HORSES

Horses don't use toilets
I'm quite relieved to say:
A horse stuck in my lavatory
Would probably ruin my day.

They dump their loads
On fields and roads,
And that is quite OK;
But if started copying them
I'd soon be locked away!

Shake, Rattle and Custard!

A jolly book is now on sale!
As a Christmas gift it cannot fail!
Crammed with poems, small and light,
It’ll make you chuckle on a winter’s night!
‘Shake, Rattle, and Custard!’ is what it’s called;
By the poems inside, you’ll be enthralled!
Check out copies, have a look!
On Amazon or Monster Books!
And who is the author of this splendid tome?
Modesty forbids me to make this known.

My Snowman

Hello? Is that the police?
I have a vile crime to report!
Someone has stolen my snowman!
It was safe in my garden, I thought.

Who on earth could have done such a thing?
My mind is all of a muddle!
My snowman was there when in the morning,
Now all that remains is a puddle!

I left him enjoying the sunshine
While I went off out for the day.
But when I came back, there was only his hat –
My snowman’s been taken away!

The same thing happened last year –
These truly are perilous times!
When innocent snowmen and women
Fall victim to such heinous crimes.

Santa

When Santa was a little boy,
No presents came his way.
He never had a gift or toy,
Not one, on Christmas Day.

Christmas time was still such fun,
With halls festooned with holly.
A Christmas feast with Christmas pud,
And everyone was jolly.

People loved the singing,
Such a festive noise!
But no-one thought of giving
Children little toys.

As Santa grew, he changed all this:
He built a busy shed,
Made toys for all the girls and boys
Delivered on a sled.

Soon children were expecting him,
And so were mum and dad,
Who saw how lots of presents
Made their children glad.

Then everyone demanded gifts -
Grown-ups, rich and poor.
The shops all think its brilliant -
But Santa’s not so sure.

A Poem about Toast.

I’ve never written a poem about toast,
And I probably never will.
It’s only bread, cut from a loaf
And put in a toaster, or under a grill.

It’s a favourite for breakfast,
With butter or spread,
A popular remedy
For slightly stale bread.

It’s the base of a meal,
(especially for teens),
Served on a plate,
and smothered with beans.

If you eat lots of toast,
You’ll doubtless feel full.
As a subject for poetry,
It’s remarkably dull.

It’s only a slice, cut from a loaf,
And put in a toaster, or under a grill.
I’ve never written a poem about toast, I’m afraid,
And I probably never will.

A Bucket of Glue

A child who was bored, for something to do,
Dipped his head in a bucket of glue.
Another piped up: “I’ll copy you!”
And dipped his head too, in the bucket of glue.
A third came along, and without further ado,
Like them, dipped his head in the bucket of glue.
Each wondered then, what on earth they should do,
With their heads all messy and sticky with glue.
Home, in a panic, all three of them flew:
What happened next, I wish that I knew.

YESTERDAY'S MEN

Give youngsters the name 'Tony Blair'
And you'll most likely get a blank stare.
Say 'Gordon Brown'
And they'll probably frown:
They know him from somewhere, but where?

Red Sky at Night...

Red sky at night –
shepherds’ delight!
Marvel at the joyous sight
of shepherds prancing in the fields
dancing round their flocks,
jigging in the evening grass
minus shoes and socks.
Singing with their arms upraised,
inhibitions fled,
gleeful in their shepherding,
because the sky is red.

How good to be a shepherd
uplifted in delight,
daily woes forgotten when
the sky is red at night.

Climbing Molehills

If only I were small enough,
Or moles made molehills tall enough,
I’d climb them every year;
Be known as Molehill Martin,
The fearless mountaineer!

With crampons, ropes, and climbing boots,
I’d conquer every one,
Tick my molehill mountain book
‘til every page was done.

But, as they’re small,
And I’m quite tall,
I’ll leave them well alone;
And just get out my climbing gear,
To climb the stairs at home.

Spick and Span

Spick and Span were twins, they were,
Always well-presented.
Well-behaved and well brought up,
Their parents were contented.

With polished shoes, and neat, clean shirts
The twins walked smartly by.
Shiny bright, immaculate;
The apples of their mother’s eye.

Until one day, they had a scrap,
Spick had called Span names.
Span hit Spick, Spick hit him back;
Their anger rose like flames.

They fought like cat and dog, or worse,
Rolled in muck and mud
Their clothes got ripped and dirty,
Smeared with filth and blood.

Pulled apart by passers-by,
Home they quickly ran.
Barely recognisable;
No longer Spick and Span.

The Spy

This poem is not a poem,
Or a harmless little ode.
It’s a secret communication -
A message sent in code.

For I’ve been in deep cover,
Controlled and in the pay
Of a certain foreign power
In a country far away.

Each week I transmit secrets
In poems that I write,
Which other agents then decode,
Working day and night.

