Whitsun Bank Holiday already ? That can only mean one thing – this website has passed another year of existence !
Now, I do have an extra-special poem coming tomorrow which I’ve been saving up. And by ‘extra-special’, I of course mean ‘it’s a bit longer, innit’. But before that, I want to share with you the wonders of AI in all their limited glory.
I recently discovered the Suno.com – where they make music out of users’ lyrics and prompts (the former mostly sung, though some lines are ignored and some are randomly repeated, while the latter are almost all ignored, though sometimes ignored in very interesting ways). The results are then spat out as full-formed songs which have only one foot in uncanny valley, and the other on the not-bad-actually foothills.
So, here are a few of mine. As a tone-mute poet who has often thought of their children as songs without music, this has been a fascinating experience, and not without a few hits to show for it. Note that the maximum length is two minutes, though more credits can be used to extend it. You’ll find a mixture here of songs that cut-off abruptly and ones where I’ve splurged on an encore. Also note that having my words sung back to me revealed a few lurking typos which have now been immortalised in melody. Other mis-pronouncements are entirely the algorithm’s fault…
Ginger Snaps
Ginger Snaps
I know it must be Summer
When my frecks come out to play,
When my polka-dotted face
Becomes a sunshine giveaway –
When my pallid-grey complexion
Finds a whole new way to live,
With its tanning only happening
As if beneath a sieve.
They serve as a reminder
For the cream and overalls –
For I cannot risk the sun for long,
Before the lobster calls.
No harbinger of cancer, though –
These are no liver spots –
But a crop of chestnut mushrooms,
Or brunette forget-me-nots.
They pop-up on the first hot day of May,
In time for lunch,
And settle-in for Summer –
Though they seem a jolly bunch.
In a burst upon my bridge,
And in a dance across my cheeks,
They’re a throwback to my childhood,
A tattoo for sunny weeks.
Perhaps I’m not so pasty,
But my darkness only bites
In an extroverted flocking
Of acute melanocytes.
My pixels are in contrast,
And my apples are in bloom –
I know it must be Summer
When my solar flares go boom.
Vine-Clad
Vine-Clad
The cottage down the lane had a big end-wall,
Beneath the gable,
Always covered in ivy, growing so tall,
As tall as was able,
Growing upto the eaves, to merge with the thatch,
Such a weight of leaves to the crown –
I’d wondered, how does it all attach ?,
How did it not pull the old wall down ?
Drilling-in through ev’ry crack it can pry,
And drinking the mortar dry,
Whatever it takes to reach the sky –
At least it sheltered from the wind.
But at what cost ? This cottage was built
With overbakes and wattled silt –
So which would be the first to wilt,
When neither was well underpinned ?
I waited years, but never did find out
The power in the growth –
For one hot night in the Summer drought,
A fire killed them both.
There’s a new-build cottage now, with a big end-wall
Whitewashed in lime,
With a single ivy runner – starting small,
But on the climb…
Beaver Geezers
Beaver Geezers
Beavers are thievers,
By stealing the gravity
Out of the water –
Such utter depravity !
Beavers are stemming our streams
With their half-inched beams,
And leaving them pooling around.
And now I hear beavers
Are back in this manor,
Those peevers and planners
Are channelling London Town.
I see their toothmarks
Graffiti the tree barks
Up to their old larks,
Of gumming the plumbing –
Their home is a slum
Full of mildew and scum,
And whenever they come
They leave the bath running.
Beavers are weavers,
When heaving their timbers,
When lugging their tinder for cleaving together.
You just won’t believe
All the leaves they retrieve
For their bodge for a lodge
And their damnable dam.
These immigrant skeevers
Are tree-rustling reavers –
Who knocked-up a hodgepodge
Wherever they swam.
We end up with either
The swamp in a fever,
Or banks in a stodge
And the brook in a jam.
But now that they’re Cockneys,
And vegan beefeaters –
These beavers won’t shock me a smidge.
So change-up the meter, and take to the bridge –
They’re teeming in the borough, good and thorough,
Down the Central Line,
Grinning with their teeth on Hampstead Heath,
And in the Serpentine.
