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This page contains a selection of my poetry. I dislike the divide between form and free verse in poetry, but if it matters to you this selection contains 9 free verse poems, 20 form poems (twelve of which are sonnets) and 11 light verse poems, which are a mixture of form and free. The poems received excellent critique via the online writing sites and with the passage of time I will attempt to polish them a bit; or maybe I'll drop them in the bin: who knows. If you want to skip the 40 poems, and find some links to porno web sites, look elsewhere. If you want to find some links to other things I'm involved in go to the bottom of the page.
Oh, and in my local pub I'm known as a piss artist, at the tax office I'm known as bankrupt, in most writing circles I'm known as semiliterate and in my psychiatrists office I'm known as incurable.
Wow, this introduction does sound mighty pretentious, doesn't it; but that's poetry for you...
e-mail: rob@spiderbomb.com
To see a black cat
on a black bin
on a black night
you don’t look directly at it
you look away
and you’ll see it from the corner of your eye
Peripheral vision
and on a different level
poetry
is a bit
like
that
Poems Thrown From The Top Of The Stairs
Free Verse Poems:
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No.115
Black lines, black tiles, a furtive smoke
inside the drop space, where clicks and
clacks rise with the heat; wet rubbers hiss,
soft plastic drips, inside the sheol
a lonely dermis cackles over
thin metal sunk in dura mater.
The locks dissolve along with air,
flickers hurry to the surface
without minding the gap between
two sides divided by a rattle:
number one hundred and fifteen
now waits inside a paupers grave
his foreign parts forgotten.
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Sand Castles
Wet sand, it sticks between cold toes
where mounds display so many flags.
Their shells are slippery and rank –
in paradise there is no smell,
just masks without expression.
I'll make a castle to keep out the waves
a lovely home for the crabs and mermaids
We lay foundations over death,
our hopes are built on fertile land.
The sea is rich beneath the breath
of magma and God's steady hand.
People are evil and God will destroy them
when I grow up I will live in a cave
Waves pass through the human swarm,
this energy is mc squared:
Oort, Centauri, the child moved
inside a sphere of solitude
a niche from where tachyons spewed
crude superstrings and other things
stewed in quintessence. All life
was one. All points were shooed
into a castle on the beach.
Why is it dark, it's not bedtime?
a monster's flying through the sky!
(no time to ask the where or why)
A burning dog licks its bollocks
and God becomes a grain of sand.
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The Sid Vicious Memorial Bench
A little yellow duck leaps up
to snatch my burning cigarette.
Sheep snot stained shirt and a cup
of Cap de Merle where willows pet
Sid's memory; no nailed regret
beneath the bench the shadows lean
with razor grass they turn and let
the nightmare stuff, the sweat-soaked dream,
dissolve in cool depths, murky, unseen.
Les canard chew polystyrene.
Bared beaks see off the geese then flay
young, spiky plumes, fluorescent green,
while crap seeps down into the clay;
but ponds don't care about the way
frogs always make discordant sound,
and swifts and swallows have to stay
aloft, while we stick to the ground;
where vicious secrets can remain unfound.
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My Landlord
My five o'clock shadow
an ex-pat called Alan
worked the P&O liners
washed-up in Vancouver
to discover his age
and the trouble with money
the Canadian Post Office
such lousy employment
a drinky poos problem
a fascination with guns
that often he showed me.
An old Lee Enfield
a 45 magnum
a semi-carbine
and tons and tons of ammunition
"in case the balloon
ever goes-up"
he would say
with wild staring eyes
while sucking on cans of beer
and his misfortune
that resulted in a shot one morning
piercing the stillness of the apartment building
and making the garden doves fly off
towards the Pacific Ocean
where once he had been young
strong
and in control.
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Nine Lines
It felt moist when the SS marched
into Lavauguyon; bourgeois blooms,
hanging strips now worn and parched –
blades skew the flesh and blood that once
passed through these walls. Feline shadows
linger where six blind decades drowned
in view of the trees. Nine lines
impound the traps laid down on skulls
that end as slivers in the ground.
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Proportion
The shell fractures, chalaza tears,
sliced soldiers lay in nescience
their measure marshalled by the way
burnt crumbs fall into news creases
then stick to socks and fingers -
a wife and child are left a kiss
and butter on a blade.
