Pro Crastinator
I promise that I’ll sweep the floor,
When I get around to it.
I promise that I’ll paint the door,
Feed the hungry, clothe the poor,
Or find the grail, learn to knit,
And cure the cancer, stop the war –
I promise you all this and more,
When I get around to it.
Counting Magpies
One for nada,
Two for nowt,
Three for a shrug,
And four for a doubt,
Five for zero,
Six for oh,
Seven for knowing there’s nothing to know.
Peggy Picas
Magpie, magpie, all upon your lonely,
Have you an omen or an auspice to portend ?
Tell me, oh magpie, perched all one and only,
What do you impart, my fortune-casting friend ?
Magpies, magpies, twosome in my setting,
Have you an omen or an auspice to bestow ?
Tell me, oh magpies, the pair of you abetting,
What do you impart – am I set for joy or woe ?
Magpies, magpies, thrice upon my vision,
Have you an omen or an auspice to enprime ?
Tell me, oh magpie, a trio on your mission,
What do you impart for my future-coming time ?
Magpies, magpies, four of you here gathered,
Have you an omen or an auspice for my mood ?
I tell you, oh magpies, I think your signs are blathered,
You’ve nothing to impart – you’re too busy finding food.
Armistice Sunday Blues
If this were a day just to celebrate peace,
And the end of the stupidity –
If thenceforth we’d learned and if henceforth we cease
All nationalist hostility –
Then maybe I could be a little less blue,
And not blame the soldiers so much
For orders they only were following through
For empire, oil, and such.
And yes, I am fully aware that a war
Is complex, and that leaders are deep –
But still they are all politicians at core,
With pollsters and headlines to reap.
So soldiers get orders and carry them out,
And sometimes civilians die –
But that’s total war, and it’s too late to shout –
We knowingly grabbed for the lie.
They don’t want me carping, but fighting there too,
But I know this war isn’t cricket.
When his country comes calling, the patriot true
Tells his hypocrite homeland to stick it.
Salient Thoughts
Passing through Ypres,
We paused for a moment to take in the Cloth Hall.
By the cathedral we parked,
And we wandered the Grote Markt,
Charmed and yet chilled
By the way they had carefully rebuilt it all.
The shops were all shut –
(We’d come on a Sunday, just wanted a look)
English words blared from their posters and flyers
So locals or ex-pats ? We didn’t enquire.
Their windows were filled
With helmets and biscuits and rifles and books.
Then down to the Menin Gate –
Far too triumphant and proud of its names:
Look at how many I bear !
They all did their duty and lie who-knows-where.
Just look at our killed !
And dare you resist us, and dare you lay blame ?
Rank upon rank of surnames,
With first-names reduced to only initials.
People I found myself wishing
Had told their nations to carry on fishing –
But instead, they had fought.
And here were their names, to make it official.
The flags barely moved,
And a few of us found ourselves holding our breath,
And it all seemed so lonely and still
And so thankfully long since the kill,
And yet still overwrought –
A faded and motionless orgy of death.
Ah, hindsight you rogue !
But let us not hate the hard lessons you tell.
So maybe it’s time to finally suture,
Time now for Ypres to find a new future.
And here’s a thought:
Maybe let’s spell it as Ieper from here on as well.
Index of First Lines
I just can’t think who wrote it,
And I never learned its name.
But I know it begins
With a line about sins –
Or maybe a line about shame.
I know I used to quote it,
But it’s long since slipped away.
But I know at its head
Is a line about Fred,
Or maybe a line about Ray.
I always meant to note it,
But I let the words grow faint.
But I know at its start
Is a line about art,
Or maybe a line about paint.
My mem’ry just can’t float it,
For I’ve racked yet can’t recall
But I know at its lead
Is a line that I need –
Just that line, just that first line is all.
Parable of Architecture
Imagine that you’re sat at home,
Lis’ning to some Bach, let’s say –
When thudding through the party wall
Comes Iron Maiden, ev’ry day.
