Tuesday 31 May 2016

Poetry for men who look at old Mechanical things




The great mechanical Marvel
With its dual time elapsed
Escapement movement
Turns slowly on its axis
Gears spinning driving its
Built in helical spring
And with its divergence inverted organ pipes
It can be taught to loudly sing
It truly is a wonder
As grown men drool
Over its polished Brass pipes
And not just old men in rain coats
But even younger well suited types
And they will look and point
And nod in a knowing way
A way that women don’t understand
Even in the more enlightened times
Of the modern day man
You see
The great mechanical Marvel
Is a product of the past
And modern ones are all plastic
And never ever last
As bits fall off
And the escape value sticks
And the all important
Trestle adjustment screw
Keeps moving
So you stick it in with glue
But  
The great mechanical Marvel
Grow men looking at its polished Brass
Supping on an ice cold pint of beer
Will always reassure a chap
After being trapped in a large supermarket
With his wife
And a supermarket trolley
That will not

Steer 

Monday 30 May 2016

The terrible curse of the selfie





Yesterday or maybe it was the day before I did something terrible, I took a selfie. One of those things that folk do so much that some cunningly clever chap invented a stick so you could take selfies from slightly further away. Now you might be thinking WHY (no not the stick but me taking one of me) and I don’t blame you, but there is a reason. You see what with drawing more pictures and then admittedly tweaking them a bit with some rather basic and very old software, plus writing a bit of dodgy poetry I thought I need a suitable image.  Until recently I have avoided using images of myself as much as possible in cyberspace, but if I plan to be some sort of mad dishevelled cult artist poet, then image is important. So I dug out my Tesco prescription sunglasses pointed my little digital camera at myself and attempted to smile then pressed the button and hey-presto . . . .terrible. Yes no matter how much I try to look slightly cool and moderately chirpy I always end up looking dead grumpy, OK I am grumpy most of the time but not all of it.

Now one of the key things that has brought this to the fore is that my old pal Mr Charlie said I needed a manager so that rather than just drawing stuff and sticking it into the voids of cyberspace to be lost forever, My manager could manage me. Actually I am probably not an ideal candidate for a manager because I am grumpy and a bit maverick (as has been proved by photographic evidence).  So I said to Charlie OK then Charlie you can manage me, and then he went off and told folk I was drawing again and that he was going to organise me and attempt to get me to create enough work for an exhibition. HAHAHAHha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha haha ha hahah a ha ha I thought; I am far to maverick to be organised into something that organised these days, surely such a thing is impossible. I suspect I am right but in order to help my new manager I have promised to create some hanging on the wall art so it can be hung on a wall and folk can look and say. . . . . . . . O my god that’s terrible, that is the worst art I have ever seen. . . .

I did say too Mr Charlie in a slightly enthusiastic way. . . I could add some of my poetry to the artwork. . . . But he looked panicked and said he thought that was a bad idea . . . that means I almost certainly will.

Now I don’t know if this will happen and if it does when, but if it does I will let you all know. What I will say is it will not be in a leading London gallery, for one thing London scares me to bits, it is full of folk running about and huge as in really huge.

In the meantime here is my selfie. . . . . . . . . . .



     

Sunday 29 May 2016

Poetry for Unseen Extinct Beasts




Behold the Greater Spotted Paraphrase
Which moves in stealthy and beguiling ways
And it is said it is a beast that man can’t see
Because of its camouflage and complex geometry
And fantastic as this beast may be
It will spend its entire life in a single tree
Or so we think, but do not know
Because despite chopping down all the trees
We have not seen it
Which is a bitter blow
As it now appears the beast
Is probably extinct
And we might just have seen it
If we had not blinked