The space between the parting of the lips [the mouth] and the base
of the nose is one-seventh of the face.
Concrete clicks beneath the frowns.
Tempus proclaims a wrestled day.
His thoughts are ticking with the tide:
another world, another way.
The thickness of the head from the brow to the nape is once and 3/4
that of the neck.
Magnets spin and hiss entrapment,
he takes a strap and wonders why
the Martians and their ovaries
don't want to see into his eye.
From the angle of the eye-socket to the ear is as far as the length
of the ear, or the third of the face.
Black baggage hangs upon his mantel,
damp fingers fiddle deep inside,
where memory becomes a mantra,
the final flip, the final ride.
The palm of the hand without the fingers goes twice into the length
of the foot without the toes.
Barotrauma sucks the sun rays,
corpuscles cling persistantly.
The measures have been
equalised. Harmony begins.
Flesh never increases on those portions of the limb where the bones
are near to the surface.
An egg exacts its own proportions
and can only work a certain way
to make a tube within a tube,
producing hypostasis.
Our life is made by the death of others.
Soldiers who act in sliced formation
have nothing to explain.
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Croissants
The croissants are like cunts, I cure them
in sums that add-up self recurring;
your ovaries hot and rattling now.
White lies are brazed into blue lines.
The mountain wobbles like a bun
that burns electrostatically.
Venus and Mars make elliptical paths
on tiny titanium disks –
our separate, solid tantalum:
old fluff ejects from bellybutton,
the flaky fear, the stinking nest; a
feather falls and somewhere
a baby begins to cry.
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The Great Leap Forward
Will they ever find Higg's boson
amidst the bloodstains on the wall?
Mama's skin is hanging strangely
across the rocking chair,
and a song is softly stabbing
into a baby's broken ears:
“Whomever kills a human mind
becomes a killer of all mankind”
and although the cradle's shattered
the infant can still crawl.
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The Train to Silves
Spliced steel stabs through the orange groves.
Arrival brings a rubric song.
Cloves spit and suck bice boughs of air.
A coral tube begins to crawl.
Cool caskets trap vermillion flies.
The boney tracks rattle this train.
We pass over a bilious pool,
sustain the journey's suicide.
Switches are set and then obtain
one terminal direction.
Mundane, this ride to somewhere else:
a place of abrogation.
Abound, enjoy and coalesce
until the buffer's found.
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Form Poems:
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Autumn Days
I walk upon these autumn days
The crunch of leaves, the shadowed lines
The feeble touch of golden rays
The way that life works out sometimes
If I could read dear Nature's signs
Gently steered along better lines
Our love would fall in matching rhymes
And I would find much better times
If love is something too unreal
Like souls entwined in fishing lines
Then I will surely see and feel
The swirls and eddies of our times
The setting sun casts darkened lines
Yet I will love you through these times.
(If you have a sound card on your computer you can click Here to hear Rob reciting this poem - it's a 450Kb Wav file and may take a minute or so to download)
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Merde A La Puissance Treize
White worms drop down from pussy's arse
to join the heaving, cack caked floor.
The flies and mites sup rooster cum
and dance around where rubbers score
fecal byways. By the barn door
a hen sits on her rotting brood;
all maggoty, the sulphurs pour
into the heat where pigs once queued
for lies and pain and carrion food.
God's animals don't mind the smell
and defecate right where they sit;
yet barnyard creatures know quite well
that humans, too, are full of shit.
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Sitting on a hillside in the Wye Valley
This poem is dedicated to the 11,000 sailors who died
in the Atlantic convoys during World War Two.
They sacrificed their lives in order to keep Britain from
starving.After the war farming methods were changed in
order to make Britain self-sufficient in food. These changes
radically transformed the British countryside.
Beneath the angry, untamed sky
Stretch pleated folds of timeless stone
The perfect countryside's reply
Beneath the angry, untamed sky
The angled hand of man's supply
A landscape shaped and raped and thrown
Beneath the angry, untamed sky
Stretch pleated folds of timeless stone.
These bodies rot, the flag is flown
In corduroy fields where corn cobs grow
Eleven thousand all alone
These bodies rot, the flag is flown
The forest cowered, the cables thrown
In Finisterre and Scarpa Flow
These bodies rot, the flag is flown
In corduroy fields where corn cobs grow.
