Woe, woe, woe, woe, chuckle

William McGonagall is often considered to be the worst poet of all time. Certainly his work was very, very, very bad - painful in fact - but it is still in print (unlike that of many, even most, better poets). So, here's a humorous testimonial of sorts, and if you want to find out about him, this site is a good place to start, but beware... and if you fancy hearing my dulcet tones, there's an audio version here.

The worst poet

William McGonagall, poet, well sorta,
your words are arranged all bang out of order –
like a lab-rabbit tested with neat Estee Lauder,
they make my skin itch and my eyes start to water.

Your metre’s soon lost and the scan starts to falter,
words reversed they are more often than you oughta,
but not cool like Yoda, it disrupts the aorta
like shrapnel embedded by thesaurus slaughter.

Each time you wrote, accidentally wrought a
work that the reader wishes was shorter,
grating like laughter from Janet Street-Porter,
lines way too long as you pack in all the explanatory details but they really should be trimmed to make them much tauter.

But your canon lives on, and in print, repels boarders,
though you spawned awful verse and always ignored all
attempts to advise, edit or cordon
off what you penned in a cage with a warder.

To allow it free rein risks civil disorder,
more terrible even than Sauron in Mordor,
ironically liked in peculiar quarters,
The Tay Bridge Disaster, read out once floored a

bison, while Pele, in earshot, soon scored a
hat-trick of own-goals, allegedly roared a
‘please make it stop, ref’ as each stanza bored a
hole in the soul of anyone caught a

half-mile or less from where a recorder
in a bunker broadcast Richard Pigott the Forger
til McGonagall’s great-great grand-daughter
killed it with cluster-bombs fired from a mortar.

Silly conversation spawns humorous poem

Talking rubbish on facebook, the concept of the 'great musical prune' was born. A challenge was set. I responded in doggerel form because, well, why not...

The Great Musical Prune

Roll up, roll up,
the Great Musical Prune,
throw him a farthing,
he’ll sing you a tune.

Make it a sixpence
his wrinkles will quiver,
he’ll spit out his stone
and strike chords on a zither.

Flush like it’s pay-day?
Well, bung him a shilling,
his dried plummy vocals
a laxative filling.

A florin or half-crown,
he’ll manifest bacon,
a devil on horseback
that you’ve just awakened.

A sovereign pound
and he’ll stew your compote,
his orchestral manoeuvres
now sticky and hot.

But if it’s a guinea,
beware of a quarrel,
he loosens not only bowels
but bras, knees and morals.

Meteorologically challenged

Sometimes, mocking the idiots of UKIP seems almost too easy, but only 'almost'. This time it's in reponse to David Silvester's bizarre assertion than gay marriage leads to bad weather. UKIP really are their own parody... audio version here.

Divorced from reality

David Silvester, Henley-on-Thames
seems strangely obsessed by sex between men,
apparently their weddings cause floods, doom and storms,
God’s wrath writ large in meteorological form,
because He or She wants them all to repent
and be healed, splinted straight
but if that’s the case, why haven’t locusts been sent?
If nations’ wrong-doing brings divine retribution,
what about unfair trade, war and pollution?
Where are the rains
of fire, hails of frogs,
actual stair-rods and moist cats-and-dogs?

Stupid Silvester thinks he’s right to decide
which sexuality’s The One for mankind,
turn the clock back some 500 years,
second-guessing the deity he says he reveres.
Even the church calls him a primitive danger,
like some old Brigadier, or smallpox in the manger,
all science-denial and jowl-wobbly anger,
totally tonto, without the Lone Ranger.

So is there Pink Sunshine as Fuzzbox once hoped,
are men pouring down, forming puddles of bloke?
‘cos if the gay guys did have weather control,
it would always be fabulous,
no more grey, damp or cold.

Palindromically yoursruoy

I do enjoy word-play and puzzling over forms and constraints, and decided to see if I could write something where each line is a palindrome - here it is...

Raw war

Onward madam, draw no
foe tirades, used a rite of
live rats, reviled – deliver star-evil
‘til DNA-trades reversed art and lit,
trade idyll, Atropos’ deed - sop or tally, died – art
is aloof, fool as I
reign – I’d won, now dingier,
sit palsied, sup on Opus Dei’s lap, ‘tis
no mead, daemon –
Doges oppose God,
murmur ‘rum, rum’
to help pirates set a ripple, hot
redness emits part, traps time’s sender
turret-fast, fire no-one rifts after rut,
dire drum sees murder I’d
gunsling, nixing, nil snug,
Sten fires serif-nets,
pan sideways as, yawed, I snap,
raw war.

Politico-ichthyology

I've mocked UKIP before, will do it again, and continue until they cease to be. This one started as a knockabout silly conversation on facebook, then grew into this four-stanza frippery...

The evolution of the kipper

In the Ediacaran,
were you the Campaign for Bacterial Dominance,
fearful of the Cambrian’s
explosion of diversity,
railing against multicellularity
and the mingling of membranes.

