Aire Valley

(Please scroll down......) 

(Pictures of Aire Valley from myself)

Up here amongst the Dales

There is a magic everywhere.

These rolling hills, all draped in mist

Seduce my senses with their rustic charm.

From high above: my sister’s loft,

Oh what a view!

The valley of The Aire: just set

Before me like an open map.

These towns and villages, all pasted on those undulating hills.

Above, the ever changing clouds right now are drifting, aimlessly along.

A tree-dot landscape smothered by those clinging mists.

The clouds roll on, imperiously

Lording over everything:

A land all shrouded in mystery.

Paul Butters

(3\10\2012 - Thank You Everyone - 800 Views for this blog now. 531 are for my "Mirror Mirror" post. Thanks again).

(If you want to see my poem, "Mirror, Mirror" then please keep scrolling down).

Clouds

The clouds play out their dramas,

As they scurry across the sky.

All shapes and sizes,

Even faces,

In my mind’s eye.

They hug the hills with mist sometimes,

Or blend into golden, blood-red, blue tinged

Sunsets.

Cloud castles,

Ocean liners on a pure glass sea.

An endless variety of forms,

From dull featureless grey

To swirling poetry.

Different every day.

Paul Butters

(Thanks for looking, dear reader. Do feel free to comment and scroll down for more poems. Pop back any-time you feel like a read. Remember, poetry is to be sipped and savoured, not gulped down. There are 18 more poems below this one).

Mortality

(Gary Speed RIP)

It starts with Death:

Your Life.

A foetus springs to being,

Who knows when?

From Nothing,

To sentience

In a flash.

Consciousness conceived

Then Born.

We know, of course,

It ends in death too.

Paul Butters

Mother Nature

(Picture Credit - Crystalline Turquoise Lake, Jiuzhaigou National Park, China, by Korubu - Alexandre Martins - on Flickr) 

Mother Nature rules the World,

And probably

The whole Universe.

Our Earth, a planet blue,

Just teems with Life.

Even deep beneath the ocean,

Amongst those geysers,

Oh so Hot,

You will find Life.

Lakes filled with acid,

Bone –dry deserts (look underground),

Solid sheets of ice:

They all are home-sweet-home

To bacteria

Or Viruses,

At the very least.

We bomb those cities to piles of rubble,

And poison the Earth with God knows what,

Yet always, given time,

Life will re-assert itself:

That sprig of couch-grass,

Those flowers.

Mother Nature never does give in.

Life springs eternal.

From amoeba to a dancing dolphin.

So utterly determined

To survive.

Clinging to existence

Like a limpet on a rock.

Invincible in Her tenacity.

Paul Butters

Cyberspace

(Photo Credit - Compute Scotland)

(Picture Source: 

http://www.computescotland.com/cyberspace-war-moves-up-alongside-conventional-battlefields-2397.php )

Where are you Paul?

I’m in Cyberspace Mum.

My Pentium processor has broadbanded me

Into this wondrous realm.

A pixel powered virtual landscape

Peopled by avatars

Speaking Internet Slang.

FFS, WTF are you talking about?

She asks.

In so many words.

I LMAO and ROFL at her incredulity.

It’s full of danger, that Internet, says Mum.

That’s true.

It’s full of paedophiles,

Spammers and trolls.

Hackers.

Chat-rooms and forums

Plagued by flame-wars

And spam enough to fill a trillion tins.

Sites full of viruses, Trojans, malware and spyware.

Cyber-bullies and loons abound.

But I just Love it.

A Heroin addiction

Needing every fix.

A realm indeed of quantum singularities,

And imploding nebulae.

Paul Butters

(A bit risky this one. Not quite "Moon in June" eh?)

Mirror, Mirror

(German Mirror - Picture Credit - Google Images: frenchantiquestexas dot com)

Does a mirror show the truth?

I could be a girl for all I know,

Or look like one at least.

Might be so ugly,

Or very handsome.

A monster

Or Tom Cruise.

That mirror

Like a television

May have a life

Of its own.

So if that glare

Should ever be switched off

(For any reason)

Then my real image

May resurface:

A scabby, gargoyle horror

Mutated

From atomic war.

Or, some radiant beauty,

Freed from the mirror’s

Shining cell.

Mirrors!

Paul Butters

(This poem has had 122 Views on "Hello Poetry", making it my 5th most popular poem there. Do feel free to give feedback)

(1\10 - 363 Views here now after a sudden surge. Way above all my other poems here. Keyword "Mirror". Is it the picture?)

(2\10 - 462 Views now! Thank You)

Anyone looking for THIS (?):  "Mirror" - song by Lil Wayne featuring Bruno Mars -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLUa8JUR18

Or -      http://www.mirror.co.uk/ (major newspaper)

Or -      http://www.ukmirrorsailing.com/ ("Mirror Dinghy" Championships)

Or -      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072443/ ("Mirror" - 1975 film)

Or -       http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667353/ ("Mirror, Mirror...Snow White" 2012 film)

Or you might want to buy a mirror from Houston, Texas:

http://wip.frenchantiquestexas.com/category/furnishings/mirrors/

Here are some of Lil Wayne's lyrics:

"Uh, With everything happening today

You don't know whether you're coming or going

But you think that you're on your way

Life lined up on the mirror, don't blow it

 (Whoo!) Look at me when I'm talking to you

You lookin' at me, but I'm lookin' through you

I see the blood in your eyes

I see the love in disguise

I see the pain hidden in your pride

I see you're not satisfied

And I don't see nobody else

I see myself

I'm lookin' at the (Chorus - Bruno Mars) Mirror on the wall

Here we are again (yeah)

Through my rise and fall (uh)

You've been my only friend (yeah)

You told me that they can understand the man I am

So why are we here

Talking to each other again?