Beneath the waves, down deep below
Stretch pleated folds of timeless stone
While livestock munch and machines hoe
Beneath the waves, down deep below
Lay crumbling hulks in phosphorus glow
The hungry fed, the harvest sown
Beneath the waves, down deep below
Stretch pleated folds of timeless stone.
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London Sonnets
These ten London Sonnets were written between 30th August and 8th October 2003. The London Sonnets were inspired by Edwin Morgan's Glasgow Sonnets, and are shown here more or less as they were originally written.
i. Sheet Metal Sonnet
"I'll cut your bleeding square throat back,
the wanky Gilbos are too blunt,
this square to round pox needs more knack,
Consultant's pulled another stunt.
The comic's drawn by some right runt;
me strife gives me a fucking fit;
'er Bodrum bum arf makes me grunt,
it's all a load of stainless shit".
The tea is brewed, a roll-up's lit,
with black bitch thumbs, a mastic grin;
sixteen gauge skin, Swarfega grit:
It'll all just end-up in the bin.
We're slipped a monkey from a Turk
and tell our shrinks about ductwork.
ii. Mind The Gap
Like Sherlock Holmes they stroke and shelve
lawnmowers, teeth, urns gone astray
(old Mr Moss, born 1912);
brown bakerloo strums Yesterday.
Who needs a Chinese typer, say?
or likes to taste bull sperm from Devon?
From bloody birth to dying day,
lost property of Mr Bevan.
Now riding a stairway to heaven
this white city is full of hate
for one-unders who like eleven
o'clock, and now we're running late.
Someone once loved these objets trouvés;
their epitaph: yet more delay.
iii. E ad a good innings
Time please, gents, the lid is closing.
A cart-shaped wreath, a toilet farce;
the lads are lashed, the women pass
smelling salts (Dan's decomposing).
A yellow grin, for Mo's just seen a
therapist, her cough all tarry,
joining in Dan's death safari:
3 packs a day to emphysema:
a last bet on the Old Kent Road,
some jellied eels and rancid toad
in the hole and auntie Glynis
almost followed from too much Guinness;
with flowers, dirt and coined regrets
we turn away, light cigarettes.
iv. Dear Mary
I would love to see you sometime
soon I now cannot get out much
am still walking with my new frame
I have glasses for my homehelp
I hear you also have her to
have still got my cat whos fifteen
now has lost most of her sight seems
very happy + copes quite well
I wish my front was on the flat
so that I could get out I miss
going down the road for a chat
enough about myself hows things?
remember the hopping a lot
do hope your keeping well love Dot XXX
v. Pull No More Bines
From Peckham Rye to Maltman's Hill
the pale ribbed skin, the faggot's glow;
a rising fire, the mist hangs still
around the huts where shillings grow.
With bubbling broth the bin-men know
that pokes will fill before they steer a
stampede towards the Lamb below;
to rationing and dear Vera
Lyne captured in a Kodak era,
with Hopper Balls, thunder box stools,
a tally count as time gets nearer
to mortgages and Spanish pools;
so now machines make the poles sway:
"no more bines to be pulled today".
vi. Peckham High Street
Hackfish remains crunch in the gutter.
The 36 to Oxford Circus
blows at the stains upon his gus-
set and sucks his liquid stutter.
He stops beside the Wall of Praise,
smells pluvera, plantain, callacod.
Tizzy's Salon returns a nod
towards his lonely, wasted days.
He does not want a Maine 'n Tail
or yum yums, croaker, best halal
chicken. Outside the Woolworths store
he reads today's bargains before
touching the glass. It breaks the dream;
he then lets out a shattered scream.
vii. The Yank In The Tank
We chased limelight to Tower Bridge
to see our dreams hang in the air,
where once stews sucked on Eckett's ridge
and cholera took Bill Sikes' lair.
I caught my breath, your gymslip dare,
as little girls sang songs to Dave,
the thrusting piles of finance there
now plunged into Fagin's moist grave.