Nature is like that

Fickle

Saturday 28 May 2016

Bad Poetry for Snakes




Snakes are happy
Snakes are cute
Snakes like to play
A minstrels Lute
They are rather good
At impersonating a deflating tyre
And a well played Islamic flute
Will always
A snake inspire
But they don’t like tap dancing
For reasons I think we all know
And they don’t chew their food
But just swallow it
All in one go
And a snake can be a bit of a charmer
But should not be trusted
As one once ate
The Dalai Lama
(You see snakes do have rather complex religious beliefs)
Some snakes are friendly
Some snakes are not
And I think we all know
Which one of those
That Cleopatra chap got.
But snakes have their uses
If they try
And a well-trained snake
Makes a jolly good tie
(Although I would not advice using a Boa constrictor)



Yes sorry I was in a bit of a rush tonight and the mind is still as blank as can be at present, you know what it’s like you just start thinking you are getting the hang of all this poetry lark and then it all goings wrong. Luckily I drew a picture of a chap annoying a snake (as you do) and thought hang on it must be possible to write a snake poem dead quick. . . . . . . . . . . . OK I may be wrong.  

Friday 27 May 2016

How I never became a Hero



Today I plan to tell you a true story of a heroic nature, OK I think it was heroic because I did the heroic deed. It is an event that happened many many years ago as in a seriously long time ago when I was about twenty or there about.  At the time I was an Electro-Mechanical engineering apprentice, well either that or I had just finished my apprenticeship and I worked in a lab in a huge engineering business in one of those post war new towns. The fact it was a post war new town is important because this particular one had a network of cycle paths and footpaths that weaved about under the roads with nice wide sloping grass banks to keep the cars and pedestrians apart. All part of the optimistic design ideas for post war towns at the time.

Now living in this environment it was not uncommon when the weather was nice for me to walk home from work even though it was about a mile and a half. It was still quicker than driving due to volume of traffic. Well one particular summers evening as I was wandering under one of the pedestrian/ cycle underpasses which went under a dual carriageway a rather formally dressed chap in front of me who was just emerging out of the subway set off running like a bat out of hell. Not something you see every day and that’s for sure, well as I was a few feet or so behind him as I emerged to my left coming down the hill and bouncing out of control on the grass banks was a large truck with no driver. Luckily as I watched it heading towards me it ran up one of the grass banks stopped and then rolled backwards before starting to continue its trip down the hill. This gave me the opportunity to run up and leap into the cab before it gained too much speed and I was able to hit the foot brake to stop it just before it attempted to go under one of the pedestrian bridges. That was just as well as the truck cab was about three feet higher than the bridge and I might have got a bit squashed. Well as I sat there pondering where the handbrake was the driver turned up, apparently he had got out of his cab to ask directions and his truck set off without him. He was very panicked so I had to sit with him to get him back on the road and to the factory he was delivering too.

Once I got him there I then wandered back home thinking OOOOooo very heroic maybe I will be in the local paper looking heroic. . . Well about half an hour later the police turned up at the scene of the accident as it was visible from where I lived, so I went and said I had stopped the runaway truck and had taken it and the driver to a local factory, they then sped off without even asking my name, and that was that.

I never got to be a hero. . . and although it sounds a bit scary to tell the truth I did much scarier stuff when I worked offshore in the very early 1980’s when it was still a bit gung-ho.

But if that had happened today it would be all over YouTube and social-media and I would be able to look heroic and say . . . No it just all in a day’s work.  Being somewhat old and knackered now I suspect I would never catch a runaway truck these days and folk would point and laugh, But I did have the satisfaction at the time to note that everyone else ran screaming and panicking and I as a stubborn rebellious bloke (always was and always will be) did not.


Now this story is entirely true in every detail it all happened as I have detailed and I never became a hero, which makes you wonder just how many folk do heroic stuff and never get any recognition for it, I bet it happens most days.



