Tag: humour

Poem by Julia Whatley


By Robert Garnham

Been feeling quite nostalgic
About that council estate
I was dragged up on
Where my mates and I ran amok
After school I frequent the youth club
Jimmy Cliff and Marvin Gaye
Song in the Key of life
Dancing every night away

At home we had a radiogram
I put the Beatles, White Album on
Dad said that their hairs too bleedin long
And that Jimmy Hendrix’s guitar
Sounds like a strangled cat
I’m off out dad
If you’re going to be like that

My dad smoked park drive
And I helped myself
He used to leave his fags on the shelf
I smoked one in the outside loo
Blamed my little brother
Seemed the only thing to do

Down the youth Club
I met my boyfriend, Vernon
He had a vesper scooter
He ‘d often take me home

This night we skidded and off we fell
My dad was driving in his Zepher Zodiac
My hair blowing in the breeze
He must have noticed me on the back
As we overtook at high speed
My fishnet tights all ripped
And blood pouring from my knees
No helmet and my dad flipped
Grounded, but well worth it!

 

I am the Genie in the Jar, by Mandy Beattie


By Robert Garnham

I AM THE GENIE IN THE JAR

A wee glass jar with a maroon lid
is an insect-tent, it sits
on a shelf watching the sunflower
clock’s second hand scurry
on yard thick walls of stone
the wee glass jar peers down
above, around and spots a ballerina
in a white tutu and pink tap shoes
on a white wall waiting for Genie
to lift the maroon lid
to flit and look for ladybirds, spiders
and moths to scoop them up and squeeze
through yard thick walls of stone
to re-pot the ladybird on a Hyacinth
bush and the scurrying spider
on a newel post by raised beds
of rhubarb and blueberries
but Genie lets slaters bide inside
a yard of stone to scurry
over oak and hide under knots.

Mandy Beattie, is a feminist from Caithness, Scotland with an MA in Social Work Practice & Research. Her poetry is a tapestry of stories and imagery, rooted in people, place and the natural environment, set at home and abroad.

 

Padraig – Who Drove the Snakes Out of Ireland, by Pratibha Castle


By Robert Garnham

Padraig – Who Drove the Snakes Out of Ireland

At the allotment, daddy
forked the crumbly black earth
till the air quaked
with anticipation
of excess, me
sifting stones
in search of treasure;
the robin sat, pert, on the lip
of the bucket meant to carry
spuds or cabbages, the occasional
giggle-tickle carrot
back to placate the mammy.

The bird’s eye bright
with a lust for worms, his song
a crystal cataract of merry;
though none of the seeds we sowed
ever showed head out of the sly earth
and we saw nothing of the slow worm
daddy promised so that, his name being Padraig too,
I guessed he must be a saint, especially
when he himself vanished.

Though he turned up
months later
at the end of school
again and again and again till
I had to tell the mammy
where the books and toys came from
and that got me sent off
to board at St. Bridget’s convent
where the head nun was nice to you
if your mammy gave her fruit cake in a tin,
bottles of orange linctus sherry, a crocheted shawl
like frothy cobwebs, none of which

my mammy could afford, Padraig
having banished more than snakes.

Pratibha Castle’s award-winning debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds and A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press) publishes 2021. An Irish poet living in England, her work appears in literary magazines including Agenda, Dreich, HU, Blue Nib. Highly Commended in various poetry competitions, she reads regularly on West Wilts Radio.

 

Record Players are just trendy, phonographs are the real thing, by Jorge Leiva Ardana


By Robert Garnham

Record Players are just trend, Phonographs are the real thing.

I have come to know people that love the old so much
they wish they could die from dysentery.
These are people who feel they don’t belong
to this world or at least to this century.

They like to handwrite letters with a fountain pen
or even worse a feather quill,
to listen to broken vinyl records every now and then,
and if they’re women they prefer to drink mercury than having to use the pill.

