
Welcome to Promote Yourself Monday. All Go Dog Go Cafe community members are invited to post one link to one specific piece of their writing (600 …
Promote Yourself Monday, June 29, 2020
Welcome to Promote Yourself Monday. All Go Dog Go Cafe community members are invited to post one link to one specific piece of their writing (600 …
Promote Yourself Monday, June 29, 2020
Welcome to Promote Yourself Monday. All Go Dog Go Cafe community members are invited to post one link to one specific piece of their writing (600 …
Promote Yourself Monday, June 22, 2020
Welcome to Promote Yourself Monday. All Go Dog Go Cafe community members are invited to post one link to one specific piece of their writing (600 …
Promote Yourself Monday, June 15, 2020
With apologies to T.S. Eliot – upon who’s original the following is heavily based.
Let us go then, you and I,
Where summer sun shines bleary in the sky
Another day, another week, never ending Sunday.
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless days of binge tv and old box sets
half hearted, lonely zoom events
Of moth balled restaurants and socially distant queues:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
And the women come and go
and talk of how the numbers go.
The wretched virus rubs its back upon the silent rails
Rubs its unseen muzzle on the window-panes,
Licks its tongue into the corners of shared surfaces,
Lingers in the air, is breathed on trains,
Let’s fall upon a hand the snottiness of sneezes,
Slips by a sloppy mask, makes sudden leap,
And since we are too close, not far apart
Curls once about the throat and makes us cough.
And indeed there will be time
For the cunning virus to slide along each street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet;
There will be time to distance and to separate,
A time for staying home and washing hands
Time not to greet or touch, to embrace or give a peck;
Time for you and time for me,
And time for Boris’ indecisions,
And for a hundred briefings and revisions,
Before the media questions on tv.
In the room the women come and go
And talk of how the numbers go.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I care?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to go out, to work and shop,
time to go out, get normal back, have this thing stop.
(They will say: “How his hair has grown so long”)
My casual clothes, the whiskers, my unshaven chin,
A face mask dangling , pointless, useless thing —
(They will say: “But how his waist is thickening!”)
Do I dare
Resume the universe?
In lockdown there is time
For decisions and revisions which can then quickly be reversed.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with dreary films;
I know the voices dying, hear them fall
Behind the numbers and the CSU’s.
So how should life resume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that bid you pass and let them be,
I’ve stepped aside or crossed a road avoidingly,
And when I’m pinned and wriggling close against a wall,
Then how should I begin
To stretch out all the strange and misspent, endless days?
And how should life resume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that once embraced me, hugged me, showed me care
Now folded, drooping, pocketed, barely there!)
Is it memory perhaps
That makes me so digress?
Hands that met across a table, or greeted when I’d call
And should life then resume?
Ah how to re-begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And seen the virus lie across the lives
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
And the world, on hold, yet pauses.
In strange and unaccustomed silence,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to face the moment see the crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (the hair grown long) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my quietness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the shops, the queues, deliveries,
Between the screen time, online chats, the conversations, you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed from the reverie that gripped us all
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
Should say: “I’m not sure what it meant at all;
That can’t be it. There must be more.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the lockdown and the isolation, those deserted streets,
After the novels, after the jigsaws, after the masks that trailed along the jaw—
After this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“This isn’t what it meant at all,
It isn’t what it meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
At greater risk, so we are told.
Shall I part my hair behind? Will I ever need new clothes?
I shall wear the same old trousers.I won’t go to the beach.
There’ll be no mermaids singing.
They won’t sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Tᴡɪɴᴋʟᴇ, twinkle, would be stars,
There are no gigs they closed the bars
Twinkle, twinkle, no nights out
Tough for comics there’s no doubt.
When the pubs and clubs are shut
There are no gigs, there’s no stand up
Nowhere you can raise a laugh,
Lead us up a giggly path.
Not that we don’t need a laugh
A glint of humour, tiny spark,
A hint of how things used to be,
The ‘funny side’ we have to see.
Meanwhile prisoned in your room
You struggle for a laugh on zoom
And wryly through the curtains peep
To see the world gone quiet, asleep.
