Well I’ve been undertaking the April Poem a Day challenge this month. The September one was very productive for me and led to my book ‘Perpendicular’. But this year I set myself the additional challenge of
1- Not featuring any introspective or serious poems
2 – No poems with a ‘gay’ theme
3- Every poem being humorous in content.
Anyway, this is what I’ve come up with some far from the first week.
Poem
I don’t want this poem to be about
The thing that it’s about.
I don’t want it to be about that thing.
I don’t want to have to
Mention
That thing which I’m thinking of right now
Because it’s what this poem is about.
People go out of their way not to
Talk about this thing,
This thing I’m writing this poem about.
People feel disgusted
Being made to think about this thing,
This thing that this poem
Is about, ostensibly.
So I won’t mention it
Because I’m nice like that.
And I’d like to shield you
From the reality of life of
This thing existing
By pretending that this poem
Is about something it’s not
By the method of not mentioning
The thing that it’s actually about.
I’m so clever.
Poem
A pogo stick
In a steep scree-lined Welsh valley.
Boing boing boing
And the boinging echoing back
On the echo boing
As gaboinging
Intermittently interspersed
Between my own pogo boings
In a sort of boing gaboing boing
Or sometimes boing boing gaboing boing
With the next gaboing obliterated
By the latest boing
If I get a chance to pick up speed.
Boing boing gaboing boing (gaboing)
Boing boing gaboing boing (gaboing)
Et cetera.
Up and down
Up and down in my Welsh valley
With the pogo and the echo
Loud enough to have some serious fun
(A cheery hello to a passing backpacker)
But not loud enough to cause an
Avalanche.
Until the park ranger turns up
And says I’m driving all the woodpeckers crazy
With my syncopated boing gaboing
And that an amorous sparrow
Is under the impression that it’s a mating call.
Poem
1. Abstract
Apart from John Hegley, Matt Harvey, John Cooper Clarke, Pam Ayres, Johnny Fluffypunk, TS Eliot and hundreds of other notable poets, not many have tackled the subject of garden sheds.
2. Introduction
I am about to tackle the subject of garden sheds.
3. Contents
The contents of the poem, you mean?
Or the contents of the shed?
You see already I am confused by the
Format of this piece but I could
Willingly oblige you, one way or the other.
4. Here we go then
If I had a shed
It would be the best shed in the world
But I wouldn’t let it go to my head.
At nights I lay in my bed
And dream of having a shed.
Oh, the loneliness.
I think of all the tears I’ve shed
Over not having a shed.
5. The next verse
I’d like a shed.
I’d paint it red.
I’d call it ‘Fred’
I’d like to be buried in it
When I’m dead.
6. Immovable sheds
Due to their semi-permanence
Sheds are virtually static
Due to their construction and purpose
They don’t usually have an attic.
7. Big sheds
I’d like a shed so big
That people say
‘Hey, nice chalet!’
And I’d say, ‘No,
It’s a shed’.
I’d like a shed so big
A barn owl tries to live in it
And I’d say, ‘Hey, barn owl,
It’s not a barn,
It’s a shed’.
And the barn owl would say,
‘In that case I’m not a barn owl,
I’m a shed owl’.
And I’d say
‘It’s all a question of semantics’.
And the barn owl would move in
And poo on all my stuff.
8. I really like this next verse
I’d like a shed so big
It’s got it’s own shed.
9. Here’s a website link to a real kick-ass shed video
10. Get some rhythm!
Lock me in your shed, baby
Throw away the key.
Lock me in your shed, baby,
Throw away the key.
Down with the paint cans.
Down with the lawn rakes.
Down with the compost.
Down with the creosote.
Lock me in your shed, baby,
Throw away the key.
11. On preferring a shed with a felt roof
I’d like a shed with a felt roof
Angled at eleven and a half degrees,
Not enough to repel rain,
But enough to make a marble roll
Of its own volition
Should one be placed on it.
12. Alternative shed names
I know I said
That if I had a shed
I’d call it ‘Fred’
But I’ve considered other names, too.
Like Ethelred.
Ted.
Jed.
Kenneth. Brian. Lola. Steven. Anne. Carol. David. Connor. Nathan. Lord Pinkerton. Johann. Philip. Susie. Christopher. Ironing board. Ryan. Desmond. Lionel. Jessie J. Bob.
13. Moving on
If I had a shed
Oh, and
Michael. Sandra. Granny Finch. Katherine. Jean-Francois. Ian.
14. Almost at the end, now
If I had a shed
I’d keep my hopes and dreams and
Aspirations inside of it
And possibly
A lawn mower.
15. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Jeff for the use of his shed.
Poem
Thou hast upon thy charms a tariff
Mitigating against, among other things, insomnia
That one should prioritise the transaction
Rather than the honesty of truth.
Halt! Pale creature, and ponder on this.
Why should’st thou be so concerned?
Thou manners have tempers not of this world.
Thine eyes shaded against the sun
Thine elevation increased by heightened heels
Yet mirth and whimsy pass ye by.
Cast thine eyes leftwards.
Cast thine eyes rightwards.
Can’st thou savour the ephemera
That we should, with our desires, augment various japes.
