Tag: art

Nursery Rhyme to a President, by Joan Hardiman


By Robert Garnham

Nursery Rhyme for a President
There was a crooked man who had a crooked smile
He found himself in Washington, helped out by Russian guile
Beat Hillary Clinton with Comey and spies
Moved to the White House, with jobs for his boys
“The working guy would elect me, he likes me”

Putin had a little scam to infiltrate the orange man
And everything the Kremlin said Donald had to do
Who dares impeach the commander in chief, credentials as white as snow
Nancy Pelosi, outed Zelensky for vilifying family of Joe
Blackmailed Ukraine, to Republicans shame,
played out In The Room Where It Happened
“What you’re seeing, is what you’re reading, is not what’s happening”

Immigrants and Mexicans climb the border wall
Along came the militia who tried to make them fall
Separated, incarcerated, the children put in pens
The world looks on in anger and doesn’t do a thing
“We are rounding ‘em up in a very humane way”

Climate change scientific hoax Greenhouse gases and factory smoke
Thunbergs glare, he said who cares
for plastic oceans or polar bears
NATO alone, world is prone, no yankee dollar
China and Jung had such fun, laughing at his pallor
“Man we could do with a big fat dose of Global Warming “

Two little Dickie Birds sitting on the fence
one named Donald the other named Pence
Tweet away Donald though you make no sense,
shame on you Pence for your deference
Come back Barack, come back Michelle
the country really needs you it’s all gone to hell
“Show me someone with no ego and I’ll show you a big loser”

Sing a song for Floyd, I can’t breathe they heard him cry
While three other coppers stood idly by
When Donald’s mouth was open the Klan began to sing
Wasn’t that an insult to the followers of King
“African Americans, I like them and they like me”

Melania in her tower house laying out her clothes
Trump was in the tanning room whipping of his robes
Epstein in the basement with the Duke of York
When along comes Virginia to do you know what
“I will be phenomenal to women”
“Frankly I don’t have time for political correctness”

There is an old fella called Biden,
who surely will give trump a hiding
The Jackasses will laugh,
when the NRA pass wagging their toy guns behind them
The Unite the White rally, full of hatred and spite
While cold blooded Covid destroys everyday life
“Guns, no guns it does’nt really matter
“I will make America great again”

CNN in The Rose Garden trying to get a clue
Fauci in the background face all askew
Trump is in the front row insisting it’s a flu
While fox news are airing fake Covid news
“USA will be stronger than ever before and soon”

Humpy Trumpy sat on The Hill
Humpy trumpy took a big spill
All his cohorts and red neck friends
couldn’t get him elected again
Good job, Good job.
“We used to have victories but we don’t have them anymore”

Joan Hardiman

 

Chicken Mystery, by Catherine Doherty Nicholls


By Robert Garnham

Chicken Mystery

I found a frozen chicken in a hedge.
Fully wrapped, not a bit defrosted,
Maybe I could roast it with potatoes.
Who threw it there?
Some litterbug had tossed it.

I put it in my bag
and kept on walking,
White winter sunlight,
blinding as it set,
Then more things rolled towards me on the tarmac,
A tin of beans,
and lemons in a net.

If I took them would that count as stealing?
I pondered
as I wandered back to mine,
Was I being followed by the owner,
of a chicken that cost two pounds ninety nine?

Something told me someone was behind me,
It was creepy, l felt right on edge,
Panicking, I ran till I was gasping,
and threw the chicken, beans and lemons in a hedge.

Winner of no Poetry Ireland Competition, or any other competition, no published debut collection, nothing printed anywhere yet.
Her poems have been nominated for nothing so she’s nominating this poem to go on this page – a great place to start.

She is the curator of nothing. Her anthology doesn’t exist, yet she keeps going.

A student of Kevin Higgins.

 

Fairy-tale Romances, by Ama Bolton


By Robert Garnham

Fairy-tale Romances

“Happily ever after”
(forgive my hollow laughter)
it’s fantasy, a figment of folklore.
Your knight in shining armour
could turn out to be no charmer
but a bully or a silly pompous bore.
Even sweet Maid Marian
may turn out to be a harridan,
and Sleeping Beauty! You should hear her snore!

Though the Prince may seem adorable
his manners are deplorable.
Cinderella’s pretty, but quite dim.
Snow White is vain and shallow
And Jack’s a tedious fellow;
he’s always at the golf-course or the gym.
Unless you’re into farming
don’t tie the knot with Charming
you’d soon run out of things to say to him.

Beauty’s a part-time Beast,
the prince, half frog, at least.
Beware Bluebeard! Beware of Reynardine!
The end of the love story
is far too often gory.
Living on your own can be just fine
with a dog or a cat
to sleep on your lap.
You can make up your own storyline.

Ama Bolton, former member of The Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, convenes a Stanza group in Somerset. Her poems have featured at festivals, on Radio 3’s The Verb, and in magazines and anthologies including Bridport Prize 2008. She blogs at http://barleybooks.wordpress.com/

 

Disappearing Act, by Lucy Tertia George


By Robert Garnham

Alright, alright, quiet down. I have an announcement and I hope you understand
that due to circumstances beyond the control of The Ritzy Music Hall and Working Man’s Club, tonight’s performance of Magnifico
will not go ahead as planned.

When we booked Magnifico, straight from Blackpool’s Magic-o-rama,
we had every intention of bringing you the Winner of the Most Promising Comeback Award, with all the trimmings
but without all this drama.

The last communiqué we had from the artiste said he was on the A324. But somewhere between Little Billingsdene and Crug we lost all contact. To the management this qualifies
as ‘force majeur’.

