The Kick Inside - A Reason to Write
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'Garlic & Guinness'
Self Doubts
I always thought I wrote poetry;
But obviously didn't.
From the libraries of the lobe,
Filled with the references of rhetoric,
Came the volumes of verse.
I wrote reams,
But the words were worthless.
A walk on the wild side
I moved to this town,
But I soon found there was no place to go;
Came the dark of the night,
I was lost, and all alone.
I was told of a place where,
For a price;
People like I could go.
Thought I'd do myself a favour,
And go and see;
But when I got there,
It was just a facsimile.
Not all are limp-wristed,
Frail and weak;
Not all take mincing steps,
And are openly called 'freak'.
Some are strong,
But gentle and kind;
And the only real difference,
Is the state of their mind.
Every man is gay,
To some degree,
They must be;
To walk into a public urinal,
And covertly show the world;
That which many claim to be,
Their prize possession.
The bonhomie of the pub,
The camaraderie of the barrack room;
The awe of the terraces.
The extent of our relationships,
Are merely a point of view.
Some are more involved, than others;
That is all.
A quote from Quentin
They ask me,
From where do I get my inspiration?
My visions of sublime reality?
'A lifetime of Being '... is my reply.
Anymore
I don't care if the sun doesn't shine;
I don't care if I am walking the line;
I don't care 'cause you aren't mine;
Anymore.
You said you would be true;
But now I have found you were cruel;
But you won't play me for a fool;
Anymore.
There was a time when I believed in you;
Even with all you put me through;
But you're not the person I thought I knew;
Anymore.
So I am going to live again;
Maybe find some special friend;
Then what you did won't matter then;
Anymore.
Girl, I wrote this song for you;
So you would know just what,
I've been going through;
But I won't ever cry over you;
Anymore.
The Illustrated Man
Some called him, 'freak',
For openly inviting public critique,
Of his fabulously illustrated physique.
But he is not so unique.
Merely a strutting peacock,
Soaking up the summer sun
On some far distant shore.
Nothing more.
Triad
Et tu Brutus?
Amo Sappho,
Amas Homo,
Amant Plato.
Eternal Triangle
I love him,
You love her,
They love each other.
Trilogy
Love labours, lost.
Lost love, labours.
Labours lost: Love.
Thoughts on Thursday the Fifth
I had to be There,
Hence I went;
Out of Politeness.
I wanted to be Here,
So I came;
Out of Desire.
Everyone's a Critic!
To all those hecklers in the crowd,
Who sometimes shout when I read aloud;
To them, I have but one thing to say;
This time pals, you didn't have to pay.
But believe me, there'll come the day,
When you will.
For then I'll be famous,
And the price of bacon will be considerably higher;
For a pig is so much harder to catch when it's a flyer!
Eternal Triangle
I love her,
She loves him,
He loves me.
Rec-tangle!
I love her,
You love him,
They love each other!
The Woodstock Witch
The Woodstock Witch,
Some say she's a b**ch!
She wildly rides the skies,
From her perch way up high;
Much to the amazement
Of all those passing by.
"Who the hell is the Woodstock Witch?"
People said;
"Looks nuffin' loike it,"
People said;
"You must be off your bl**dy 'ead!"
People said;
"How can it be?"
People said;
"I just can't see..."
People said;
"It's only a f**king tree!"
People said.
The winsome witch,
Caused the Wind, to rise,
It blew and it blew;
Then under her spell,
They all too,soon fell;
The wily Witch of Woodstock.
Beauty is in the eyes of the Beholder.
School Play Days
School Play days,
I remember them well.
Proud parents preening
Their infant prodigies.
Gone are the days
Of remarks like,
"Johnny sang very well, didn't he?"
Or "I'm so glad Mary remembered her line".
Nowadays it's Tristram, Abigail and Brooklyn,
With their personal voice coaches.
Love is.....
Love is ....
Bringing me that fresh bath towel, I'd forgotten.
When I'm in the bath.
Hand-washing my dirty smalls.
Ironing my work shirts, every day.
Clearing her hairs out of the shower trap.
Kissing that mint-strewn, fat soaked face;
After she's eaten breast of lamb.
What I see in her eyes,
Every time in the morning;
When she awakens
Walking Watton Road
Walking along the Watton Road,
In the wind and the wet.
Going past Harwood Park,
So dank and so dark.
My whole posture
Is one of Pain.
Shuie ( A salute)
Who gives a damn that the charges were fixed?
Who gives a f**k that the all white jury weren't mixed?
Who gives a hoot, and what would it figure;
Just put it down to the fact that he's another black nigger!
They're letting him rot now
In their living hell,
Out on an island somewhere.
With nineteen other 'brothers'
Sharing his cell.
He got bad bronchitis, and needed a bed;
But all he got for his pains, was a bust-up head.
