Category: Licks

When the Fox Got the Chickens

Remember when we drove to that farm on the edge of the Forest. Fordingbridge was the town we passed through in the old Montego coughing diesel fumes embarrassingly blowing grey dust out behind. We’d made the decision to go for chickens and had spent two days constructing (is too technical a word for it) a run, digging in the wire for security or so we thought.

We felt four to be about right gauging the amount of space for roosting. Of course we hadn’t counted on the fact that chickens are shit machines; more crap to the square metre than a field of Jersey cows. The cage we’d taken seemed too small but when the farmer crammed them in we realised what cowering creatures they are. I could have murdered a pint in the pub across the road but leaving them steaming in a hot car seemed too cruel to contemplate.

So we brought them home and carefully placed them in their hut, hoping for produce. And, sure enough, it came. Creamy, textured eggs with yolks standing proud poached or fried. Boiled, the yellow smeared our chins and soldiers, enough to bind you for a century. Eggstatic would be the word to use for the state of mind induced by this free range bliss. But when we let them out the neighbours didn’t like their borders battered in the scrape for worms and fixing fences put me in mind of the poem about it. It saw me blocking holes and more holes when those were blocked. He’s all apple orchard and I’m all chicken shit and it’s said that ‘good fences make good neighbours’.

So soon we became affectionate, liking to stroke them when they’d hop-run up to you weeding or drinking in the garden or sunbathing on the grass. At dusk they’d head for their hutch and we’d find them roosting there as night drowned the place. Then we’d shut them in as the dark creatures came. Until, that is, we forgot one night and came in the morning to find a few white feathers left in small piles.

The Do
i.m. Mike Pentelow

We all turned up,
we wept, we laughed,

we drank and ate
our  fill of you.

Your ghost was here,
we felt it strong;

no one can quite
believe you're gone.

The sky lit up
above the Tower,

communists
across the lands

sat up, noticed
something wrong;

a falter in our 
strongest voice,

a missing note,
a poorer song.

We're out of tune
now you are gone.

For Ronovans Decima Challenge with Beach the prompt word on the A rhyme line.

The Shipwreck

He left the port set on a reach,
genoa tight, clenched in the cleat.
Quite soon, he knew, he'd have to beat,
remember all sea dogs could teach.

Portland loomed above Chesil Beach,
a darkling sky filled him with dread.
The white whipped waves he saw ahead
would see his boat tossed as the squall
held his survival hopes in thrall.
The last he saw, his mainsail shred.

The Trail Is Cold - A Decima

We've had our fill and gone without;
it's all part of life's ebb and flow.
We sometimes wonder where years go,
how seasons change and change about.

When certainty turns into doubt
as youthful days grow ever old,
prognostications turn less bold.
Ever unsure of what we've learned
we mourn for wisdom, less discerned
and somehow lost. The trail is cold.

A contribution to Ronovan’s Decima Challenge 65 with Go being the prompt word on the B rhyme line.

Old Possum Rides Again

Our garden boils with local cats.
They dig the earth where seedlings grow,
squat, poop, paw back the soil and go
on sniffing out domestic rats.

They are feline aristocrats
whose sleek demeanour, haughty ways
drove Eliot to overpraise
their practicality. My wife
is apt to chase them with a knife
back through the local alleyways.

A contribution to Ronovan’s Decima Challenge with WHIM as the prompt word on the B rhyme line.

The Dylan/Perkins Controversy

Bob Dylan, in Workingman's Blues,
once went into town on a whim,
saw his Pa (or thought it was him)
wearing a pair of Blue Suede Shoes.

Carl Perkins was shocked at the news,
thought, How can this possibly be.
Those shoes are agnatic to me!
But Dylan was not to be crossed
and Perkins was not to be bossed.
It ended unmusically!

For Ronovan’s Decima Challenge with GOLD as the prompt word on the A rhyme line.

Gave Up Years Ago

I liked my cigarettes self-rolled.
The craft of it is quite a trick;
paper out, baccy in, quick lick
the glued strip, fingers poised to fold
an aromatic Autumn Gold.
I did enjoy a puff, a drag
of a smooth, perfect, homemade fag,
the curling smoke, the stained ceiling
showing how my lungs were feeling
enveloped by this noxious shag.

This week's contribution to Ronovan's Decima Challenge #54 with BIRTH as the prompt word on the D rhyme line



How We Mythologise

When Joseph found his wife with child
he was suspicious as she'd not
found time to let him have the lot;
he thought she may have been defiled.

She claimed that she had spent a wild
night sleeping with some holy ghost,
but being young, inclined to boast,
and noticing her growing girth,
invented tales of virgin birth;
because otherwise, she was toast.

Here’s a go at Ronovan’s Decima Challenge #52, with Noise being the prompt word on the B rhyme line. I’ve done a couple….

Mortals Inc.

I wake. Somewhere there is a whine
not so unlike those clockwork toys
that children wind up for the noise;
but could, perhaps, be endocrine
secretion from those glands of mine
in need of oiling or repair,
some maintenance, mechanic care.
Bodily organs, failing fast,
(although they are not built to last)
infrequently come with a spare.....


Immortals Inc.

Jim said, You know the haunted pub,
the one out there in Theydon Bois?
The landlord swore he heard a noise,
a voice spoke of Beelzebub!

They filled their knapsacks with some grub
and travelled on the Central Line,
arriving there at closing time.
The darkness came, they waited, mute,
both fearful and irresolute.
Next morning, they were Scene of Crime.....

A contribution to Ronovan’s Decima Challenge #51 with CAUSE being the prompt word on the A rhyme line.

The Cause

I've long been faithful to the cause,
the striving for a kinder world,
a pregnant blossoming unfurled,
capitalism's menopause.

Arms dealers, with their rabid wars,
consigned to tilling common land;
beachcombers on the long sea-strand
picking over long lost treasure,
that pure, ancient, human pleasure
of reaching out a helping hand.