Glad wrapping
Two states,
Two regimes!
Victoria’s Dan says it’s time
To hard Lockdown
Ring of steel is installed
Covid-19 retreats
N.S.W.’s Gladys
Speaks soft lockdown
Hey lady, glad wrapping
Won’t work against Covid.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
To fight like a lady
To fight be a Lady,
Lady you don’t want a medal!
A medal or a sainthood
Let me tell you
Generosity, kindness,
Grace and love
Aren’t to be lauded
While fighting
Let them drop on the side
Sure have the grace
Of a snake while striking
Have the ferocity of a rat
Fighting for its life
For your foe is to show no mercy
Strike true in fight, let the fight be short!
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Cultural DNA
I have to admit to it,
My cultural DNA is undoubtedly French,
I know it’s a dire trait
In our POC culture
To admit to it,
So put it in your pipe
And smoke it!
To return to my cultural DNA
As a child my grandfather
Used to sing to me
“ Quand nous chanterons le temps des cerises”
When we were picking cherries
And making me cherry earrings,
A lovely song with nightingales
And ladies in love,
Or so it seems,
Very French indeed!
Unbeknownst to me
It turns out that this song
Is the song of the Communards
A revolutionary song from the civil war
Sung by the working class
During the siege of Paris by the bourgeoisie
Dreaming of the good times to come
Once the revolution won. It didn’t!
Now the curious thing is this happened
A generation before my own grandfather was born
So he must have heard it from his father
And he sung it to me,
Like DNA it follows generations
It is part of my family history
I can’t ignore it.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Pandering to pandemic
Pandemic, stop, lockdown, pause,...
Reload, slowdown, pause,...
Reload, snap lockdown, suspend,...
Reload, vaccination, new lockdown,...
New variant, another lockdown,...
And it goes on and on
This enforced staccato pushed us
To take stock, to dream
Seasons pass also in a slur
Marking the garden
Frost and rain in winter
Heat and drought in summer
What has changed?
Us, truly, deeply
In this adagio era
We have time to see
New green, new shoot,
Pruning, planting,
Nature follows its cycle
We follow its crops
Simple but delightful delights
We’re learning again
What’s important
Living each moment
Enjoying the rewards
As they come
No need to rush
Let each moment exist
Let it pass for it will pass
No other certitude we have.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Wherever we are
The same bodies
Hang in the sky
Despite being universal
They’re treated differently :
La lune et le soleil,
Der Mond und die Sonne,
The moon and the sun,
Different genders in
Different cultures in
Different times
Man and woman,
Anima and animus,
Yin and yang,
The same principle
Exist In ourselves
Accept what we are,
Ignore labels, just be.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
The moon, my friends,
Is a constant lie.
Look at it this way
It tells you every night
A different story.
It makes you believe
It’s your friend
That it will be there
For you but sometimes
It does not bother
To even show its face
Such a fiend it turns to be!
Only fools and poets
Listen and see its magic .
For truly it is bewitching
How many of you
Have ever walked
Under the silver glow
Of a full moon?
Have you noticed how soft
It has turned your shadow?
How deep above your head
Is the tree canopy?
How it imbues with a halo
All it touches?
The world becomes softer
Losing its sharpness
Becomes fuzzy
Forces you to reassess
Your perception of the mundane .
Its power is enchanting
Charming, otherworldly
It’s in a perpetual state of flux
The moon, my friends,
Is a constant lie.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Silly poem
Why these two pets don’t work together?
They are too di-verse
They’re like cat and dogs
Lady Purrfect stretching herself
On the sofa cushion
I’m so bored
I need a snack
Sir Barksalot : a smack?
You need a smack?
Lady Purrfect
Sure a smack across
Your fat muzzle
Would fix me up
And don’t forget
Never quit your day job
Trying to become a poet
You’ll go from bad to verse!
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Spuddle
From morning to night
I’m in a spuddle
Well, that’s what I like
To think
The reality is I do
Bloody nothing
So it’s easy
To achieve zilch
Absolutely
Procrastination is utmost
Everything is postponed to tomorrow
If not to next week
Then easily forgotten without any guilt
I could say I think
That would be a fib
My mind is in a state
Of Stasis above a void
Waiting, waiting
For life to return
Simply to normal.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Lupus telephone
5487363421
5 counting syllables
4 form a poem
8 is insane in my opinion
7 won’t make it good in my mind
3 I dare you!
6 do you see what I see?
3 not so fun
4 completely mad
2 that one
1 is!
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Will it be today or tomorrow?
———————
Despite the fact
You’re not even born
Nor conceived for that matter
I’m writing to you
In those uncertain days
I don’t know if or when
You’ll receive this
If ever that is
But here it is.
I was one of the baby boomers
That is the name
Given to my generation
And for long we were
The darlings of the world
Born in peace
In a world of plenty
We grew up sure
The world was right
We could do no mistakes
We gave the world
A chance to freedom
We let go of our tyrannical ways
Wealth increased by exploitation
We created a world
Where progress was material
Unfortunately our hubris
Was our downfall
Our greed fed the infernal spiral
Like Oliver Twist
We wanted more, always more
At the detriment of environment
Not realising it would impact us
And here we are today
On the edge of chasm
Are we to continue
This race to destruction ?
