Goodbye 2011

No posts during 2011. A year to forget. Will try harder in 2012.

Druridge Bay

I threw the stick into the sea
She ran and caught, and running back to me
she snorted at the sand and water up her nose
tearing along the beach, leaving deep impressions with her doggy toes

The beach was sunny yesterday for once and warm
You can keep your costas and your Benidorm
Seaton Sluice and Blyth have much to offer
If only just more often it was hotter

Breakers out to sea like some Pacific beach
Who needs Bondi with Druridge in such easy reach?
Surfers in their wet suits keeping warm
Beach babes wearing something like their grannnies would have worn

The windswept glory of the Northumbrian coast
Lindisfarne and Bamburgh our proud boast
Despite the cold and no half dressed pretty girls to see
I'll sit here with the dog and my thermos of hot tea

Fort William (Home from home)

Road to the isles from Fort William
The Bonny Prince at Glenfinnan
Harry Potter on his train
but all the time with lots of rain

Strontian and Ardnamurchan
Deep fried mars bars, haggis with 'em
Tenant's lager, Newky Brown
This is where it's going down

Scottish music, smiling faces
This one's called the Blaydon Races!
Be wary if you want to dine
Everyone's in bed by nine.

Bobby Shaftoe's Scottish too.
(that's something you never knew)
Tam O'Shanters with orange hair
The Loch Ness Monster in his lair

Craddoc cruises, Highland Pipes
Dutch, Italian, English types
from all the world they come here
Fort William, the town with no real beer

Ben Nevis, Glen Nevis, Ballahulish
jumping thrashing captive fish
Rum Muck Eigg and Tobermory
makes eating salmon a bit gory

Empty hills with no livestock
lovely views across the loch
All around the blooming heather
and Ecclefechan Scottish weather.



(July 2009)

I don't want to be a fucked up poet

I don’t want to be a fucked up poet
I want expletives deleted
verses metred
and most of the time
Yes, I’d like rhyme

I sit at the bar and drink
I order a beer and watch it sink
May be another would help me think

May be another would help me sleep
to forget why I’m here and let me sink deep
Deep, where I’m forgotten
not missing or missed

I start writing a poem
and I see something small
I help it to grow
It starts with a trickle and turns to a flow
soon it’s all over me and I can’t swim
I cry out aloud as it sucks me in

I’m a fucked up poet - that’s me done
Pass the gin.

The Green Carpet

The Green Carpet
(Collaboration with Poet Oro Etti)

Round my house a carpet of green is spread
On it lie the corpses of thousands dead
red blood given for a green and pleasant land
Am I guiltless or did I have a hand?

Bank Accounts

Bank accounts are scarey
though they should be very good
they should be full of money
if only my one would

I never open statements
I never look on screen
to find out what's the balance
do you know just how I mean?

If only I were sensible
and worked out a simple way
of how to spend just a little
less than is in my monthly pay

It never seems to work like that
the bills pile up each day
I get wound up while the bank gets fat
and the debt never goes away.



1 May 2010

Off to Market

 Off to Market
(Villanelle)

Ladies off to market all excited
stacked in their charabanc four storeys high
Had they known they'd not be so delighted

To tell the truth the sheep are not far-sighted
they had not missed their brothers at their time
Ladies off to market all excited

Packed in with friends, happy, re-united
As it gets warm then some get crushed and die
Had they known they'd not be so delighted

No light or rest: the ladies stand now blighted
by waggon,ferry or by plane to fly
Ladies off to market all excited

From pleasant fields and tourists we invited
All look away as sheep go roughly by
Had they known they'd not be so delighted

What waits for you, dear ladies so benighted?
Rack of lamb, or shank - we get the chops, you die
Ladies off to market all excited
had you known you'd not be so delighted




24 April 2010