Category: General positivity

A week of quick and foolish poems

NaPoWriMo ?!? means the nation has to write a poem a day in April.  Here's my week 1 which had 6 days.

Do I Miss the Excitement

There was always a task in the world I was in
And always another nineteen
It wasn’t a question of which you would like 
Or where you would rather have been
Or if you would tackle them one at a time
They had to be juggled – yes twenty
Like great flaming torches with axes and knives
Now tossing a pancake is plenty

Rubbish in the Night

Think about that
And think about this
And think about that some more
What is the purpose 
Of thinking of things
In the morning at twenty to four

Thinking of that
Reminds me of this
And leads to the other and on
And on till the nonsense
Dissolves in a dream
So by twenty to nine it has gone

Sorry if it Doesn’t Make Sense

I can’t seem to laugh 
At my prose paragraph
But the rhyming verse keeps me amused
The sense will be changed
And the words rearranged
Till the reader and I are confused

Live Long and Prosper


Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme
And in doing so it takes up a huge proportion of the writer’s time
You could have sold many a successful novel
In the time it took to produce 4 perfect lines in your miserable hovel
You could have been wined and dined on a world book launch tour
Or stayed true to your dubious talents and poor

Life is too short
For poems of this sort

O for the End of NaPoWriMo 
This one is a disgraceful lyric parody 
from The Sound of Music

Po a pot a fine Ming pot
Po an infant’s favourite word
Po in case I wet myself
Po a place to put a turd
Na no better things to write
Mo hang on and have a go
Wri this acronym is shite
But it gets you started so
Collect your poems in a Po
Rhyme O

Be Friendly

Hello You on the edge of the gathering
Spruced up in a fetching blue hat
We’re all here enthusing and blathering
No chance of you joining the chat

These topics are desperately boring
To anyone not in the loop
I don’t want the guilt of ignoring
So let’s form a breakaway group

I’ll ask you some questions politely
And give you a turn at the bat
And you may berate me quite rightly
For treating you rudely like that

And why did we want to avoid you
And try not to look in your eye
Our attitude really annoyed you
So now we are all going to die

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 
 

Mixed Observation Ward – poem 33

 I flew back from England to see my poor mum
 In fear of sad words and last parting
 She was crying with laughter and glad that I'd come
 That man over there can't stop farting
 She whispered a nurse put a pipe in his bum
 Her hospital fun was just starting
 Despite her low numbers she didn't succumb
 It wasn’t her mood they were charting 

 She wasn’t expecting to hear a guitar
 Just behind the thin fabric partition
 Is it angels in there it depends how they are
 Most patients just need the musician
 Two verses of Edelweiss small repertoire
 Enough is enough repetition
 Mum's band with maracas was better by far
 Do they not have some kind of physician

 Last night when I came she was grumbling away
 I listened to what was the matter
 She’d like a cream tea a nice cloth on a tray 
 And six kinds of cake on a platter
 The chef sends her gruel both lumpy and grey
 She’s getting too hungry to chatter
 So we’re home to do dumplings and doughnuts all day
 Sink our fangs in meringues and get fatter

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

Mannequin on the Train

Hey workers don’t be sitting here like stone
All grim grey clothes and faces don’t go home
Let’s go to the next party!
Don’t mind if you’re a mess forget your meals
I’ve got the pure white fishnet tights and heels
The porcelain skin long neck exquisite lips
The ballerina shape and can-can hips
I’ll take you!
Too bad you need to do those toilet things
And sweat and cry grow excess hair and cough
You bend your elbows do the twist and sing
I’ll party till my head and legs come off
We’re stopping! See me bouncing to and fro?
Come on you workers pick me up let’s go!

Drudgery

I wasn’t great at waitressing
I wasn’t good with hair
I wasn’t always making any effort, to be fair
I couldn’t sort the cutlery
I couldn’t do a rinse
I couldn’t wait to bugger off and meet a handsome prince
I wanted to be waited on
I wanted to be glam
I wanted to become the gorgeous creature that I am
I wondered when I thought like that
I wondered what’s the plan
I wondered where to go to meet the famous royal man
I thought I’ll do the lottery
I thought I’ll study well
I thought I’ll start a business with stupendous things to sell
You have to really ask yourself
If what you want is gold
Or just to make the great escape from doing what you’re told

