Niggles & Naggles
I’ve always suspected, vaguely,
Though I’ve never attempted to probe –
But it simmers away to plague me
At the back of my frontal lobe.
Of course, of course, I don’t dwell long,
But it’s never, not really, quite forgot –
Of course, of course, I could be wrong,
But of course I think I’m not.
Work in Progress
I’m not some focused market-hype,
Or beta-tested prototype,
Not better – not faster – not fickle.
I still have flaws and silly quirks
I still have bugs within my works –
Like chuckle – like freckle – like tickle.
I’ve no save-game and no abort,
I’m version one-point-double-nought –
No cover – no sample – no sequel.
Organical of recipe,
I move through ev’ry part of me,
As slowly – as sweetly – as treacle.
The Gravity Pin
Paperweight, paperweight, glorious paperweight,
Balanced on letters and jottings and files –
And whether beneath you are crooked or straight,
They are anchor secure in obedient piles.
Bleed All About It
They came at first in ones or twos:
Unseasonal, yet harmless.
And with a swipe of printed news,
I turned those lively flies to flews –
A dextrous-forearm mess.
I turned those bottled-blueboys black,
A stain upon the masthead group –
An asterisk to heavy flack,
An apt critique on pap and hack,
This headline now a scoop.
But long before I’d reached the sport,
I heard some buzzing overhead –
And looking up, I must report,
A dozen more of equal sort –
The paper’s filth had spread !
With tabloid reciprocity
And breaking news of utter trash,
With gutterpress ferocity
I blazed each fresh atrocity
Upon my front-page splash.
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.
Hazardous & Dangerous & Greatest
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.”
– John Kennedy, written by Ted Sorensen
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.
Rhyming Couplets 