April 14 Poem A Day 3
It’s week three and I’m really in the rhythm now, still trying to a funny poem every day. Of course the definition of a funny poem differs with individual senses of humour.
Some of these might even be performable!
Poem
You can shove Paris up your a##e
Swindon is a proper town.
If you put your hand over the first part
Of the word ‘Swindon’
It looks like it might say ‘London’
Until you take your hand away.
Swindon.
You can’t spell ‘Swindon’ without ‘win’.
Unless you use a postcode.
Swindon. Swindon,
It’s a hell of a town,
It’s got a bus station and a Lidl.
We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We’re Swindon town, we’re Swindon town.
We are.
Swindon town.
Is probably the football chant the local team uses.
I don’t know, I don’t really follow football.
Going into Swindon
Always makes me hyper
Knowing it was the birthplace
Of Billee Piper.
It’s got a car park.
It’s got a station.
It hasn’t got an underground tube network.
It’s got a street gang
Called the Swindon Massive.
Here’s a list of places I’d
Rather forego visits and instead
Is got to Swindon:
1. Ashburton Owl Sanctuary.
2. The dentist.
3. The Leicester Museum of Coat Hangers.
4. Any branch of Kwik Fit.
5. Cheltenham
6. Laura’s brother’s house.
Excuse me Mr Pinkerton
Let’s turn this thing around.
I love you baby.
Heart thump jitter purge
Teeth a-chatter
Keep away from me with those handcuffs
Oh you are so naughty
Feel the way my heart rate increases
Not with the overwhelming brilliance
Of your accursed beauty
But by the glimpse
The merest glimpse
That jolt within
Of a road sign
That says ‘Swindon’.
My friend Jeff gets an orgasm
Every time he sees Swindon.
He lives in Swindon.
He keeps his curtains closed
Except for three times a day.
Three or four times.
You know. Depends.
I want my ashes to be scattered
On that funny roundabout thing!
You took me by the hand
And let me down past the eggcup factory
And I whispered into your ear,
‘Welcome to Swindon’.
And you replied,
‘Your’e WELCOME to Swindon’.
Poem
I took a selfie with my camera
A selfie with my phone
I’ll upload it up to Instagram
The moment I get home.
I took a selfie in the petrol station
A selfie in the sauna
A selfie in the botanical gardens
Surrounded by flora and fauna
I took a selfie in the farmyard
A selfie with a tractor
A selfie to be my Guardian Soulmates profile pic
(She’s out there, I just need to attract her).
I took a selfie on the underground
A selfie on the tube
A selfie in the public toilets at the urinals
(Though that one was a little rude)
I took a selfie in the space station
I went up there for a bet
I uploaded it to my Facebook page
No-one’s liked it yet.
I took a selfie in Okehampton
A selfie in South Brent
A selfie in Moretonhampstead
And other places I went
In and around Dartmoor.
I took a selfie in the pasty factory
Next to the dispatch manager’s office
A malfunction on the conveyor belt
Led to a pasty in every orifice.
I took a selfie at the disco
A selfie at the rave
I took a selfie hoping you’d realise
It’s you it’s you it’s you I crave.
I took a selfie in the Museum of Rural Life
Next to a display of milk churns
I put on a show of great bravery
And yet still my heart it yearns
For companionship.
I took a selfie here in Paignton town
Right in the middle of Torbay
Relaxing in an ice cream parlour
With a nice sorbet.
I took a selfie in the Premier Inn
Or it could have been a Holiday Inn
There’s so many inns that I’ve been I
I’ve got confused about the ones that I’ve been in.
I took a selfie on the Millennium Bridge
Surrounded by other people taking a selfie.
If prosperity is measured by Instagram likes
Then I must be very wealthy.
Poem
I took a selfie.
No-one cares, dammit,
Baby cakes jack a spleen so damn
Ego
Tistical
So self obsessed
Big man camera held
Jaunty angle
Hand quivering
That’s it’s now add one of
Those
CHEAP
Filters
And whack it on
To some
Jaded
Social
Media
Site
Poem
1.
Trapped in an Antarctic research station
With a giant male antlered stag
And a Grandmother who speaks only Welsh.
Life doesn’t get weirder than this.
She spends most of the day cooking Welsh cakes.
The stag spends most of the day eating them.
I say to her, Carol,
We need the electricity,
And she says,
Donald needs his grub.
She says this in Welsh.
Donald is the stag, apparently.
It’s bloody cold.
Oh dear god it’s pooed next to the
Sleeping bunks
And last night I found my best anorak
Enmeshed
In it’s antlers.
Carol, ceaselessly knitting
Knit knit knitting
And then for a bit of light relief,
Crocheting.
She’s only gone and knitted him an
Antler warmer.
I don’t know how she does it.
Donald steadfastly refuses
To wear the
Antler warmer.
The wind whips round our cabin.
A ceaseless moaning mournful wind.
It kind of goes like this.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
And the stag goes
Arooooooo aroooooo aroooooo!
Plaintive.
Homesick.
It’s ever so grim.
2.
it’s all a question of geometry
and working out all the angles
of your
shack
carol says she’s glad he’s not
a yak
you can’t go back
and they often attack
if the science survey found out
i would get the sack
i would have to change tack
and tell them that they lack
a sense of humourrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
vis a vis the whole
welsh grandmother / male antlered stag thing
inhabiting their research shack
3.
I’m trying to extract biogas
From five thousand year old ice.
The biggest trouble is
Finding ice that’s that old.
