A Blogger’s Lament
Oh! I wish I could blog every day
But my head doesn’t let me, okay?
There are others who do
But I’m just not like you;
There’s a block on my brain
And so, once again,
I can’t think of a damn’ thing to say.
Oh! I wish I could blog every week,
But my life is exceedingly bleak
It drifts by so sadly,
I’d swap it quite gladly
Because, as a rule
It’s distinctly uncool
Writing words that have flimsy physique
Oh! I wish I could blog every quarter,
That interval’s one that I oughter
Attempt to achieve
And, at least, I believe,
I could meet the time scale
And so thusly regale
You with noteworthy essays – well, sorta
But I think I’ll just blog every year
‘Cos I know that I’m no pioneer;
Then more are a bonus
And therefore the onus
Upon me decreases,
I’ll store up some pieces,
Thus leaving me more time for beer
An Anagramapoem for LoisInTheForest
I am the proud inventor of the literary device which I have named the Anagramecdote. It consists of anagrams of the subject of a (usually) disingenuous tale appearing frequently – in upper case – without affecting the (ahem) perfect sense of the tale. This is an offshoot of that device, called the Anagramapoem, for obvious reasons. Just by way of explanation, LoisInTheForest was an internet nickname I was once given.
THE SINISTER FOOL
Continues with his plan
IN FOOLISH STREET,
While kindred souls look on
WITH FOOLISH INTEREST;
He wishes that one day they all could meet
TO THIS FINE LOSER
Go the spoils of senseless conflict;
IN TOOTHLESS FIRE
That burns with empty flame,
THE LOONIES FIRST,
And then the sane, achieve his heart’s desire
SENIOR THIEF, LOST,
Who steals the love and wanders
IN THE SOFTER SOIL:
The dirt that’s left unturned,
FILTHIEST SOONER,
Cleanest later, the dream must never spoil.
ON THIS SOFTER LIE
Rely, but know the truth of it:
THE SNORT IF I LOSE,
The cheer if I win,
LONER OF THIS SITE
But owner of the fight that I will choose.
Do You Remember?
Do you remember that, when you were young,
The summers were always so sunny?
If you kissed a girl you held on to your tongue
And a tanner was serious money.
Long before SEGA and Super Nintendo
Were giving the kids addled brains,
You’d not heard of karate, jiu-jitsu or kendo
And water and coal drove the trains*
The Corona man delivered on Saturday morns,
The coalman was not far behind,
Dusty and jet-black from head-lice to corns
And he never seemed to mind.
“Rag-bone, rag-bone!” We’d run to the gate
And gape at the horse and cart;
Piles of clothes, here a sink, there a grate,
As if lives had been torn apart.
Cigarette cards that were pegged to the spokes
Made an engine for any old bike;
No-one had heard about ethnic jokes
And a tick meant ‘correct’, not ‘Nike’.
You were allowed to have a golliwog,
A race issue was who had run faster;
There were many more fields to run with your dog,
Being picked last to play was disaster
You could only catch colds from the opposite sex,
When you got home from school, Mum was there;
Doctor Who was the greatest for special effects
And it was quite safe to go to the fair
Two feet of snow was a dream come true
And ‘gay’ meant full of joy;
There was newspaper hanging in Gran’s outside loo,
Memories time can’t destroy
*Which were always on time
Sharp Practice
If I was the inventing kind (which, thank the Lord I’m not, sir!)
The kind of thing that I’d invent
Would be a Poppy Clothing Attacher – it would be a thing
to stop your fing-
-er being attached
to your shirt or scratched
and without a point
that impales your joint-
-ed digit to your nipple
Not designed to cripple
Or make you bleed
But what you need
To fix it safely in –
And it’s not a bloody pin!
On a teenager joining the human race
Why is your bedroom so tidy and neat?
Why are you wearing fresh clothes?
Is that some cleanliness there, on your feet?
Why aren’t you picking your nose?
There are eight pairs of socks in your washing this week,
It’s really not bad enough;
Why wait ‘til I finish before you speak?
And your trousers aren’t covered in – stuff.
You’re going uphill,
Are you ill?
What’s in a name?
My sister’s name is quite absurd
The daftest that I’ve ever heard;
I sometimes think she’ll soon go crazy,
Wouldn’t you with a name like
Whoops-a-daisy?
It’s not a name that I would want,
The vicar dropped her in the font,
You see, the day that she was christened.
No-one since has really listened
When she moans about her name.
Mum and Dad are not to blame –
The vicar should have been more careful,
Mum didn’t half give him an earful.
Still, I’m glad that Mum and Dad,
When they were young, spent all they had
On visiting the cinema –
Inspired by their favourite star,
They vowed that, if they had a son,
They’d name him after Number One.
So when we sit and eat our food,
My sister sometimes is quite rude;
“You must not eat peas with a knife,
Such bad behaviour leads to strife”,
Mum chides. I laugh, she snaps at me,
“Be quiet, Lassie, eat your tea!”
Tread Gently
Tread gently for the snake still sleeps
in sun-kiss’d purple haze
and often there he softly weeps
alone, on gold, long days.
Tread gently for the child awakes
on tips of dreams – beware!
and, as the dawdling daylight breaks,
step softly on the stair.
Tread gently as forbidden lust
raps hard upon your door,
defy, deny, resist, it’s just
an ill-imagined whore.
Tread gently, mourn the love long dead –
white-smiled, soft-lipped, deep-eyed –
regret the whispers left unsaid,
and tears that never dried.
On a train
For mile upon mile, away from dull grey weed-strewn platforms,
Rusty corrugated iron-roofed buildings, windows barred and cracked,
We snaked through long arcades of wild untrammelled greenery:
The messy and bedraggled scenery that the towns and cities lacked.
From time to time, we burst into the open
Where nothing hides what lies beyond the bank:
No fence, no tree, no shrub or thick and thorny hedge,
No unkempt grass, no fern or wind-blown sedge.
Through the gathering dark, a grassy hill of gravestones,
Among the tidy ranks of spotless black and grey stones.
An old man walks with flowers, slowly down the slope,
His lowered head and hesitant tread redolent of fading hope.
The distant steeples do not seem to move, and yet
The other track’s a blur of sleepers, stones and rail,
The shining silver surface proof of constant use;
Below, the slowly rusting metal still a sound and steady trail.
There were aliens, too: metal giants on gentle green hillsides,
Striding down through tree and gorse, vast feet avoiding sheep and horse,
At home, yet out of place, their swaying cables
Sending power back to nearby town and track.
Never The Same
Of course, we can rebuild you,
We’ve taken out the lesions and the tumour;
As you see, we haven’t killed you
Nor did we take away your sense of humour.
For the way the body will behave
We can’t assume the blame;
We know the normalcy you’ll crave
But it will never be the same.
I know that we have filled you
With a sense of deep foreboding and distress
But, as I said, we haven’t killed you
Though you may often feel we should have, nonetheless.
Well, thanks for that, it turns out you were right,
Though I would have found out later in the game
That the system you had mended would not properly reunite
And, since that day, it’s been the bloody same.
The same as what? I hear you ask; well, I’m not really sure,
A drainpipe that is often blocked with leaves and moss, mayhap.
Many a time I’ve wondered could I get them to restore
The status quo with little plastic pouch to catch the crap.
Words on the Street 