It’s your bright and hard won laugh
Lights an audience in the dark,
Tho’ I know not where you are,
Come back soon oh little star.
The primary source of income for every comedian in the UK has been stripped away due to the impact of the Coronavirus – shutting down venues and cancelling live events. If you value live comedy as much as we do at NextUp and respect the performers who dedicate their lives to bringing us laughter – let’s band together and #hecklethevirus.
All funds raised will go to comedians in urgent need of financial support. Every donation (however small) matters and is really appreciated. – The NextUp Team
This is one of the many #hecklethevirus initiatives setup by NextUp to help support and utilise live comedy during Coronovirus. We’ll also be streaming special gigs and doing everything in our power to help keep the circuit going and bring live comedy to the masses when people need it the most. Keep an eye on hecklethevirus.com to stay up to date.
When shall we three meet again
carefully social distancing?
When the hurley burley’s done
And when ‘R’ is less than one.
Where the place? On the heath?
What of thunder, lightening, rain?
Can’t we meet inside again?
It’s not safe to be indoors
Lest we meet with covered face
Mask upon that nose of yours.
Double, double, toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble
See what happens if I cough
Folk can’t scatter fast enough!
Fillet of a fenny snake
In the cauldron boil and bake
Works much better than the bleach
Orange fella’s bad mistake.
Eye of newt and tongue of frog
Wool of bat and tongue of dog.
For a charm of powerful trouble
Watch my Wuhan hell broth bubble.
We’d have conjured far more deaths
If not for the nhs
Saved the skin of that Macbeth
Stayed at home escaping us.
There ought to be an old folks’ demo
Gather, Piccadilly Square
Pull down Eros Statue
Eternal Youth, oh yeah??!!
Who got dumped in care homes
To ‘save the nhs’?
They were just ‘bed blockers
Discharged got no tests.
Left there with their carers
No proper PPE
ICU won’t take them
Have to keep those beds free.
Let’s delay the lockdown
‘Herd immunity’
Only old folk dieing
That’s OK you see.
So pack out Piccadilly
Cram all the old folks in
May just spread the virus
But a cause worth gathering.
Little boy blue,
Come blow your horn,
Tell us how wonderfully
Everything’s gone.
There’s sheep in the meadow,
There’s cows in the corn.
Our death toll’s the highest
The problem’s not gone.
There’s chlorine in chickens
There’s hormones in beef
But where is the boy
Who looks after the sheep?
Where is the man
Who will make Britain ‘Great’
He’s under a haystack
fast asleep.
Little Jack Horner stared in a mirror
admiring his puffy white skin.
He stuck up his thumb
and was proud as they come
that the white pallid likeness
was him.
Now the thing about skin
is it’s a very good thing
for keeping our insides tucked in
but the colour and hue
is not down to you.
You pretty much get
what you’re given.
It’s pretty good stuff
for feeling and touch
and helps keep our bodies
real cool.
It does all that stuff
quite well enough
but what it is not
is really that hot
for deciding
who gets the best job.
A good enough reason
it’s certainly not
for someone to kneel
on your neck
so unable to breath
you’ll soon be stone dead
and all cos
your skin colour’s black.
Your skin’s really not
a license to kill
or even assume you’re
the boss.
So get used to seeing
whatever their colour
that others are really like us.
The years of oppression
enslaved, a possession
are really not
how it should be.
It has to change soon
which could take
some doing
but let’s start with you
and with me.
Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders
Toasting her pretty little toes
Anger at injustice
Prejudice and hatred
That’s the way a bonfire grows.
Little Polly Flanders
Sat among the cinders
Watched the burning embers glow
Who has stoked the hatred?
Who should be berated?
How does such a big fire grow?
Polly’s mother caught her
Scolded her daughter
For spoiling her pretty little clothes
Liberty affronted
Human rights confronted
That’s the way our freedom goes.
Little Polly Flinders
Sad among the cinders
Watches conflagration grow
Cries in consternation
So sad for her nation
Tearful as the bonfires grow.