Shuie made but two mistakes.
The first was that he was just born black;
The second one being that he dared to talk back.
Couch Potato
This is me.
Just sitting here.
I don't laugh anymore.
I don't cry anymore.
In fact, I'm not even sure,
I am still breathing.
Being a vegetable,
I probably photosynthesize!
Very Michael Cainesque
"You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" - Charlie Croker (The Italian Job)
A man died today.
Thirty-five he was.
He lost his head
When a gas bottle blew up.
Or was it,
The other way round?
Either way,
He didn't make a sound.
And they do say
That his feet never touched
The ground.
Hard Sell
Sign in the window:
FRESH FISH FOR SALE HERE
"You have somewhere else?"
FRESH FISH FOR SALE
"You are giving them away, maybe?"
FRESH FISH
"I would need another kind?"
FISH
"This I knew, from the street bottom."
Thank God, it's Friday!
Conspiracy in Rhymeland
Humpty Dumpty never fell.
He knew who'd put Pussy in the Well.
And rather than let him live to tell,
They pushed him from the Wall.
And made it look like a fall.
Humpty's girl,
Judy Muffet,
Was dining at their favourite bistro, 'The Tuffet'
When she got word that she would be next
To end up dead.
So when they espied her, and tried to sit down beside her.
She just got up and fled.
Little Jack Horner,
Who was sitting alone in the corner.
Saw what was happening but he never said.
He just acted dumb,
And started messing about with his thumb.
In his plum pudding instead.
It am a ramblin' poem
dem ting he say,
he no write dem.
dat white boie talkin'
it no come out like dat
when 'im sez dem tings,
'im jist put dem down.
he jist tink stuff.
me 'ave no skoolin'
so me write
wot me tinkin'
when me write it down,
it me wey, man
me experimentin'
it mek it difficult
for white boi'
it am a ramblin' poem
'im no know
tings we knows.
when me write me stuf
me knows
wot i's tinkin'
Beach combing
One may comb
Coherent thoughts;
When walking alone,
On an empty beach.
The sea's insistent,
Eternal cadence,
Dulls the cutting edges
Of Fear and Doubt.
Until they are,
As smooth
As wet, shiny stones
On a rocky shore.
With this also,
Comes a sense,
Of ephemeral sojourn,
On this planet.
Hot enough,
To extinguish;
Desire or Ambition,
Only a bitter-sweet
Awareness remains.
That all fires,
Must die.
Which makes their
Present flames;
All the more
Precious.
Desolation Row
In surroundings familiar
The unexploded bomb
Continues to tick, for now
Words of solace
Read in unreal times
Reflect the desolation
Of Donna Nook
In the land of the bombers
Peace is declared
While overhead
The wings of change beckon.
A Close Encounter of the Fourth kind
Shintu taberus instermaun
Yarbarato insterman garmana
Onawa contes moran
Yarhaw fno sorman
Ginta seeama yousta
Donja arma setus
Karsta flma seark
Shintau stermus umsta
Sharme kuntanie sifma
Istus marma infansa
Cousa yousta instam
Sasau nonma sarta
Karsta langa sortma
Sosta noma soretatae
* Footnote - As many are aware, a close encounter of the third kind, is a meeting with an alien life form. The fourth kind is alien poetry. It is read from right to left, starting with the last letter, wherein one finds the metre. For the benefit of those unfamiliar with Zxarftriousn dialect, this particular poem translates thus:-
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
On the pretence of finding water.
Jill soon came quickly down;
As Jack tried on something,
He shouldn'ta orta.
Reflections on a modern day Holocaust
It's sixty years to the day,
Since Auschwitz was closed.
It's a month to the day,
Since the waters rose,
And orphaned so many
In Asia.
My heart goes out,
To the survivors of both.
Blair promised millions in Aid;
But he spent billions on bombs,
In Iraq.
Josef Mengele would have been proud
Of the Tsunami;
Ethnic cleansing
At a stroke.
Nations devastated,
Generations decimated.
Economies ruined.
And, oh yeah, there was a flood;
In Carlisle.
Autumnal Days
A gaggle of geese
On the wing;
The flock flying
In tight formation.
Heading south, to flee
The winter winds.
Pheasants foraging,
In a field, full,
Of corn stubble.
Paddling in a puddle;
Formed by yesterday's rain.
Pigeons perched precariously
On high wires.
Attempting aerial acrobatics.
Marauding magpies,
And bandit rooks:
Robbing robins,
Of tasty tit-bits.
An audience of arachnids,
Watch and wait
On woven webs,
That wave in the mistral wind.
Sitting on shards,
Of silk-like gossamer,
Shimmering in the light
Of the watery sun.
Anticipating a final feast
Of flies, and other such flying things:
Before the famine-like fast of winter.
