Tag: comedy

Carluccio’s, Ealing, Before Christmas, by John Lanyon


By Robert Garnham 
CARLUCCIO’S, EALING, BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Antonio,
big smiling man with the puffball hair
it’s almost like we’re on first name terms
you rich old mushroom hunter
how I might adoro your pomodoro
you master of corporate rusticity.

Your customers worked all week for this
if they want to sit down
they’re going to have to stand up
eat in
eat out
it’s all been worked out
black shirts
white shirts
it’s so cold tonight
your red and gold wrappings and trappings
your vibrantly green beans
your snowy mozzarella
your tanned, smiling staff melt my cynicism
100g at a time.

You dug up a good one.

Sooner or later
we’ll bore of your flavours
all the window dressing 
your one-stop Italy-to-go
but somewhere
as long as there are forests
there will be mushrooms.

John Lanyon lives in the Cotswolds. He works as an organic gardener, linguist, musician, and writer. Having failed his English Literature O Level, he came to love literature through reading it in French and German. He writes about art, the body, childhood, society, nature, the spirit of places, the secret lives of words.

 

The Archivist of Cathedral Hill, by Casey Jarrin


By Robert Garnham

Casey Jarrin is a poet, painter, and educator whose writing appears in Irish, UK, and US journals (Banshee, Abridged, Washington Square Review, Belfield Literary Review, Banyan Review, Buzzwords, Grand Journal). She’s received the York, Goldsmith, and Fingal Poetry Prizes, been on the Bridport shortlist, and performed as a featured poet at Lime Square and the Nuyorican Poets Café. A Jewish-Catholic atheist raised in New York who’s since lived in Dublin and Minneapolis, she received her PhD in modern literature/film, taught at Macalester College for several years, and is founder-director of Live Mind Learning. She’s now completing her debut collection, The Naked Dinner. Website: www.caseyjarrin.com

 

Sort, by Sarah J. Bryson


By Robert Garnham 
Sort 

What sort are you? 
Tea or coffee? 
Victoria Sponge, 
or a rich fruit cake? 
Dark chocolate Bounty, 
or a Milky Bar kid? 
Would you choose 
a bag of lemon drops, 
or a sherbet dip? 
Would you prefer 
a large gobstopper, 
or an Extra Strong Mint? 
Milk Tray or Green & Blacks?
Are you a suck it and see type, 
or a gobble and go individual? 
Do you think birds of a feather
flock together, or rather that
opposites attract? 
Maybe you are
a Foxes Glacier Mint?
Me? I’m a Licorice Allsort

Sarah is interested in words, words for well being, people and nature and the connections between these elements. She has poems in print journals, anthologies and on line.

 

On waiting for a poetry journal’s acceptance/rejection email, by Terri Metcalfe


By Robert Garnham

Cumbria native Terri Metcalfe moved to Ireland with her Mayo born partner and two children in 2019. From a down-to-earth, tools of the practical trade family, she only recently in her forties thought it acceptable that she might be a serious poet. Terri has endured several decades of mental and physical ill health which she draws on in her work. She has been published in Abridged, A New Ulster, Green Ink Poetry, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis and Skylight 47, amongst others. She was shortlisted for the Open Window 2023 mentorship programme and will be a featured reader at the 20th anniversary of Over The Edge Literary Events held in Galway city library this coming January.

 

Dearly Beloved, by John Lawrence


By Robert Garnham 
Dearly Beloved

This poem is 
gathered here

to celebrate
the matrimony
of Couplet and Tercet.

This poem is not to be entered into lightly. 
Thus, we need to confess

that Couplet hath played 
fast and loose
with a sestet, thrice,

and Tercet hath also succumbed 
to the tenderness of carnal union

with a haiku, in an act of confused 
orientation. Nonetheless,
as a measure of forgiveness

and a certain degree of apathy, 
if no-one can show just cause 
or impediment, I proclaim 
Couplet and Tercet
to be a quintain.

John has recently moved to Cambridge (voluntarily) from Worcestershire, and writes poems (involuntarily) because he feels he has to or something bad might happen. He is a popular (reportedly) performer and has published a collection The Boy Who Couldn’t Say His Name.

