This page first opened October 5th 1997
FRANK'S OTHER POETRY PAGE
(IN FACT, HIS FOURTH)
      
      
      
      
PHOTO-18K

                            If you want to know more about Frank Haliwell then find a short biog right here.
But first, have a quick look at the offerings here, you can get back to our home area from either page. 		                           
While prose may carry all the facts, the voice of verse is sweeter
For poetry transports the soul on lilting rhyme and meter.
Frank Haliwell

Anyway here is the juice:
WINDSONG
                            The rigging sings the north wind's song,
Through all the sheets it's sighing.
The pirate crew atoning now
In time that flight is buying.
The holds are filled with plundered store:
The sheets can not be coaxed for more:
We'll all hang high, the captain swore.
For our sins, we'll be dying.

              The frigate flies before the wind..
              Her every fibre straining.
              The quarry can't escape them now,
              In what sea room's remaining.
              "Put one round close across her bow!
              The boarding party ready now!..
              She'll strike her colours soon, I vow!
              Or blood, her decks be staining!"

To starboard: land, and land ahead...
To port, the frigate: gaining!
They curse the hand of destiny,
And know their fortunes waning.
The waters shift from blue to green
As heaven lights the depths unseen.
The surf roars out its endless paean
To join the north wind's keening.

              A shadow sweeps beneath her keel,
              The coral pink and bright,
              And rips apart her stout oak heart
              And chills her crew with fright.
              The waves rush in to seal their fate.
              The women and the children wait...
              The lamps burn and t he slow bell tolls,
              Long into the night.

                            
EXTINCTION
The ship snapped out of hyperdrive twelve thousand miles from earth
The planet loomed immense upon the screen
With gleaming ice at both the poles and white clouds 'round its girth..
A floating ball of blue and brown and green.

     The crescent of an ancient moon above the planet's rim,
     Its face illumined by the brilliant sun,
     And craters from ten thousand rocks gave it a visage grim,
     Suggesting that it be a place to shun.

         "Magnification, number one! Let's have a closer look!"
         Said the captain as he eased into his chair.
         "The colonists were landed here, according to the book,
         So scan the place for life with every care!"

              "They've had a million years or so to populate the place,
              So they may not be so very hard to find.
              They had some competition from a rather larger race:
              Alien beings of a very different kind!

`          In only a few seconds then, the screen burst into life,
         And the image of a commodore appeared,
         "My report is that we prosper, though we've had a little strife
         From the giants that our ancestors once feared!"

     "We lost millions to the chemicals they broadcast everywhere,
     They dealt our kind an almost mortal blow...
     'Til they stripped the earth completely, and they fouled the seas and air,
     ...And they went the way the unresponsive go !"

"So report that we're successful and we've made it our abode,
And a new age for our kind has now begun!
Antennae will wave exitedly to mark this episode
When your ship arrives back home on Cockroach One!"

NOT FOR ME!
No, not for me; the plastic verse,
The lines of fractured prose.
Give me instead the singing rhyme
That each true poet knows.

The imagery that overwhelms
And sweeps you like a flood.
The thrilling, driving, metered verse
That pulses like the blood.

I want to feel the joy and pain,
I want to taste the fear;
So take your plastic poetry,
And stick it in your ear!

JENNYBABY
My gentle giant came to live,
and spent two years alone,
Till I found her "donkey company",
and brought my Blossom home,
But my well made plans all came to naught
as Blossom did perplex...
Showing all the gentle fondness
of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

While she gives me all the friendship
that her love of man reveals,
Poor old Jenn was offered nothing
but her malice; and her heels!
For two years more, she tried and tried,
this small brown friend to make,
Ever content just to plod along,
in little Blossom's wake.

Jennybaby's just gone out the gate,
we've been good friends for years,
And my heart is full of sadness,
and my eyes are full of tears,
But her future's full of promise,
and I'm sure she'll be the toast,
Of all those other donkeys
up there on the sunshine coast.

So I hope her grass grows lush and green
and her water's crystal clear,
And she never has to scratch for food
in a paddock dead and drear,
And she always has those folks around
on whom she can depend,
And I hope she finds what she deserves...
And I hope she finds a friend.

 

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