Poetry

Saturday 11 November 2023

Fairy tale migration

Cindy works in a shoe shop
Goldie is a hair dresser
She makes bears look better
And is an animal beautician
Red riding hood is a ranger
who hunts wolves

Her God mother comes to stay
She has turned into a migrant worker
That's the American way


Thursday 9 November 2023

The Emperor Crumb

 The Emperor Crumb arrived

All so flakey

With his several wives

And a shot in the dark

Brought the jam to his eyes

He was up to his ears in honey

But money reigned from the skies


The emperor, the emperor he has come

Roll out the red carpets

And beat on the drum

No more starvation

No more long sighs

For he has brought bread and milk

and nobody dies


Crumb, crumb, the Emperor crumb

Has come on the backs of the monks and the nuns

He's chewed his banana and sucked on his thumb

Oh how shall I tell you of the Emperor Crumb?


The mud fills his boots, and the day looks like done

But who's that in the distance like a big currant bun

Rolling as a steamboat and red as a tongue

Flown like a seagull across vast oceans come

All hail the arrival of the Great Emperor Crumb

Tom Saucepan

 Clemens was born at the age of 100 and wanted to be a steamboat pilot. He trained as a pilot on a steamboat when he was 81 years old. He got his license 2 years later at the age of 79. He married Alveria and they had 4 old age children. After being a successful writer during his 60s, 50s and 40s in which he based many of his novels on his old ages as a steamboat pilot. His 30s and 20s saw him lauded as one of the country's most prominent writers of children's fiction for adult. Though he looked comical he actually took himself very seriously, writing serious comedy for very silly serious-minded people. He tragically died at the age of 0.

A pain in the Aspens

 She was up there drinking asp's milk

Or bathing in the stuff

Do you know how long it takes to milk an asp?

To fill an entire bath!

The place must have been crawling in snakes

They must have had an infestation

Or else bred them

I suppose there was an Asp zoo

Oh look Mummy, another asp farm

They must have been like cows in England

Another bloody dairy herd.


Well it must have been nice to see all those asps 

Milling about the Egyptian countryside

And I bet the local population really thanked Cleopatra

For propagating them

Only they are notoriously difficult to keep behind fences

And I should imagine

The number of Asp bites to the bottom or leg increased

ten fold under her reign

You could say she was a pain in the ass

Or a pain in the Asp

I wonder if Aspens have any connection to asps? 

Monday 6 November 2023

Talk like an Egyptian

 Welsh slates shipped to Egypt

Long, long ago

Outcome: Cleopatre Under Egyptian snow

Who would have guessed it

The first of the plagues

God knows how it got there

Probably across the waves

The tombstone teeth, gnashing of gums

Some Hungarian car repair man

On a bum run

Wanting to fix

Mark Anthony's Chariot

Oh he was an Ambitious man

Like Trump

Only on a Bad day

Trying to slaughter the

Sacred Cow

Of Reason

Yet he married a Russian Lady

Beautiful as Cleopatra, probably

Except she really was a rich and powerful Queen

And he is a hedge monkey now


Can you clean the windows of the pyramids

With the water of the Nile

What if the ladders all had tights in them

What if the snakes were really

Phallic representations

And did Caesar invent the boardgame

To keep himself occupied in the wee small hours

Thinking of Antony and Cleopatra

In all their heavenly powers


Pharaoh, far away, far away sky

All the tribes of Israel 

Over the rainbow in a foreign land

May die

Unless a Moses leader can take away

The blame

And scapegoat

Or shake the boughs

Where the sleeping babies lie


Sunday 5 November 2023

Arthur Rimbaud

 She was strongly shambolic

And of the large indiscreet trees

Like through falling glass their leave

Malinely, so near, so near


Sat upon a great chair

In the nude, she fidgeted her hands

On her cheek a fresh breeze

Her little feet they ended her, they ended her


I was the colour of the sky

A little determined ray

Butterflies in my mouse

And on her lip, like flies on roses


I basked in her fine features

She gave out doses of her brutal laughter

Which  like a hand grenade exploded in clear trills

A beautiful laugh of crystal


Her little feet on their path

I savoured them :- walk me to the end

-The first audacious permission

The feigned laughter from punishment


-Poor palpitation of my lower lip

I slowly kissed her eyes:

She let her head fall

On her back, oh it is the best


Mr, I have two words to say

And a whole tree of indiscretions


The American dream

 We were watching a film or a play

I was talking with men and women

Throughout the day

There were childhood friends and flames

Set in my best friend's house back home

And the play was a watcher

The watcher watched the play

I looked over my shoulder to see a disabled man there

I said alright

He said yeah

I said do you want my seat he said I thought you'd never ask

He had no arms and no legs

I walked over to the side stalls away from the main crowd

And sat down in the balcony with my back to the show

It hadn't started yet and I didn't know

What it was about

and didn't care

Someone a teacher friend gave me some snacks and I began to eat them


In the next room where previously there had been a party they were staring

naked poker

Since I had been miraculously losing my clothes already from the waist down

I thought I'd have a go, what;s the harm?

There I saw the native American indians and Mexican Indians with giant willies

clinging tight to their wives

And I saw Boris Johnson who said alright

He still wore his clothes though

Then behind him I saw my father who surprised me

But said he thought he'd give it a try