An English Country Garden

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brown wooden house beside green trees during daytime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

An English Country Garden

New to the village then, hey ?
Ah, the cottage of old man Beck.
All that garden in the way !
Well, good luck keeping that in check…

Tell you what, let’s take a gander,
Milk and two spoons, lovely, cheers.
Of course, it used to be much grander –
But gone to seed for donkey’s years.

These flowers like potatoes…
Nightshade ?  No, it’s bittersweet.
Oh, don’t look so relieved mate –
Those are just as deadly if you eat.

What’s that, you hope to keep some bees ?
I really wouldn’t, were I you –
Cos when they pollinate all these,
It turns their honey deadly too !

Now here’s a fine old holly tree,
Though he could do with quite a trim.
Yes, he’s a he – a male, you see,
You’ll get no berries out of him !

Your buddleia is running free,
In crumbled mortar, rotten sills,
And, yes, between your slates, I see.
Pretty flowers, massive bills !

And stonecrop on your gable-end –
Hanging mid-air, what a champ !
But best to hoick it out, my friend,
For room for roots is room for damp.

I see you’ve last year’s veg galore,
All overgrown and moulted.
Too late to shut the greenhouse door,
Your cabbages have bolted.

Your bindweed bullies ev’rywhere,
Insinuating strangling strands
While its triumphal trumpets blare –
A cheeky chap with wand’ring hands.

A shame about the knotweed, though,
And ragwort too !  And bracken fronds,
And ivy, nettles, thorny sloe,
And duckweed choking off the ponds.

This hemlock – best not touch it, natch –
All snowy-flowered, poison-flecked.
Much like your giant hogweed patch
With last year’s corpses still erect.

Your wild tobacco’s quite a hit,
And morphine poppies look a treat –
Oh don’t sweat guv, they’re quite legit –
Though weed-out all your weed, toot-sweet !

And are those shrooms I see in spawn
Between the death caps ’neath the trees ?
And fairy rings across your lawn,
And stinkhorns flavouring the breeze.

But say, your dandelions roar !
A joy, a golden-yellow sea,
And ev’ry year, there’s more and more –
Old Beck would brew the leaves for tea…

Speaking of which, is there more in the pot ?
Well, can’t stand jawing round here all day.
I’d say you’ve got one hell of a plot,
To keep you busy for many a May.

Heavy Canvas

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cracking a smile
detail from The Veth Sisters by Jan Veth, remastered with FaceApp

Heavy Canvas

The modern portrait comes in many gazes –
Some are staring at us,
While others ponder into space –
And profiles never even know we’re there.
But the thing that most amazes
Is the thing we barely suss,
Until the aggregate of faces
Steals upon us what it is they share:

It is their air of serious concern –
The weight upon their brows,
Their watchful eyes,
Their level lips.
These sitters sit unblinking, deep and stern,
In ranks of frowns and scowls,
And endless masks of empty guise
Through which their boredom slips.

They’re pictured well, each grave expression,
Well enough to find them in a crowd –
And yes, they entertain us for a time,
For all their dour style.
So portraiture’s a serious profession,
Justly resolute and proud –
And yet…can it be such a crime
To sometimes paint one with a smile ?

Frontispiece

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bookplate

Frontispiece

On the Inability of many Victorians
to adequately append to their Dissertations
such short and succinct titular Benamings
as would better serve their weighty Publications
without exposure to crucial Details
of sundry Devices and Plots thus delineated
by which the presumed Reader is disprivileged
and their subsequent Enpleasurement undersated.

The Green & The Red

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shepherds' warning
Maiasaura & Azhdarchid by Wayne Barlowe

The Green & The Red

To comment that Nature is always in balance
Is viewing it just in the shortest of terms –
Infact, as the countless extinctions all show
How the strong will go on, and the weak will just go.
For Nature exploits with its various talents,
From predator apex to parasite worms,
With no thought for planning or smoothing-out quirks –
And the law of the jungle is ‘whatever works’.

Like the tusks of a babirusa
Or a peacock’s sexy tail,
Nature will often fail through greed –
And as for the losers, let them all bleed !

From ancient bacteria breathing out oxygen,
Right upto elephants knocking down trees,
They do it regardless, they live for today –
And the balance keep shifting, and life finds a way.
So don’t think of Nature as perfection’s proxy
When plague-rats are swarming with some new disease –
For humans could not be more nat’ral, in truth,
When Nature is selfish and red in the tooth.

Like the cheetah and gazelle,
It’s an arms race to the bottom
The tree of life is rotten through
With its endless fascination for the new.

But warnings are warnings – why must we resist them ?
We still haven’t learned not to piss in the wadis –
We poison ourselves when we poison our neighbours –
The stables need cleaning, but nobody labours.
And sure, we are smart, but we’re part of the system –
For just as our thoughts are a part of our bodies,
So bodies are Nature, and Nature is us –
As perfectly nat’ral as cancer and pus.

Like the lemmings booming and busting,
There’s too many of us, however clever
But Nature’s balance is never still –
And if we can’t fix it, other life will.

