Lunar Eclipse
Last night, there was a blooded moon,
Eclipsed at perigee –
For once the clouds all stayed in bed,
And let her wander free.
She slipped into totality
At just passed half-past three,
She must have made a pretty sight,
But one I did not see…
I chanced awake at ten-past two,
And saw her dimming light,
But didn’t stay to catch the show
And soon bid her goodnight.
I woke again long after dawn
And knew I’d chosen right:
For all the views across the news
Make such a pretty sight !
The Practical Gardener
My garden is a rabble
Of the pushiest of weeds –
I wander through the scrabble
Of these self-selecting seeds.
I really should uproot them,
But in truth, I’m loath to scoot them,
When they bring the place alive, alive,
Where lesser blooms won’t thrive.
I love the weeds for their weediness,
For their entrepreneurial greediness,
With none of your hot-housey neediness.
Keep all your grasses and sedges and reeds,
Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
My rose-bush is no stunner,
And my aster’s called it quits.
My beans have done a runner,
And my melon’s gone up-tits.
But see my clamb’ring bramble,
And my bindweed web and ramble,
And my nettles stretching high, so high –
At least they’re never shy.
I love the weeds for their weediness,
For their never gone-to-seediness,
With none of your quaint little tweediness.
Keep all your caulis and marrows and swedes,
Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
With maggots on the rise,
And with aphids by the score,
I hope to soon see butterflies,
And ladybirds galore.
So when the slugs come feeding,
They just help me with the weeding.
Those bugs may all belong, belong,
But so does blackbird song.
I love the weeds for their weediness,
For their naught-to-invasive speediness,
With none of your lack-of-succeediness.
Keep all your cultivars, hybrids and breeds,
Just give me a garden of nothing but weeds.
We Choose to Go to the Moon & Do the Other Things
We went to the moon and we wondered in awe:
For now there was nothing, but nothing beyond us –
If we could go there and could see what we saw,
Then how could we come back to famine and war ?
Just think of the challenges still to explore,
The missions to finally bond us.
We stood on the moon and we finally shone,
We tested our nerve and we found we were equal –
Now climate and poverty prove a tough sequel.
But conquer we shall !, to learn from discoverings.
We went to the moon, now it’s time to move on –
It’s time to be doing the Other Things.
Promethean
Sometimes, we feel,
That we’ve given quite enough,
And we’ve nothing more to spare,
And we haven’t got the energy.
And sometimes we feel
That we’re running out of love,
And we’re running out of care,
And we’re running out of memory.
But those are just the times
When the going’s getting steeper,
That we need to dig the deeper,
That we need to cheat the Reaper one more time.
We haven’t got much left,
But we need to heft together
Or we’ll never get a better score –
Unless we pump from ev’ry pore,
We’ll only ever be okay.
And that’s okay, I guess,
Though it feels a little less,
Like we sorta oughta try for something more.
Are we what we thought we’d be ?
And are we disappointed
That we’re only as expected ?
Or are we double-jointed,
Reconnected, K-selected, fancy-free ?
Undaunted by the egotisitic, narcissistic
Nature of each wannabe ?
It feels like half-time, two-nil down
To Nowhere Town,
Yet still we’re strangely optimistic –
We’re not yet out the Cup,
We’re warming up,
We’re either brave or masochistic…
But this ain’t all that we can get,
And we ain’t even finished yet !
If we can’t go ballisic,
Then let’s fix our bayonet !
Now to rise to the occasion,
Now to mount a pitch invasion –
Now to be less realistic,
Now to spit at caution and regret.
Time to muster all persuasion,
Time to equal the equation –
Time to be more Hellenistic,
Time to make the inner Spartan sweat.
Till, one day, they’ll write our names in Trajan
In a Roman alphabet.
Let’s take another go.
Maybe this time, I don’t know,
We’ll catch a wave or hit our stride –
At least we’ll get to say we tried.
And maybe we can jump a little higher
And can burn a little hotter than before –
I guess we’ve gotta stoke the fire,
Raise the steam and prime the core,
And hustle ev’ry muscle
Till they scream with something more !
By ‘mount a pitch invasion’, I mean by the players, not the fans.