They miss so much the days when drinking gin didn’t involve having to study a masters degree in botany,
and even tragedies had so much flair back then
such as it was the notorious case of the huge titanic.

If they drink coffee the beans must be freshly manually ground
otherwise they moan and say the taste is not the same,
and those are the type of things they complain about
because everything now is made by mechanical means
and that’s a real shame.

They love the liturgy of going to the post office or down to their local bank, because there is no queue in this or other worlds that can’t beat the joy of getting stamps. They’re more than happy by owning a typewriter and a landline phone, and they prefer sending documents by fax than flying drones.

When justice wasn’t the annoying slow bureaucracy
we know today but something less human and more divine,
and all the problems if you ask them started with democracy because before if you acted wrongly you would end up like Lot’s wife.
There was a time when crime was smoothly dealt by a hanging
according to the quickly and efficient eye for eye law
and there would be people standing, their hands clapping
because it also was a great show and the only think to worry it was the size of the rope.

If you had a bit of dough you didn’t have much to worry about,
for a small fee you could lift your sins and redeem your soul,
because there has always been classes, there is no doubt,
and that my friend, I’m afraid hasn’t changed at all.

Jorge Leiva is from South Spain and he lived in Ireland for over eight years. Some of his work has appeared in Skylight 47 Magazine, The Galway Advertiser, Drawn to the light press, Headstuff.org, Dodging the Rain and 2 Meter Review. In 2019 he was long listed in the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year competition.
He has been on the waiting list for a tonsillectomy since he was a child.

 

First Mayor of Richmond, by Peter Kay


By Robert Garnham

FIRST MAYOR OF RICHMOND

T’was sixteen hundred and six,
for legend has it so,
when, whilst out hunting all alone,
Robert Willance, future mayor
of Richmond, shattered his femur bone.

His horse, a noble steed of some renown
had always borne him well,
but as November’s dense mists thronged,
the bewildered beast bolted,
racing headlong into nothingness.

With Willance clinging on for life,
his horse plunged to its death,
two hundred feet o’er Whitcliffe Scar.
Robert lay prostrate, right leg broken,
twisted, breached, death’s door ajar.

With no prospect of immediate respite,
he slit soft belly of his beloved horse,
using a trusted hunting knife. No malice.
Plunged his leg in up to groin and hilt,
to try and keep it for his balance.

For two days he held on to life and limb,
before rescue came at last.
Alas whilst Robert survived,
his poor leg could not be saved, t’was buried
with due ceremony, in his chosen grave.

T’was sixteen hundred and eight
when brave Willance and his stump,
became first mayor of Richmond.
Eight long years, without a single blunder,
Before dying, reight well, in his slumber.

And so it came to pass that in his death requited,
Robert Willance and his leg were gladly reunited.

Peter has had two books published: A Pennine Way Odyssey, 2012. Show Me The Way To Santiago, 2020. A third book is with his publisher. He writes travel memoirs, fiction, short stories, monologues, children’s books and poetry. Three poems have been published in anthologies. His website is peterkaywordspace.co.uk

 

Because it’s total crap, by Karen Jones


By Robert Garnham

Because it’s total crap

Ratner lifted the lid on a sherry decanter
At £4.95 a pop too good to countenance
When asked about his high-street gems
Little tacky rings for working class girls
Risking bedtime dealings with blue collar boys

It was Gerald who had himself by the balls
All for earrings costing less than a quid
He’d choke on an M&S sandwich now
Fish the prawns himself if he could
Than grapple with the loss of a
$10 billion business, 10 seconds to nought

Now 30 years after the biggest PR gaffe
The Sultan of Bling can only think back
To Mrs Ratner and her word of advice
The only pearl he declined to string
Ego really is a terrible thing

Karen Jones is new to writing poetry, a student of Kevin Higgins, born in Northern Ireland, living in Dublin and working in public relations.

