Friday, 15 December 2023

The dancing mirrors the disco music

Weight on left foot, shift to right
(try to keep the royalties light)
keep on facing the same direction
(rhythm's enough, just repetition)
back to the left foot, look around
(give 'em the funky disco sound)
shift to right foot as before
(time to raise the volume more)
shuffle between left foot and right
(keep the sme sound all the night)
To aliens it might seem rather comic
(monotonous as metronomic)
As long as there's sufficient drink
there isn't any need to think
and everything will turn out right.
(another groovy disco night)

Thursday, 14 December 2023

It made my day !

I've lived in the same house some decades.
House martins used to build their nests
mud balled above the bedroom windows.
The stream behind the house had sticklebacks
and therefore occasional kingfishers.
Water voles used to swim in the stream
tunneling their nests into the banks.
But the stream was canalised to stop it flooding.
The martins couldn't glue to plastic.
And all that wildlife vanished.
But the frogs still spawn in the nearby meadow
and I always fetch some spawn or tadpoles
to my garden pond (as others do)
before the scrape dries up (quite often)
and all the tadpoles there die.
Frogs are clearly still surviving
and I have found one occasionally
hiding on my council allotment
across the other side of the stream.
But today was quite a wildlife special.
Never before have I found there
a newt.
It made my day.

Mediocrity

Preposterous art, pretentious poems,
potboiler novels, repetitive songs
are routine products of creative minds
that can't make masterpieces every time.

Wednesday, 13 December 2023

What is the English national flower?

Though roses look and smell so beautiful,
truly aristocrats of flowers,
perhaps something more representative,
more able to weather stormy showers,
a bit more common and down to earth
might be more appropriate as ours -
dandelion or daisy ?

Plenty of fish

Sure, so there's plenty of fish in the sea
but that doesn't mean there's any for me.
Sure, what I catch will depend on my bait
but nothing so far has reached my plate.
I've had lots of nibbles but nothing biting,
curious circling but nothing striking.
I might do better if I could use wealth
but I'll be lucky to even use health.
I could try deceit and mention youth
but some-one would soon discover the truth.
I can't use fame with an unknown name
and as for humour, it's only a rumour.
No matter how much I trawl the web
I fear I'm just too much of a pleb.

Tuesday, 12 December 2023

Pavlov

We're more and more like Pavlov's dogs
conditioned to salivate at the sight of
palm trees fringing golden beaches
and flaming  sun orbs dipping blue seas.

The thought of hotels dripping with drinks,
and magical menus makes us seize
the latest, once-in-a-lifetime offer
making us go quite weak at the knees.

We all need some sort of treat for the future
so that's the very thing that he's
got lined up for the months ahead
but "Where is the money coming from, please ?"

Seagulls

Although we're fifteen miles from the sea,
seagulls are flying here aerobatically  -
gliding, swooping, banking, turning,
a display as if the sky is gurning.

They must find food around the town
but what do they do when the sun goes down ?
Fly back to sleep on the beach or pier
or stay and roost on the rooftops here ?