and talk,
when no one listens or misunderstands?
There is no point in waiting any more.
Our greatest weapons will leave them in shock.
When it comes right down to it, no one can
resist the subtle serpent’s song of war.

What good is it, resisting such a force?
It gathers in momentum by the day,
and casts aside all reason. Why? Of course,
because some people love to hear drums play,
and safely, from the hilltops, watch the scene
where lesser men and boys succumb and die,
and count it victory when money’s made.
What does it matter, winning? What’s it mean?
Who knows what is the truth, and what’s a lie,
when the glory and the trumpets fade?

Let loose the hounds of hell, and let them run,
among the poor and hungry fools who fight.
The battle ends before the war’s begun,
a pre-decided case of right and might.
Imagine this scenario’s a test,
a way for culling ignorance from bliss,
to see who gets it, or nothing instead.
What good is knowing who knows what is best,
or wanting to believe the world wants this?
There are no heroes there among the dead.

17 Jun 2025

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Small Towns: ode (Keatsian)

Published on April 7, 2017

For what it’s worth, most places on a map
merely exist as clots in highway veins:
mere wisps of web for speed or tourist traps,
perhaps historic, where that sense remains.
At thirty thousand feet that’s how they look:
just blips on distant radar, single grains
of sand on beaches that in recent books
rate just almost a star; not worth the pains.
But down here, where the highway meets the chrome,
a place takes on dimension. It retains
some spark, and for those souls that call it home,
an energy that tourists feed upon:
a tilting match between living and death.

The ebb and flow is more or less a tide:
a feast and famine cycle that repeats
quite often at so slow a speed, the ride
seems dull, not worth the ticket price for seats.
At other times, the fulcrum tilts so fast
there seems no forward motion or retreat,
just wearing down what once seemed built to last,
a winner’s gait slowed down to shuffling feet
that struggle two steps forward, one step back,
and finally collapse in a bar seat,
where like an aged and rusted Cadillac,
their owner basks in golden yesterdays
and stares out at new flowers every spring.

Sometimes, influx of new blood fills the streets,
its holy and exuberant refrains
erasing painful memories of defeat
and adding camouflage to ancient stains;
for a brief hour or two, time is forgot,
and with it all self-loathing and distain.
The shiny, feverish fish won’t know it’s caught
until the hook reminds it once again
from whence it came, and how its future runs:
a circumscribing series of events,
monotonous once they’ve just half begun,
and covered with the dust of drawn out days
as soon as the car’s headlights fade from sight.

7 APR 2017

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