Poems for Pleasure

[Ishmael]

Once upon a time we had a poetry thread, but I've lost it. And sometimes I feel like writing a piece of silly doggerel. Possibly you do too. So I'll start.


Good Clean Fun
(with apologies to WS Gilbert)

There once was a little Venusian queen
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
Who landed her spacecraft on our village green
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
And she asked me why authors of modern renown
All wrote about folk from the wrong side of town
In erotic potboilers that they can't put down!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

I said if you really desire a good book
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
You'd better not judge them by how covers look
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
Though their heroines may be all scantily-clad
Though their back-jacket blurbs may be wickedly bad
Their repetitive content will just drive you mad!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

Now in stories which are of the space-opera kind
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
There are lashings of danger and sinister minds
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
But I'm glad to relate after everything's said
Though there may be some schmaltz when the two heroes wed
That the bulk of the action won't take place in bed!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

[amoskalik]

Well done! This should be a fun thread.

[kentagions]

*
In my chapters the breaks are quite brisk
Set them off with a mark some tisk, tisk
A star, not a hash
Sadly simple, some trash
But I’ve only my big *


JAK

[Ishmael]

Aloha Uhura

My boyfriend is a Trekkie
He says he's James T Kirk
When he goes outdoors in Long Johns
He looks a proper berk!

Our life's not as you know it
It's bound to end in tears
He cries “Beam me up, Scottie!”
Then blooming disappears.

I know what I shall have to do
I'll give him such a shock
When I put on my pointy ears
And claim I'm Mrs Spock!

[Ishmael]

When I consider how I spend my time
Submitting stories to some great slush pile,
Where often the first readers aren't sublime
Or even competent to stop and think awhile,
Where diligent adherence to assessment schemes
Results in declarations that my genius does not fit
And pours cold water over all my fondest dreams
Before they've time to read more than a page of it,
Then, then, methinks no justice dwells
In any publisher's cold, stony heart,
No future ages shall my awesome words retell
Or on a marble pedestal set them apart.
And yet - undaunted, here I am anew
Sending my treasured work, Dear Editor, to you.

[amoskalik]

[warning, polemic content for those offended by such things]

War is peace
Are you listening?
Kill your mind
is their mission
Don't put up a fight
We'll be happy tonight
And wake up in a dumpy trumpkinland

Gone astray is the true word
Here to stay is a new world
It won't be too long
Before we go along
to living in a dumpy trumpkinland

On the border we can build a wall, man
Then pretend that it is good and strong
We'll say are you Mexican?
They'll say no man
But we'll ship them off
because their skin is brown

Freedom's gone
There's no denying
When everyone keeps on lying
We cover our eyes
and try to disguise
we're dying in this dumpy trumpkinland

On the border we can build a wall, man
Then pretend that it is good and strong
We'll say are you Mexican?
They'll say no man
But we'll ship them off
because their skin is brown

All your dreams,
are they fulfilling?
Lost your soul. Ain't that chilling?
Don't look so sad, it can't be that bad
Just living, dying
Hand in hand in a crazy dumpy trumpkinland.

[kentagions]

Yup

[Ishmael]

Oh my, you guys!

The Times (UK) has been running a 2016 carol rewrite contest. You both should have entered!

[amoskalik]

Good one, Kent.

Oh my, you guys!

The Times (UK) has been running a 2016 carol rewrite contest. You both should have entered!

Maybe next year

[Ishmael]

WARNING - if you are a Corbynista you may find this song offensive. If you never heard of the man you may find it unintelligible. (Tune - The Ovaltinis)


JC Clings on - Obliviously

We are the Corbynistas,
Jezza's girls and boys,
We wake each morning straight and gay
To play at politics and say -
Would you like to spit at Tories?
Won't you join our joys?
At understanding we're not good
We think that history is dud
Because our heads are made of wood
We're Jezza's girls and boys!

They are the filthy Tories
Think they're born to rule!
They'd like to starve us all to death
We'll curse them with our dying breath -
Oh, just because they went to Eton
They take us for fools!
The truth is we're ex-Eton too
But that don't mean we're not like you
We're upper class but we're not blue
We're Jezza's girls and boys!

There on the ballot paper
We will put our mark
At Christmastime we choose JC
We know that's how it's meant to be -
Ah, hark how the nation listens
To our frenzied bark
They voted Brexit, and what's more
When Jeremy sat on the floor
They knew what empty seats were for -
Unlike Jezza's girls and boys!

We may not get elected,
May not have a clue,
We think all politics a game
But we press onward just the same -
Ha! Do you think that our Momentum's
Really something new?
We're ancient Marxists from the Ark
Das Kapital is such a lark
But real life? Nah, we're in the dark!
We're Jezza's girls and boys!

[amoskalik]

I'm not familiar with Jeremy Corbyn or his policies but given the faddish nature of politics around the world these days I can still appreciate the sentiment. Well done!

