This way,
or that way?
That way,
or this?
I never can tell.
And, sometimes, I miss
a chip being dropped,
a pasty passing by,
or an old man with an ice cream.
I sigh.
This way,
or that way?
That way,
or this?
Pen*s
is just an anagram
of sp*ne
and p*nes,
sn*pe and sep*n –
and if sep*n
isn’t a word
then it d*rn well ought to be.
They are just w*rds,
l*tters on a p*ge,
so what are you all that worr*ed about?
“Plant your seagulls early,
and plant them in a row;
then they’ll be ready for Spring Harvest!”
said nobody I know.
Fred Herring? He didn’t have a clue. Never knew that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – time after time – and was so often mistaken for a case of déjá vu, that he seemed to be what he was, in fact, not.
.
He was a poem in the midst of purple prose, wearing a yellow tie. Why? Nobody knows. In his buttonhole a blue rose, and in his top pocket, a handkerchief, upon which he blew his nose. Then again, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts in the coldest of days; imagination plays with the senses, you see a ship jumping fences, which sends you to sleep; and you slip between the sheets of a thousand page essay upon the subject of abject subject poverty in the time of the Russian Emancipation of the Serfs. And, what’s worse, nobody cares.
.
Theirs is the rub. A Dub-dub is just as extinct as a Dodo; but, to hypothesise is a no-no.
.
Where, you may ask, is this going?
.
I have know-no way of knowing?
.
I only right the things – rite?
Posted in Poetry
Tagged #dialogueforaplay, #FredHerring, #poetry. #poem, #RedHerring
‘Let’s meet up for a coffee!’
Said nobody, ever, to me;
so I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it do this thing,
let’s meet up for a coffee!’
to nobody, that I could see.
.
So we met up for a coffee;
no, we did not do any such thing,
we didn’t meet up for a coffee,
and you never gave me a ring.
.
‘Let’s meet up for a coffee! Again!’
Obviously, from the first,
this is not going to happen.
.
‘Let’s meet up for a coffee!’
.
It’s never gonna happen.
The worm, said to the fish,
‘I really, really wish
that this hook
wasn’t stuck up my bottom.’
.
The fish said to the worm,
‘It must make you squirm;
by the way that you look
you could be mistook
for a worm who has … worms!
Have you got ‘em?’
.
‘No.’ said the worm,
‘And, another thing I wish,
is that you didn’t pop me on your dish,
as it won’t do
either of us a favour or two.’
.
The fish could see
the point of the words
that the worm spoke to warn;
and if it hadn’t have been so hungry
wouldn’t have treated them with scorn.
.
The worm and the fish
we’re both caught in a trap;
fed the same old line,
and never let off the hook –
always predestined to endure a final mishap.
‘SoCS’ Prompt: Black, Gray, or White – unreliable witness. As posted by Linda G Hill
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): So, madam, what colour was the vehicle that you saw leaving the vicinity of the area of Whom Manor at about, or just before, or even just after 11, 12, or 1’ o’Clock on the day in question?
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): So, it was Black, Grey, or White? Can you be a little more specific? No. Okay, it was Black, Grey, or White, and being driven by …
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): Well, I stopped there hoping that you would fill in the details.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): Well – Man, Woman, Girl, Boy, Other.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): ‘Yes’ is not helpful, Madam. If you could narrow it down it would be most helpful.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): Not ‘other’. Yes, that does narrow it down somewhat. We have ascertained that it was a Man, Woman, Girl, or a Boy, driving a Black, Grey, or White vehicle.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): Not a vehicle? Ah, we are getting somewhere now.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): It was a ‘Motor Car’. A Black, Grey, or White Motor Car.
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): And in which direction was it going?
DCI Syd (ex of the Yard): Forwards. It would be, wouldn’t it.
I was walking along,
when a leaf, from off of.a tree,
landed upon my head,
damaging me –
I was concussed?
Nobody fussed
over my supine body,
but, other leaves soon joined in,
tapping a cacophonous threnody
upon my broken pate;
at this rate, I’ll be
the mound of the fallen zero –
more a landmark,
less a hero.
Fred, the dead Red Squirrel, sighed,
‘The last time I died …’ he said,
I was wearing red.
‘And, this time, too …
perhaps, next time, I should
be wearing blue.
One day,
a whale
decided that
it wanted to learn Brail;
but, the whale
was in a bit of a bind,
as, not being blind,
it was difficult to find
a reason for doing so.
The whale talked to a friend,
who had been to school,
and asked, ‘Am I being a fool?
Wanting to learn Brail?’
The friend thought a bit,
about the learning of Brail,
and declared, ‘If you don’t try,
you are destined to fail’.
Which were wise words indeed.
‘But …’ was added at last,
‘I think that that you’ll find
you’ll need fingers to read
the language of the blind’,
and as the whale was deaf,
it signed the words
in BSL as well.
Graeme Sandford 