A New Age

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” Lord Acton

Are fear and ignorance
The foundations for a new age?
Instead of enjoying our freedom
Would we rather live in a cage?
Economies destroyed,
Societies deranged,
For an illusion of safety
Our liberty exchanged.
Democracy obliterated,
Has taken centuries to achieve,
Crushed by the false gods
That we choose to believe,
Who have taken unlawful powers
That absolutely corrupt them;
But in this new age of fear
Where’s the courage to disrupt them?


I Am A Contrarian

I am a contrarian,
A skeptic through and through,
Don’t follow the narrative,
Like I’m told I must do
.
I am my own person,
Not some left wing classification,
And I believe in free speech,
But not the Marxist interpretation.
I’ve retained my sense and reason,
Not been politically corrected,
And by the woke ideology
I’ve not been infected.

A critical thinker at heart,
When critical thoughts aren’t allowed,
Not in awe of the media,
By their brainwashing not cowed.
 Consider myself an empiricist,
Doesn’t mean I lack emotions,
I just don’t confuse them with facts,
Coming up with ridiculous notions.
An environmentalist as well,
In the true meaning of the word,
Not a climate change disciple,
Following a religion that’s absurd.
Not frightened by debate,
Don’t need to call people a name,

Don’t feel responsible for our past,
Not looking for someone to blame.
I used to be one of many,
Perhaps now one of the few,
Just shows what dumbing-down
And indoctrination can do.
Being a questioner and a thinker
Makes me a strange kind of man,
But I’ve no plans to change,
Proud to be a contrarian.  
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The Garden at Stone Cottage

“Life begins the day you start a garden”
                                           Chinese Proverb

The garden at Stone Cottage
Is such a magical place,
It wraps around our home
Like a scarf around a face.
Despite the heat and the dry
And the wind, it still thrives,
As it demands our attention
And helps shape our lives;
A true reflection of us,
Of our efforts and care,
So generous in returning
All the love that we share,
Teaching us about nature,
Of its fascinating ways,
Watching our garden evolve,
Surely the most special of days.

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But there’s so much more to the garden
Than just the plants and the trees
Its insects attract the birds,
Its flowers draw the bees,
So the garden is never still,
Always movement for the eye,
Whether a breeze rippling through,
A visiting bird or butterfly,
Or a bee hard at work
As it moves from flower to flower,
Mesmerising us
For hour after hour;
A world within a world,
Where from stress we are free,
Our garden at Stone Cottage,
There’s no better place to be.

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The Reading Room

Sometimes there’s the need to close all the doors,
The outside world’s nonsense, shut out, put on pause;
Settle down with a book in a comfortable chair,
And spend a hour or two just relaxing there. 

TPOTG Reading Room 02

In a favourite room, in a favourite house,
 Which good fortune allows me to call home,
Is where I escape and loose myself,
In a novel, or some historical tome.

The room, almost square, hushed by walls of thick stone,
Looks to the mountain that protects it so well,
 And its old well trodden, polished wood floor,
Must have many a tale it could tell.

Now shelves filled with books, pages full of words,
Sit in anticipation of their turn to be read.
And in my winged back chair I can often be found,
When I’ve swapped my garden for a good book instead.

Reference books nestle alongside those full of verse,
And novels, classic and modern, abound;
The history of the world is there to explore,
While biographies wait to be found.

A room filled with riches, of literary treasures,
 Some, their secrets have yet to be told,
And it’s there, with the books, that I immerse myself,
And let the magic around me unfold.


 

Pecan Tree

One of the joys of early winter is the taste of fresh pecan nuts…

A neighbour’s pecan tree
Hangs over the garden wall,
And each year I gather the nuts,
That in my garden fall.
But they’re not all for me,
That harvest hanging there,
As with the local hornbills,
The crop I always share;
And they do have an advantage,
Those hornbills, over me,
Being able to reach the pecans
Still hanging on the tree.
So while I patiently wait
For my pecan nuts to drop,
My clever feathered friends
Are able to browse and to shop.

TPOTG Pecan Nuts Frame 01

Some years there’s not so many,
If the pecan crop is small,
Then my black and white visitors
Leave so very few to fall.
But I don’t mind about that,
As their needs are more than mine,
And the few they always leave behind
Will simply suit me fine.
But this year was a bumper crop,
Pecan nuts are everywhere,
And so there have been plenty
For the birds and I to share.
Pecan butter, candied pecans,
What a treat I’ve got in store,
Freshly made from the pecan nuts,
From my neighbour’s tree next door.

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From the Classroom – The Silencing of the Lambs

“Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think, but how to think. Today their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of ‘race, class and gender'”
Thomas Sowell

TPOTG Lambs SilencedGood morning my little lambs,
How are you all today?
Sit up and pay attention,
Please put your phones away.
Before we start our lesson,
Johnny won’t be coming back to school,
He has broken what is perhaps
Our most sacred golden rule.
He used the forbidden word “why”
In class yesterday,
And we all know that’s a word
We must never ever say.
So he’s being sent to a special school,
With those similarly infected,
And we send him our best wishes,
And hope he gets politically corrected.
Now back to our lesson, see I have written
“Free Speech”, there on the board,
And our lesson for today
Is why that should be ignored.
I’m here to teach you what to think,
All you’ll ever need to know,
So any unnecessary free speaking
Will help confusion flourish and grow,
And if we all become confused,
Well, that’s a very bad idea,
And that’s the reason why free speech
Is something to fear.
So there you are my little lambs,
Why your silence you must always keep,
Then you will all grow up to become
Nice, obedient little sheep.

