Prompty goodness

Yesterday was spent at a 'first thoughts' workshop based around Allen Ginsberg's idea that 'the first thought is the best one'. So, numerous writing prompts and example poems were provided as inspiration to write pieces within short periods of time (6 to 14 minutes depending on the prompt/proximity to lunchtime) after which there were opportunnity to read and critique. This is what came out of the 'beach' prompt and is about a place very near my home.

The beach

Bishy Beach, roadside gravelled arc,
a magnet for shirtless, baggy-shorted teens
to splash, sunlit, where gypsy girls on ponies waded
while mallards, hunting bread-chunks,
dodge the swimming dogs.

Downstream, an angler,
hook-capped in waders and multipocket waistcoat,
grumbles about the frightened state of trout.

By night, a lone pubgoer
eats tinfoiled meat madras
with a plastic fork
as bats take mayflies from fishes’ mouths.

When tiny dinosaurs attack!

Flippancy reigns supreme today on the topic of some friends' maybe-friendly-maybe-evil-depending-on-mood African Grey birdy...

Ornithoraptor

Pinprick-pupilled beady eye
tempts fingers closer with a tweet
and a look that’s reptile-sly
come friendly digits, you shall meet
a living pair of peanut-pliers
as beak and brain plot and conspire

to peck and pry at the unwary
whether foe or tickling friend,
wings to fly but no fey fairy,
mandibles to tear and rend
flesh, this herbivore’s vampiric
but her parrot-victory’s Pyrrhic

for now she’s on the naughty perch
with fewer chums for strokes and kisses,
gruel for tea and name besmirched,
known as wicked, biting Missy,
yellow card, last-chance saloon,
play nicely or play on your own!

Gove makes me mockyswearywordy

The Education Secretary Michael Gove is an idiot. He doesn't get 20th century American literature, so he thinks it shouldn't be taught. However, while writing this, I found that, to my surprise, it's possible to create a Gove-poem that doesn't include the word 'twat'. Who'd've thought it...

To Mock a Fuckingberk

Arsegrapes to your petty wrath
over works you don’t enjoy –
this is how it starts,
just a step away
from making hit-lists of ‘degenerate art’,
modern, postmodern and contemporary
art you find too hard,
not the Classics you learned at school,
rote-recited lines by dead white dudes;
now you’re a blind mouse
leading blinded men-in-suits,
can’t handle The New,
no amount of rabbit or private over-education
can hide the fact that
you’re more ignorant
than Lennie and George were itinerant,
you’re fooling nobody –
we can see you coming a mile off,
the landscape of your mind’s tortilla-flat,
no peaks pierce the sky,
no scaling heights,
no scenic view,
no forests soar,
no flowers bloom,
the last songbirds shot and sold,
gardens grubbed-up and paved for parking,
you are nothing-small,
you are the least of Eden.

Passion playtime

Written to be performed at the Art House-hosted launch of Grant Sharkey's album Free Nuggets - the 3rd of 40 albums planned to be released over 20 years. The theme of the night was 'passion' and it landed around Easter...

Rhyme of passion

Passiflora edulis,
flowers' elaborate sex-organs,
botanical baboon-bums
on display for all to see
and sniff
and lick (that’s bees),
fruit split and parted
by deft fingers, practised thumbs,
sticky seed-mass probed with tongues,
while Easter Sunday mornings
are more fun
with tousled tumblings,
duvet bundlings
than Via Dolorosa sufferings,
a two-thousand-year old tale
used to summon church-roof funding
from ex-Brigadiers,
broad-‘tached and grumbling
that ‘eating’ wasn’t so messy in their time
but hey – pleasure isn’t guilty
and passion’s not a crime.

Three little letters

The BNP still exist, just. They need to be opposed, trounced and mocked wherever they try to go. In this case, via an oulipo-ish poem working on their own abbreviation...

B.N.P.

Bullies never prosper,
bankrupt Nick - perhaps
bigotry’s not paying,
breeding no profits,
Billy-no-pals’
bad-news peddlers
bringing nothing, pathetic
bloody Nazis parading,
barely nineteen participants,
bullies not ‘patriots’,
bull-necked plonkers
blaming non-whites, Poles;
blokes needing Playtex,
bloated numpties pulling
burqas, needling people,
browning nylon pants
because nearby person’s
black; now pitiful
boneheads nervously piss
britches, noticing plenty
Britons not pleased
by negro-phobes
belching neurotic policies,
beyond ‘not particularly
bright’, nearer Protozoa,
banjo notes playing –
best no platform,
block nationalist prats
barricaded, no – pigpenned,
broken noses perhaps.