The New Zoo
She has the memory of a goldfish,
In that she remembers pretty well.
She is a frog in a warming dish
That knows it is no place to dwell.
And she’s a giraffe who loves shut-eye,
An ostrich with her head held high,
A colourblind bull when the red rags fly,
And an old wife with new tales to tell.
Training Neurons
My dreams are like AI –
They’re making-sense in bursts,
But then forgetting what they’ve said.
Over-confident and high –
These yes-men feed my thirsts,
Just to keep me longer in my bed.
All their written words are bees
That simply won’t stay still –
They’re almost right, until they’re read.
They scrape my memories
With a questionable skill,
And they never pay to use my head.
My dreams are like AI –
With their textures not quite right,
And their eyes a little dead.
But still, a riot worth the try,
A playground for a crazy night
Where logic fears to tread.
Archipelago
Some say poets are randy goats
With endless groupies from the herd –
The source of passion-dripping quotes,
And rock stars of the spoken word.
And yes, their tongues are best when spoken,
Lilting, accented, uncowed –
As something primal has awoken,
Glamours cast when breathed aloud.
Some say poets are balding folks,
Bespectacled and analytic,
Full of dry and clever jokes
That half will miss…but not the critic.
Their mumbled tones are flat and beige,
Each vaguely RP, lacking hype –
No, theirs are poems for the page,
And come to life when set in type.
Some say poets are dreamy souls
Who pluck their verses from the ether –
Whispered into pigeonholes
By some unkempt yet soft bequeather.
Screamed and rambled on the stage,
And scribbled down to be forgot –
They’re sometimes tortured, sometimes sage,
And yet their words still hit the spot.
Some say poets, and far too many,
Neither speak nor set to ink –
They never want to share with any,
Terrified of what we’ll think.
And good luck to them, writing verse
Within their heads, a private lay.
There’s none are better, none are worse –
They’re poets all – as some would say.
Hotspots & Coldsores
“It isn’t the resident tenants that make a city ugly, but rather the absentee planners.”
The Blueprint Bugle
Vienna is bursting with tourists,
While Croydon is thoroughly dead –
We all know why the one has the more is,
And one is a ghetto instead.
One has buildings of beauty
That people will pay to admire –
The other is screaming out “Nuke me !,
And raze all my ugly in fire.”
Oh sure, that intangible culture takes many a-century
To embed and to reign –
But if your town looks more like a penitentiary,
Then you’re waiting in vain.
Venice is sinking in people,
While Stevenage wallows in grime –
We all know why the latter is feeble,
And looks like the scene of a crime.
One has buildings of grandeur,
That travellers travel to see,
The other is yelling-out slander
With a nihilistic glee.
And it doesn’t take castles and squares and cathedrals
To still have plenty of charms –
But it does take some sense, and lack of upheavals
From brutalists swinging their arms.
Paris is famous for beauty,
And Slough is famous for bombs –
We all know why the one is a cutie,
And one won’t get asked to the prom.
One has buildings for humans,
That are sculpted, and tiled, and embossed.
The other is built for consumers
With the ornaments cut-out for cost.
We know it deep down in our footings, this concrete-clad craze
Is simply so unrefined.
If it ain’t Manhattan, then high-rise ain’t for the holidays,
But for the daily grind.
Please note that for the rhythm to work in the second verse, ‘century’ needs to be given it’s full there syllables, and ‘penitentiary’ it’s full six.
Pioneer Species
We’ll still grow trees on Mars,
Under the domes,
And rooted in thin soil –
We’ll take nuts to the stars
And distant homes,
To shade our fervent toil.
Beside potato fields,
And stands of wheat,
They’ll ease the barren crag –
Not for their timber yields
Or fruits to eat,
But just to plant our flag.
It only takes an acorn,
That’s not too much weight
To build a tree.
And ev’ry sapling born
Shall grow up great
In lower gravity.
