The Battle for the Pub -A Sestina
At six p.m. I'm heading to the pub,
A local situated on my street,
The Bird in Hand is swinging on a sign
Enticing would be drinkers come inside
To sit around the crackling, cosy fire,
enjoy a hand drawn pint of foaming beer.
There's few round here who can resist a beer,
Though lately say, I don't want to buy the pub!
At this price I can't quench the raging fire
Of my thirst. I'll likely end up on the street
Or bankrupt, spend a year or two inside.
Give me an I.O.U, where do I sign?
Discerning drinkers see it as a sign,
The end of joy at quaffing down a beer,
Of congregating with your mates inside
Social spaces like your local pub.
We can't descend to drinking on the street
Bereft 0f darts or cribbage by the fire.
I heard a landlord set his place on fire,
Such was his desperation when asked to sign
For a rent increase or be thrown into the street;
A rise that couldn't be met by the price of his beer.
For he loved his job, he loved that parish pub
but could feel his mind uncoiling from inside.
Such economic woes aren't felt inside
The palaces of those shielded from the fire
Of neo-liberal thugs who want our pub,
Those oligarchic thieves who would consign
Us all to gristle pasties and small beer,
Gloating on their rampage through our street.
Unusually there's two pubs on our street
Both called Bird in Hand! I know the inside
Story. How these two purveyors of beer
Came to be named. It was in the raging fire
Of sibling rivalry, as sure a sign
As any of The Battle for the Pub.
This pub and its twin were set up on our street,
Two brothers' signs beckoning inside
To a blazing fire, pints of foaming beer.
Farewell Performance
Farewell Performance
I'm reading the later poems of Vernon Scannell,
idiosyncrasies of ribald humour,
love, regret, not a little flannel,
penned in his fervent race against the tumour
clinging to the inside of his voice,
a voice of perfect diction. His form of phrase,
confirming always fine poetic choice,
brings laughter, tears, linguistic holidays.
He loved the scan of a pentameter,
though he composed in other forms as well,
with its rhythm of the human beater
pumping blood and love in parallel.
So too, he scribed a craftily wrought sonnet,
always his wry humanity stamped on it.
A Clerihew, or two…..
A Clerihew or two......
Rishi Sunak
Won't have your back
Unless you're a multi-millionaire
Like Tony Blair.
Sunak, Rishi
For some is public school dishy.
Winchester has beaten
Eton.
The Do
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.
More of the Shame
More of the Shame
We walk this morning to the reservoirs,
these great pools filled with winter rains,
filled to overflowing like broken hearts.
We await the coming of the geese
skimming in like military drones.
Far away the cruel satanic choirs
of shells chant barbarous refrains
reminding us humanity departs
when ignorance undoes our sense of peace.
We hear the sound of tramping from their homes,
the several thousand years of refugees,
their haunting songs bewildered on the breeze.
At Seventy
At Seventy
Is there more to say, much more to know?
You'd think in seventy years you'd have seen it all,
had heard all wisdoms, sown the seeds that grow
luxuriant grasses, fertilised and tall
with understanding, comprehension like
a second sense, a knowing, winking eye.
But no. This age is more a Pennine hike
than a country stroll, each step a swallowed sigh.
It seems a shame you've not made more of it,
stuck at something, chased some small success.
Yet not for any transitory fame,
more, participating in the game
continuing around you as you bless
all those you've loved. They're the core of it.
Memoriam
Memoriam
For Arthur Wesney 1915-1941
If I could, I'd come to visit you
where your bones have lain these eighty years.
In Libya's dangerous soil you are interred
beneath the ground you died on as a youth,
so many dreams unfulfilled and gone.
My father, who fought with you, is now gone too
but died an old man lying in his bed
still thinking of the way you fell in battle,
your sacrificial blood drained in the sand.
What would be gained by coming to your grave
is indefinable. I cannot tell
you of the millions subsequently slain
and feel your sorrow heave beneath the earth,
but only kneel to give you back your name.
Never Lost
Never Lost
You talk to me in the way you like to do,
your words, all news, what's happening in the world.
I adore you for your vast humanity,
the way you'll never cease to show how love
transforms us all, so we are never lost.
Out of the Dark
Out of the Dark
"The mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark"
Thomas Paine
The journey started many years ago,
as Hesse had, heading to the East,
his mind a fragile butterfly of hope.
And once he settled there he knew
there was no return, no way back.
Yet still he yearned for the warm comforts of sin,
an ignorance of unknowing dreams.
He dreamt only of stillness and respite.
Knowledge is like a sparkler in the night,
thirty seconds, just on the edge of sight,
the marks of it left inside your eyes
as firefly sparks crackle and quickly die.
But somehow these images remain,
illusions of light that guide us out of the dark.
The Shipwreck
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.
Poems, Polemicks and Licks 