The Daily Poem (2019)

Well, here we are: the last Daily Poem EVER. There will be other days and there will be other poems, but not every day. I’ve missed posting other stuff and I’ve missed the quality filter that time and contemplation offers. That said, I don’t think there’s been anything truly AWFUL posted, and there’s been some absolute blinders along the way too. I’ve also got a pretty large heap of stuff in first draft form and wayyyyy more than 365 poems to organise into something a little more permanent (but I’m not sure what yet). I hope you’ve enjoyed them, and it’s going to take me a while to get them all to disappear without leaving horrible 404 errors all over the site (something I didn’t think about when I started out!), so if you’ve just found them feel free to trawl back over the year.

Anyoldhoo, here’s the last Daily Poem, and thanks for reading – especially those lovely people who took the time to read every one or to offer a virtual thumbs up in the form of a ‘like’ along the way…

The Last Daily Poem

The Daily Poem’s done today
It’s time to put the pen away
I’ve written poems for a year
And every day I’ve put them here
I’ve shitloads now the year is done
For many days wrote more than one
Of Fishy Friday quips alone
I have more than one man should own
And so they piled, more and more
Like leaves upon a forest floor
And now it’s time to fetch the rake
– O what a bonfire they will make!

***

Ciao 😀

The Daily Poem (2019)

Bloody hell! The penultimate post! I don’t really know which way to go – serious or silly. Maybe one of each, and hope you can tell the difference?

Not These Hands

I’ve never had the nerve for knives
my skin shies away from shining blades,
the cold kiss of steel.
I could, perhaps,
take that long walk
into the sea,
pockets filled with pebbles
as the waves wash over me
and the current takes the decision out of my hands,
or maybe take a high dive
from a tall building,
changing my mind halfway down
when it’s too late.
A rope could do it, in the right hands,
but not these hands.
Or this neck.
The trouble is, I learned too young
that death is ugly.
There’s no such thing as a beautiful death,
however much we might hunger for the romance of it;
it’s all black tongues and bulging eyes,
pants filled with shit and the inevitable decay to brittle bone.
I want more from death than that.

***

Dunking Fish*
(a not very good nonsense poem but I’ve written it so I might as well bung it up anyway)

I chanced to meet an elfin child
while walking in the woods
he tempted me with honeyed bread
and boiled Christmas puds

He sang to me in dulcet tones
and strummed upon a lyre
then danced the tarantella dance
around the roaring fire

He made me tea – oh happy me!
with water from the stream;
I found three fishy in my dish:
one trout, a brace of bream

I craved a gudgeon but was told
that gudgeon swam no more
though once the stream had teemed with them
back in the days of yore.

‘Of yore?’ I said, ‘OF YORE?’ I cried,
‘Where have those gudgeon gone?
‘Pray tell me why they swam away,
those fish for whom I long?’

He told me, then, a sorry tale,
Of why the gudgeon left,
A sorry tale as sad as snails
that left me quite bereft

‘The gudgeon went,’ he said to me,
‘in search of stickleback,
who swam away one summer’s day
and didn’t stop to pack.’

‘The stickies too?’ I cried anew,
‘Oh poo, please say you jest
I love to dunk them in my brew
(But still love gudgeon best)

‘They took exception,’ said the elf,
‘To being dunked in tea
That’s why they swam away that day,
because of fools like thee…’

Well I was shocked right to the quick:
I swear to you it’s true
I never guessed they took offence
at being dunked, did you?

And though it cut me to the quick
I swore through my dismay
To never dunk a fish again
and have not to this day.

Envoi:

So if you’re ever offered tea
That’s served with dunking fish
remember, please, this sorry tale
and give those fish a mish.

* not to be confused with Dunkin’ Donuts, which have been specially bred to enjoy being dunked.

The Daily Poem (2019)

Fishy Friday’s done today
All the tackle packed away
Just one last haul, that’s all we get
So let’s go see what’s in the net…

Gosh! Just one Lobster! But it’s a very special one, so it inspired a whole quartet of poems…

Salvador Dali’s Lobster (Pt.I)

Dali had a lobster
he walked it on a lead
the walks made up in spectacle
that which they lacked in speed.
Nerval had a lobster too
he walked it on a chain
he marched it up the eiffel tower
and he marched it down again
he marched it up the Champs Elysees
and all along the Seine
then on to that cathedral
(– damn! I’ve clean forgot the name!)
he took it to the follies
(so the dancing ladies claim)
and if I had a lobster
I’d probably do the same.

***

Salvador Dali’s Lobster (Pt.II)

Dali had a lobster
He used it as a phone
And every time he picked it up
He heard the Dali dial tone
If he had used a conch shell
He might have heard the sea
If he had used a jellyfish
What stingtone would it be?

(Of course that should be ‘what stingtone would that have been’ but it didn’t rhyme or scan and I DON’T CARE!)

***

Salvador Dali’s Lobster (Pt.III)

Dali had a lobster
He kept it in a tank
He didn’t clean it out much
I heard it frickin’ stank.

***

Salvador Dali’s Lobster (Pt. IV)

Dali had a lobster
he kept him in a bucket
and every time the cat walked past
the lobster tried to nip her with his pincers

***

Apologies for that last one, I came over all Judge Dread. By which I mean seventies crap-novelty-song-with-a-reggae-rhythm virtuoso  Alexander Minto Hughes rather than the comic-book hero, Judge Dredd, as created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

But I digress. As far as Fishy Friday goes, that, to paraphrase Bug’s Bunny, is all folks, but there’s still a couple of days of The Daily Poem to go so do tune in same time same place tomorrow…

Oh, and a quick reminder that some of the Fishy Friday Poems have been commemorated in cartoon and greeting card form by Peppy Scott. They can be found HERE, along with the rest of the 2Fs Design collection.

The Daily Poem (2019)

Yesterday I posted a trio of “Nonku”: small poems with big themes. I thought today I’d post some more “Haikicks”: frivolous poems borrowing features from the Haiku, Limerick and Clerihew forms…

That Jacob Rees-Mogg,
with his face like a bulldog
chewing on nettles,
wants Brexit settled
with EU flushed down the bog.

Jeremy Clarkson
seems a horrible person.
On-screen persona:
a bullying moaner.
Gets hungry on location.

(alt version)

Jeremy Clarkson
Seems a horrible person.
It could all just be
An act for TV
Him, and that vile twat Piers Morgan.

Luvvy Steven Fry
As the chairman of QI
Kept Davies in check
But Sandi Toksvig
Hardly seems to even try

Daft Boris Johnson
Onetime Mayor of London
Hair a disaster
Mugging to camera
A devil fooling no-one.

Boris now aspires
To office even higher
The PM, no less,
A thought, I confess,
That causes me to perspire.

The Daily Poem (2019)

Haven’t done Nonku for a while, so here are a few short poems with big(gish) themes..

A Word of Caution

Throwing caution to the wind
I watch it snapped away
and lifted high into a tree
where it tangles and hangs forlornly.

I won’t try that again in a hurry.

***

Kintsugi

So many cracks:
gleaming rivers winding over and through,
binding me together.
All those fragments:
how could you even begin to make me whole again?
Yet here I am, unshattered,
more gold than clay.

***

Knife Drawer

I’ve taken the Stanley knife
I use for scoring pork
out of the kitchen drawer.
It was winking at me
every time I went looking for a fork.
I don’t trust it any more.

***