Thursday 26 May 2016

Poetry for not having enough time



It seems now that summers here
I have so many things to DO
Like feed the birds
Feed the cats
And stick antlers on them both with GLUE
And the grass grows faster
Than any man would like to SEE
So I have to get the lawn mower working
As well as trim several bits of TREE
Plus make a cardboard Trojan horse
Which I said I would do ages AGO
And hunt under rocks and stuff
Looking for newts and frogs
And other amphibians
To paint strange colours
For the local village summer SHOW
And who has not got a tortoise
Stuck on the garage ROOF
Or problems in their attic
From some demonic monster
With a cloven HOOF
Or a dripping TAP
Or aphids taking a little NAP
While sucking SAP
On the rose
Which was a gift from
Your favourite (scary) gran- neeeee
Because as we all know
When she comes to visit
It’s the first thing she wants to see.
And the greenhouse needs water
As the tomatoes start to WILT
And my working model
Of the Grand Union Canal
Is filling up with SILT
And I do need the odd cup of tea
And a bacon butty or maybe TWO
And the leopard has escaped again
From the local ZOO
And if it attacks Grannies rose
She will be in a terrible RAGE
So I will run off now for a bit
To help get it
Back in its
CAGE

A chaps work is never done
Maybe a cup of tea first.

Right that’s THAT
The leopard has been caught
Using my gardening HAT
. . . . . .(yes if you wondering, it tried to attack my head)

And now I must finish my poetry
Because tonight I am off out to see
Friends and to have a Chicken Dhansak
Which they will run off and buy
And then bring back
to me

Hang On what do you mean
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The poetry is rubbish . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I don’t think you appreciate
How much I have to do
I still have to paint a
Zombie Gnomes wheelbarrow
Bright blue
I know what you think
But it is quite true
He is a friendly chap
And I have called him
Hugh


OOOOoooo time for another cup of tea…

Wednesday 25 May 2016

Poetry for the Diet of a Dragon




Tarquin the Dragon
Likes ice cream on toast
pizza and pie,
Rhubarb crumble made by a ghost
Followed by a nice Sunday roast
Deep fried
And marinated
In liquidised corpses of fly. . . .
And he will eat pumpkin seeds
As long as they are a bright bright red
And he once ate baked beans
By did not like them, he said
He likes iron filling with a hint of rust
And salt on his porridge is an absolute must
He will even eat tin
If it is served right
Wrapped round a grumpy medieval knight
Who as you might expect
Will complain when the dragon
Takes his first bite
He once ate three witches
From a Shakespearian play
And would have eaten the prince and the princess
But they both ran away
And he is partial to Poet
And says they taste of snow
And who could resist glow worms
When they start to glow
And every dragon
Likes toad and frog soup
Some anchovies and garlic
With an accessional Spaghetti hoop
And a big bowl of hot wizard stew
And a nice bit of Harry Potter gristle
On which to have a good chew
All washed down with some camomile tea
Accompanied by a bit of
Rancid fermented Bree    

   

Tuesday 24 May 2016

More Pirate Poetry



Everyone loves an eccentric wise Pirate
With his pirates swagger
As he sharpens his cutlass on a cuttlefish bone
And his parrot sings of the sea
In a raucous belligerent tone
The crew dancing on a dead man’s chest
Stolen in the dark of night
From its hidden place of rest . . .
Pieces of eight
Gold doubloons
And glinting silver coins
Slipping through the crews fingers
Mistrust brewing through their desire and greed
The eccentric pirate captain and the parrot
Watching and chewing caraway seed
Be gone me hearties
He shouts with his cutlass drawn
Greed will destroy ye all
Like a poison thorn
And with that he throws the chest
Into the sea and says
I be ye greatest Pirate Captain
There will ever be
Because while on my ship all the crew
Are treated equally



HAR HAR HAR
Now where be the rum.
And who
Is going to dive in to recover that chest

Tom the cabin boy ye say
Well give him a cannonball
To help him on his way

HAR
Whats that you say Skippy
Tom can’t swim

DAMN


This by the way is what happens when you choose to strim the grass at the side of the drive within view of a few cows. Cows are like cats, give them a cardboard box and they will get in it

Monday 23 May 2016

An almost rational reason why I plan to vote to leave the European Union

I thought I would have a quick break from Poetry today and do Politics (sorry about that).



Have you noticed that here in Britain the great debate about should we vote to stay in or leave Europe is starting to look slightly silly as each side raises the stakes like a mad game of Poker. . . . I will match your World War Three and raise you pestilence and Armageddon as a result of aliens from Venus.  It is getting harder to get any real idea about what the best thing to do is. Certainly the stay campaign has the greatest clout because the bulk of the establishment are scared of change and the unknown, so they are doing a great job of ensuring that leaving looks like total madness.