In the Devonian,
were you the Terrestrial Defence League
telling those lobe-finned coelocanth-types
not to start any of that
amphibian nonsense –
“geroff our land”,
early vegetables fearing herbivores.

In the Cretaceous,
were you the Fruitless Preservation Society,
using your blinkered
back-in-my-epoch fronds
to surround your little island with cones
trying to hold back the tide
and the flowering of petalled beauty.

In the Pleistocene (no not Plasticene)
were you the Cro-Magnon Independence Tribe
denying Ice Age cycles,
shouting ‘no to the land-bridge’
and ‘neanderthals out’ –
those horrid proto-Europeans
coming here and taking all our flints –
Britain doesn’t exist yet
but to you it’s already full.

Shifting Dizraeli gears

I saw MC Dizraeli live on Saturday - I was inspired to put out a bit of autobiography. Audio version here.

The right to annoy

After the gig I’m still buzzing,
sitting on the last bus home,
writing words inspired by tales of
Iranian parties
 curtained off from an unforgiving world,
backpacking angst
 felt by the middle-classes
  finding themselves too subcontinental,
and the nastier acts
 perpetrated by Ayatollahs’ bully-boys.

Here, as there,
gagging is ordered
by the homogenisers
to stifle noise and reduce choice –
though on our little island,
it’s not so much theocracy as
the incestuous edicts
of a dysfunctional Wal-Mart fa-mi-ly,
[insert theme tune here]
the Big Brother of Asda
where I’d been courting ASBOs
by stickering produce seditiously,
 highlighting the ocean plunder
  of industrial overfishing
and loggers’ jungle devastation
 adding orang utans to the
  lengthening homeless list.

In-store security drones
dressed in wannabe-FBI black puffa-jackets
and second-tier Magnum-boots
ask me to
“come to the manager’s office please” –
I decline
and politely remind them that
in fact
they have no legal right
to enforce that particular request,
though I’ll happily leave the store
at their behest.

Finding this inexplicably annoying,
they scowl impotently
as they follow me out,
stroking groinal Maglite bulges –
oh, compensating much?

A week later I find myself
sweet-talking a legal secretary into
telling me who owns a particular
piece of not-quite London
real estate,
and through which
hidden offshore trust its money flows.
As a result,
the small field behind a pub
becomes a plot
to block the builders
and the small local town
is not being bulldozed
to line cronies’ pockets with something
folding and crinkly.

The carbon budget breathes a sigh of relief.

But vested interests are predatory
and do try to bite back –
two spooks from maybe-Special Branch
(it’s hard to say when they’ve got no ID)
turn up on the doorstep at 3am,
rat-a-tatting the brass
and bellowing their ‘open up’
with unveiled threats including
“we know where your Mum lives”
while whukka-whukka-whukka low overhead,
a helicopter spotlights and videos.

I laugh hard in their faces,
photograph them back
and tell them to fuck off –
they’ve not met my Mum.

Ponds, rellies and makeshift tools

Reading my brother-in-law's facebook post about the weather and garden flooding from the perspective of an everyday family situation (and some DIY), I was taken by its almost prose-poetry style and the trio of trios found within. With his permission I edited it into verse form.

In threes

As I brush my teeth,
I look out of the bathroom window
then go back to the sink
as the minty foam is on the point of escape.

I've not been down to the bottom of the garden for quite a few days
but the silver of the sun-lit ponds seems to have become bigger.
Tom (my youngest son), Dad and I go down to check –
the top pond has burst its banks
and there is a stream running over the top of the dam
into the second
and leaking
into
the third,
and
out again –
water,
water everywhere.

The overflow for the top pond is easily unblocked –
the water flows freely,
whooshing straight into the other two ponds.
Also blocked,
the overflow pipe for the third pond is twenty feet long.
The longest things we can find –
a special spade,
a handle for something,
a stick,
are taped together
and we fight our way through the undergrowth,
bloody brambles, sodding holly,
into the stream below.

We feed in the long, unwieldy thing,
push-pull, push-pull,
then more whooshing –
on reflection,
it would have been more sensible
to unblock the lowest pipe first.

Trees and guns both shoot

This year is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World war. Much will be written about it. Some of it will be idiotic and self-serving like the comments made by Michael Gove recently. Hopefully such stupidity will be in a tiny minority. Here's my tree-themed take.

Baumkrieg/Peacetime

I

Ash-keys unlock oaken doors,
sycamores rescue drowning acorns
by sending helicopter-seeds
and lifefloats –
catkins yowl to be let in,
dogwood barks to be let out.

Both shed leaves upon the floor.

II

Willows weep for fallen deadwood comrades,
elders send saplings to the Front –
they’re only following orders.
It seems just yesteryear that they were buds and blossoms,
blooming on the may,
flying warning flags from beech-masts –
now thorns are set, fixed as bayonets,
sound the advance,
march across the Nullarbor.

Some come home
missing twigs and branches,
bearing lop-sided crowns and leaf-scars –
at first tended like heirloom bonsai,
but later, still unsightly and now seeming foreign,
they are planted in the corner
of some forgotten arboretum.