 

My Mother Doesn’t Know that I’m a Poet, by Rodney Wood


By Robert Garnham

MY MOTHER DOESN’T KNOW THAT I’M A POET
after Billy Bennett

I’m cherishing a secret about this poets-life I lead
as according to the papers that she reads all poets
are lazy bastards, cads and cowards who live in ivory towers.
They’re scum of the earth, much worse than bureaucrats
and really don’t give a toss for anyone but numereo uno
but I know is that really us poets are decent folk.
All the people I hang out with think I’m quite OK
and say I’m a poet of the much more pleasant sort
but I never breathe a word of this at home.

You see my mother doesn’t know that I’m a poet
sometimes she sees the inky stains upon my clothes,
the trembling of my voice and that haunted look in my eyes
I tell her is from the solvent I’ve been using for cocaine.
When I spend hours in my room alone and writing poems
I tell her not to worry as I’m only watching porn.
and when I go to London for a Forward or TS Eliot Prize
I tell mother I’m off to meet and reminisce with fascists
because you see, I’ll never tell my mother I’m a poet.

And those parcels that drop through my letter box
I say are guns, knives, explosives, lubricants and sex
toys. If she knew I was a poet she’d shoot me like a dog
and all those books came, I say, by mistake from catalogues
and I keep them, just in case. She can think I’m a murderer
before she’ll know the truth. I have to respect her old age but
she knows that I’m a liar, a crook and arsonist
but it would break her poor old heart if she found out
that I write odes, epics, ballads and get my kicks from sonnets
so thank heavens Mother doesn’t know that I’m a poet.

 

Or your scants will come back to haunt you, by Beth McDonough


By Robert Garnham

Or your scants will come back to haunt you

Here’s to the thrill of ethical knickers

delivered by post through your own front door.
Each pair of pants comes carefully wrapped
in tactile fantastic brown papery packets,
patterned with turtles, octopuses and whales,
skilfully block-printed in India.

All of these garments are guaranteed free
of nasties like plastics, except just perhaps
those barcoded stickers proclaiming these knickers
one hundred per cent organic cotton, designed
entirely to delight on the very fine Isle of Wight,
dyed in colours as smashing as eggshell.

Already, I’m advised on my pants’ end of life,
little symbols explain how these ethical undies
can be sent back, then recycled safely. I must
express just a little alarm about future
manufacturing tactics of endless elastic, but
why not have big hopes for the morals of smalls?

Beth McDonough’s poetry is widely anthologised and published in Magma, Gutter, and elsewhere. Her first solo pamphlet Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word.Fairly soon, her site-specific poem will be installed on the Corbenic Poetry Path. She swims year round in the Tay, foraging close by.

 

Trespasses to be prosecuted, by Rebecca Gethin


By Robert Garnham

Trespasses to be prosecuted

We tied string to the door knockers after dark
yanked on one and watched the lit fuse of fury
run down the street. We made all the dogs bark
at one another and then started miaowing
so they wouldn’t stop. We wrote letters to neighbours
for a secret lark in invisible ink
and told them fibs they’d never read
and then asked to search their backyards
for a dog we hadn’t lost. We climbed trees
to drop water bombs on passing cars
and swapped round the smalls
we unpegged from their washing lines.

Rebecca Gethin has written 6 poetry publications (which makes her feel rather over-rated). She was a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Vanishings was published by Palewell Press in 2020 and Fathom was published by Marble in 2021. She blogs sporadically at http://www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com

 

On Flatulence, by Simon Williams


By Robert Garnham

On Flatulence

It’s commonly held that farts are methane.
While this is true for cows, sheep, goats
and other herbivores, it’s not for humans.
Our flatus (that’s the word, I looked it up)
is largely hydrogen, lighter than air.

So the story of the Persian Prince
with noteworthy and continuous flatulence,
who is supposed to have suffocated himself
while asleep on a low bed-pallet on a trip abroad,
could not have happened.

However, should an equerry have brought a lamp,
a naked flame into the chamber,
his highness, without rising from his sleep,
could have raised the roof.
I think that trumps the suffocation story.