It won’t be very long
And they’ll be seven thousand strong,
With their ev’ry one a carrier
Of oak and London plain.
They’ll get their sapling shredding done
From Wapping up to Teddington,
By blocking Woolwich Barrier
And flooding Pudding Lane.
Beavers are thievers,
And duckers and divers,
And cunning deceivers,
And wetback survivors –
They’re just like the rest of us,
London domesticus,
Hard-working strivers,
And over-achievers.
And soon they’ll fit right in, I’m sure,
In the melting pot of the pond next door.
The real question, of course, is how do beavers colonise new rivers well away from the old ones? Some say they can travel over land for many miles, but we all know the truth – they’re carried there by red kites !
Allspice
Allspice
Turmeric and ginger,
Cumin, mustard, mace,
Red-hot chilli peppers,
With cardamom to taste,
Cinnamon, paprika,
And nutmeg makes it sweet,
White pepper, black pepper,
Turning up the heat.
Scaredy Cats
Scaredy Cats
Not all cats are playfully aloof,
Or queens of household staff –
There’s some will never steal the show
In fairytale or video.
And likewise, on the busy midnight roof,
They’re just some riff-a-raff –
While toms compete and loudly brawl,
Some kits can barely catawaul.
Not all cats are masters of their strut,
Or lords of backyard realms –
For some are timid, peeking out
From under sofas, wracked with doubt.
They know they’ll never truly make the cut,
Their poses underwhelm –
And so they snuggle-up indoors
Where we protect them from the wars.
The First of May
The First of May
The first lone mayfly of the year,
And Spring is on the go –
Looks like the merry month is here
As evenings make a show.
The bulbs give way to tardy blooms
While cuckoos boast their song,
And mayfly brides greet urgent grooms –
For Spring won’t stay for long.
Scratch a Lefty, Find a Hippo
Scratch a Lefty, Find a Hippo
You should be my own people –
Strivers for a bright tomorrow,
Dreamers for an equal way,
A better chance, a greater say.
But the moralising streaks still creep
With the finger-wag to follow –
Authoritarian and snide,
How come we’re on the same damn side ?
You should be my own people,
Treating people just the same –
Instead, you’re tribal, keeping score,
Denouncing heretics galore.
But no ! Rebuking you is cheap –
I still believe we share an aim.
What makes us strong, what shows we care,
Is when our foes are treated fair.
Skew Left
Skew Left
When did we get so puritan ?
When did we lose our common sense ?
When did we get so keen to ban,
And get so keen to take offence ?
Why did we frown and lose our humour ?
Why did we break our self-made laws ?
Why did we credit ev’ry rumour,
Just as long as it helped our cause ?
A lie was told,
A line was crossed –
And this is how the left was lost.
We used to be the peace-and-love brigade,
We used to be on your side.
We used to be so unafraid,
So when did we grow so terrified ?
Now we’ve become the rage-and-shun regime,
The ones with the hate-filled mouths –
We loathe you almost as much, it would seem,
As we secretly loathe ourselves.
Our bleeding hearts
Have turned to frost –
And this is how the left was lost.
When did we give up on forbearance ?
When did we grow so paranoid ?
When did we all become our parents ?,
Overwrought, not overjoyed.
We’ve bought into the capital con
Where individuals demand respect,
With all sense of community gone
For a constant “I object !”.
We won our place,
But at a cost –
And this is how the left was lost.
Shires Old & New
Shires Old & New
English counties show a frozen glimpse
Of population,
Of where we lived, a long time since,
At the dawn of our English nation.
Cathedrals too, and the larger abbeys,
Hint at a bustling past –
Wells and Ripon weren’t so drab,
But boom-times couldn’t last.
Huntingdon, you once were free,
With Somerton and Appleby –
But people change, and trade moves on,
To Milton Keynes or Basildon.
Political constituencies
Can’t stand still too long,
Without some boarder-fluencies
To keep their numbers strong.
Postcode districts are a modern score
To count the blur –
If they survive a thousand more,
They’ll show where once we were.
Stevenage, you’re earned your key,
With Swindon and Southend-on-Sea.
But people change, and drift away
To who-knows-where and come-what-may.
Rhyming Couplets 