The only ice I’ve found so far
Was made last week.
I think they’re having me on.
4.
I tell you,
After about six weeks
You get really fed up with
Fucking penguins.
5.
Where the hell’s she getting all
This wool from probably
Got a suitcase full of
Sodding sheep SHES ONLY GONE AND
KNITTED HIM A JUMPER I was on the
Satellite phone last night having a good old moan
To a friend back home and he said at least
You’re not stuck here watching Britain’s Got Talent
And I said something like yeah, you’ve got a point.
6.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh.
Aroooooooooooo. Arooooooooooo.
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh.
Poem
I haven’t got a parakeet.
I’ve never had one.
So I feel barely qualified, if at all,
To write an ode to parakeets,
Of which this is, ostensibly.
Oh, parakeets,
As multicoloured as a
Packet of sweets
(Goodness, its only the second verse
And I’m really struggling).
The wide arc smooth parabola
Of your flight
As you colour the evening sky
And bring your sweet bird song
To the setting of the sun.
(I just guessed all that
Because I don’t even know if
Parakeets can fly).
I painted a sparrow bright green.
Its a paracheat.
During the First World War
Thirty eight of Brixham’s trawlers were sunk
By enemy action.
Its not known if any parakeets
Were also lost.
As far as I know
There has never been a parakeet
On Coronation Street.
(I mean, there might have been,
I don’t usually watch it.
Is Mary the Punk still in it?
Or Roly the dog?)
My friend Fran’s parakeet
Is really sweet
With its paws and its whiskers and its tail
And the way it sits on my lap.
Poem
I was trying to order a moussaka
But the pub was full of circus performers.
Clowns in the most part whose gaiety
Tomfoolery sinister subversions aimed at
Something beyond my need to fee on
Moussaka. I need to see the bartender.
I know its on the menu but I still want to
Ask her if they’ve got a moussaka
One of the bleeding clowns tumbles over
And invites me to smell his lapel flower
(I’m not falling for that one again) and I
Have to duck to avoid a custard pie
Which then hits the specials blackboard behind
The bar, slowly dribbling down leaving a
Creamy trail and obliterating a word which
Could very well have been ‘moussaka’
Because I can’t seem to think of any
Other word ending in ‘aka’.
Poem
Dean reckons he’s got
A transvestite goat.
How can you tell?, I ask.
Because its a bloke, he replies,
And yet it’s called Lulu Belle Kingsley.
Who gave it this name?, I ask.
I did, he replies.
Why did you call it Lulu Belle Kingsley?
I ask.
So I can tell people
That I’ve got a transvestite goat, he says.
Later on I go round Dean’s flat
And he hasn’t got a goat at all.
Poem
1.
Bilo stands back and admires his latest canvas. The subtle texture of the paint speaks to him deep inside and reminds him of something from his childhood. He cannot quite define what it is but it’s somehow more of a taste than anything else, that vague place where flavour and colour mix, perhaps going to the very
r o o t
of his cognitive skills.
The next day the paint dries and the colour is ever so slightly different, and the taste has gone.
He goes to the shed and plays his bongos for a bit.
2.
At the retrospective
Slugs it out with a critic.
‘You’ve got no soul, Bilo,
No humanity within you.
In fact when I look at your work
The only thing they reflect
Is the stupidity of me being
Here in the first place’.
A long drawn sigh
And a deep mutter
Along the lines of
Balls To The Lot Of Ya.
Also,
Queries the curator as to why
Only three walls have paintings on.
(Because
That’s all
You’ve done,
Bilo).
3.
Bilo has the name of his girlfriend
Tattooed on his back.
Her name is Susie.
They break up.
As fate would have it,
His next girlfriend is also called Susie.
When she sees the tattoo
It kind of freaks her out.
Eventually she gets used to it.
When they eventually stop seeing each other,
He goes searching for another girlfriend called Susie.
He finds one called Suzie.
She changes the spelling every morning
With a magic marker.
4.
Takes a ceramic St. Bernard dog,
Puts it in a glass pyramid
With a smaller St Bernard dog.
Adds water and coloured stars
So that on shaking the installation
The stars fall ever so gently
Like a mini constellation.
Suzie takes one look and says,
‘My uncle brought me one of those
Back from Austria’.
5.
Decides to emulate Banksy
And sprays the word ‘knockers’
On a wall near the station.
6.
each individual bristle of his paint brush
bristles individual each application
master of his craft individual
i mean we are all
good at one
thing
surely?
7.
There, he said, sit back and
Gaze upon my genius!
In the middle of the canvas, a
Tiny dot which, he said, re-
-presented the nullification of all
Hope in a blank void nothingness.
Susie said it looked like a dead fly and
He conceded that it was a dead fly,
8.
I visited the studio of the artist Bilo
And immediately became enraptured with a sculpture
The likes of which I’d never seen.
A white metallic box, rectangular, monolithic,
With various protuberances, brown,
Like raised bridges,like portals to a new age,
One about two thirds of the way down, the other
One third from the top, both on the left hand side,
And on the rear a strange convolution
Of black metal grilling and pipes
The likes of which, in their elegant geometry,
Brought to mind the logic of ivy.
It stood like a monument to souls, to life,
Quietly humming with a sci-fi energy
In an almost smug manner, and yet it represented
Something beyond the immediate, timeless,
He kept his sandwiches and the milk in it.
9.
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
Taking some paint,
Whacking it on!
There, that’s the
Bathroom decorated.
Robert Garnham 