English Poems From Why Give Nuts To A Man With No Teeth?

The Reserve of the Dead Swiss And so, the ultimate obituary Immortalised by snapshots 42 dead Swiss in the confines of a gallery Living likenesses so like slabs in a mortuary Vibrissae: Nasal Hair The vibrissae of Madame Theresa Release a huge dollop of snot All over the Tower of Pisa A glorious sight it is not The vibrissae are ginger and pointy And covered in germs and bacteria And it's certain those hairs thick and jaunty Should be exiled to outer Siberia! Overheard: A conversation between a West African woman and a diner. WAW: I visited Africa recently you know. Went back to my father's village They were so poor. I've never seen people so poor But so happy! And they had nothing! Nothing at all! Diner: Ah well, but they didn't know any better, you see They didn't know they were poor They didn't know what a wonderful life We have in the west, in the civilised countries All the things we have they don't possess If they knew how little they had They wouldn't be happy then! Walter Scott:Hot Trotter Sir Walter Scott, nowadays still a powerhouse, hot to trot Gave his name and characters'names to: A girls'school in Johannesburg, South Africa Tea plantations in the highlands of Ceylon Streets, pubs, restaurants, houses, cities, diners Waverleys worldwide, the overspills Of fame, in homage to the Writing Great himself That Scottish author genius, hot to trot Whose shrine in Embro's almost supersonic Celebrity with knobs on- -and why not! The Pill Poppers Alfred Kerr, theatre critic and satirist, acquired a cyanide pill Victor Gollancz,publisher secreted an opium pill Harold Nicolson, writer, opted for morphia tablets As did the novelist, Rebecca West Frances Partridge, Bloomsbury diarist, Leonard Woolf the writer Saved up sleeping pills All prepared for the unthinkable Of what do if Hitler conquered Britain A glass of water…a stiff upper lip And goodbye Hun, we've given you the slip At the Compost Bins 1,2,3,4,5,6 visits 1.The larches have entered the world of frost and cold The heads are wreathed in coils of silver mist Birds shiver in their feathers, cut to the quick by cold The season of the caileach. The year turns old 2.Freezing breeze shudders the leaves Sky high larches coorie together Far below the river runs remorseless Nettles quiver poised to sting intruders Three blackbirds and one robin Visit the apple tree 3.A hundred years from now Will these horse chestnuts Still be a canopy under the stars? The tumbled leaves of beech are yellow and black Like dismembered butterflies The slippage of the slippery path to the loch Is a stone's throw off 4.An oak leaf spirals down Brushes my head. Any port in a storm The trees are talking. I'm excluded from their chat Perhaps they're admiring the way The sun transforms them to gold? The larches sway ritually To the four directions I stroke the rainbow with my outstretched hands I flap my outstretched arms like a crane's wings Threeravens watching me like hooded shamen 5.Vestigial puddles in the grass, after an Autumn deluge It is midnight. My mind walks over the lawn The moon has its anxious face on Why is this diurnal mind treading the grass of night? 6.Every compost has its own acoustics Vivacious squirrels scrabbling The transient crinkling leaves that crackle underfoot With the ears of a bat, you might even hear The worm, turning the loam in worm casts, tiny ringlets Autumn the Alchemist The alchemy of Autumn changes all Larch fronds sway, their fingers Tipped with gold A wren the size of a sixpence Rustles the loose change of a bush Copper silver, brass Leaves clink and rattle A tasty robin perches A snack for a hungry cat Bonfire We fed the fire with sticks Chanted a mantra We fed the fire with thoughts They rose as smoke We fed the fire with song Sound faded into silence Later, a thrush sang its own Sweet contribution to the day Frozen (2) I am frozen when Forced to socialize at parties I am frozen when I'm given a surprise I like my life well ordered Plentytime to analyse Every step, each word, each thought I reject what comes unsought My psyche's like a squirrel in its drey It loves to hide away in shady nooks I only thaw when I'm knee deep in books Horizons When I was five, The world began in Aberdeen Ended in Lochnagar My skimmed stone never reached across the Dee My world was small Fisher, farmer, banker, teacher, baker, clerk The moon, my family lamplight shining in the dark In the silence what disturbed me In the silence what disturbed me Was a shrine that was bare of incense That soundless scent of prayer all Asia knows What disturbed me further was I have no sense of smell Like a blind eye, my nose Katherine the Great was a Russian Katherine the Great was a Russian Who knew how to keep herself warm She walked through the ranks Prodding buttocks and flanks To see who'd be the best to disarm An Ozzy Koala called Lydia An Ozzy Koala called Lydia Caught a terrible dose of chlamydia For in the outback She was easy to track From her naughty girl flicks on the media