This espionage I’ve carried on,
In poems, one after another.
Undetected now, for years –
Damn! I’ve blown my cover!

Old Jim

I know of many decent folk,
In fact, they’re ten a penny.
Then there’s Jim, a jolly bloke,
And he’s as good as any.

A proper gent, he’ll never spit,
With a lady on his arm;
Unless, of course, she’s used to it,
Why, then he sees no harm.

He’ll offer you his final fag -
It’s kept behind his ear.
It’s getting rather manky now,
It’s been there for a year.

He’s a strict regime for keeping clean
In a bath that’s steaming hot.
He has one every New Year’s Day,
If he feels the need, or not.

And every month he’ll change his socks,
And usually change his shirt.
(He’ll wear his pants for longer,
For they don’t show the dirt.)

He never touches alcohol:
Before his morning cuppa,
To which he likes to add some gin
Left over from his supper.

Old Jims are now in short supply;
In fact, they’re getting fewer.
But decent folk need some around,
Like roses need manure.

The bandwagon

I hurriedly jumped on the bandwagon,
It seemed to be going my way.
But when I peered in, it was full to the brim
With people who’d climbed on that day.

I scrambled inside, keen for the ride,
But there wasn’t a place to relax.
With so many people crammed in there
It’s a wonder it didn’t collapse.

“Where are we going?” asked one,
“What are we going to do?”
Some there made out they had answers,
But no-one, in truth, had a clue.

“But at least we’re aboard!” said another,
“Although it’s a bit of a crush!”
Then it dawned, we were all in a wagon,
Going nowhere at all, in a rush.

For the wagon just went round in circles
Until, finally, the driver said “Stop!”
We all looked around, quite embarrassed,
And, sheepishly, slowly got off.

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Humpty Dumpty had a big fall
Humpty Dumpty made a quick call
straight to his lawyers, who put in a claim
naming the Council and placing the blame
squarely on them, for building the wall,
from which Humpty Dumpty had such a fall.

The Council paid up, for they'd failed to install
a big warning sign, on top of the wall.
Humpty's in bits, but he doesn't care,
now Humpty Dumpty's a millionaire.

My Sausage Tree

My Sausage Tree

Our house went vegetarian,
now every meal’s meat-free.
So it’s handy my allotment has
a full-grown sausage tree.

Every time I go there
(past the butcher’s shop),
I pick from off its branches
the latest sausage crop.

The kids say they’re delicious,
better than beef or pork.
They ask me how I grow them, but
my mouth’s too full to talk.

Now, sausages can get boring,
which makes me want to rush
off to my allotment
to plant a bacon bush.

Holy Roads

Here's one for all who are struggling to drive or cycle on pot-holed roads caused by the bad winter and years of neglect...

Holy Roads

I met a band of pilgrims
In town the other day.
They told me they had travelled
From very far away.

“What brings you our city?”
I asked of them, in wonder,
When they gave their reason
I realised their blunder.

“We came because we heard about
Your many holy roads!
We gathered from the news reports
That you have loads and loads!”

I smiled as I enlightened
These poor deluded souls,
Our City’s roads aren’t holy –
They’re simply full of holes!

Pets

I've never had a parrot
A spider or gnu.
I've never owned a terrapin,
Or ever wanted to.

I've never kept a wallaby,
A goldfish or a bee.
For every living thing there is
Is better being free.

I did though have a flu bug once,
But that was not much fun.
I kept it for a week or two,
Then gave it to my mum.

The wheelie bins are waiting…

The wheelie bins are waiting
On every street in town,
Waiting for the bin men
To tip them upside down
And empty out, into the truck,
A fortnight’s trash, or more,
Stuff that’s overflowing,
And falling to the floor.
They stand there, constipated-
Could things get much worse?
Three weeks now, they’ve waited,
Each one fit to burst.
Standing in the ice and snow
It wheelie is no fun,
The wheelie bins are waiting,
But the bin men still don’t come…

The Queen

The Queen’s popping round for a visit,
She’s not been to see us for years.
She used to nip over with Philip,
Put her feet up, and have a few beers.

Their kids would all play in the bedroom,
We’d let them get out some old toys,
Then yell up the stairs at those young royal heirs
To stop making QUITE so much noise.

But Her Highness, of late, has been busy,
And she’s had a tough time with the press.
She’s had a few royal engagements,
And we’ve been at fault, I confess,

For, as our neighbours have told us,
She’s called and we haven’t been home,
Or I’d not heard the door (I’d been hoovering the floor)
- You’d think she’d alert us by phone.

But this time arrangements are sorted,
There’s loads of good stuff on TV,
We’ve got in some pork pie and pickle,
And said she can stop here for tea.