You, if and when reading
Will know the answer.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Alliteration poem
SARS-COVID-19-Kappa-Delta
Has made it to our “protected” shores
It pisses me off how this putrid pandemic
Needs to add more letters to its patronym
It doesn’t make it more powerful or patronising
Perfectionism might be an exalted passion
Perusing the press perversely
Creating Pandemonium perfect
Playing around on the first page headline
Particularly piling in crowded premises
Perversely changes its perverted spots
And changes perpetually its perimeter
Pouring misery without mercy.
Take breathing, we took it for granted
But every breath we take
We have to brace ourselves
For it might be our last breather.
Problematic predicaments
Are still around
Taking second or third position
Behind this existentialist probability
We are sitting preys for this paranoiac virus
Plague on us, it preaches
Preposterous! I presume to pronounce.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Bagua poem (8*8 )
Rain in the night, rain in the morning
Thirsty parched soil sips it slowly and delicately
Puddles here and there by the forest roadside
Sun breaking, the sky hues of a Turner
No wind to distract from settling birds twitter
Grass feeding kangaroos and cattle peacefully sharing paddocks
We are the only ones breaking the peace,
Taking our walking exercise in time of lockdown .
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
Winter garden
Beets barely beat bats
By burrowing beneath
Carrots carefully cast
Colourful calyx covering
Cabbages, cauliflowers
Dill and dandelion wild nature
Dissociate them dodging duty
Fennel is so flavoursome
Grapefruit with ginger and garlic
Is a great gustative gourmet dish.
#TSL PANDORATHON 31
A cockroach' sermon to an insecticide.
————————
It was biology practice day
The lab assistant used heavily
To spray the large cockroaches
Before pining them down
In the specimen basins
Just routine for her
Thirty six large fat cockroaches
Lying on their stomach
Waiting to be dissected
By the students
A study of frontal nervous system
Three hours to dissect,
Draw the beasts.
The students tittered
When they saw the cockroaches
Pinned down,
Relaxed when they realised
The creatures were dead
By insecticide suffocation.
The hours quickly disappeared
The surveyor came to assess
Their dissection work
She poked with the scalpel
The central nervous system
The insect legs started
The student fainted on the spot
On this repulsive sighting
The supervisor noted
“ with this one , no need of insecticide “.
Lucette C. Bailliet
All rights reserved
#TSL Pandorathon 30
He sat bolt upright in bed. It was midnight and someone was knocking at the door .
Short fiction ,500 words
——————
He was engrossed in his book, reading in bed, when suddenly someone was knocking at the door, the clock displayed the witching hour , midnight.
He refused to get up, but the k o king became insistent, eventually grumbling he went downstairs to see what the hell was going on. He switched on the light porch, he saw a kid, a teenager, in corduroy jeans, parka and beanie looking at him.
“What do you want?”
“ don’t you recognise me?”
“ should I? What’s your name?”
The kid answer stupefied him
“Are you playing some stupid game? That is my name! Get out of here!”
“Yes, we share the same name and I am not leaving “
“Don’t try to play the paternity card, my young lad, I never gave my sperm”
“Don’t be afraid of that, you can Rest In Peace I am not you son. Anyway I don’t think I would like you to be my father in the first place. You’re turned up to be such a misanthropic guy”.
“ Oh we are judging me now, wonderful! And how old would you be?”
“ twelve years old”
“Should you not be in bed by now? School and whatnot tomorrow “
“ you don’t get it, do you?”
“ no, and I don’t want to, get off with you, now”
“ I’m here, for my revenge, you see I am your younger self”
“What?”
“Yes, you remember the trashing your dad, my dad gave me before he threw me out of the house? The day when my/your childhood ended? That day or night more precisely I decided that one day in the future I’ll take revenge on him. That day has arrived, and here I am, let me in”.
The kid, his younger self pushed gently open the door and entered the house.
“ nice and cosy, isn’t it? I’m pleased for you, you know, close the door”
Still standing in his pyjamas he was still hearing the kids words.
Sixty years ago, he remembered his drunken father in a delirium tremens, throwing him in the streets. As today , it was a winter night, he had no money, no where to stay, he remembered the hunger, the constant fear and cold of being homeless,all by himself.
He closed the door turned to his younger self and asked
“What do you want?”
“ take revenge on the old bastard, that’s all”
“ revenge, you say, wouldn’t it be better to let bygones be bygones?”
“ easy for you, now isn’t it?”
“You disgust me, you’re ready to betray your younger self, to betray me! Have you no self respect? No pride?”
“ I haven’t forgotten, believe me! Those years that followed made me the man I am today” the kid snorted “ not that brilliant socially, are you?”
“In my case, I can go to bed and sleep, mate. I haven’t forgotten nor forgiven him, but you know what life is a bitch, and he is paying the price for senile dementia is no soft landing!”
“not enough! The kid kicked the wall.
500 words
Lucette C. Bailliet