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Garden Talk

The garden has so many visitors….how can you not talk to them?

TPOTG Old Man Talking to Birds

My garden’s a haven for visitors,
Uncaged and always free to roam,
Bringing me such beauty and colour,
I’m so lucky when they share my home.

I know they haven’t come to see me,
They come for the bounty that’s here on hand,
I can forgive them, then, when they ignore me,
For why they’re here I do understand.

Still I like to give them all greetings,
The polite thing to do, don’t you think?
As I watch them busily feeding,
Or taking a bath, or having a drink.

I have conversations with butterflies,
And daily I have long talks with bees,
And I chat away constantly with the birds,
Who chat back, perched up in their trees.

And, naturally, I talk to my plants,
Encouraging them all to grow,
Because of my plants my visitors visit,
And without them they’d surely all go.

So if you’re passing by Stone Cottage,
See an old man speaking to no one at all,
He’ll just be in conversation with his plants,
Or with the visitors who have come to call.

May 2020

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Why is the K Always Silent? – I Don’t K-now

Some couples can never find interesting things to talk about, not us, we talk about the silence of the k’s…..

TPOTG Silent K Words 01

We were sitting around aimlessly talking last night,
The second glass of wine was tasting so good,
Just chatting about the quirks of our language,
You know, in the way that old couples should.

Now we all know that the English language
Is such an incredibly hard language to learn,
But last night, as we poured our third glass of wine,
We had only one pressing concern.

We asked ourselves why the k before an n
Is always kept silent, not usually heard.
And as we discussed this a conclusion was reached,
The English language was simply absurd.

On a silent night our silent knight,
Silently around the castle grounds walks.
And on silent nights they talk about our silent knight,
Saying he’s the knight who at night never talks.

But then is it night-night, that we say to our kids,
As off to bed they sleepily go?
Or is it knight-knight, or maybe night-knight?
It’s something we surely should know.

Which takes us to need, or maybe it’s knead?
Depends upon what you are doing;
Because if you need to knead the dough my friend,
A career as a baker you should be pursuing.

A knots not a knot if it’s not tied right,
As soon it will become undone.
But now how do you know that it is not the right knot?
This language game really is fun.

And if you knew it was new, then you couldn’t say
That you knew it was old, that’s a lie;
But what then if you knew that the new knot was not new,
What a tangle we’d have to untie.

The knell sounds for Nell, she was still in her prime,
Discovered a nit in her knitting and died.
Been out shopping that day, bought new knickers for a nicker,
But the knot in her new knickers won’t now ever be tied.

Now what about not knowing knowledge about a ledge?
No, surely that be must be a useful thing to know,
As armed with the knowledge that there was no ledge
Out of the window you just wouldn’t go!

We’re thinking of starting a world-wide campaign,
That the K should once again be spoken,
A knotty problem is it not, we know some will say no;
Perhaps another bottle of wine we should open!

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Voice Robots

“Your call is important to us; please stay on the line until it is no longer important to you!”

Talking to voice robots is taking over so fast,
As personal service becomes a thing of the past.
“It’s to improve customer service” – are they being funny?
Answering systems are installed just to save money.

TPOTG Auto Telephone Robots Frame 01

“The system will help us to redirect your call”
That is such a big lie for which we all fall.
Can’t think of anything that gets more on my nerves
Than the endless menu of options a robot serves.

“Sales or service? Enter your customer code.
Sorry, not recognised, you need to re-load”
You navigate that maze and then what do they do?
Tell you your call is now being held in queue!

“Don’t hang up”, says the robot, “your call is important”,
To not giving a damn, what an endorsement.
If your call meant so much, then surely they’d choose
To personalise their service and those robots just loose.

At last a human voice might eventually appear,
By which time the phone’s become a part of your ear,
And you’ve a headache, you’re stressed and feeling quite rotten,
And the reason for phoning you’ve completely forgotten.

And as robot services are not actually customer driven,
A name or direct number you’ll never be given,
So if you need to call back, you’ll have to start all over again;
Communicating via robots will drive you insane!

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Breakfast With A View

Perhaps getting up every morning at sparrows fart, just so you can sit in seemingly endless queues of traffic isn’t the best way to start your day after all……..

IMG_7300 with frame

Imagine starting each day
In the way that we do,
Breakfast on a stoep
A great mountain view;
Sitting there chatting,
No need to be rushed,
The smell of fresh coffee,
As the plunger is pushed.
Fresh creamy yoghurt,
Nice and thick, not too runny
And drizzled all over,
With local raw honey.
Eggs sometimes scrambled,
As the routine gets changed,
With tomatoes and bacon
For the yoghurt exchanged.
Our day being planned,
Or then again not,
Discussing the weather,
Is it going to be hot?
Watching orioles and drongos
At the fountain drinking,
Planning garden improvements,
Gets the grey matter thinking.
Just chilling out
Before the day has begun,
As we sit on our stoep feeling
Life’s jackpot’s been won.

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