Original poems for the young at heart
I’m spickled and speckled and dotty bedeckled,
I’m spotty alotty and frickelly freckled,
I’m sprinkled with splattery splodges and splashes,
And littered with largish and littlish dashes.
I laze for whole days by the sea and the sand
But I burn like a beetroot and never get tanned.
Yes, I’m polka dot peppered, but do you know what?
I like every one and I don’t care a jot!
Miss, Miss, we can’t do this!
We can’t do sums
When we’re sitting on our bums
In the class,
And the grass that’s outside
Is so green and so wide,
And just running in the sun
Looks like so much better fun.
Miss, Miss, we can’t do this!
We can’t do grammar
When we listen to the clamour
Of the birds,
And the words are so dull,
And wind’s gentle lull
Is inviting us to play,
Not just sit in here all day.
Miss, Miss, we can’t do this!
It’s so boring that we’re snoring
And we want to go exploring
Not just sit,
For a bit on our bums
Doing literacy and sums
When we could be running free.
Do you see?
Miss?
The loo in space is difficult;
It’s very hard to have a wee.
It sort of flows back up your nose,
And all through lack of gravity.
If you’ve ever made fudge or toffee (taffy), you’ll know how easy it is to burn if you turn your back for a few seconds. For fudge the mixture needs to reach what is known as the ‘soft ball stage’, or the ‘hard ball stage’ in the case of toffee.
Keep an eye on it. Keep an eye on it.
And I do, as the syrup sun oozes
Into caramel clouds, melting
In a soft sweetness of sky, darkening
To a honeyed perfection.
It must be setting now, I think,
It must have reached the soft ball stage.
Any sweeter and it will start to cloy.
So I watch the breeze give its final stirs,
Until for a moment, for one brief moment,
I turn my back, and when I look again
All is black; as dark and bittersweet
As treacle.
This poem is a bit of a homage to the playground chants I grew up with
Who’s that sneaking,
Stopping at the freezers?
Who’s that peeking?
Two thieving geezers.
One chooses chocolate,
One sticky toffee,
One goes for butterscotch,
One plumps for coffee.
Hands in the coldness.
Three scoops, four scoops.
What astounding boldness!
Five scoops, more scoops.
Pile it in their backpacks
(Surely there’s a better way?),
Run off down the back tracks,
Make a daring getaway.
But what’s all that dripping stuff,
In a trail behind them?
This is getting gripping stuff!
Will the coppers find them?
Run away! Run away!
Footsteps quickly pelting.
Sunny day! Sunny day!
Ice cream quickly melting!
Here come the sniffer dogs,
Followed by the vice team.
Up go their noses,
Catching whiffs of ice cream!
Dogs give a quick lick,
Evidence gets eaten.
Seems like those geezers
Simply can’t be beaten!
High five! Fist bump!
Aren’t we incredible?
Let’s check out the booty.
Oops! It’s inedible!
All that lovely ice cream
Just a pool of liquid.
Who planned that heist then?
Someone really thick did!
This one really needs to be chanted. Think the first three three notes of a minor scale, going up and down.
The mould’s unfolding up the walls,
From down below it creeps and crawls,
It seeps in every plaster crack
In musty, dusty blobs of black.
The walls are conquered, floor to top,
But still that mouldy mould won’t stop,
It seethes across the bedroom ceiling
(Cobweb-strewn and paintwork peeling)
Then it spreads its evil spores
By oozing smoothly under doors.
Its greedy grasp holds fast your clothes,
Your stairs, your chairs, your rugs, your throws,
Until that murderous mouldy mould
Has got the strongest stranglehold
On all your house, on all your stuff,
But for the mould that’s not enough
And so the mould comes marching through,
Until it’s suffocated
YOU!
A toddle, a paddle, a skid and skedaddle,
A skip and a trip and a hop,
A race and a chase and a stare into space,
And a pick-up-a-stick and then stop.
I don’t often post serious poems, but today I stood and watched the demolition of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, south London. Although few could have described the architecture as beautiful, it was home to thousands, many of whom resisted the council’s efforts to displace them. ‘Elephant Park’, as the site will soon be known, will contain less housing and far fewer options for those unable to afford London property prices.
‘Brutalist’, they say.
Each stark and staring concrete slab
As dull as tombs. And so they grab
With greedy grasping fists the land
Where graveyard-grey the blocks still stand,
Declare (with nose in air) ‘A slum.
A place of vermin, vice and scum’.
People cry and people shout:
‘But they’re our homes! And look, they sprout
With signs of life! Our hopes! Our dreams!’
Their voices can’t be heard, it seems,
Beneath the roaring onward tide
Of all south London, gentrified.
So diggers come, with claws that grip,
And vicious jaws that rasp, and rip
Huge wounds. And in the dust and mud
The past comes pouring out, like blood.
A past that lived, a part that breathed
Within those blocks, once concrete-sheathed.
‘Look!’ they say, ‘A new estate!
It’s called a park! Move in! It’s great!’
The people shake their heads. ‘That’s nice,
But well, we can’t afford the price’.
And so their lives and loves all must
Be crushed, and crumble, fall to dust,
And where there once stood concrete slabs
Are now just holes, like festered scabs.
What does it mean, ‘brutalist’?
Buzz
Does
Pain
Brain.
Fly,
Bye!
Don’t try
Again.
Taking Words for a Stroll 