Yet forests don’t get lush
Till a thousand years
Of Martian peace have been –
I guess we’re in no rush
To clothe our spheres,
And turn the red to green.
Which trees, though, all depends –
Can oak withstand,
Or maybe pine, or beech ?,
To scatter to the ends
Of ev’ry land
Our giant leaps shall reach.
And thus, we’ll leave a trace
From overseas
That shows we once came by.
We’ll still grow trees in space,
Because the trees
Have reached-up to the sky.
Blue Plaque Blues
A writer’s house is such an odd museum –
With all their private, not-for-public touch.
Does it forever colour how we see them,
Or just amount to telling little much ?
Must we rifle through their dirty laundry,
And publish all their letters, kiss-and-tell ?
And then complain they put us in a quand’ry
Of seeing flaws when knowing them too-well.
So why does hero-worship seek these holy relics, anyway ?
And basing truth on only what they claim the gossip-mongers say ?
Although I guess some writers would adore the fame they have today,
And sure, let all the crowds come snooping round their hallowed ground…
But as for me, if my words work there due,
Don’t let the creeps come crawling through my caches –
But burn my house, and all its contents too –
And leave the pervy fanboys only ashes.
The Big Butterfly Count
There ! A steak of white !
Let’s see…that’s one.
Now was it large, or small, or green-veined ?
Oh, what fun !
And there ! A brown of some sort –
Could be meadow, heath, or speckled wood –
But it’s clearly brown, I’d say,
If that’s much good…
A flash of red ! An admiral ? A tortoiseshell ?
What’s going on ?
Let’s take a closer look,
But no, it’s gone…
Wait, was that one the same
That I tallied over there,
As it circles round the garden ?
That’s not fair !
Willow Pattern
Two dancing birds,
Beaks apart, as if in song –
As they circle through the cloudy, milky sky.
One windsocked weeping willow,
Slanted, yet still strong,
And three folks on a hump-backed bridge nearby.
Could it be they’re fishing ?
Or waiting for the boat ?
Though it hasn’t got a sail – perhaps a punt ?
Upon the other bank
Is a house that looks afloat,
Sporting plenty of blue shrubbery infront.
And over here, behind a zig-zag fence,
A squat pagoda,
That’s sheltered by a spreading ping-pong tree.
And round the edge are squares and scales,
And flowers for a coda,
A busyness of cobalt for our tea.
I stared and stared at China
On those Sunday afternoons,
Round at Grandma’s, in her cottage with the gate.
The disappearing cake
Revealed the timeless blue lagoons –
So very Eastern, yet so English, on a plate.
It is uncertain when the first examples of Willow Pattern appeared, although Wikipedia suggests they could have been produced by Spode in 1790. They are, of course, a classic example of cultural appropriation – and thank goodness they were ! Genuine Chinese porcelain at this time was very expensive, and modern pecksniffs would have seen to it that it remianed so, and that the hard-working families of Britain should be denied the beauty and broadened horizons that came with their roast beef and Yorkshires.
Meditation
Staring deep in wonder at an apple,
Or contemplating where to move in chess,
Shutting-out the thoughts with which we grapple –
Boring, boring, boring mindfulness !
Lazy-arses squatting in believe-ment,
While others get stuff done so you can pray –
But beauty’s in distraction and achievement,
And life’s too short for omming it away.
The A300 Relief Road
London Bridge has fallen down
As planners suffocate the town –
They cannot fathom what appeals
In Nonesuch House and waterwheels
They claim it’s not a chance to dream,
For reasons that evade me.
It’s just a means to cross a stream,
My fair forgotten lady.
The bridge that used to grace these banks
They gladly sold-off cheap to Yanks.
They have no care for what is lost,
Just that it’s done for cheapest cost.
And now the name evokes the tides
Of business bland and shady –
Just traffic jams and suicides,
My fair forgotten lady.
Rhyming Couplets 