We thought it was rather quite brave
to swing with dollymops and rats
in such a very taboo place, save
for chic bistros and yuppy flats;
and I gave you a crooked grin;
you said: "shut-up and drink your gin".
viii. Suspicious Packages
We will return to Hammersmith
and cackle over Rotten Row,
those cavalry killed by the whiff
of compost and the crack below
the Union flag. It's time to blow
a bloody hole in Bishopsgate
and steer tourists towards Heathrow
with flying limbs and a blind date.
No statues for our good and great,
no heroes stand in M.Tussauds;
our lives are filled with waxy hate,
we'll cremate children for the cause.
We go to work on Monday mornings
with packages and coded warnings.
ix. Thames
Whorls whipped by wind race to the west,
waves slap and suck on slimy walls,
a rippling surge teases and hauls
flotsam to where Romans once blessed
a bobbing bridge. The flood compressed
and seminal, below St.Pauls
the mark is kissed, the ocean calls,
and so Isis will get undressed:
she twists and turns twenty five times
and starts revealing moistened flanks,
her helical fervour is rushing
to show the sky those straining lines,
the squelchy bits and rotting shanks,
to leave her now exposed and blushing.
x. Westminster Sunset
This city is a fist, a sum
of storeys (knuckles bruise the sky);
its sores now soaked in sodium,
its roar drowns out the swallows sly
retreat. The Standard wires cry
where tumourous foundations criss-
cross caged clay and rodents shy
away. Terry and Julie kiss
amidst the rushing hours hiss
the scurry wags a question there:
perhaps there's more to life than this?
Fingers uncurl a circus fair;
beside Big Ben they see and feel
a trippy, turning hamster wheel.
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Toothache
Sharp splinters pierce
The weeping gum
Where dentine cracks
To wincing pulp.
Where once we touched
Now poisonous;
Our frothy blood
Bacterial.
This ache remains
So deep within
Toxins adhere
To au revoirs.
Growth and decay
The endless play
This agony
Will fade away.
If I could write such joyous pain
The mellow flux, the ecstasy
The patterns on life's strange refrain
The path that leads one to be free:
A golden rush of antibody
Sweeps away infected thoughts
And a peaceful sleep will follow.
Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
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Paddy Field –1969
He ejaculates a dollar, she stops picking rice
Whomp whomp whomp as the fluids boil
Beteljuice teeth, sex, fear and lice
He ejaculates a dollar, she stops picking rice
The treeline blisters on radio advice
A military erection on foreign soil
He ejaculates a dollar, she stops picking rice
Whomp whomp whomp as the fluids boil.
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Perihelion
For Maz
If I could write such joyous pain,
the mellow flux, the ecstasy,
if I could see a starry mane,
an orbit reaching apogee:
Disintegration, c'est la vie
for qualia that race in space;
a tea ball dance with gravity:
creation is a lonely place.
Hip volatiles and ions trace
consummation in the sky.
Erato shrugs and turns her face
towards a fond goodbye.
Cognition clicks, ideas won,
skin will warm beneath the sun.
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6 days in London
The roar rebounds off city walls,
a hand is punching through the air;
Serge Pep says 'hi' to naive fools.
The roar rebounds off city walls,
the Games are ours, we've got the balls.
Tavistock Square, a reddish stare:
the roar rebounds off city walls,
a hand is punching through the air.
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A Young And Pretty Barmaid
She could have been just
any Jane
With puffy lips and bedded eyes
Her tits and hips beneath her
brain
Her snatch is moist between her thighs
His hands caress and meet
her sighs
She corresponds and plays the role
The throbbing cock’s
enormous size
She is impaled upon the pole
It feels so good inside the
soul
This ecstasy now agony
A writhing, jerking baby doll
Potential
blood so young and free
The cock is blind and keeps extending
Her rising
heat is never ending.
Her head makes contact with the ceiling
The
giant cock now breaking through
A membrane torn with no known feeling
She finds herself in someplace new
He climbs the pole to get there too
The veins and muscles help his grip
The flesh stays firm, he passes
through
To perch upon the foreskin’s lip
On tiled floor she rests her
hip
Her legs apart and without shame
Morticians try to close his zip
On cabinet drawer he sees his name
He feels just like he wants to sneeze
A jet of liquid hits the breeze.
