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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Frame-Fillers
What makes Mona Lisa smile ?
Well, some say it’s the genius
Of Leonardo’s toils –
That undefining dreaminess,
That soul bared free, that hallowed style,
Not me –
No, I say it’s the pigments in his oils
That manifests his guile.
And now that she’s been painted, see,
She’s micrometre points-of-colour –
Sometimes brighter, sometimes duller –
Quantified by RGB,
And shared by log and file.
Leonardo’s canvas is just that,
And not some holy relic –
Just a poplar panel, nothing more.
What matters is no artefact,
And art critics aren’t clerics,
And a gallery is not a sacred store,
With treasures by the pile.
No – it’s the image, not the paint,
That we must cherish like a saint,
And never leave to perish –
But the board is just wooden tile.
And though there’s some may be indignant,
We can print with oil and pigment
Perfect copies, big and small –
Let’s have a thousand-Lisa free-for-all !
I’d say she’s worth the while…
Her beauty should be on the move,
Beyond the Louvre, to ev’ry wall –
So anyone can recreate her smile.
Day 2 – Relic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Apple-Woods
Orchards are lower these days,
The rootstock is stumpy on which they are grafted –
The trunks barely over our shoulders,
The branches still reachable, that’s how they’re crafted.
Their forests don’t crowd in a maze,
But spaced to let sunlight turn crabs into plumpers –
And these aren’t some wind-fallen moulders,
But lures to tempt deer in, and blackbirds, and scrumpers.
So take care when walking these ways –
For all that they’re waxen, these fruit can be hairy
When boughs can be heavy with boulders,
All lurking at head-height, to catch the unwary…
Day 1 – Apple – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Well, there’s no denying that Autumn is with us, so it must be time for the annual month of fertility that is Inktober.
As as in previous years, my lack of drawing talent shall not restrain my fingers from sketching across the keyboard in a series of short and silly vignettes.
Though I do have to say that I have been thoroughly underwhelmed by the choice of words this year, as if all the interesting ones have already been taken. And I made a concerted effort to write them strictly in order, without looking-ahead at later prompts, all the time thinking ‘surely the next word will be something more potent…?’
Smack
Ogre
Panic
Stinky
Ram
Mystical
Rescue
Toss
Flimsy
Lady
Hooray
Gangly
Contraption
Flightless
Confused
Lounge
Hero
Beacon
Dapper
Bake
Fracture
Zip
Dumb
Trophy
Tusk
Cookie
Flex