I see the truth in your lies

I see nobody by your side

But I'm with you when you're all alone

And you correct me when I'm lookin' wrong

I see the guilt beneath the shame

I see your soul through your window pane

I see the scars that remain

I see Wayne

I'm looking at the Mirror on the wall..."

(Variation on the theme I reckon)

(3\10) BTW - Thanks everyone - 531 Views of this post out of 800 for the whole blog.

13\5\2013: I see "Mirror,Mirror" was also the title of an original Star Trek episode about an alternate universe in which they are most brutal. In fact there are many websites with the same name, about beauty treatments etc. A very popular "brand name" indeed.

24\5\14 - 7148 Views. Still don't know why. 

Now

I went for a late afternoon nap but started playing with words in my head. Liked these words so dashed for a pen and pad, and wrote the following poem.

Just take your mind beyond our time and space

Continuum.

All things have happened, whatever they are.

The Universe has died, or been reborn

Again and Again,

In God’s Embrace.

You and I were born and passed away.

Andromeda and the Milky Way were merged.

Our Earth was roasted when the Sun ballooned into a Red Giant.

The Human Race had its day

And learnt its fate.

And I wrote this.

It all has happened, as I say,

Yet still is happening

Now.

Paul Butters

Voice

Oh great Voice of mine,

Deafen them with your roar.

Inspire those readers

With rhetorical power.

Make their hearts and spirits soar

To Mount Olympus

And beyond.

Pound their ears with decibels so loud,

Then lower

To a whisper.

Sooth their souls with songs

And lullabies

So smooth.

Tinkle like a mountain stream,

And echo through the caverns

Of their minds.

Resonate within my head,

And echo again

And again

In theirs.

Call the Muses to my aid

To wave their magic wands

And serenade those readers

With a symphony

Of sensual delight.

Paul Butters

Young Chickens

These balls of fluff, so small and light,

They make a sweet and delicate sight.

With tiny beaks and dewdrop eyes,

And stalky legs on clutching toes,

Soft chickens chirp and shake,

While mother keeps them safe from foes.

My sister’s hands, uncertain, flicker-

Take hold afraid a one-day chick;

Such vices that could snap its twiggy ribs

Or mangle wings like petals

If startled by a stalky flutter.

These bright, shimmering, shivering balls of sun,

Like magnificent tigers, grand yet near extinct,

They shame the work of man.

For what can he create?

A glittering palace of steel and concrete and soot,

Which crumbles, black, to strew the sterile earth with slag.

Self-seeding grass retakes the rubble jigsaw!

The carcass of man’s mortal mark,

Once left,

Is dust in nature’s wake.

See spring now banish the death of winter,

As leaf-clouds billow from tree-trunk spikes,

Puffed like a yacht’s wind-filled sail.

Above, great white clouds cruise on a crystal film,

On the surface of a great waveless ocean.

Beyond, rests the dome of the sky,

Pure blue,

Broken only by the radiant sun.

PAUL BUTTERS

© COPYRIGHT PAUL BUTTERS 1996. First Published 1996 in “Our Natural World” by ANCHOR BOOKS.

(16\6\2012 – Title Changed from “Chicks” to “Young Chickens”).

Yes this is a golden oldie now. To be honest it's 2 poems rolled into 1. Comments appreciated.

Circles

I see a pattern Everywhere:

Circles and globes (three dimensional circles);

Shiny rings of fire.

Countless manifestations of this same shape.

Star-spangled galaxies wheeling through the sky:

That half-globe dome.

Earth, in circular orbit (more or less) around the Sun,

Escorted by the Moon.

Days give way to seasons,

Repeating every year.

Groundhog Days becoming

Groundhog Creations

Perhaps.

The list seems endless:

Hopkins’ dapples,

Planets, craters, cyclones, anti-cyclones, sea currents,

Balls, apples, oranges, nuts, potatoes,

Teardrops, heads, faces, eyes, mouths,

Holes!

Coins, bin lids, and plates;

Sunflowers, daisies, pansies,

Rings of mushrooms,

Circling birds of prey,

A cat curled in a circle,

Like a foetus.

Life as we know it

Is a circle

And a cycle too.

Birth, Death, Blossom, Wilt.

Reincarnation?

Renewal?

Clock-faced Time itself.

Eternity might be a circle,

Infinity the same.

Maybe even God,

Some way.

Perhaps we still are building God,

For Him or Her to travel back through time

Like Doctor Who

To Create The Big Bang,

And form this expanding Universe,

Thus taking us full circle.

Or maybe the Universe will fold back in upon itself,

Producing yet one more Big Bang,

In an endless cycle,

Of Big Bangs,

Amongst this ever circling

Multiverse.

Paul Butters

(Do please keep scrolling for more and any Comments welcome)

(1\10\12 - This poem has suddenly become my most popular on "Hello Poetry"! It has shot past "New Eden" etc.)