The liquid splashes to the floor
And tadpole creatures start to flap
With snapping teeth they start to
knaw
Their way towards his bloodstained lap
He smells her rich and
rising sap
His terror takes him over there
He wants respite, he wants to
nap
Head pushing into pubic hair
He drinks the juice inside her lair
The warmth, the peace, security
Stretched walls then close to hold him
there
He does not care that he’s not free
Now inside her one-and-only
Where he finds he’s always lonely.
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Cloggie Cinquain
Utrecht
A dripping night
The dead combustion clicks
Our shadows shrink into the dawn
To die.
Licking
Guylian lips
I roll another Drum
while you suck the severed silence
and stare.
Thinking
and feeling numb
penned by misted windows
waiting for nothing to happen
again.
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To the Virgins, to make much of time
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
From To the Virgins, to make much of time, by Robert Herrick.
As I walked out one summer's morn
Through softened mist and
dancing rays
The air felt crisp and filled the blood
The singing birds
declared the day
Green fields of corn waved at the sky
Sheep-nibbled
grass, the river's sigh
The valley stretched towards the east
Those
blackened hours were chased away
A symphony began to play
Gather ye
rosebuds while ye may.
As I walked out one summer's morn
I came upon
the years gone by
A younger man than I stood there
Reflections of my
vernal days
His supple skin, his lack of strain
A coil tightly wound
within
Potential beat, raw energy
His mind not weighed by things once
said
Myself before the score of years
Old Time is still a-flying.
As I walked out one summer's morn
Two shoulders touched so tender
Where Spring met Summer once again
Where hands are held and other things
Roll in the wash of sadness
That fills the moss and whispers
Of
birth and death and copulation
Stillness lives in dreams of yearning
The
heady scent of elder-blossom
And this same flower that smiles today.
As I walked out one summer's morn
The lonely road ahead did lay
A foreign country left behind
The spiteful grief of something lost
The golden glow of something found
Now sand runs down to salty sea
Now North does bring a chilling breeze
The worms await my final feast
This setting sun brings closure
Tomorrow will be dying.
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Light Verse:
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Mousetrap
The mice are teasing me, but I must type.
I must trap the mice. My manuscript
must be finished: slap slap, slap! The traps
tap their death throes. I hear the sun shining.
The shutters split the shadows. I must wipe
the spaces: slap slap, slap! a tiny crust
in bulging eyes, a filthy, nervous
twitch. The mice tip across my toes and trip
into the darkness. My mind is teasing me,
but I must type...
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A Young Man's Death
I do not much desire a bag o’ pills and a zimmer frame
Nor will I dribble and ramble on about my life’s story
Not for me a so sad incontinence and a booze soaked brain.
I want to die a young man’s death of cool exquisite glory
The world’s press will scramble to their phones to find out what’s gone on
Involving every godamn cliche, both ancient and hoary.
I’ll die while wrestling tall grizzly bears in the remote Yukon
And they will all sigh and say: ‘my, that guy had the biggest balls’
While making passionate love to a princess with a hat on.
I’ll die while trying to walk across high Niagara Falls
After making a million bucks and living sweet at the Ritz
And receiving my deserved knighthood in the Queen’s hallowed halls.
I’ll die defiant through waves of vicious machine gun bullets
And will certainly be the last true comrade left on my feet
Fighting for the glorious revolution in cold Smoletz.
Because there would be something really quite annoyingly neat
About leaving the bottle to stay firmly unreligious
While staring death in the face without admitting a defeat.
That’s why I want a grand state funeral and all kinds of fuss
Cause death by booze poisoning is far too ignominious
Don’t you think?
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Aliens
Rising from the mire
It let out a high-pitched scream
And low rumblings
Silver liquid bubbling from its casing
Vaporising in the thin atmosphere
Drifting towards the other
Whose snapping tendons signalled readiness
Running gold droplets of desire
Vibrating hotly as a tentacle reached out
Wrapped around
Pulling them together
Silver into gold
Latticeworks locking
Gushing clouds enveloping
Running acids
Hydro-carbons
Igniting
A chemical catalyst
That flared violently for micro seconds
Melting, fusing
High-pitched screams
Erupting from the furnace
That quickly cooled
The union over
They flopped back down into the hot mud
Smoking.
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Dick van Dyke's octopus proposes to Llama Lil
One fine day down Whitechapel way an octopus did stroll.