Significance

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hands up

Significance

A survey sought to sample us
Down to a thousand souls –
I was never questioned though,
So others filled my roles.
But who were these individuals
Standing in for me ?
I always hoped to be unique,
Not cloned so easily !
Am I nothing more than maths,
A mindless analogue ?
Am I so predictable,
A predetermined cog ?
Probably.  With seven bill’yon-odd,
The odds are high,
All thinking they’re alone, like me –
Statistically shy.

No Biography

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this chair does not look comfortable

No Biography

When I die, don’t worry who I was,
Don’t carve my name at Poets’ Corner –
I hope my rhymes still cause a fuss,
But let no stranger be a mourner.

When I die, let me die and be done,
Don’t raise blue plaques or rename streets –
I’d love to think my words still run,
But they weren’t written for receipts.

Ping-Pong

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a load of balls

Ping-Pong

Here’s a sing-song on playing ping-pong,
With a rat-a-tat-tat on the tic-tac-toe
With a whack and a smack and a snickersnack,
With a there and back to the come and go –
But the pitter-patter must clatter, I bet
When heard from the other side of the net.

Here’s a song-sing on playing pong-ping,
With a mi-re-doh to the swash and the swish,
With a tock-tick tock-tick clacker-click,
With a slow-slow-quick and a bosh-bash-bish,
With a fum-fo-fi-fee la-la-land –
But how does it sound if you play left-hand ?

Here’s a sing-ching on playing pong-pong
With a buckle-my-Schubert under par,
With a nee-nah nee-nah stick it up your jumper,
Baa-baa blast-off twinkle star,
With an eeney-meeny knees-and-toes –
But how does it sound if you’ve got no nose ?

Here’s a see-saw on Plato plink-plonk
With a yan-tan-tesseract mamma-me-and-you
With an all-for-one and a four-four-two,
A diddy-diddy-doo-da and lop-bop-be-doo
With an ella-menno-pee and a ringo-john-and-paul
But how does it sound from inside the ball ?

Here’s a *dok-dok* on playing *pat-a-pat*
With a *boing-boof-bok* and a *spit-spot-SPLAT*

Rue Britannia

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scouse britannia
A supporter from the Nelson Memorial in Liverpool, sculpted by Richard Westmacott.

Rue Britannia

The trouble with lefties is cultural cringe –
The feeling that England and Englishness
Are suspect, colonial, Tory in dress,
And bearing the taint of the hooligan fringe.

I swear, that there’s many a comrade I know
Who just longs for our country to go down the gutter –
So while we’re all queuing for teabags and butter,
At least they can tell us they so told us so…

We know all the customs, yet scarcely believe them,
We laugh at the toffs and the pomp and regalia,
Meet with them rarely, yet long for their failure –
We just see the wigs, not the justice beneath them.

However we came here, we’re on the same side,
So don’t be ashamed of the marks that distinguish –
We’re caring, and hopeful, and diverse, and English !
For aren’t we the ones who are all about Pride ?

And St George’s banner – why must we destroy it ?
Let’s demystify it, but love the old flag.
So wave it, or don’t – but it’s only a rag –
It’s not gonna kills us if others enjoy it.

And yes, it is shame about God Save the Queen
With its sentiments we’re ill-at-ease to endorse –
But with national anthems, that’s par for the course –
It hardly excuses our virtuous spleen.

Ignore all the words, and just hum to the tune –
A dirgy tune, sure, but the one that we’ve got.
And at least we all know it – let’s give it a shot,
It’s only a minute, it’s all over soon.

There’s bad in our past, but those times were withstood –
Let’s learn from our worst-selves, and never forget,
And sing out our best side, and build on it yet –
The odd bit of bunting might do us some good –

Don’t think that old England is not worth the fuss,
For we’re all a big part of the way she turns out –
Let’s change her for better, not whimper and pout !
Be proud of our nation, for this land is us !

Slums by Design

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photo of brown red and white buildings
Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric on Pexels.com

Slums by Design

The rich live in houses, the poor in cells,
This is how classes are classed –
From Kensington Gore to Tunbridge Wells
The best were designed in the past.
The poor get newer and concreted hells
That are decomposing fast.
Of course, the new could be just like the old,
But then they would all get far too bold –
So keep them ugly, keep them cold,
And build them not to last.

Ghetto

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low angle photo of flatiron building
Photo by PixaSquare on Pexels.com

Ghetto

For most of the people who live in a city,
They’re not in the city at all –
They’re out on the suburbs, a bus-ride away,
In the bland and the ugly and small.
But anyone’s free to enter the city,
Though nothing is free once you’re there –
There’s beauty and splendour for those who can stay,
And a curfew for those who just stare.
For only the richest can live in the city,
The rest are the visiting poor,
Who traipse-in to work there for day-after-day,
And in through the tradesman’s back-door.
They’re cleaning the crap off the streets of the city,
They’re polishing egos and chrome,
And serving up coffee for minimum pay,
Then taking the final bus home.