Category: covid

Covid Rules for Career Criminals – poem 37

Do 
vandalise deface and damage 
steal and shoot and snort
defraud and threaten cheat besmirch 
and otherwise extort
Be contactless, in short

Don’t 
jostle grapple grope molest
or wrestle do not mug
No smacking shouting kneeing nutting
throttling like a Thug*
As this may spread the bug

*Thug: HISTORICAL
a member of an organization of robbers and 
assassins in India. Devotees of the goddess Kali, 
the Thugs waylaid and strangled their victims, 
usually travellers, in a ritually prescribed manner. 
They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s.

Follow the Star Trek – poem 36

 It’s Christmas but not as we know it
 so strange we can hardly absorb it
 the thought of a virus or poet
 invading your personal orbit
 and no chance of meeting a Klingon
 or saving a planet in trouble
 so just get your glad rags and bling on
 and party inside your own bubble
 Festoon it with baubles and holly
 Be careful in case it should burst
 Rejoice and sing loudly be jolly
 avoiding the need to be nursed
 The rules will relax don't know when
 We'll boldly go everywhere then

Balcony Folk Look Down at Lockdown – poem 34

look at the people all marching about 
making the most of the hour that they’re out 
swinging their arms all the bags are at home 
furloughed along with the iron and the comb 
no defined route just the whim of their feet 
swerving round all other soldiers they meet 
randomly crissing and crossing the green 
imagine some lines showing where they have been 
a map of their journeys like tangled up string 
with no destination extraordinary thing 
a fast-forward film of the aerial view 
would show all the dogs passing very quick poo 
and speed up the shoppers in Sainsbury’s queue 
we balcony dwellers need something to do 
like hang from a rope or a flying trapeze 
abandon all hope or swing down from your knees 
be gloomy and mope or sail over the trees 
and show you can cope with restrictions like these 
 

Let Off Lightly In Lockdown – poem 32

 
 
 
 How large is your problem 
 How long is a string
 What counts as catastrophe 
 Any old thing
 Good towels gone rigid
 Fresh cornflakes gone soft
 That thing that you liked 
 Surely lost from the loft
 Your socks all unravelled
 Your teabag just burst
 Such things didn’t seem
 Quite so tragic at first                                                                
 When news was exciting
 And frightening and new
 And clearing out cupboards
 Was cheering to do
 What fun it was finding 
 And fondling old junk
 And poking in plugholes
 And hoking out gunk
 But now for a challenge
 It's glum in this trough
 Let’s have some explosions
 Big fever bad cough
 An earthquake that sweeps you
 Off north on a flood
 Through rough seas and cyclones
 To boiling hot mud
 How big is your problem
 What's really at stake
 It’s not Armageddon
 To run out of cake
 Whatever you suffered
 And dreaded before
 The way to forget it
 Is suffer some more
  
  

Measham Looks Forward

 
 
 
 
News on 18th November 2020 
Main Street in Leicestershire village to Close for Roadworks on 16th January 2021
  
  
 The people are lovely in Measham
 Just not on the national stage
 They keep to the rules about Covid
 Well no-one’s been out for an age
 So what’s to be talked of in Measham
 They feel they are not where it’s at
 The regional news is too ghastly
 They need some community chat
 Beyond friends and family on facebook
 What gossip can neighbours all share
 Not football or glitzy occasions
 The Measham Times’ pages are bare
 But something has grown on a grapevine
 That’s Leicestershire Live it’s an app
 There’s going to be action in Measham
 To put the place back on the map
 It’s happening right at the centre
 The slow-beating heart of the town
 The word will get round pretty quickly
 To strap on your mask and get down
 There’s 32 hours of excitement
 Predicted in Leicestershire Live
 See action discuss the diversion
 Just go for that perilous drive
 Reporters competing for access
 Photographers lenses aloft
 Big cameras and microphones waving 
 On sticks and all fluffy and soft
 Recording the road works in High Street
 In how many weeks only 8
 In 4 no-one knows about Christmas
 So cling to that Severn Trent date