The Vera Lynn and the
oily rags did half take their toll,
so Olly sought some comfort in Llama
Lil's cafe:
a cup of tea, some digestives and games that lovers play.
Llama Lil felt a thrill as she scrubbed dishes at the sink,
felt the
pull of a tentacle and steaming tiddlywink:
"Gawd blimey, Lil, oh what a
sight you are for me mince pies
and when I seez I'm an octopus you'll think
I'm telling lies!"
"I can see what's plain to me, you're rubbery with slime
and as for a Donald Duck, well, I just don't have the time."
"Wow, what
a pair of first aid kits, a wonderful selection;
me skin's gone all clamy,
I'm 'aving a general election!"
So Olly threw out caution and got down on
bended knees
where he spun a Jackanory and asked for marriage, please.
Now, Lil was not a Frankie, but felt like a Frankie Vaughan:
octopod
relations were not the reason she'd been born.
"I'm not the kind of gal who
would rail and make a fuss,
but why should I have wedlock with an effing
octopus?!"
"We'll have a lovely jubbly, I'll invite all me old muckers;
as to why you should marry me, just think of all those suckers."
But Lil
was not convinced and spoke of her skin and blister,
who for a laugh had
married a giraffe after he had kissed her.
Olly scratched his barnacles and
tried to find the dog and bone,
"We'd have dustbin lids, lots of quids and a
lovely little home."
Llama Lil felt Tom and Dick about sex with octopi
and for a start in her jam tart she would much rather die.
The Sweeny
Todd do frown on things like bestiality,
so dear Olly did become Lil's sushi
jamboree.
Now back at Captain Kirk, Lil could not be called a skiver
and
all that's left of Olly gets sold for a Lady Godiva.
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Well-connected
Her clot was removed, that royal divorce
A bit on the side called a Llewellyn
While spending became par for the course
Her lungs shot to hell, her liver swelling
See Chicago where the Blarneys are pigs
While the darlings play games in old Mustique
The media chaps were drunk in their digs
They are careful about calling her a freak
Her tongue was puffy, her cheeks were furry
The nights were long and heavy with smoke
The legs all wobbly, the eyesight blurry
The newspapers rallied with a final stroke
Margaret gin and cigarette lover
Never destined to outlive her mother.
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In a pub near Liverpool Street Station
The 5.48 was late
We drank expensive beer
Smoked French cigarettes
And laughed
While a stream of grey commuters trudged by
The very essence of futility
When we left our cares behind
And chased the sun across an ocean
Our souls burning in the heat
Intrepid adventurers
You and I
Under an endless prairie sky
On a sea of golden wheat
That carried us to the west
Past Saskatchewan grain elevators
August tornados in Alberta
The Yukon press
That swept the dust from the road
Like our dreams
Young, free
And on a spending spree
With someone elses money
It's kinda funny
In a pub near Liverpool Street Station
It seemed like a wonderful dream
As dour coummuters trudge by
I asked her if she would abandon me again
In Fairbanks, Alaska
And she smiled
And I didn't ask why
Because of the cigarette stubs in the ash tray
And past memories
And a lie.
(If you have a sound card on your computer you can click Here to hear Rob reciting this poem - it's a 700Kb Wav file and may take a minute or so to download)
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15 Pound Minnows
The child that is born of the word
Cannot cry
Nor can it laugh
It is a perfect child
With no death in its future
(hmm, what do you think?)
The moth knows no Yom Kippor
Sucks the drop of sweet
From the wild flower
As on any day
(well, maybe)
Windows, little windows
These flocks of urns, fluted
Dense as iron coin banks
(yeah, enough said)
Every day it's a new wound
The worms go in
Hell, I can relate to that
My hero
Where to finish where to begin
Frozen to the bone
Drinking Walker's Gin
And wanting something dramatic
Perhaps a shedding tear
Then I could say quite frankly my dear
I don't give a damn
But you just said I'll see you around
And of course I was bound
Not to show it, to act nonchalant, as if I didn't care
But my throat was choking, like with a ball of hair
Why is life so unfair?
So I gave you a 'I don't believe you'
And like me you laughed too
But now I believe you
And wonder
Did Dostoyevsky have this trouble
Did he have to pull himself out of the rubble
Of unrequited, unsighted, blighted
Love?