Well it may surprise some, but I plan to vote to leave and there are rational reasons for this and also one very non-rational reason. Firstly I need to say as I have said before I am a bit left wing (not very, just a bit) and unlike a lot of the out voters I would be happy to let more refugees into the UK, particularly from Syria. Ooooo I get annoyed by British politicians and now the EU with feeble excuses not to help people who are fleeing a terrible war, most of whom are just decent ordinary folk.

In theory the principles of the EU should appeal to me, I mean I voted to join in the first place (OK yes I’m a bit old). I believe in equality and a level playing field in life for all, and that we should protect the vulnerable and the weak. All stuff which the EU is meant to stand for. When I voted to join all those years ago I was hoping we would be part of a single currency, and that it would be possible to travel about in Europe as easily as nipping up the road to Scotland. We would be one big happy community, smiling hugging each other and having a good life.

But is that what happened No the EU  has turned into a huge bureaucratic semi opaque monster, I don’t know if money is spent wisely or not and there seem to be more dodgy deals and . . . I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine stuff going on than one can shake a seagull at. The politics of Europe are becoming polarized and based on self interest with the Euro on the brink of yet another crisis. In fact I suspect the Euro crisis may have been delayed a bit until we have our vote, or am I just being a bit cynical. . .maybe.  So my main reason not to remain is that I do not believe that the long term future of the EU is looking good. The stay in campaign say we would enter a recession if we leave, but if the Euro starts to fail and we are part of Europe then that will happen anyway. Right now I just feel Britain may have more control of its economic future and the well being of its population outside the European Union. I am just an ordinary man on the street I may be wrong I don’t know, but I can only do what I feel is right long term.

I did also say I have one very irrational reason why I am voting Leave, it is a very simple one. Both David Cameron and Tony Blair have said they intend to vote to stay in . . . I do not know them personally but Oooooooo they both annoy me with their smug I am better that you attitude

OK there you have it I will vote Leave I don’t know it that is right or not but I suspect Britain will Stay in just on the shear amount of doom stories the government is managing to get into the news. And even I am not of fan of the . . .  . We don’t want all these foreigners over here . . . . attitude of some of the Leave supporters. Why is there a them and us approach to all this; Britain will not sail off into the sunset and we will still be part of Europe come what may.


If we do stay in and the EU economy very quickly starts to go into crisis I promise not to say I told you so. . . . . when I say promise I am in fact lying. . . . I will  

Sunday 22 May 2016

More Poetry for Dragons





Before going to look for a dragon
Folk will often drink a double flagon
Of extra strong homebrew beer
And as they enter a dark gloomy cave
Feeling apprehensive but somewhat brave. . .
This as we know, being the traditional dragon’s lair.
They will often wave a large sword about
And then very loudly loudly shout
By all alas to no avail
Because quite frankly
The dragon
Will not
Care as it sits preening its scaly tail
Because as we know
Dragons are extremely rare
So are now a protected species
By law
So even as the dragon
Flicks out all the talons on its
Extremely large scary claw
It will remind you of this fact
Before it then attacks
And you end up
All sore red and raw
Scratched from head to foot
And to the core

And its all the fault
Of those knights of old
Who were unaware of
The implications
That would unfold
Of killing Dragons
On their quest
To do knightly
Things
Bringing the life of 
Dragons
To an untimely


END

Saturday 21 May 2016

Poetry for why I should Rule the World




How small is the smallest, small is small
When compared with
The very, very big and tall
Like a large sailing ship
Or even the moon or the earth
Or a huge undefined indefinite article
When held against
The smallest sub atomic particle
And who decides what’s wrong
Or what is right
And where we can go
And what we can write
And nothing is, as we often know
As simple as plain Black and White
It is clearly (to me) all very odd
And I don’t think we can blame it
All on that chap . . . . . . . .  
You know the one . . .  God
Although which God is God is God
Can be a rather heated debate
Leading to war death and destruction
As state fights state
So who or what can resolve
All these issues for man
Well I suspect
Maybe
It might be possible
That Poetry
Can
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
DAMN
Maybe Not
What we need is a jolly good world leader
I am available for a small fee

No refunds if you still carry on fighting.