Little Goth Tinkle tinkle little Goth Like a dark demonic moth Your skull rings and nasal pins Your mascara black as sins Hair of midnight, face of fright Mark you out, oh child of night Mindful My mind's often off with the fairies It's a flibberty-jibbet of a mind Always skedaddling, harum skarum I've been training it though Yanking its chain Another twenty years And I'm sure it'll come to heel Meall an Lochain A six barred gate leans open, into the wind Sky and the rain pour through its spars, unstoppable A human checkpoint rusting over its own shadow The distant bleat of a sheep, its nearest neighbour Moon Struck The moon will be there when I'm not Is that why the moon's so high and mighty? It thinks it's God's gift Pulling the tides up and down Like fisnet stockings The moon's a typical female Never pleased with her shape Moss acrostic Muffler for the frozen lawn Overblanket for the earth Softly green it soldiers on Sharing room for mushroom's birth Mother-in- law Forever knitting for her family She was love in a frayed cardigan Frier of bacon and eggs Giver of hugs, of care Westie puppies barking round her shins Punch I took my hate out walking A turn around the town I dressed it up in poetry And academic gown My hate thought this avoidance A need for action rose When next I met my enemy I punched her on the nose Simile Simile As happy as a cow pat As sad as Sunday's knickers As dark as a horse's nostrils As hard as a healed scab As red as a virgin's blush As confused as macaroni As soft as a rotten sheep As blue as a Tory joke As dead as a spent squib As lonely as the last leaf in Winter Six unrelated things Unlaced Highland dance pumps An angry Scottish terrier The sound of a bamboo flute A tour around the galaxy A hermit crab on the road Two pink candyflosses Strange fruits (3) The dead ones lie on shelves In the earth's pantry Their bones stored like rice No further need for a compass Their thoughts spill out like seed Some may bear strange fruits Tai Chi & Qi Gong Tai chi and QiGong keep old Chinese women young Paint the rainbow, touch the earth, can ache as much as giving birth Skelp the midgies, flap your wings…pull your unseen psychic strings The 5pm Meditation What came first, was it the kiln or the potter? Sky doesn't reply The compost remains silent. It is turning the matter over The Boulder When people push me around, I give them the cold shoulder Stand still as a boulder. My face growing colder and colder Asked politely, I might acquiesce But whethere I will or won't, is anyone's guess The Thing is… The thing is Courgettes are only colon fillers Soggy little yucks of vegan slops The thing is Global footprints dig their poisoned heels In the clouds The thing is My uvula's like a struck tunung fork It's my tremulous tremendous snore maker The thing is Sardines are tinned, no heads or tails No eyes to see who devours them The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing I am a wolf in sheep's clothing All nicey nicey up front But inwardly raging I am a wolf in sheep's clothing I butter you up The better to slide around you Watch out for my wolfy back biting I am a wolf in sheep's clothing Little miss goody two shoes Oh so sweet and engaging Inwardly raging Ticked off Out among the grasses, underneath the trees Little tics are waiting to give you Lime's disease And if the tics don't get you be sure the midgies will Or else malicious mushrooms are rearing up to kill What never gets done The house will be here when I'm gone So why push the dust around? It always returns again, like the prodigal son Autumn is so much better At finishing its chores Painting the leaves on the trees Harling the grass with frost Shrivelling up the brambles I never got round to picking Old Mother Autumn Giving the birds a-whipping I could trim the ivy hedge Butm I like to see it sprawl Higgledy-piggledy over the shared steps Curling around the legs Of my neighbour's fence Like a choker, a noose, a garrotte Like throttling caul Spiders- I'm quick To give them the old heave-ho One flick of the elbow grease And out they go! As Things Stand Decay has presented his calling card Beggars from Eastern Europe Have blown in with the winds of poverty The sea as usual, is badly behaved Punching the pier like the bully that it is Not cared for in the community. Incurables pound the pavements to pass the day Leftovers from the oil boom Flounder in its smutty wake Haunting the foodbanks, counting every penny Like boats the sea's abandoned With barnacled, rotting hulls Gum and gull droppings pepper the paving slabs With fag ends, squashed beer tins, take-way wrappings The suicide bridge is blocked up Too busy, too tempting for making a quick exit A yellow pages book is a pillow For a homeless man in a city underpass Walking Meditation X Moss sucks the soles of my feet, like treading a sponge I am not picking over the wreckage of the past I am not second guessing the worries that are to come One footstep follows another. Plod, plod, plod No room for a thought to squeeze in to curdle the blood