Sunday, October 18, 2009

Hello, readers, writers, and others!

I am going to include short essays on general and maybe 'philosophical' themes here from now on. I exchange a lot of this kind of material on the closed site of the Erotic Readers and Writers, but I'd like to let a wider audience share my views if they are interested.

As George Bernard Shaw, playwright and critic, once said, "If a man has something to say, the problem is not to make him say it, but to stop him from saying it too often!"

I hope not to fall into that error. But having lived for more than eighty years, I have learned so much that some it it seems worth passing on, if only to help my juniors from the consequences of the same mistakes I've made. Not that making mistakes – and learning from them! – isn't a great way to a better life.

Some people thnk there are no original ideas, but I am not so pessimistic. To write poetry you have to be able to put old words into new combinations. I'm sure the same applies to novels, essays, and other writings.

I've never written a novel or a play, but I have written many varied articles, mainly as a science journalist. I've also been a theatre reviewer for years, as well as an actor. I've had a great life and done many things, from flying in military aircraft to using big telescopes as an astronomer, from being married and divorced twice, from being a grandfather and a great-grandfather, to owning and using a player piano.

I hope I can write something that interests you, the reader, and gives you 'food for thought.'

Sunday, October 11, 2009

love and joy

love and joy are best to write about
better by far than tales of suburban angst
or aboriginal ghosts bemoaning cruelty of whites.
the sun shines, I have known love, they can’t take that
away from me. I have seen plays that filled
some part of me better than a Christmas dinner,
read poems that spoke or sang to me .
I have travelled , penned like a sheep it’s true,
but to destinations rich in history, art, beauty
and scenes and places only known from literature.
some I knew are gone, have died. I do not mourn;
my time will come, what’s wrong with that?
new worlds of discovery and invention
have opened for my delight, great telescopes
played their part, and questing minds that passed to me
their treasures of new knowledge.
I’ve flown in fragile planes, guiding them myself
my own hands opening the three dimensions,
used ingenious machines of precision and delicacy
to gather information and test the dimensions of the universe.
I’ve lived and been a human among people whom I love.
I can’t imagine any life that’s richer or worth more.

© MM 11.10.2009

Sonnet on Age and Beauty

Beauty’s fear of age - how true! – will always exceed mine
since I am old and never was sought after, tall, or strong.
My part in any group was simply for the numbers, not to shine,
now most are gone but I survive and my life has been long.

Blessed – or maybe cursed, with beauty – how then to ensure
that it’s your servant, not a master , bent to shape your life,
youthful joy at first, then ageing sorrow to endure
when gone are days as lover, star, diva, or even wife?

I think the answer is to build yourself, ignore all taunts,
not to surrender to the idle flattery of men.
Hundreds of years ago a famous satirist again
described in verse this problem, which the last years haunts:

Pope’s words: “Fair to no purpose, artful to no end”
and “Young without Lovers, old without a Friend”.

© MM 6.10.2009

Oh be my love and lie with me

Oh be my love and lie with me
that all your beauty I can see
my hands so warm on each bare breast
as on your lips my own are pressed
and next my hands will loving roam
between your thighs, on Venus’ dome
my kisses mark a trail of love
from shapely feet to hair above
my arms embrace your naked form
delighting in your skin so warm
your curving hips I will caress
your back and belly no whit less
so lie with me and be my love
be under me or be above
and I will celebrate in rhyme
the love for which at last it’s time!

© MM 29.9.2009