[Ishmael]

Thank you.

Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of the opposition in the UK parliament (i.e. he is in theory the alternative to the present prime minister). He has a policy of resetting the national clock to 1980. This is sad because there are some sensible people in his party who could give the government a much needed credible debate (and to give them credit are actually trying to do so even in present circumstances.)

Every now and again I tell my wife I could make a political comeback (and she tells me I wouldn't last a week.) However things have changed so much since I stood for parliament I think I should need to seek the nomination of the None of The Above Party!

PS. JC sat on the floor of a train to make the point that it was full = inadequate service. Sadly the train company then released CCTV footage of him walking through an almost empty carriage to get to a full bit.

[amoskalik]

He sounds like a character and in today's world that seems to sell better than substance . It's the fourth turning, if you subscribe to that theory, which means things are coming to a head (just like in the Great Depression/WWII which was the last fourth turning).

[Ishmael]

Friends of Martin on Facebook may know he tends to write by means of dictation while driving. Recently he noted an unfortunate incident where twenty minutes' work was lost when he didn't realize the recorder hadn't started. A bit like Coleridge who lost a great part of his major work 'Kubla Khan' when interrupted by 'a person from Porlock.' Okay, something similar has happened to all of us. The satirical poet among us could not resist.

YESWE KHAN

In Xanadu did Martin L
A twenty-minute piece dictate
Where words, the product of his brain
Just tumbled out as right as rain
All down the interstate.

So twice two thousand phrases fair
He spouted to uncaring air
Only to find when he got there
Technology on which he'd trusted
Had failed to work 'cos it was busted.

[Ishmael]

And in response to another FB inspiration:

A Golden Retriever

Planet of the Apes was just a fairy tale,
Not a chance that it could ever come true,
Gorillas out to get me,
Chimps all on my side,
Talking primates dyeing their hair blue!

Then I saw her face! Hey - my girlfriend's a gibbon
From outer space – our apartment's a zoo!
What a big disgrace - tied up in pink ribbon,
None can tell me what to do -
I'm orang too!


I wonder why people don't care for me writing on their timelines?

[amoskalik]

And in response to another FB inspiration:

A Golden Retriever

Planet of the Apes was just a fairy tale,
Not a chance that it could ever come true,
Gorillas out to get me,
Chimps all on my side,
Talking primates dyeing their hair blue!

Then I saw her face! Hey - my girlfriend's a gibbon
From outer space – our apartment's a zoo!
What a big disgrace - tied up in pink ribbon,
None can tell me what to do -
I'm orang too!


I wonder why people don't care for me writing on their timelines?

Ha! You can write on my timeline anytime (although that's partly because I rarely log in to FB anymore).

[Ishmael]

I've been taking an interest in Rattle's weekly 'Poets Respond' feature, for poetry about current news. I doubt if poetry from an idiosyncratic UK perspective will suit their audience, even were it not for my seldom writing blank verse* and never writing free verse**, two features of my work that make it as unfashionable as it's possible to be.

However, should anyone have an esoteric interest in the sonnet*** format you might like to know that I've attempted two such in the last couple of weeks and these can be seen on the poetry page of my blog (see below).

A while ago I undertook to try and explain what little I know about poetry to those who might be interested, so here's a glossary of technical terms used above.

Blank verse - doesn't rhyme
Free verse - doesn't rhyme or scan (i.e. is not written in a traditional rhythm.) Also known (by me) as badly punctuated prose.
Sonnet - 14 lines with rhymes on alternate lines for the first 12 lines then finishing with a rhyming couplet

[amoskalik]

I've been taking an interest in Rattle's weekly 'Poets Respond' feature, for poetry about current news. I doubt if poetry from an idiosyncratic UK perspective will suit their audience, even were it not for my seldom writing blank verse* and never writing free verse**, two features of my work that make it as unfashionable as it's possible to be.

However, should anyone have an esoteric interest in the sonnet*** format you might like to know that I've attempted two such in the last couple of weeks and these can be seen on the poetry page of my blog (see below).

A while ago I undertook to try and explain what little I know about poetry to those who might be interested, so here's a glossary of technical terms used above.

Blank verse - doesn't rhyme
Free verse - doesn't rhyme or scan (i.e. is not written in a traditional rhythm.) Also known (by me) as badly punctuated prose.
Sonnet - 14 lines with rhymes on alternate lines for the first 12 lines then finishing with a rhyming couplet

Well done. I actually enjoy sonnets, both writing and reading. Looks like you employed the rarely used iambic heptameter form.

[Ishmael]

Thanks. Iambic heptameters are probably too wordy for most people's tastes, but they do therefore provide something unusual. The only poem of mine to win a competition prize in modern times was actually written in iambic pentameters. Right now that's in Rattle's long term slush pile.