When total dormancy sets in.
Whodunnit?
Murder?
It must have been!
Lying there, with his head all bashed in.
Couldn't have been anything else.
Whodunnit?
"Not I," said the Hound;
"I made not a sound of my characteristic baying,
When I espied his lifeless body.
Out of respect, as it were,
In the light of his untimely slaying."
Whodunnit?
"Not I," said the Wind:
"I blew the Last Post over the body, all tattered and torn;
Seemed fitting, somehow."
Whodunnit?
"Not I," said the Rain:
" I cried when he died, and wept so much;
That the children played in the puddles left by my tears,
The next day."
Whodunnit?
" 'Twas I," said the Car:
"I came from afar, much too fast, it is true.
I had Rabbit set in my sights, transfixed by the lights.
Trapped in the glare of my steel-eyed stare.
Fox, always an opportunist, thought his cunning;
Was more than a match, for my fast running.
With feet normally so fleet,
He thought he could cheat me of my prize.
He was wrong, and so were you!"
The Coroner's verdict was Death by Misadventure,
Whilst of an unsound mind.
Thoughts on an early morning
As I rode along the Watton Road
This wet and windy morning,
My mind travelled back,
To better times.
And I realised
What I really missed
Was the meeting of the minds
With my mate
On his way to work.
Thoughts II
Another God-given day,
So full of promise,
At the outset.
Has finally passed me by.
And what did I do with it?
But it helps ...
You don't have to be gay,
To be beaten to pulp:
But it helps.
You don't have to be black,
To be arrested for 'sus'
But it helps.
You don't have to pop pills,
To be harassed by the ' fuzz'
But it helps.
Don't look back
I looked at her a thousand times,
But never saw her once.
She always asked me,
But I never answered.
She always talked,
But I never heard.
So she left.
Now all I see,
And hear:
Is Her.
Banking Failure
There are tanks
On the streets
Of Albania.
The people are rioting
Because of the failure
Of the state banking system.
They trusted the politicians
And their policies
Where did that get them?
Now there are guns
In the houses
Of Albania.
In rust-bucket boats,
People are trying to flee:
Trusting themselves,
To any vessel that floats.
There are many bodies
In the sea,
From Albania.
The passing of the apple tree
For fifty years and more
It has stood there
Giving shelter and subsidence
To a multitude of feathered friends.
Seen the comings and goings
Of many summer suns
Weathered the winters.
Had its fruits and leaves
Succumb to the Fall
On many occassions.
Bird song
Learn to write your hurts
In the shifting sands of life.
Where the sea of forever forgiveness
Will wash them away.
And carve all your blessings
In the stone walls of rememberance.
Where the ravaging winds of time
Can never erase them.
Poetic Licence
'They espied the angelic hosts,
And were sore afraid'....
Or in plain English,
We scared the s**t,
Out of the shepherds last time,
And haven't used
The wings and sandals approach since!
Kitchen Blues
I changed the oil in the chip-pan, baby;
I changed the oil, yeah.
I changed that old oil last night;
I really did change that oil, yeah, baby;
But it still don't feel quite right.
Oral
Someone,
I can't remember who,
Asked me once,
"Does your girlfriend Spit or Swallow?"
"She gargles", was my reply.
Jack's Revenge
Porcine pig
Hung on a jib,
Swinging sideways.
Lord of the Flies,
With eyes, still in,
Reviewing the road rage
He was provoking.
Slit from fore to aft,
Hoisted by his own petard,
Perhaps?
The Weakness
It had never happened before
True, he had been many places.
But never on the floor.
So hard did he hit it
The repercussions were felt
In the sorting shed next door.
The further discovery
Of the gaping gash
Had him whacked up on warfarin.
Poison to rodents, that gave him life.
And daily filled with fortified foxgloves.
Shipman
Harold Shipman is dead,
Or so the text message said:
But you can never be sure,
Can you?
Spawn of Hell,
Thought he'd be safe in his cell.
But I knew they'd find a way,
To hang you!
Daydreaming
Oh, to be on that plane,
Bound for Spain.
Sipping on an ice-cold beer,
Instead of sitting stagnating here.
"And by this Sign, .....
So shall you know me! "
"Remember this, Sire,
And use the information well.
For they plan to kill my Liege"
So spoke the Lady of the Lake.
" 'Twas the Vessel with the Pestle,
That bore the potion that was Poison.
And it was the Flagon emblazoned with his Dragon,
They did fill with the brew that is True.
But the serving-wench did slip,
The platter fell to the floor
And did crash on the flagstones there.
The Vessel with the Pestle was smashed.
Shattered into a thousand shards.
Now the Flagon with the Dragon,
Contains the potion that is Poison.
And the Crystal Chalice,
That was procured from the Palace;
Holds the brew that be True"
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