Hat Plus One
The football books all said it,
And they wouldn’t make it up –
The more-than-hat-trick scorers
In the world of the World Cup.
Ten were these men of honour,
From ’38 to ’94,
Though mostly pre-the 60s,
When they still knew how to score.
Back in the days of black-and-white,
And the studs were more like claws –
Before the need for penalties
To settle the goalless draws.
Leônidas, Wilimowski,
Wetterström, it said,
Schiaffino, Ademir,
and Kocsis, so it read –
And Just Fontaine was next,
And then Eusébio was last –
And nothing more for twenty years –
Those stars were in the past.
But then, from out of nowhere,
Butragueño made his 4,
And then Oleg Salenko
Made it 5 to up the score.
And this was universal,
It was there in ev’ry book –
But then the list got shaky
When they took another look.
Match reports from early days
Were sloppy things back then –
No camera to play it back,
Just notebook and a pen.
So hard luck Leônidas,
You were scored a goal for free,
And likewise poor old Wetterström,
Your storm was only three.
And Schiaffino, even worse,
Was left with just a brace –
And on those all-time scorer lists,
These three leave not-a-trace.
Are four goals one-too-greedy ?
Should a teammate get a chance ?
But the Great-Man view of history
Is all in the romance.
I’ve always thought there should be a specific name for four-in-a-game. Boot-trick ? Quad-trick ? Maybe top-hat-trick ? I hear the Spanish refer to it as a ‘poker’. And if a ‘perfect’ hat trick is one scored (in any order) from the right foor, left foot, and head, what would a ‘perfect’ fourer be ?
Bunting in the Rain
Please stop me from caring,
I just want to care no more,
About which teams are pairing,
Or their ever-fickle score.
I guess for those who play them,
They get healthy exercise,
(If they don’t descend to mayhem
Or collapse with hamstrung thighs).
It’s always all so macho
For the fans in branded shirts,
As we gorge on brews and nachos –
And we always cheer the most when someone’s hurt.
So stop me, please stop me,
From watching and watching,
And watching again.
Tackle and drop me,
Or book me and shop me –
Whatever is needed to make me abstain.
There’s so many better things I could be viewing,
And so many better things I should be doing.
Don’t censure or flatter
Each bowler and batter
For vacuous antics that don’t even matter.
We reckon we won it, and kicked ev’ry ball.
We claim that we done it, yet did bugger all !
So please stop me from caring
For I want to care no more –
Don’t tell me how they’re fairing,
And don’t let me hear their roar.
It’s just the same old grudges
And old jingos in disguise –
Sneaky trips and nudges
For a tuppence-ha’p’ny prize.
There’s always so much cheating,
As the sponsors rake their dues.
Victory is fleeting:
And when someone wins, then someone has to lose.
So stop me, please stop me,
From cheering and swearing,
And tearing out blame.
Slap me and chop me,
Or prod me and pop me,
Whatever is needed to give up the game.
Just watching and waiting in endless paralysis,
Pontificating in endless analysis.
We’re just getting fatter
On replays and chatter –
Let’s make a damn diff’rence to show that we matter !
Sucked out and soulless – so hard to ignore:
The whole thing is goalless, whatever the score.
So please stop me from caring,
I just want to care no more.
Belgian Lessons
I met a gent one day in Ghent
Within his chic café.
He brought a viennoiserie,
And croissants, and sorbet.
And as he served his fine hors d’oeuvres,
He wished “Bon appetit !”
Aha !, I thought, your phrase has taught
Your mother tongue to me.
My French is good, perhaps I should
Plutôt parler Français.
Of course ! Très bon ! “I say, garçon !
L’addition, s’il vous plaît.”
But Gallic chat was falling flat –
Had I just caused offence ?
But then he smiled and said, unriled,
“Ten euros, sixty cents.”
He’d rumbled me ! My tasse de thé
Had shown my rosbif-hood.
“Don’t worry, sir, for de rigueur –
My English speak is good.”
My grand faux pas was too bourgeois,
My cheeks were burning rouge.
“Your French is fine,” said he, “Not mine –
For I was born in Bruges.”
“I feared as much” I said. “This Dutch
To me is all but Greek.”