Be this not concerning the tariff tarriff tarriff
Thou hast no need of thy tarriff tarriff tarriff
If chance prevails one must faithfully gyrate.
Cast all thoughts of thy funds from thy mind.
Be this not concerning the cobblous sound of pennies accumulated, accumulated,
Be this not concerning the grotesque fripperies that one might purchase, purchase,
If chance prevails one must faithfully gyrate
Cast all thoughts of thy funds from thy mind.
Upon what manner is this public obsession?
Currency hath not the charms of potential merriment
That we should by turns de-accelerate and ponder on lightness
In pale guarantee of a more harmonious mind frame.
Poem
I always seem to associate
Several Surrey towns
With shades of beige as marketed
By the Ford Motor Company in the 1970s.
Egham is Nevada beige.
Woking is Sahara beige.
Weybridge is classic cream beige.
Guildford is light beige.
Staines is antique beige.
I know Staines has a Middlesex postal address
But it’s definitely in Surrey.
My friend Steven opines
That I always get excitable
And blunder on through life
And he might have a point.
I like the display of busts
In one of the galleries at the British Museum.
I can’t remember which gallery it is
But they’ve all got big sideburns
And the sun slants oblong like solid dust.
I put my hand in the dust slant solid beam.
Haslemere is Bahama beige.
Horsell is Toucan beige.
Bracknell is in Berkshire but it’s milk caramel beige.
In 1995 I had a bad cycle accident
And my nose has been this shape ever since.
I fell off my bike in Englefield Green
(Sonic beige)
Went riiiiiiiiiight over the handlebars.
I take time now and then
To slow down and savour life
And to commune with the exact platzgeist
Of a place / moment.
So up yours, Steven.
See, I can do it sometimes.
At nights the trains used to spark electric and
Light up the skies,
Silhouetting
Holloway College like Dracula’s Castle.
And I’d get ever so scared
Until,
Lulled to sleep by the friendly roar
Of transcontinental jets,
I’d dream of labyrinthine holiday cottages.
Poem
1. Oh my goodness
That’s 20p he owes me now.
2. Dreaming of being an aircraft
I zoom over mental landscapes
With the thrust lift pitch yaw
Except I do so safe in the knowledge
That I’m 20p poorer.
3. It was one of those sunny Devon mornings, the kind of morning in which one feels that the world is not so terribly bad, and I’d begun by answering some emails, then going for a walk along the promenade, then to the coffee shop where is usually sit and scribble poems and things before going to work, and he was in there, and he wondered if I might lend him 20p so that he could upgrade from a primo to a massimo. And like a fool I said yes. He then sat next to me and bored me rigid with tales about his uncle.
4. Tentative ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffriendship
I
Believe
In
The
Power
Of
Being
Ever
So
Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice
5. I went to the 99p Store
But I only had 79p.
(Gosh, I’m so postmodern
Mentioning the 99p Store
In a poem!)
I couldn’t make a
Single purchase.
6. 20p
Is meant to be
Plenty for me
So lending thee
20p
Hath left me
Empty.
7. Coffee shop rules and regulations:
– Don’t grab a table first and then order a drink.
– Watch the steam rising from the machine, see the way it rises, Jake?
– Toilets for customer use only
– The ephemera of logos and corporate design, temporary at best.
– Comfy sofas, but no good if you’re a sofa-phobic.
– Sorry, no tiaras.
– Ladies, please don’t fight over the only copy of the Daily Mail.
8. In early morning light
The road surface, smooth,
Shining ever so worn flat
By a decade’s car tyres,
The dips and hollows caused by
Fortune’s roadworks
Causing ever such slight shadows.
9. Josh, I know you don’t like poetry and you never read anything of mine, so it’s probably quite safe to hide this right now, halfway down the page, and declare it to the world, that I absolutely adore you.
10. See below for a half-assed selfie I took while writing this poem in the coffee shop.
11. I love everyone who’s ever lived
Which is quite an undertaking
When you consider history’s assholes.
People in the most part are fantastic,
Even that bloke over there.
I wonder if he’s ever leant someone 20p?
12. Scene five, the stables.
ILLYANA- Upon my whim, that I should
Partake of that which I can never afford.
ALLACUTIA – (While shoeing a horse)
Upon my soul, what might that be?
ILLYANA – (Looks out window, soulfully)
I seem to leap from one misadventure to the next.
I see the daily grind of absolute nullity
Where others see chance.
ALLACUTIA – Pray, tell me.
ILLYANA – Life in all it’s pleasantness,
Hath but, like a church to a couple
Contemplating wedded bliss,
An ominous gothic twinge.
ALLACUTIA – ( Blinks she, heavily).
Upon my Heath, do tell.
(Be still, thou tiresome horse, be still!)
ILLYANA – Upon my desires, ‘this as I say
A whim that I should
Plumb the depths of our friendship, and drive a
Tractor through that which has sustained us as
Friends, but, alack, for I am in need of
Twenty once in order that I might be furnished
With a packet of Polos.
ALLACUTIA – That my wealth should bar all further trespass
And other sympathies upon the tenements of our camaraderie, I hereby
Present to thee pence of twenty.
ILLYANA – Ta.
(The horse bucks, knocks over a small automobile)
ILLYANA – For goodness sake.
Robert Garnham 