Who Gives a Toss ?

Rediculous that I had to resort to AI to get an image as obvious as this. Oy, Pexels, pull your finger out…

Who Gives a Toss ?

Capita aut Navia ?
Cross or Pile ?
Just when did the coin-toss come into style ?
The Greek ?  The Romans ?
Rise and fall,
I guess it’s a toss-up who made that call…
For those early coins were thin and light,
And hard to get them sitting right –

So when did balance – flip – spin – and snatch
Become decisive ?  There’s the catch…
Who made it float instead of fling,
And made it sing with its metal ping ?
Who first flicked their thumb at a thruppenny bit ?
I can’t make heads nor tails of it…

Day 12 – Toss – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

The Law of the Anthill

Photo by Mohamed Nasar on Pexels.com

The Law of the Anthill

Ant in trouble ?
Call for the cavalry !
Call for their nest-mates to come running rapidly.
Ant entangled ?
Here come the rescue-squad –
No-one on their watch is left to the will of God.
They’re digging and slicing and pulling and rolling,
With ten-parts encouraging, ten-parts consoling,
Unbounden, unthreatened, untrapped and unsmothered
It’s all ants for one till the one is recovered.
So ant in danger ?
Send out the safety-crew !
The tiniest heroes who do what they gotta do !

Day 11 – Rescue – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Mist-ical

Photo by Darya Grey_Owl on Pexels.com

Mist-ical

Mist still holds a mystery,
There’s more to fog than we can see,
The very vapour seems alive,
A smoke-machine in overdrive.
We’re swimming through a pool of clouds,
In black-and-white and muted louds,
It turns the mundane to unknown –
And wraps me up, and me alone…

Day 10 – Mystical – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Counting Rams

Photo by Erwin Bosman on Pexels.com

Counting Rams

Sheep with horns are no solution
For insomniacs –
They come on twos or fives or eights,
And not in endless packs.
These bands of boys can cause confusion,
Wandered from the flock,
They’re hard to herd, and jump no gates,
And only bleat to mock.
So rams won’t, in conclusion,
Help you give your dreams a shake –
And if they’re rutting with their mates,
They’ll keep you wide awake !

Day 9 – Ram – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

A Noseful of Notice

Photo by Largo Editt on Pexels.com

A Noseful of Notice

Mammals sweat – it’s our superpower,
But boy, does it make us pong !
Our glow is wafting, musk is humming
Ev’rything can smell us coming…
Mammals sweat – we’re a perfumed flower,
That likes to come-on strong –
We love to run our engines hot,
Yet keep our cool by kilowatt.
Mammals sweat, but lizards cower,
Basking all day long –
While on the breeze, we spray our ink
To mark our presence, spread our stink.
Mammals sweat – unless we shower,
Then our whiff goes wrong –
But rest assured our nat’ral scent
Cannot be silenced, as we vent.

Day 8 – Stinky – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Panic

Photo by sumit see on Pexels.com

Panic

        1.
If the sound of distant clatter
From the kitchen shakes you from your bed,
If the smell of bubbling pancake batter
Makes you fear the bread,
Or if the chirpy chatter
Of a TV chef fills you with dread,
Then shriek or slink, it doesn’t matter,
But just scatter to the shed….

        2.
If the sound of critics pishing,
Tutting, and poo-pooing, taking aim,
Or sneering as they’re strutting, swishing,
Choosing who to raise to fame,
Just sucks you of ambition,
That you’ll never beat them at their game –
Then don’t wait from the first edition,
Join a mission, change your name…

        3.
If you hear a distant cry
From the skirl of his pipes in piercing shrills,
If you hear his hooves come trotting by,
Or his bleating, braying trills,
If you glance his wool-caked thigh,
Or horns still bloody from his kills –
Then pant and scream that the end is nigh,
And run high for the hills…

Day 7 – Panic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Ogres

Photo by Milan Stefanovic on Pexels.com

Ogres

Oh god, is that an OG ogre,
Croaking broken brogue ?
Or else a voguish Mini-Mooger,
Ogling hokey rogues ?

Oh, show me no attention,
I’m just goading Mr Block –
With a token of nonsension,
Till a notion comes to knock…

Okay, I’m only joking,
With the bogeymen and blokes –
Just smoking hoagies like old fogies,
Colloguing a hoax.

I’m groping oafishly, to choke
A spoken ode on ogre-folk.
My mind, though, won’t let go of ‘O’,
For all the pogues I poke…

Day 6 – Ogre – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

A Smack of Jellyfishes

Photo by Merlin Lightpainting on Pexels.com This looks suspiciously like AI, but it might just be excellent lighting…

A Smack of Jellyfishes

Why is it a smack of jellies ?
Well, of old it never was –
For this is very much a modern coinage,
Likely just because.
But then, it’s pretty harmless, and it raises giggles,
I confess –
Though who has ever needed to employ it ?
Surfers, I would guess.

But why a smack ?  Is that a ref’rence
To the whip-crack of the sting ?
As metaphor, of course, because they’re silent
When they’re blistering.
Or are they ?  Do we bump them with our hull
When sailing through a crowd ?
But even then, I can’t imagine
That they’re headbutts are that loud…

But sailing makes me think of fishing boats,
And weren’t those called a smack ?
And I can see them forming a flotilla,
Drifting in a pack –
Although, a fishing boat needs miles of room
To cast its nets at sea –
You only spot them on their own,
Except when clustered at the quay.

But wait, I think a smack is Anglo-Saxon
For a pep of taste –
A silent pop, a gentle jolt,
To show this aspic ain’t so chaste.
Or are we simply fools to swim in spicy waters,
Where they’ve snuck ?
I guess we sometimes smack of arrogance,
And prove ourselves a schmuck ?

Day 5 – Smack – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Badland Barons

Film crew filming around a supported saguaro cactus in the desert
The AI managed to even make it look like it’s been inflated…

Badland Barons

Spaghetti Westerns filmed in Spain –
Was that because the cactus got there first ?
Invading through the dry terrain,
And perfect with some charros interspersed…
Alas, the only ones we see
Are squat and unromantic prickly pears –
Saguaros need a century
To even grow those cowboy arms of theirs.
Instead, they had to turn to fakes
For long-shots standing-in as Arizona –
Moving flats between the takes
To look more Tucson, look less Barcelona…
Were there not native spurges
That could act the part as extras on the set ?
Although, what now emerges
Is a weird, invasive hybrid – better yet !

Day 4 – Cactus – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry

Miniatures

Godshill Model Village 1984 by Roy Hughes is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

Miniatures

Model railways run in circles,
Through the days of steam,
All cobbled-streets and Northern quirk-ful,
In a Thirties dream –
A spotless, frozen neighbourhood,
Bedecked with tiny trees,
And terraces of balsa-wood,
And cardboard factories.
This world had vanished long before
These modellers were born,
But here, in H-O scale once more,
It’s elegantly worn.
They never show the modern world,
It seems – no urban sprawl.
Perhaps they take so long to build,
It sets their sights so small…?

Day 3 – Miniature – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry