Month: February 2018

Hands Off

 

 

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HanNone ds Off

This week copyright is uppermost in my mind with the news that my son’s you tube series Dave Green’s Street View Show where he interviews comedians using Google Street View has been ripped off without acknowledgement by another comedian Geoff Lloyd who is doing a radio version on Radio Union Jack. There is more about this on the comedy website Chortle.

Meanwhile in case anyone is eyeing my stuff for similar treatment:

Hands Off

None of my work is any good
You needn’t read; but if you should
Remember not to copy it.
It’s all my own, stuff what I wrote.

Everything is copyright
So no one has a legal right
To copy or to steal my stuff
I’m really fearful that you might!

If you achieve celebrity
Stealing stuff what’s written by me
It really won’t be very fair.
So leave my stuff. Just don’t you dare!

You may think that I’m paranoid
But steal my stuff I’ll get annoyed!
I’d hate if you got rich and famous.
Stealing my stuff; that’s really heinous!

Please like or leave a comment if you enjoy reading my work but DON’T  under any circumstances copy. It’s rubbish and spreading it across the internet would be a public disservice.

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Curse Coffee Cups

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Curse Coffee Cups

Curse the coffee cups and spoons
The yellow fog, the window panes
Curse the dying of the light
Curse the rage against the night.

Curse daffodils, satanic mills
Pleasure domes, the albatross,
Comparisons to summer day
The last man in, an hour to play.

Curse roads divergent in a wood,
The knock upon a moonlit door
The airman’s helmet and the hawk
Painted women and their talk.

Curse Gunga Din, curse Kubla Khan,
Curse the Tiger burning bright.
Curse Dulce Et Decorum Est
Let Drummer Hodge not find his rest.

Unstop the clocks, unmuffle drums
Forget the honey with your tea.
Forget the grin of bitterness,
The look of rooms returning thence.

Forget the friendly bombs on Slough
And men in brightly lit canteens.
Curse the damns of your content
The crumpling floods that force a vent.

Zero hour will never come,
We won’t ride a merry go round
Or Whitsun train that’s late away.
We won’t be naming parts today.

Stop the cannons, stop the charge,
Stop Hiawatha in mid song.
The eye will simply look on glass
It won’t look through; it shall not pass.

No knock kneed men will cough like hags
Three will never meet again.
Blood stained hands will be washed clean
And woods won’t come to Dunsinane.

Too many words crammed in my head
The rhythms dance, the cadence strong
I need new words to call my own
My head rings with another’s song.

My favourite coffee cup of the moment. Click the image link to get yours on Amazon.

Hip Op

CEEDF698-B284-4218-A6D5-A7BC534B13C8Listen up youth to what I’m sayin’
Cos I’m long in the tooth and I ain’t playin’.
Got a gammy knee been pensioned off
I ain’t Hip Hop more like hip op.
A burden on the NHS
Wastin’ my time with guff like this.

Get me a stair lift, zimmer frame
Too old n’ stiff for party time
Kind of past it – know what I mean?’
‘Get Down with tha youth’ just ain’t my scene.
Hate Hip Hop – am more into tunes
Dodgey dad dancing – playin’ the goon.

Kind of tiresome getting old
Past your bed time, feeling cold.
Shuffle off grandad, had your day
No one’s listnin’ to what you say.
Can’t quite cut it any more
Legs are tired and feet are sore.

Listen up youth it’s comin’ to you
Ain’t gonna tell you what to do.
Just make the most of what you got
Got your youth, got your health, you got the lot.
Past my prime, the ‘best before’ date.
Get the most out of life before it’s too late.

Done it my way, now try yours
Creepn’ outta here on all fours.
Spun around some, done my bit
Good while it lasted, guess that’s it
Exit left, don’t need no applause
Done my stuff, stage is all yours.

Do not alight here

Among my favourite examples of over complicated English are the signs of the platform of what was an international station saying, ‘Do not alight here’.

Do not alight here

There’s a sign as you pull into the station
It says,’do not alight here’.
No need for an explanation
You’re sure to know what it means?

We don’t want you planning to set it alight
We don’t want it set on fire
Be careful with your matches
Don’ set the place ablaze.

Or could they have kept it simpler
Said what they meant to say?
If they don’t want us getting off the train
Why don’t they just say?

Say what you mean
Mean what you say
Use much simpler words.
So confusing for foreigners
When you use such arcane words
You don’t need to say
‘Do not alight’
When you just mean
‘Don’t get off’!

 

 

Moorbath Cottage

Narrow lanes to country farmhouse
Isolated, rural splendid,
Penned beneath the Dorset hills.
Morning runs between the hedgerows
Wild flowers, birdsong, seldom cars.
Sorties out to pebbled beaches
Warmed by gentle English sun.
Fossil hunting, coastal footpaths,
Farmhouse eating, barnyard fun.
One last day in bed and breakfast
Then return towards congestion
Drive back through the summer rain.

Poet's Corner

Submitted by Andrew Green

Narrow lanes to country farmhouse
Isolated, rural splendid,
Penned beneath the Dorset hills.
Morning runs between the hedgerows
Wild flowers, birdsong, seldom cars.

View original post 35 more words

Pistol Packin’ Teachers

I posted this first on Wattpad where it provoked an interesting discussion.

Pistol Packin’ Teachers

I’m a pistol packin’ teacher
It’s best you don’t forget!
Mess around in my class
You know just what you’ll get!

There is no corporal punishment
That wouldn’t make no sense.
Just be sure you don’t commit
A capital offence!

Will be no use complain’n
If you’re reported ‘late’
We teach em Christian values
And fightin’ hate with hate.

 

 

Sarcastic or something else?

I’ve laid claim to writing in clear plain English and saying what I mean but there is an important qualification. I’m British and have a very British sense of humour. Irony is a key weapon in our armoury.  We will often say the opposite of what we mean to mock the ideas we are pretending to hold so, when I talk in All Fall Down about the answer to all the killing being more good men with guns, I rely on the reader to understand I mean the exact opposite.

This is very British. If you doubt that check out Quora and the habitual way the British respond to what they regard as stupid questions from Americans about the UK.

Some people have referred to the way I write in comments as ‘sarcastic’. I get quite hurt by that. I think of it as gentle mocking irony while ‘sarcasm’ in my book is something quite different.

I wrote the poem sarcasm to explain what I see as the difference.

Sarcasm

You say my work’s sarcastic
But I don’t really like that word.
Sarcasm comes with a caustic bite
It stings, it’s meant to hurt.

I may say the opposite of what I think
But I say it for humorous effect.
It’s gentle, mocking irony
Not really meant to hurt.

It’s a very English humour
The kind that we do best
It’s almost force of habit
A gentle mocking jest.

Please don’t be offended
Or even worse confused
I only hope you get it and
You know it’s not meant to hurt.

 

 

 

Poetry in plain English

You’ll have gathered by now, if you’re not a first time visitor, that I do plain straightforward writing in clear, easy to follow English. I’d happily adopt another style if it worked for me,and I thought there were others who wanted to read it, but, as I expressed in the poem Voice; published on here before anyone was actually reading this, I feel like I’ve found what works for me. Voice has had 19,000 plus reads  on Wattpad so hopefully I’m getting it right for others too.

The truth is I had any pretentions to florid, discursive writing knocked out of me in a working career where ‘writing’ was a key part of what I did but for a very different audience. The ‘writing’ I did to earn a living was far from being creative. I wrote reports for decision makers.

My work was expected to be clear, concise and to the point. Brevity was the order of the day and the instruction was never to use a long word where a short one would do. We would never ask people to ‘peruse’ documents we suggested that they  should ‘look at’ them.

One of the missions I was given was to re-write the local authorities contract conditions in plain English. The lawyers hated me for it!

My ambition to write the great English novel is never likely to be realised. The Next Big Thing, as the poem of that name expresses, is unlikely ever to be written but ‘verse’, comes very naturally to me. I’m not always sure I can glorify it with the word ‘poetry’ but that is for others to judge and worry about. My mission, as the tag line has it, is to entertain. I’m sometimes seeking to entertain with a purpose but I try to express what I am saying as clearly and effectively as possible.

Todays poem, Red Lines, is a tribute to the manager who honed my writing skills with a liberal helping of red ink.

Red Lines

The report you have written
Is ‘basically fine’
The words are yours
But the ideas are mine.

I’ve covered it liberally
With red ink
Please rewrite
But don’t rethink.

I’ve altered all your capital letters
Crossed out all the “howsoevers”
It’s punchy now
All bullet points
You can rewrite again
If it disappoints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wish I could write obscurer.

I’ve read other people’s poems
And they don’t much look like mine
I wish I could make them obscurer.
Be done with silly rhymes.

I’d like to shroud in mystery
But I just say what I mean
I wish I was better at writing
And could write obscurer lines.

I’d dab words round my canvas
Pluck metaphors out of the air
Draw a veil over what I was saying
And leave you crying for more.

I’d like to leave you scratching your head
And wondering what I mean
But it seems to come out
In the same plain words
With no hidden meanings at all.

Maybe I’m just shallow?
Don’t have any hidden depths.
There are other, cleverer writers
And I’m just way too dumb.

Think where I could take this
If I didn’t just say what I meant?
Fathomless conjectures,
Museful meanderings,
Pensive pontification
Big words, long
and perhaps extravagantly constructed sentences?

But would that still be me?
My tired and torrid attempts
To twist, turn and complicate
My communications for the benefit
Of audiences immune to the
Innocence of my simplistic doggerel
Are condemned to fall on fallow ground.
Seeds ungerminated
Failing to come to fruition.

I can’t be doing with that stuff.
I’ll just say what I mean.

Nothing to say

His work exuded sophistication;
That clever poet.
There’d be endless layers of complication.
Name a technique and he could show it;
He displayed such knowledge; erudition.

The most perfect rhymes he’d always retrieve.
The power of his intellect there on display.
And, at choosing his words, he was quite a magician,
His extensive vocabulary hard to believe.

It was just such a pity he’d nothing to say!