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 !
Z for Zen
Poetry is ev’rywhere,
Ev’ry day has rhymes to share,
Ev’ry one has verses lurking,
Ev’ry chance, the words are working,
Headstones whisper epitaphs,
Letters to the Telegraph,
Dylan lyrics, hip-hop crew,
Aides-memoire and billets-doux,
Nurs’ry rhymes and wishing wells,
Playground chants and magic spells,
Proverbs old and riddles vexed
Advertising copy text,
Couplets quoted from the Bards,
Purple prose and greetings cards,
Epigrams and tetrastichs,
Cockney slang and limericks,
Lear, Milne and Tennyson,
Lennon, Carroll, Chesterton,
Milligan and De La Mare,
Poetry is ev’rywhere.
Tiger-Hawker
Zigger-buzzing, flitter-flying,
To and fro and fro and to –
A dragonfly is zagging-by,
His body shiny-new.
Ready for the slaughter,
With his goggles on and paint-job dry –
For three years, underwater,
He has somehow learned to fly.
A fighter jet, a microlight,
With wings of cellophane –
Drunk yet nimble in his flight,
He circles round, and round again.
A regal blur, a day-glow streak,
Who never rests from his deploy –
But when he does, he’s plastic-sleek:
This summer’s latest toy.
I meet him, though, in hot July,
Some distance from the river bank.
So jealous in his patch of sky,
He watches for a rival’s flank –
But they won’t come, and neither will
The ladies that he’s longing for.
So here he is, patrolling still:
A soldier who’s misplaced his war.
White Mice & Black Rats
So many books and films and plays,
So many greats of music and art,
Loved by so many, lauded with praise –
So why do I still feel apart ?
Why do these classics not fill me,
When millions burn with the hope that they give ?
Why does their beauty just chill me,
When millions grab them as reasons to live ?
No. Don’t brood. I also feel,
Though diff’rently from all of this –
But I am just as sharp and real,
And I deserve my share of bliss.
And sometimes, yes, I find a voice
To tell me I’m not quite alone.
This pickiness is not my choice,
It’s just the way my brain has grown.
So many books and films and plays
Are doing their jobs, and doing them well.
I wish them luck, on our sep’rate ways
As I pray for one to cast its spell.
Dry Rot
I have no dark and stormy night
To tell you of today,
I have no thoughts on changing light,
Or rhapsodies to birds in flight,
Or need to set the world to right,
Or clever words at play.
My pen is dry, my powder shot,
My musings down to diddly-squat,
I’ve written ev’rything I’ve got,
I’ve nothing left to say !
But say it still I shall, I must,
I will, despite a lack of thrust
And wearing out your patient trust.
I wallow in my nothingness
Until I’ve said it all.
And when I have – I know, I fear,
My chaff is trite and insincere.
It’s time to get well out of here,
Before I scrawl another mess
Upon another wall.
But never mind, I know my brain
And how it ebbs and floods.
I shall have things to write again
When westwards points the weathervane,
And dust is quenched in Summer rain
That shoots the darling buds.
And all this time I go without,
There’s movement still within the drought
As seeds blow in and wait to sprout
To yield their crop of spuds.
I do not know the when or how
There grows some fruit upon the bough,
But hark, I hear a rumble now…
There’s water rising in the wells
To wash away this clot.
I sense their sound, their breath, their key,
The ground is trembling under me.
I know not what their form shall be,
But ballads, sonnets, villanelles –
I’ll write the bloody lot !
The Sheriff of Chelsea
What a bastard,
What a bastard,
What a bastard: Tommy More.
Saint he is, exemplar fellow,
Philosophical and mellow,
But no pussy lib’ral yellow –
Heretics, he is the law !
Not a bit like Tommy Wolsey,
Tommy More will hear each prole’s plea –
Takes their lives to set their souls free –
He’s the Torture Chancellor.
Got a Bible ? What’s it chattin’ ?
Better be in God’s-own Latin;
If it’s one Bill Tyndale’s shat in,
You are for the stake, for sure.
No Laughing Matter
There !
There in the middle of my cheeks,
I swear – I bear the mark of freaks !
