Miss-World
Ms is such an ugly word,
Let ev’ry Ms become a Miss –
I know no-wedlock is inferred,
But Ms is such an ugly word.
And Mrs too, a mumble slurred –
It’s not the sense, but sound I diss.
For Ms is such an ugly word –
Let ev’ry Ms become a Miss.
Wimples & Dimples
Abbey – a building with arches and towers –
And also a girl who fidgets and glowers.
Abbey – a building with gargoyles and gables –
And also a girl who hides under tables.
Abbey – a building with vaulting and chapels –
And also a girl who giggles and grapples.
Abbey – a building with windows and doorways –
And also a girl who’s curious, all ways.
Patina
Her hair is purest white, not quite,
Her skin is hinted bisque,
Her eyes are palest blue in hue,
Her lips are coral kissed.
Her subtleties of shade displayed
Are never blanched, but lush –
And with a gentle goose, educe
A gorgeous crimson blush.
I would just like to add that the goose was consentual.
Building Slump
Oh, poor buildings ! Gutted inside;
They mistake your artisan pride for slumming.
They rip-out and knock-through, your subtleties egress
To plate-glass and concrete – the onmarch of regress.
Go, poor buildings ! Run off and hide !
The architects are coming !
They turn all to shit that they plan, draw and quarter,
But keep your façades as the trophies they slaughter.
Equality
There’s a glassy ceiling above me,
Way up the greasy pole
But I’m still down in the basement
Just pence above the dole.
A fraction of us may hammer the ceiling,
Always demand more,
But most of us working stiffs are afraid
Of the rise of the quicksand floor.
A Friend in Blend
All through Europe, there I’ll find you.
(Never back in Blighty, mind you.)
Ev’ry café, ev’ry table –
Lipton’s Yellow Label.
St Random’s Day
The 6th of June is ev’rywhere, it seems,
It turns up all the year.
This av’rage day has gained the fate
Of ev’rybody’s av’rage date.
The 6th of June has crept into my dreams,
The Swedes have whispered in my ear –
Or maybe D-Day’s up to tricks ?,
Or the Devil claimed oh-six-oh-six ?
I guess we each of us have such a day,
For tripping-over, bric-a-brac finds –
It pings our sonar, winks our eye,
And scores us another proof, we cry !
So patternless-patterns will work their way
Into the slots at the back our minds –
We know they’re wrong, but still they fix,
Just random rolls of double six.
I Am Bix
I was instructed to iambicize,
And keep a strictly penta-metric beat.
Alas, I could not fit within this size:
I could not keep my bloody stride within my bloody feet.
Less than Nothing
Antimatter: it bugs me –
It doesn’t feel likely, it doesn’t feel clean.
But maybe it’s here and it hugs me,
Maybe it’s here and will never been seen.
And it really doesn’t matter if I really don’t believe,
Cos it doesn’t even know it, and it doesn’t even care –
So it just goes on existing, with no thought to beg-my-leave.
Unless, of course, it doesn’t – cos it isn’t even there.
Stowaways
I am the B in doubt and in womb,
I am the G in gnostic and brougham,
The P that’s in coup, and in pseudo and pneum-,
The N there in autumn, the dumb L in Hulme,
The W lurking in answer and whom,
The E that is freeloading gaffe.
And I am the H and the T in whistle,
The K in knife and the C in scissel,
The S in debris and the comma in this’ll,
The F in lieutenant and laugh.
A poem about silent letters. Because spelling in English is always an adventure.
Rhyming Couplets 