I thought you were heaven sent
But now I have my own Crime and Punishment
And what about Clark Gable?
I was never so drunk you'd find me under the table
And you never wore mascara
Like Scarlet O'Hara
But I was always sincere
In what I said
Was that your biggest fear?
Che sara sara, so I'll drink another Walker's Gin
It's just another sin
To add to the long list
Because you never knew about my past
You think it's overimagination
You think my ego's too vast
Believe me I have sinned
But that was yesterday
Now I've got my own Gone With the Wind
And although you never wanted me
At least I'm consoled by the fact
That you always loved my angst poetry
Strange girl.
Back to Contents
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Go Read Mary Oliver's Poetry Handbook
Thanks, all,
for your very helpful comments
In my opinion it needs condensing
Er, I
don't think this pantoum makes much sense
You've got a bit mixed-up with
your tensing
In my opinion it needs condensing
I don't have time to
give a detailed crit
You've got a bit mixed-up with your tensing
Oh come
on, I thought this was total shit
I don't have time to give a detailed
crit
Really, I can't fault the language at all
Oh come on, I thought
this was total shit
You treat your reader like some kind of fool
Really, I can't fault the language at all
This one is terrible, it
clunks along
You treat your reader like some kind of fool
I'm an amateur
so I could be wrong
This one is terrible, it clunks along
I thought
this was an absolute delight
I'm an amateur so I could be wrong
Cliché,
too many abstracts, Hallmark shite
I thought this was an absolute
delight
I enjoyed the breezy quality of this
Cliché, too many abstracts,
Hallmark shite
I conclude that you are taking the piss
I enjoyed the
breezy quality of this
First off, I thought it was far too prose-like
I
conclude that you are taking the piss
Message has been deleted by Staff Mike
First off, I thought it was far too prose-like
Er, I don't think
this pantoum makes much sense
Message has been deleted by Staff Mike
Thanks, all, for your very helpful comments.
Back to Contents
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Ill in Ulan Bator
Mongolia, a far off place,
dead heart of Asia's potpourri
where Genghis once did
start to trace
Ulan Bator, the main city;
a place where sheep and goats
run free,
some beat-up cars, and with their claw
the drunken beggars
pick debris.
I was ill in Ulan Bator.
Travelling through this alien
space
an ailment then came down on me;
the stomach cramps began to chase
a virulent form of dysentery
and I did wail like a banshee
and
rolled around upon the floor,
pain expanding to the Nth degree.
I was
ill in Ulan Bator.
I was then a charity case,
the diarrhoea all
liquidy,
hallucinations filled the space
between my ears and sanity.
Gulping Immodium, whoopee,
red crocodiles began to claw.
I had blue
spheres for company.
I was ill in Ulan Bator.
I lived to tell the
tale, you see,
and oft times people start to snore,
but no one now will
disagree:
I was ill in Ulan Bator.
Back to Contents
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A Square Limerick
A man known as Smithers
Man handles and delivers
Known hepatic specimins, oh quite
As in the organ on the right
Smithers delivers quite right livers.
Back to Contents
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Boiling an Egg
Take a pan and fill with water
Bring to the boil, do not falter
Place the egg in so it's just right
Take a step backwards and recite...
415 566 0972
0208 291 2828
888 352 5443
0207 935-9427
812 230 16 55
1594 530 708
403 229 1897
0207 937 0150
7095 218 3605
01932 859777
206 208 4589
0208 875 4320
415 566 0972
0208 291 2828
888 352 5443
0207 935-9427
812 230 16 55
1594 530 708
403 229 1897
0207 937 0150
7095 218 3605
01932 859777
206 208 4589
0208 875 4320
415 566 0972
0208 291 2828
888 352 5443
0207 935-9427
812 230 16 55
1594 530 708
403 229 1897
0207 937 0150
7095 218 3605
01932 859777
206 208 4589
0208 875 4320
415 566 0972
0208 291 2828
888 352 5443
0207 935-9427
812 230 16 55
1594 530 708
403 229 1897
0207 937 0150
7095 218 3605
01932 859777
206 208 4589
Eight seven five four three two oh
Remove the dish, be careful though
Sit at your table, cross a leg
Prepare to eat the perfect egg.
bon appetite
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e-mail: rob@spiderbomb.com
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