A Pretty Kettle of Poetry

Dickensian Kenneth as is his ilk
In pyjama regalia picks up the milk.
Slippers quick-march hup hup one two
Back at the double to Breakfast HQ.

Where in her eggcup marmalade empire
Tea toasted soldier paraphernalia,
Victoriana’s rule of thumb clear;
He’s under hers “Yes love, no dear”.

‘X’ marks the spot on his Union Jack bot
Where the canvassing Conservative candidate stopped.
His face, like the rosette, turned Tory Blue
Securing a seat in the polls ‘92.

Dickensian Kenneth as is his bent
Eyes left parades outside the gents.
No medals for lateness; Victoria’s cross.
Despatches excuses; Careless Talk Costs!

Drunk on revenge
See them square up to each other.
The same old scraps.
The same old bother.

They hold their minute of silence
while bad-mouthing and incapable of keeping silent.
One day, both sides might come to their senses
as amateur giant-killing peacemakers beat professional war mongers in a cup tie upset that sends dailies into delirious cup fever excitement.

Meanwhile, the school blackboard is blank.
What have we learnt in centuries of learning?
Give as good as we get?
Leave revengers and pie-eyed war party disco dance floor revellers disco burning?

Very wordy.
Too much so.
Simple message:
Let it all go.

life is hard
like a war
i’m no bard
that’s for sure

bombs and bullets
tears and torment
blood and blitz
is what I meant

every day
turning to night
come what may
before the fight

fearing a loss
you pray for victory
but who gives a toss
down on one knee?

Plate-spinners spin tales.
Jugglers juggle coincidence destinies.
Acrobats do tumbles and cartwheels
while banging against skull cavities.

What people said and what they did
gets distorted in a hall of mirrors
as escapologist brain cells
vanish and disappear.

Trapeze artists in high-low mood swings.
Clowns doing slap stick comedy routines.
Dwarves playing pranks round and round in rings
as magicians cast spells to magic away and free lions and horses and childhood dreams.

As tricks of the mind cloud fuzzy senses
big top heads get lost
in thick theatrical smoke that billows and tent-denses
while thought lines get telepathically crossed.

like a piece of you has gone
gone into another life cut short and wrong
i’m standing mime-drumming on my balcony
and the next day is as tomorrow as far as I can see

football is the theme tonight
a match between my heart and soul
everything I love is out of sight
and trying to understand is the goal

Teatime rain brewing in teapot clouds,
powers-that-be dunk their big biscuits in their big cup.
A pretty kettle of fish and bones boiling in up-the-revolution kitchens with rights overlooked and doffed hats centuries kow-towed:
something’s getting somewhere like a cat from a kitten or a dog from a pup.

Legendary ties get consigned to history,
to be dug up again and again in eternal rematches that get postponed due to rain in waterlogged trench pitches.
Fighting cats and dogs, with little mercy,
a paw, a whisker, a tail, a skull, bubbling and steaming like being promise-vowed and brewed by 16th century revenge accountants and little quill-pushing civil snitches.

Meanwhile cats and dogs in many households
live together in peace or blissful non-aggression pacts, at least.
Time’s getting on and it’s getting muddled and old
as future generations drink and guzzle and party-revel, oblivious to a copy-cat unneighbourly dog-barking politely-camouflaged unidentified cat-dog mechanical biscuit-eating Yeatsian beast.

Writing this on the Number 1 bus.
Late meeting my instant love for dinner.
Met by chance lingering friends drinking to us
and, having to get away, made excuses like an original sinner.

Today I’m in such a good mood:
I might have cracked the meaning to it all.
Be cool, don’t fret, avoid any feud
and, if possible, stick to routines that punch the clock or knock down the wall.

i was born
i was a kid
i had a mark
for everything I did

i grew up
got a job
bent over backwards
to please the mob

i got married
went up the aisle
had a family
in traditional style

i got older
wondered why
got a policy
for when i’d die

i got on
worked and worked
had my doubts
but never shirked

i retired
drew my pension
grandkids round
relieved the tension

i never woke
died in my sleep
last thing i remember
counting sheep.

Original song by JDG (voice/drums)and Chicco Fresu (guitar)

The dead are like those alive:
Paranoid, mad, and clicking with nobody.
Newborn souls buzzing around, trapped in a honey money
modern mayhem medieval ancient digital world hive.

There’s no escape.
Tracker dogs sniffing them out and tracking them down.
Ropes or chains or rat face torture cages or red tape
and surveillance squads unearthing corpses still breathing underground.

How is it in the afterlife?
Can you still keep in touch?
Back and beyond, betrayals and ambitions as cutting as a quality steel knife?
Does it matter that much?

Not knowing where to start while looking forward to the end,
this week has been one long headache and Friday topped it with a computerised migraine.
Nothing works and I broke it anyway cos I lost my temper with cables and connections that tied me up in knots round the bend.
Would take my guitar to the mountains
but I can’t play, and I can’t climb
but worldly fakes can feign.
What’s your poison? Same again?

We beg on the street.
We roam the roads as puppet mongrels on a string.
We are roughened up. We are weak as can be.
We put you at risk and we are ready to risk anything.

There’s a longing in every astronaut-dog’s face.
A survival lottery in every litter’s birth.
As whistles go whistling off to space
bones come hurtling back down to Earth.

Would we run after them and bring them back?
Might we pick at the leftovers with the pack?
Would we wag our tail at any kind of kindness
or bark ’n’ snap out of fear of being defenceless?

We follow our noses.
We track down what we’re after.
We stray. We sleep.
We dream of having a master.