Alternative endings
1.
And do you really want a king
Festooned in stolen gold
Or just to make the great escape from doing what you’re told
2.
I’ll wait until I get more cash
I’ll wait to be more old
I’ll wait and buy a sexy boy who’ll do what he is told

Uncle Tony and Cousin Liz

They maintain a sense of humour
In the face of lethal tumour
Death and torture fire and flooding
Never mind the trees are budding
They are blissful home alone
With a companionable phone
If they’re about we jump and shout
We’re going out with Liz and Tone

They find it very funny
If you offer any money
And do nothing else but laugh
At your attempt to give them half
They think nothing could be worse
Than someone getting out a purse
Another day is what they’ll say
Or you could pay in rhyming verse

They have reasons to be weary
Sad and anxious but they’re cheery
Smartly dressed to feel their best
In natty trousers nicely pressed
Their lovely smiles are full of glee
As if their favourite person’s me
So consistently resilient
What a brilliant way to be

Twelve years of Global Warming to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas – with practice the words do fit the tune

Well at first we’ll be warm but we’ll all be in the sea
Your house flooded to your bare knee
Just a second to decide what to rescue as you flee
Those purple gloves
From the flood rising past your bare knee
So the third thing to take is a thermos full of tea
Plus odds and ends
Those purple gloves
And a map showing all the new sea
By the 4th year you know this is how it’s going to be
Free floating turds
Old odds and ends
Those purple gloves
Missing map never mind it’s all sea
In the 5th year your home is a giant redwood tree
Man has grown wings
Still the floating turds
But you have
Lovely purple gloves
And a view of the sparkly blue sea
In the 12th year of warming we’ll look around and see
12 Snorkels spouting
11 Mountains melting
10 Divas diving
9 Countries quaking
8 Rascals rowing
7 Fellows flying
6 Girlies gliding
Man has grown wings
Caught the falling birds
Found fish friends
Different ways to love
And to live on a boiling blue sea

Moving House

 I’m clearing all the clutter out
 And here’s my favourite bin
 It’s straw a basket-woven thing
 To put small rubbish in
 These tiny empty bottles
 And this plastic fountain pen
 Are going in my little bin
 And coming out again
 A Christmas card addressed and sealed
 And never sent but then
 They’ll still be there next year and so
 I’ll take that out again
 A comb with several working teeth
 There must be 8 or 10
 It fits in this old pencil-case
 I’ll take them out again
 Unopened tubes of eyelash glue
 From way back don’t know when
 A lonely pair of curtain rings
 All coming out again
 This pile of useful bits of stuff
 Will fill a useful tin
 I need to act decisively
 And throw away the bin
 Retrieved from under rubbish bags
 Re-shaped with cabbage on it
 The frazzled basket bin is back
 To serve as Easter bonnet

The Devil Wrote the Diet Books

The devil wrote the diet books
So pudding is a sin
You lose your heart to a big jam tart
He’s chalking up a win

Your shoulder holds a tiny fiend
His trident holds some chips
He buys his souls with sausage rolls
Saliva wets your lips

It’s better not to roast in hell
But frying makes you fatter
Perhaps we’ll bake – have chocolate cake
It isn’t going to matter

You gorged your way to Judgement Day
He won you fair and square
It all began with the frying pan
And into the flames from there

Find sports to play – kick fat away
Foul demons, flee chastised!
I scored a goal with a profiterole
But mine weren’t exorcised

They couldn’t give a fiendish fart
They play a different game
Do health and virtue hell can’t hurt you
Salad what a shame

That cloud of low-fat cottage cheese
My angel came from there
In a heavenly dress of watercress
A lettuce for her hair

Her halo a dish of the whitest fish
Her skin of peach no cream
I ate a plate of fudge and satan
Made my angel scream

That’s her battle song she saved me
And advised me tell the judge
Well My Lord to gain this weight I ate
More fruit and veg than fudge

She said cherubim are never slim
They grow to power the choir
We are guardian sopranos
Ever mightier and higher

To be sturdy is a glorious thing
The devil’s such a liar
We shout rejoice to drown his voice
And taunts like pants on fire

But he’s still the Prince of Darkness
Mortals can’t be too sarcastic
Just don’t let his evil writing
Make your eating habits drastic
Eat your greens and come to Heaven
Where the clothes are all elastic
And the Lord’s eternal lighting system
Makes you look fantastic