 

By Robert Garnham 
THE FULL ENGLISH TAKES A DNA TEST

Old Bean, Old Sausage, there are question marks. 
I know you’ve had a lot on your plate.
How can I break this to you?
Your bacon is pure Viking.

Baked beans arrived here illegally
Uncle Sam wants them back
Hash browns have no right to remain
Plum tomatoes only speak Italian
Since 2006 HP sauce has called the Netherlands home 
PG Tips must face up to its colonial past

Three mushrooms on your shirt 
your England’s still dreaming

If you know which side your toast’s buttered 
you’ll be a good egg.

Mr Full English, you are thoroughly scrambled.

John Lanyon lives in the Cotswolds. He works as an organic gardener, linguist, musician, and writer. Having failed his English Literature O Level, he came to love literature through reading it in French and German. He writes about art, the body, childhood, society, nature, the spirit of places, the secret lives of words.

 

The Yarn Spinner, by George Bastow


By Robert Garnham 
He sits in the corner of your local boozer 
Wearing a smile as broad as a battlecruiser 
He's got the spiel of a champ and the luck of a loser 
But lend him an ear and he's sure to amuse ya 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, you know him 
 
He's got a mouth that moves at the speed of light 
Emitting patter sickly sweet as Angel Delight 
He's as old as the hills and as young as the night 
Halfway between an oracle and a gobshite 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, you know him 
 
He used to work for MI 5, but he keeps that on the low 
He used to be a roadie, went on tour with Status Quo 
He used to be a boxer, trained in the States with Smokin’ Joe 
Plus, he played all the instruments on Enya's Orinoco Flow 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, you know him 
 
He's a world-famous artist with a masterpiece on his easel 
He's an ex-Hollywood tough guy, former stuntman for Vin Diesel 
He’s a lapsed circus performer with his own troupe of dancing weasels 
Oh, and his wife’s a scientist who's discovered a cure for measles 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, you know him 
 
He spent decades as a TV exec, commissioning comedy and drama 
He spent his work experience at the British Museum spit-polishing suits of armour 
He spent seven years in Tibet as an organic yak meat farmer 
And he spent yesterday as a Buddhist monk, making tea for the Dalai Lama 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, you know him 
 
He’s been known to beguile crowds with his eccentric charm 
He often bewilders bar-staff with his far-fetched smarm 
For a pint or three, he'll no doubt twist your arm  
But everyone can agree he don’t mean any harm 
He's the Yarn-Spinner, we all know him

George Bastow is a poet, writer, blogger and hat connoisseur from the picturesque wilderness of North Warwickshire. 

 

He has written for numerous publications and regularly performs at spoken word events. 

 

George also facilitates workshops for Writing West Midlands’ Spark Young Writers Programme. 

 

Blog: https://gdbastow11.wordpress.com

Twitter: @GDBastow

 

Formication, by Tonnie Richmond


By Robert Garnham 
Formication
 
If, sometimes, you like to indulge
in a spot of alfresco, illicit sex
be careful where you lie,
be wary of what might happen next.
 
If, following said fornication
while you have a cigarette and a little rest,
you feel a rush of formication
you may well be sitting on an ants’ nest.

Tonnie Richmond has, since retirement, spent a lot of her time doing archeology and writing poems. These days, the poetry is a little less arduous than digging. She has had poems published by Dreich, Yaffle, Dragon and others.

 

The mighty, by Ruth Aylett


By Robert Garnham 
The mighty
--
He arrived in the sixth form
from a poxy private school
that thought itself posh,
and though he was local,
they’d rubbed his voice down
until our local accent came off
and he spoke like an Etonian.

He had that up-your-own-arse
confidence of the rich,
but wasn’t all that clever
when it came to school stuff,
almost like he felt above it.
And his grades weren’t much.

So the summer we left
I bumped into him in the street,
and just could not resist
telling him I was going to Uni.
I’m not bothering with that he said
(Daddy’s business I thought)
Because, he said, I’m in meat.

I didn’t know Daddy had gone bust
until I caught sight of him next:
the boy on the local butcher’s van.
In meat.

Ruth Aylett teaches and researches robotics in Edinburgh and has been known to read poems with a robot. Her pamphlets Pretty in Pink (4Word) and Queen of Infinite Space (Maytree) were published in 2021. For more see http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/writing.html