His assistant Delores is backstage, crying her eyes out, confidence cracked. She’s done up like a Christmas Tree, but her nerves are shot
and your hollering has upset the doves
they use in the act.

We regret there’s no refund but you’re not paying for nowt, you enjoyed the free buffet and the singalong with Marjorie and that, we feel, should constitute
a good night out.

No, this is not like the time we promised Night of 100 Stars,
when, in a misunderstanding that some of you felt should come to the attention of the Advertising Standards Authority,
we only had 12 people on stage
and three of them didn’t have their Equity Cards.

Of course, I’ve called his mobile phone, I’ve dialled his agent twice.
I even rang the Magic Circle, but have you tried getting information from a secret society? No dice.

Throwing anything at the stage will result in a lifetime ban.
You’ll not see the panto or get a seat for the Tom Jones tribute act where he wows the crowd with Sex Bomb like the very man himself— and I know you’re a fan.

You’re only hurting yourself if this place is trashed.
I’ll cancel Weekly Bingo and the darts team will be forced to practice in the boys changing room at the Youth Club
and that place stinks of Flash.

If you won’t listen to reason, I’m off, do your worst.
I’m taking Delores to the All-U-Can Eat at the Golden Horseshoe and if I see Magnifico I’ll have his guts for garters.
That’s if you don’t get him first.

Lucy Tertia George is an author, publisher and satirist, sometimes known as Lucy Lyrical. Her novel, Three Women, was published by Starhaven Press in 2018.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lucytertiageorge
Twitter: @Wordville

 

Broccoli, by Melanie Branton


By Robert Garnham

Broccoli

If you have to eat broccoli,
gobble it cockily.
Flaunt it with pride,
don’t gulp it with guilt!
You’ve done nothing wrong –
it will make you grow strong,
for broccoli-eaters
are stockily built.

If you have to eat broccoli,
stick to it doggedly:
pick up your fork
and submit to your fate.
Don’t let it go cold
and disintegrate soggily.
Eat all that broccoli
up off your plate!

Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from North Somerset who is totally obsessed with cats, linguistics, Vikings and vegetables. Her published collections are Can You See Where I’m Coming From? (Burning Eye, 2018) and My Cloth-Eared Heart (Oversteps, 2017) melaniebranton.wordpress.com

 

For the Breakdown Men of the Leamington Spa Vehicle Recovery Office, by Kerry Priest


By Robert Garnham

For the Breakdown Men of the Leamington Spa Vehicle Recovery Office

O breakdown men, O Bob, O Mick, O Roger, when fourth gear
failed to engage on the A46 just south of Coventry,
we were right there, Eileen and I, between those twin keeps,
the castles of Warwick and Kenilworth, and it transpired that chivalrous
men worthy of Elizabeth I still walk, or rather drive,
the asphalt and tar of the low-slung heart of England.

When we attended the conference, Hello Kitty from a Feminist Perspective
at the department of Sociology of a nearby university,
it was suggested in some quarters that academic standards must be slipping.
But standards in vehicle recovery in the South Midlands are, if anything,
clearly rising, O Mick, O Roger, O Bob!

With an exhaustive collection of alphabetized Haynes manuals,
you await the phone in the back office
like three Tibetan Bodhisattvas with a library of ancient scrolls.
And there’s something about your matching waffle-weave polo shirts,
call it a casual formality, but it took only one glance
to know you’d never presume to assume that it was friction disc wear
that left Eileen and me stranded on the dual carriageway,
but would allow for the possibility that the clutch pressure plate
was prevented from sliding on the transmission input splines,
or that you might need to refit the clutch release bearing and lever,

for you combine a sharp sense of the way things should be,
of a job done right, with the purest instinct of those who have laboured
a lifetime in a vehicular environment.

Breakdown men, you know your camshaft from your crankshaft
as easily as I know any two Sanrio characters from one another.

I’d wager your MOT checks are thorough without being overly stringent.

And is it The Specials or Madness or some more obscure Two Tone release
that you play, Mick, on your retro record player with inbuilt speaker
when you go back to your virgin Queen, your Anne Hathaway,
who you keep in Yorkshire terriers and cream leather sofas?
And is it a Ruby Porter or an IPA you gulp of an evening, Bob?
as you share a table in a 1930s brown brick tavern?

O breakdown men, we were brought together by hapless luck,
but our entire lives were one long collision course
to this enormous corrugated box, a testament to metal
where Eileen and I bask momentarily in your benevolence.
Such benign technocracy O Bob, O Mick, O Roger!
What rottweilers, what girders, what stanchions of steel!

 

I want to be . . . By Geraldine Ward


By Robert Garnham

I Want to Be…

like Pam Ayres
and Victoria Wood.
Not care what others think,
and are highly talented.
I want to be a cross between Julie Walters and Buddy Holly.
Get your head around that!
I do not have the sideburns
or matching quiff
of dark suits and shades and sixties glitz.
I would have loved to have been Debbie Harry.
Blondie was just the biz.
Eighties punk rock glamour puss.
Name a celebrity you admire?
Chances are they are either still here,
or harps and lyres.
Shaken not stirred.
Bond had his last dance.
Sean Connery really was a class act.
The problem I am left with, is who I could choose to be?
Well, everyone else is taken, all that’s left is me.

Geraldine Ward is an author and poet from Kent. She has had work in ‘The Sunday Tribune,’ and ‘International Times’ among other publications. She enjoys playing the piano, cello and ukulele. Her twitter handle is @GWardAuthor