Now perhaps you rather like
To mosh from time to time –
But not at home – for home is Bach:
Subtle, delicate, sublime.
You’re not a snob, there’s room for both,
Though Eddie’s really out of place
At festivals of lilting strings –
They ain’t the stage to show his face.
And Glastonbury’s Pyramid
Is likewise not the perfect gig
For chamber-orchestra-quartets
To strut their stuff and make it big.
But ah, you say,
There’s shuffle-play:
A random stream shall come our way.
But if you try another’s Pod,
I bet you find their choices odd.
But now imagine, ev’ry day,
Their music blares until it bleeds –
They always crank it to eleven,
Cos that’s what our music needs.
And all your pastiche must be crushed,
For that is old and we are New –
We are the only tune allowed,
Cos all your heathen hymns are through.
But long before they moved next door
There used to live the sweetest song –
It’s gone forever, now, that air –
Alas, the future came along.
They took the song and stripped it bare,
Then slowed it down into the grave –
They tore its notes out, cleared its score,
To build their tune upon its stave.
But ah, you say,
That’s what we pay
To progress through to come-what may.
But I say we can play them both
If we just learn some civil growth.
Democracy in Action
You’re blue or you’re red,
All others are dead,
You’re blue or you’re red or you’re bluffing.
You’re red or you’re blue,
All others are through,
You’re red or you’re blue or you’re nothing.
All others are splitters,
All others are chumps –
The heaviest hitters
Are holding the trumps.
All others are losers,
All others are fools –
We may be the choosers,
But they set the rules.
You’re blue or you’re red,
Or you’re red or you’re blue,
There’s no other colours for you.
You’re vote isn’t for –
No, you’re vote is agenst:
To settle a score
And to see them dispensed.
You’re vote isn’t aye –
No, you’re vote is a nay –
But don’t waste your cry,
Cos you’ve only one say.
You’re red or you’re blue,
Or you’re blue or you’re red,
Not orange, not yellow, not purple instead.
There’s no hope in green and there’s no hope in pink,
Cos who gives a toss what the voters may think ?
Your False True-Colours
America, no ! You’re doing it wrong !
It’s red on the left, and blue on the right.
The rest of the planet can all get along,
But you Yanks as usual are picking a fight.
For red are the hands that must labour and toil,
And blue is the blood that possesses the soil.
It hardly takes NYPD or the Feds
To spy just how blurred is the choice of your hues –
With red-meat Republicans labelled as Reds,
And New England Democrats down with the Blues.
But red is for passion, and rage, and hard knocks,
And blue is for loyalty, culture and stocks.
America, no ! What you practice today,
We follow tomorrow – and follow you blind –
Our system for centuries soon shall decay
As crimson and cobalt get quite misaligned –
Then blue are the collars that lefties much cite,
And red are the necks of the folks on the right.
I debated whether I should leave out the superfluous ‘u’ in colour in the title, but I just couldn’t let logic overcome my desperate need for identity.
Some Things are Beyond Rhyming
If I read one more bloody poem which
Rhymes move with love,
Or prove with love,
Or cove with love,
Or some such non-concording glitch –
I swear I’ll tear it from the page,
My critique serving to assuage
My poet’s rage.
Each lazy half- and quarter-rhyme,
With stubbly chin and flaccid lust,
Just can’t be arsed, it’s marking time –
It’s only there because it must –
On speaking terms, but only just.
And then they have the rough-faced gall
To drag in love among their ranks,
To mangle with their petty pranks
And gen’ral lack of wherewithal –
For love, as ev’ry poet knows,
Has few bedfellows of a pair –
It won’t be shunted into rows,
Or sold-off cheap in shabby fare.
Don’t leave your love where rhymes rehearse,
But let it flow throughout your verse –
For love is never trite or neat,
And rare those words that sound as sweet.
Rhyming Couplets 