I am hoping to find the US markets (possibly chimerical) that are alleged still to publish traditional ballad-form poetry. I've given up hope of ever finding this in the UK.

Once upon a time I attended a shipboard lecture on the subject of the sonnet as a poetic form. (It wasn't even a particularly esoteric cruise, surprisingly.) I've had a sneaking fancy for sonnet-writing ever since. Mind you we must be rarities because I've no recollection of seeing a new one published in decades.

[amoskalik]

A nonsense sonnet:

The Doob

Once I was a ponderific manube
who never quixuned but slovened unherb
and bood. The flitizens forblamed, "The Doob!"
whilst plaincozing the conflazenous flerb
whose oozenous afloze they sunderberked
and lobed twoward my tuberlone and prone
proze. Oh, 'twas dirksome. Oh, how thure I zerked.
But somebling stumbling stunward came. I flone,
"This is!" Maybe, maybe not. Until woom
and woof can interfly then I will why
away the zymic pyme. 'Tis all a moom
can. Do you, oh my nover, everply?

For woom and woof, unfrazened as they blam,
koop me a manube who forblames, "I am."

[amoskalik]

National Haiku
Poetry Day is today
In case you don't know

Easily written
Haiku gathers followers
but has few masters

[Ishmael]

Bad guys are problems
Quite easily solved by the
Mother of all bombs.

Oh my! That may be
A step too far over the
Edge of The Abyss.

For whom the bell tolls
Doesn't matter so long as
Someone still tolls the bell.

[Ishmael]

(With apologies to NW)

Don't laugh at me, 'cos I'm not cool.
Try, at my age, I'd look a fool,
Some days it just seems
I'm only dreaming dreams
Of writing stories that really move you.

I see you all reading a lot
Oh why don't you like me a jot?
Some day maybe
Your taste will turn to me
Don't laugh at me, 'cos I'm not cool!

[Ishmael]

And another rejection from Rattle's 'Poets Respond'

Obamadvice

You might have thought he would have learned before,
Obama, when he cast the Brexit runes,
Telling the British how they should vote for
Europe, not go off whistling their own tunes.
Well, his advice did not go down so well;
“You know what?” says we. “Do give it a rest!
We don't know much but one thing we can tell
Is when some foreign bloke tells us what's best
For us, we growl, “Go take a running jump!”
But no! He's back to tell the French to vote
For Macron, who was winning but now slumps.
So listen over there and please take note:
If you think we should move, cry out “Stand still!”
Lo and behold, you might just find we will.

[kentagions]

To the sales bots that keep sneaking onto the forum.
Arise Pitchfork Nation! Go forth and slay bots.

Ode to the Effable

O’ charlatan dude I can’t eff
Too bad that you’re name isn’t Jeff
Stop using this berth
To increase your net worth
And learn English, you dumb effing eff

[Ishmael]

Error Message

404 not found
You are always telling me
Following dead links.

Now listen machine!
Why don’t you keep 403
And just give me one?

[Chris533]

Once upon a time we had a poetry thread, but I've lost it. And sometimes I feel like writing a piece of silly doggerel. Possibly you do too. So I'll start.


Good Clean Fun
(with apologies to WS Gilbert)

There once was a little Venusian queen
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
Who landed her spacecraft on our village green
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
And she asked me why authors of modern renown
All wrote about folk from the wrong side of town
In erotic potboilers that they can't put down!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

I said if you really desire a good book
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
You'd better not judge them by how covers look
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
Though their heroines may be all scantily-clad
Though their back-jacket blurbs may be wickedly bad
Their repetitive content will just drive you mad!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

Now in stories which are of the space-opera kind
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
There are lashings of danger and sinister minds
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!
But I'm glad to relate after everything's said
Though there may be some schmaltz when the two heroes wed
That the bulk of the action won't take place in bed!
Oh tell me a good sci-fi story!

Well done!
Makes me think of Asimov~

[Ishmael]

Thank you! High praise!

[morganb]

Woke up one morning with this little ditty going through my head. No idea where it came from in the night, but I'm picturing some future antagonist whistling the tune as he makes his way over people's rooftops and down into their homes. Sincere apologies to Mr. Dick Van Dyke...

Chim chiminy
Chim chiminy
Chim chim cheree
I takes wot I likes
If I likes wot I see

Chim chiminy
Chim chiminy
Chim chim cheroo
You got wot I likes
So I takes it from you

~Morgan

[amoskalik]

Woke up one morning with this little ditty going through my head. No idea where it came from in the night, but I'm picturing some future antagonist whistling the tune as he makes his way over people's rooftops and down into their homes. Sincere apologies to Mr. Dick Van Dyke...

Chim chiminy
Chim chiminy
Chim chim cheree
I takes wot I likes
If I likes wot I see

Chim chiminy
Chim chiminy
Chim chim cheroo
You got wot I likes
So I takes it from you

~Morgan

I like it!