Time Travel - Oscar Milde

The year is Twenty Thirty One
a new decade has just begun
and if time-travel is your bag
you’ll join me here without a snag
but what a shock, what a surprise,
you hardly will believe your eyes:
the Guernsey of Twenty Nineteen
has vanished like it’s never been.
No more mind-numbing traffic jams,
aggro, hostility or scams,
or undisguised abuse of power,
with prices rising hour by hour.
The modern Sarnia has changed
though sometimes it just seems deranged.
We all live indoors nowadays.
Outside, pollution like a haze
hangs over our poor Bailiwick:
if you go out you come back sick.
Life’s safer now with VRC
(that’s virtual reality),
much better than real life by far.
We live like beetles in a jar
for our protection, say the States
(yes, we still have those reprobates).
Nobody works, it’s too much fuss.
Now robots do the jobs for us.
St Peter Port is just glass towers
bedecked with artificial flowers,
there’s no marinas, not one boat,
all’s tarmac now nothing’s afloat.
The highlight of our little lives
is once a year we and our wives
are taken on a trip to see
something miraculous for free
Today we’re off to see real grass,
extremely rare, kept under glass.
It used to flourish all about
but blade by blade we stamped it out.

Oscar Milde

Wondrously Bright - Kathy Figueroa

The future of humanity
Could be wondrously bright indeed,
If only the many warnings
We'd try to understand and heed.

If we'd raise our voices in song,
Instead of conflict, strife, and war,
We could become like the angels...
How the human spirit would soar!

Kathy Figueroa

Wondrously Bright was published on October 9, 2014, in The Bancroft Times newspaper.

The future's imminent (it’s not in our hands) - Julian Clarke

The brass key turns tightening the spring
How the second hand races, chasing dates
Evenly stitching together the edges of time:

Facing its face, no smile, no frown
Unzipping the seconds into minutes
Tormenting, teasing, running late
Unperturbed silently setting the day;
Relentlessly sweeping round and round
Each hand turning towards the future:

If the clock work were to stop, no tick-tock
Suspended in time the hands would wait.

Ingeniously, somehow they will always turn
Magically pointing to impending events
Mocking us, they will never age . . .
In time zones across the lands these hands
Never stuffed in pockets in perpetual motion
Engraving the past and sealing the present.
Now the digits twist in time, one understands
The future's imminent: it’s not in our hands.

Julian Clarke

Outlaw (My take on the song Highwayman) - Ian Duquemin

I was an outlaw
I spent a life time on the run
A leather holster held my gun
Many a poster showed my face hung on a wall
Many a hero had in times then had to fall
Until one day I too fell crashing to the ground
This outlaw had been downed

I was a doctor
When only tonics were a cure
I'd served a long hard civil war
Many a man had called me to relieve their pain
Many a man would never walk or see again
One day a cannon ball came flying through the air
And I was helping there

I was a miner
I spent my years deep underground
Removing all the coal I found
One day the pit caved in and buried me down there
Deep in the darkness no one heard my final prayer
I left my wife and child to struggle on alone
My whereabouts unknown

I was a saviour
I called on many men to come
To follow their god's only son
But I was captured and a scapegoat I would be
A cross upon a hill was waiting there for me
And with my final breath the rains fell from the sky
I was born to die!

I was the future
A human race had needed me
As I was meant to set them free
But no one listened when I warned them of their fate
If they continued with their fighting and their hate
One day an outlaw who had been their only friend
Brought about their end

Ian Duquemin

Pulling the Wishbone - Jenny Hamon

The turkey has been eaten
Brown and white meat, we’ve had the lot
The last few bits have been curried
And the carcass boiled up for stock

The last part that is remaining
Is a very special thing
We’ve still to pull the wishbone
And see what that will bring

I’d wish all wars were over
And peace will reign once more
No more poverty or hunger
Or cold through to the core

I hope I win the wishbone
So I can make this wish
And peace and happiness
Will result from my turkey dish

Jenny Hamon

The Waves - Oliver Thompson

The waves break onshore.
I stand as the foamy mass builds.
It fades again as the supine sky
Beats down patters of grey and dissolves.

The sun has ended.
Waves continue to break, now more violent.
My hood whips up, hair is moist.
I do not shed a tear for the end,
But find resolve in memories.
The passing months of idle dancing,
Where we hailed to the sun
And brought with us everyone to sing.

Again I sigh for a summer gone.
But, as waves do not end or fail to beat,
We make a new song for autumn.

Oliver Thompson