Rob Burton
Author/Artist
Poems
To the explorers of the linguistic universe.
Keep your hosts of daffodils
Your weepy, whiney, verse
Don’t try to tell me
My writing is too terse
Don't question my choice of words
If they don't match your mood
Check your privilege at the gate
As there’s nothing I’d preclude
A healthy dose of realism
Will come knocking at your door
Don’t hide behind the curtains
Because its too hard to ignore
Living a poetic fantasy
Of whimsy, fawn, and fae
Does not really cut it
In the hard, cold, light of day
The world tis a hard hard place
Life’s no shining bowl of cherries
When all we have are words and rhymes
To challenge such adversaries
So no howling at the darken places
No barking at the moon
Just pen and ink and attitude
And paper to festoon
So take heed my friends and foe alike
And read my silken verse
For poets are naught but explorers
Of the linguistic universe.
February 25th 2021
Planting Trees in Mongolia
March and April are the months
Of sandstorms in Beijing
Three in the past weeks alone
The Gobi desert is moving
Filling the air with its malevolence
Choking dust in a blinding wind
But they are planting trees
In Mongolia
Pollution level six
A yellow warning
To the humans in its path
Creeping, creeping
Closer inexorably
Swallowing the land
Suffocating, swirling grit
But they are planting trees
In Mongolia
The Gobi was devouring
Ten thousand four hundred square kilometres
A year
The monster had to be stopped
Nature fighting nature
Humans dwarfed against the competition
And yet
Trees. It's all about the trees
In Mongolia
Deforestation
The quintessence of man's greed
And folly
Stripped Mother Earth
Of her green mantle
Releasing the
Asian Dust
And they are planting trees
In Mongolia
Fighting fire with fire
China has planted
Eighty-eight billion trees
An auspicious number
For the Great
Green Wall.
Five thousand kilometres
Long
Planting trees in Mongolia
Let's hail heroes
Such as Wang Yinji
And his family
Unceasingly planting trees
Hail the spindly huabang,
The yellow sweetvetch,
Now, says Wang, surrounded
By Pines, Blue Spruce
And rhubarb…
There are trees in Mongolia
"Our corn grows taller.
The sand that used to blow
In from the east and northeast
Has stopped."
Holding down the sand
Grain by grain
Metre by metre
Tree by tree
By the sweat of the brow
The monster is being tamed.
By planting trees
In Mongolia
Shudda
Today it is my Birthday
I’m feeling kinda tired
Yet only 20 years ago
I’d have been feeling kinda wired
Today it is my Birthday
Another year gone
I’m wondering about all those
Great things I shudda done
I shudda travelled round the world
And seen the Taj Mahal
Kissed all the lovely women
Not let my life just pall
I shudda climbed some mountains
And swim in the Japan Sea
Sing monkey songs with monkeys
Eat marmosets for tea
I shudda walked the China wall
And swum with dolphins free
I shudda leapt that canyon grand
On a fat boy Harley D
I shudda worshipped idols
On the road to Shangri La
Listened to the silent monks
Just one hand clapping – Nah!
I shudda spent some money
On diamond rings and pearls
I shudda spent some evenings
With durty durty girls
I shudda found some inner peace
I shudda found a route
I shudda got my arse in gear
For my tree of life to fruit
I shudda had the kumquats
The centre sweet and soft
Lived a magazine type lifestyle
In an airy New York Loft
Or I shudda been a poet
Eating canapés and brie
Like William Butler Bloody Yeats
On the isle of Innisfree
But today it is my birthday
And all that stuff is tosh
If I really take a look around
My life is just awash
My loving wife and family
My darling grown up girl
Make all these sad sad sad regrets
Unpick, deflate, unfurl
Who wants a New York lifestyle?
And Marmosets for tea?
Who cares about the idols?
And the fat boy Harley D?
I’d rather have my family
Than all the China tea
Because after all that moaning
I’m pretty pleased with me
So hurrah today’s my birthday
I’ll sip a malt whiskey
But maybe one day you’ll find me
On that Isle of Innisfree.
Et tu Extremist?
In the quiet stir of dissent,
voices rise against the backdrop
of complicity, of silence,
etched in the annals of power.
Extremist forces, they say,
are the dissenters, the challengers
of policies and decisions
that bear the weight of blood
and the echoes of forgotten lives.
They speak of lands ravaged,
of innocence lost in the shuffle
of geopolitical games,
where arms flow like rivers
and justice stands as a mere spectre.
Extremist forces, they argue,
are those who refuse the binary,
the dualities of power
that offer no true refuge
from the storm of oppression.
In the corridors of democracy,
they demand representation
for the marginalized,
for the voices drowned
beneath the cacophony of status quo.
Extremist forces, they challenge
the very fabric of governance,
the pillars of deceit and greed
that crumble beneath the weight
of their unwavering dissent.
In the tumult of their cries,
lies the audacity of hope,
the belief in a world
unshackled by the chains
of corruption and tyranny.
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