“Pardon, meneer, in Flanders here,
It’s Flemish that we speak.”
“Mais oui, monsieur, if you prefer –
A patriot and true !
But help me out and talk about
The change between the two.”
“Each verb and noun when written down”
He said, “is much the same.
But when they’re sung upon our tongue,
It’s quite a diff’rent game.”
“Well, très bien to that, my man,
Indeed, it’s worth a verse !
I’ll write it yet, our tête-à-tête,
With phrases interspersed.
But wait ! Alas, it cannot pass,
If they aren’t en Français.
I have no crutch of schoolboy Dutch
With which to sound au fait.
My masterplan will bring rien –
Veloren hoop, I say !
Oh fame, adieu ! Cruel déjà vu !
The Flems have told me nee !”
Mercator’s Projection (A Requiem)
You always made the Arctic look so grand,
All strewn with bouffant archipelagoes.
As wide as the equator, so they spanned –
As tall as continents, so they arose.
And lurking down below – the vast Antarctic,
A bony finger raised above the thrall –
The rest so blanched and bloated and lethargic,
(Well, when you bothered showing it at all –
And when just done away with altogether,
The southern seas would stretch on down forever.)
You held no truck with Circles, howe’er Great,
For nautical advantages abound
When lines of constant bearing lie so straight,
Though actu’ly they took the long way round.
And if we’d plot your rhumbs, we’d best beware –
They’d run in true diag’nals, you’d allege,
Not spiral to the Poles (which were not there)
But fly on straight until they hit the Edge.
(And two New Zealands – just to keep on track –
But what strange lands must lurk upon your back ?)
You charted our imperial domains,
And painted up your map to show our broods –
You swelled the pride of rainy northern reigns,
Who gained good fortune by their latitudes.
You easily outstripped your upstart peers,
And served so well as armchair trav’lers’ muse.
You hung so proud in classrooms all those years,
And lent your gravity to ev’ning news.
You’re so ingrained, we’ve swallowed you since birth –
From here unto the Corners of the Earth.
In Praise of the ‘Leaf’
Well done, Ealing ! Macho, strong !
Build your towers, probe the sky,
Pump your concrete, raise your steel –
Bring the low-rise wimps to heel.
Bravo, Ealing ! Far too long
You’ve languished only four floors high –
Never felt the bracing breeze
When funnelled through a cut-price Mies.
Lord it over Christchurch spire,
Just a finely-sculpted fop –
It looks too good and stands too proud,
It mocks too much to be allowed.
Now we find when building higher,
So our expectations drop –
Mustn’t cling to ancient primes,
For now we live in av’rage times.
Your flats will sell before their sheen
Has moldered-off or ghetto-greyed.
So price them at a hefty wad –
For no cheap housing here, thank god !
And finally can Haven Green
Now bask all year in deepest shade.
Don’t be subtle – rage and shock,
By showing them the finger-block.
Well done, Ealing ! Ditch the mild !
You’re pissing down to raise a stink.
It’s meant to be so out-of-scale,
This temple to the Thrusting Male.
Bravo, Ealing – stay beguiled !
And who cares what they locals think !
Quit the Nineteenth Century,
And welcome Nineteen Sixty-Three.
The ‘Leaf’ was a proposed wanger for Ealing in West London back in 2007. Alas, this was ditched in favour of the Dickins Yard wangettes of only 14 floors, which is only three-and-a-bit times too high. But just think what we could have had !
The Long Journey to Average
I used to watch the ordinaries
Crowded on their buses
Or queuing in their banks –
Watch with fascination all baldies and the hairies,
The thems to my own usses,
The shufflers to my swanks.
Watching all the many ways that nothing-special varies,
Its minor spats and fusses,
Its local hopes and thanks –
Certain in the knowledge how I’d never join their ranks.
I used to think extr’ordinary
Feats were for my aiming –
I’m, surely, something more.
Now I must accept the truth, so truly sharp and scary –
That I am but a tame thing,
Like those I watched before.
All my efforts cannot reach my heroes’ lofty eyrie.
You must have thought the same thing
When yours too wouldn’t soar.
Genius, it seems to me, must always live next door.
Rhyming Couplets 