Dogs and cats and poems

My dog would write a poem, for sure,
if only he could hold a pen or pencil in his paw,
or learn to read and write.
But I feel he lacks the intellect, being a dog that’s none too bright.
And so he’s content to bark, and wag his tail,
chase balls and sticks, and tear the morning mail.
Though, sometimes, when he looks at me in a certain dogged way,
not hoping just for food or a simple canine game to play,
I feel he might enjoy a creative writing session,
just for the thrill of a more cerebral form of self-expression.

My cat, though, I’m convinced,
would never feel the need
to ever write a poem
- unless a suitable fee was agreed.

Clerihews

(clerihews, invented and made popular by EC Bentley, are, to my mind, a much underrated and underused form of light verse. They comprise four lines, the first being a famous (or infamous) name, the second line rhyming with the name, and the third and fourth rhyming with each other. Meter rarely enters into it, and the content should preferably contain a grain of truth, and a big dollop of absurdity.) Here's a trio of my more recent efforts:

Michelangelo
Never mastered the banjo.
The demands of the Renaissance
Left him neither the time nor the patience.

DH Lawrence
Had no abhorrence
Of the sexual act.
He quite enjoyed it, in fact.

Queen Victoria
Disliked euphoria.
Though the Empire enthused
She was not amused.

LIMITS

We live in four dimensions;
what fun to have a fifth!
But the Great Dimension Maker
is infamous for thrift

and claims there are no more to have
(or none He can allow).
So length and width and depth and time
must do us all, for now.

The Sputum Tree.

The sputum tree
Does not exist.
I somehow think
It’ll not be missed.

The wheelie bins are waiting…

The wheelie bins are waiting
On every street in town,
Waiting for the bin men
To tip them upside down
And empty out, into the truck,
A fortnight’s trash, or more,
Stuff that’s overflowing,
And falling to the floor.
They stand there, constipated-
Could things get much worse?
Three weeks now, they’ve waited,
Each one fit to burst.
Standing in the ice and snow
It wheelie is no fun.
The wheelie bins are waiting,
But the bin men still don’t come…

Scrappage

I wish I’d looked after my teeth –
And the rest, from my head to my feet.
My body’s a state,
I feel overweight,
I’m no longer shiny and neat.

My muscles are stiffening,
My arteries are thickening,
My joints are beginning to rust.
My back’s starting aching,
My skin’s started flaking,
My hair’s falling out in disgust.

My teeth have got longer,
My new specs are stronger,
I find myself wanting to nap.
To my family I said:
After I’m dead,
Just sell off my body for scrap!

They looked at me so,
Said: No! You can’t go!
We want you to live, can’t you see?
Alive, you’ve a job,
So you’re worth a few bob,
Dead, you’d fetch less than ten pee!

My Rubbish Poem

I wrote this rubbish poem
Just the other day.
Chucked it in my wheelie bin
For the council to take away.
But they refused to have it,
Said it was too heavy.
For removing rubbish poems,
They’d charge an extra levy.
So I’ve put it on my blog,
Hoping that one day
Someone will find a use for it,
And take the thing away.

The Jolly Banker

(with acknowledgements to Charles Causley)

I saw a jolly banker,
With a jolly smile.
He looked extremely jolly,
Because he’d made a pile.

Jolly great big bonuses
Were his, he said, to keep.
All in all, they added up
To quite a jolly heap.

He told me that his jolly bank
Had all the jolly luck.
For we all jolly bailed it out
When things had come unstuck.

He said it was a jolly shame
That we weren’t rich, like him,
Then went off to his jolly yacht
And gave a jolly grin.

On his jolly sailing boat,
He jolly celebrated.
With lots of jolly bolly,
He got inebriated.

He jolly well fell overboard
And by the tide was caught,
Weighed down by his cash, he drowned:
Jolly good, I thought.

Baldies

God saw men had ugly heads:
To save them from despair,
He raised an arm and kindly said:
“To all men, I’ll give hair!”

“But some men’s heads are beautiful,”
He suddenly recalled:
“They don’t need to cover up-
I’ll let those ones be bald!”

Keeping the City Going


A large open lorry inches down the dark icy hill,
slipping between snowed over parked cars.
A man in a grimy hi vis jacket stands, and sounds
uneasy on the back, flinging out shovelfuls of sand
and grit from a sprawling, diminished heap.
Occasionally, he yells “Stop!” to the driver, and looks
unsteady, too near the open tail gate. He seems
pissed off, unsafe, but probably glad of the overtime.
What might Laurel and Hardy have made of this?
But this is serious: our roads must be fit for purpose,
those centimetres of snow have to be shown who’s boss.
As the vehicle passes, yellow light whirling, I see the livery
on the door: blue and white, Godiva and horse, and the words
Rapid Response Vehicle. City Vision – Quality Services.

ice and snow

The young ones slip and slide and skate
for them the ice and snow is great.

They don't care about the cold
unlike all those becoming old
who fret about their fragile bones
and buying food and heating homes.