These cavities my face must wear
Just undermine my steely stare –
These hollow hickeys suck the chic
From out my compromised physique.
Oh, why must I be cursed to share
The pinched-in dimples of the meek ?
I’d sooner acne, moles, or freckles
Than these intermittent craters –
Hardly think my lips need echoes
Just to show my cheeks are traitors.
But now, such is their two-faced work,
They turn a smile into a smirk.
Alas, they’re written in my cells –
The cheesiest of tells.
Why on me and not my brother,
Nor my cousins, aunts, or nieces ?
But the worst is how my mother
Loves to chub my surplus creases.
Hardly wonder all that froth
Would drive my teenage self to goth.
I felt far safer with a frown
When their depressions couldn’t bring me down.
Damn !
I always promised that I wouldn’t let the beggars show,
Or that I’d let my whiskers grow.
But if you like to see such flam on me,
Feel free – but never tell me so !
I guess we’re wrinkled when we’re born,
Or else that’s how my face has worn.
I guess I should maintain a scowl,
Or slather on the botox with a trowel.
Dented, vented, wrecked, and rent
Is really not my style –
I guess this must be what is meant
When faces crack a smile.
Did I once gurn on a change of breeze
To trap my grin within parentheses ?
I wish my apple cheeks were fruitless
From this taint of enforced cuteness.
Versificator Regis
Oh Carol-Ann, what’s the plan,
Why did you do it ?
Why wallow in the treacle,
And swallow back the bile ?
Poor Carol-Ann, scrape the pan
Of stodge and suet.
First among the equals,
Or stuck in rank and file ?
Oh Carol-Ann, it seems these days your worth
Is turning out for weddings and for funerals and births.
Oh Carol-Ann, do the bay leaves hide the stink ?
Or does your pseudo-crown somehow affect the way you think ?
Oh Carol-Ann, make it scan,
Don’t make it tricksy:
Your patrons are old fashioned
By sev’ral hundred years.
Come Carol-Ann, praise the clan,
Each fop and pixie,
And keep your passion rationed
As you swap your pals for peers.
Oh Carol-Ann, just a lackey of the old elite
Praising little princelings, and sucking on the teat.
Oh Carol-Ann, all that bowing sure puts up your back –
I hope you do not choke on your precious butt of sack.
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.
Pond Life
One day in our science class, we trooped out to the pond
And trawled our nets to haul a hoard from out the wet beyond.
We jamjarred up our specimens, our trove from out the deep,
And took our volunteers back to have a proper peep.
The swimmers and the sediments were busy in their dance,
Or squished between the slides beneath our microscopic glance.
Tadpoles and waterfleas, fresh-water shrimps,
Algae and flatworms and dragonfly nymphs,
Rotifers, water bears, snails by the score,
Whilygigs, boatmen and duckweed galore.
But best of all, the hydra: the monster in our lake –
One day, or so the rumour went, it turns into a snake !
Hydra, hydra,
Now that I’ve spied ya,
I can’t decide what I love about you more:
Your proof there’s a Zeus, or
Your looks of Medusa ?
Not hard to deduce you’re a snake down to your core.
Just think – an anaconda with a plethora of heads
To slither round the playing field and stalk the cycle sheds !
But Mrs Patrick told us no, the two did not equate,
For hydras were cnidarians, and snakes were vertabrates.
The former lacked a brain as such, and var’ous other parts –
(Though snakes, our teacher told us, were likewise not so smart,
And multi-headed mutants would attack their conjoined brothers)
But hydra bred asexually to be both spawn and mothers !
And better yet, they’d learned a trick for ageing without ageing
By morphing from their adult selves back to their childhood gauging –
So, rather like The Doctor, but with tentacles and stem.
I’d like to see old Herc attempt to kill off one of them !
They say you have a silent c –
Well, not with teenage me !
Cknidarians, cknidarians,
Aquatic antiquarians:
Preserving ancient shapes and genes,
Behold the mighty cknidarenes !
If only Greeks had known of you,
Just think what legends would ensue !
Instead, your polyps are maligned –
Medusae, sure, but not the Grecian kind.
Contrarian cknidarian,
You slithered through myth-infested mind.
Rhyming Couplets 