Friday 20 May 2016

Poetry for a Superhero in a Pink Tutu



Gerald was a journalist
Who thought he had super POWERS
And would hang about at stations
Trying to stop trains
For hours and hours and HOURS
And was often told by the police
This was a silly thing to DO
And he was often caught
In telephone boxes
Changing out of his formal suit
And into a rather fetching pink TUTU
You see
He could not wear his superman outfit
Because his fellow journalist
Bruce Kent said
In a formal letter from his solicitor
He would SUE
And it is hard to believe and keep faith
When you are trapped
On that speeding train
Hurtling along the railway TRACK
That the superhero in a Pink tutu
Will stop it and safely get you BACK
But he did once save a cat
Trapped high up in a TREE
And the picture in the local paper
Was an interesting one to SEE

Is it a Bird
Is it a Plane
No its

Tutu-Man . . . . .superhero sort of?

Thursday 19 May 2016

Poetry for a Vampire and a Mummy chasing an Android Zombie Cat



A Vampire and a Mummy
Chased a large black cute fluffy cat
They chased it up a lamp post
And past an Ex-London borough council flat
They chased it past the chip shop
And under a railway bridge
And into the recycling yard
Where it hid behind a fridge
They chased it into a cul-de-sac
Past a pound shop and a café
And into a posh restaurant
Where the cat knocked over a carafe
They chased it onto the artificial ski slope
Past a man singing songs and drinking Gin
And round and round a roundabout
Until they all got in a spin
They chased it into the cinema
Which was showing the movie
Catch 22
They chased it into a railway station
And then into the public Loo
But they soon all ran out again
Because there was a penguin
Doing things it should not do
Then they chased it past a statue
Of Queen Victoria holding a Stratoscope
Chasing the cat for hours and hours
Until they had almost given up all hope

But when they finally caught up with it
It seemed the cat just did not care
Because the cat was in fact
An android Zombie Cat
Which cut the Mummy clean in half

With its android Zombie Cat laser eye stare
Which as you might expect
The Vampire proclaimed was ever so slightly
Rotten and
Unfair

And the cat smiled
And said it didn't care


Typical cat 

Wednesday 18 May 2016

Poetry for a Woman who Writes Wizard Stories



You know that chap
No hang on it was a woman
Who wrote those books about a wizard
You know the one; they were turned into films
Or was it a TV series
And it had that chap in it with a pointy hat
And those hobbit things and an odd cute rat
What was her name
She has the same initials as that other man
The one in that 1980’s show who got shot
You know it was on the box quite a lot
Back then
What was his name
In sure it stated with a J or M
It was Jack or Jim or was it Dave
He was in that film about a slave
Which I’m sure had a dinosaur
Like that 1960’s thriller called DAMN I forget
No hang on I remember now it was Godzilla
Yes you know him.
Well he had the same initials
But a different name
Oooooo this is enough to drive a chap insane
If only I had a better brain
Anyway I saw her once on a bus
Or was it a train
No Hang on it was on the television
she wrote all that stuff in a café you know
Which really only does go to show
What a good cup of tea can do
Anyway she has wrote this play
About the same wizard chap
Who asks about the Thirty Nine Steps
Or so they say
And he has to find them as he goes on his way
Or he will end up covered in custard
No hang on that’s not right
He will end up in a curse
Which is quite frankly easier to get into verse
Ooooooo dear what is her name
Because whenever I wave now
While on the bus or train
She whispers to her husband
O god its that poet chap
You known the one
Whats his name
That poet who is
Quite
Quite
Quite
INSANE.



You know who I mean
The one who’s cat sleeps on his head
Yes the black cat called
Thingy something or other
No I’m sure it is not a dog



Hang on why has he drawn me poking a wasps nest?
And his poetry is rubbish.