Poets Cornered

So farewell Hazel
Blears.
The manner of your leaving
was so typical of a ginge.
You had to whinge
about being picked on.
I will remember you,
for what it's worth, you were
always my favourite Smurf.
But losing you Hazel Blears
will cause few tears.

Over a year of inavtivity on this blog, I'm surprised it is still here.

Well I haven't done much myself recently but can recomment the prolific and talented Banana to lovers of comic verse.

Try this as an introduction, a story that will strike a chord with many parents of grown up, unattached children (and hopefull a few grown up children will take it on board too - ours in particular.

De Problem With Defooing

Check out Poetry Life and Times August 07 issue and read the inteview with Ian Thorpe on the role of protest poetry in the battle against climate change.

Poetry Life and Times

Also check out some thought provoking poems at Authorsden:

Peccavimus
African Ambition

Feel The Burn

The Offcomer

Have a look at my sweetie Janet Caldwells interview and poems too:

5 degrees to separation

Minimize

Pancake Girl

First Haircut

What Lies In Sight

Ancient Lover

ODfallout1

EJTrad

It took a long time to decide what to do with this blog, I am not such a prolific poet that I could post a new poem a day (or even one a week)even were the blog not restricted to comic verse.

It finally struck me, blog other people's amusing poems.

So let's start off with A Prayer For The Late Lissa T. written by a lady who is sure she will be late for her own funeral.

A Hippie’s Solstice
by Brother Bastion

‘twas midsummer’s morning on Salisbury Plain
while waiting for sunrise on the solstice day
all around the great henge Druids congregated,
their anticipation made the dawn seem belated.
Suddenly on the horizon appeared one single ray,
I looked to my mate Pigpen on the grass where he lay
saying “rise up good Pigpen for the Solstice is here.”
“Fuck off hippie,” he said, popping another beer.

Check out Brother Bastion’s music at MySpace

This month sees a relaunch for British poetry e-zine Poetry Life and Times under the editorship of Robin Ouzman Hislop.

I am featured along with other poets bringing vetry different styles from around the world. The mag had been stagnant for a while as pressure of work weighed increasingly heavily on the previous editor, Sara Russell. Fortunately Robin, like me, is a gentleman of leisure these days so no likely intrusions from the increasingly frenetic world of the workaholic society.

I hope you get time to check out the mag, bookmark it, and maybe even consider submitting your work for a future issue.

Tried to post this yesterday but it has not showed up. The servers are so slow at the moment it probably timed out.

Not a comedy poem but one for my pagan friends, with a brief description of what Beltane is all about for the "infidels."

Fires of Love

Hope to get poets coirnered back online soon but finding people willing to contribute is soooo difficult and I can't expect half a dozen people to keep it going.

One or two hits every day mean the site is getting visited. It coulod be a search engine spider of course...
I will be starting this project again very soon, all that is holding me up at the moment is trying to work out how to make it fly and bring contributing poets the audience they deserve.

But I am getting there.

Cheers
Ian

Sorry for absence folks, back in a few days.
Ian

A newcomer today, with a dark and sardonic poem. Well its been that kind of a week.

Horizon News.
by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Nobody wants to say
New Millennium
Got off in a bad way.

No sugar for the coolies,
Government shortage of oil,
To pay or not to pay.

But O brave new world
In the name of your host et al
Your legacy's crashed.

robin ouzman hislop 2005

a rich man
steps in a dog-turd
on his doorstep,
swears at a tradesman
who has called to
present his bill

the tradesman
is unctious, but then
sacks his workman.
a good man who
is not to blame
for his sad demeanour

the workman is bitter
he beats a beggar
who lives on the street
has no home or family
holds no position
and can go no lower

the beggar kicks out
at a passing dog
he kicks out his anger
he kicks at injustice
a rich man's injustice
that has trickled down to him

the dog has no reason,
no means of stating his case,
feels pain, instinctively knows
where that kick got started.
He shits on a doorstep.
The rich man's doorstep.

Check out Beloved Succubus a gothic horror poem with audio

NOTE: Haiku are a Japanese poetic form consisting of seventeen syllables arranged in lines of 5,7 and 5 syllables. A true haiku conforms to a philosophical definition too, in fact a Japanse - American poet of my acquaintance holds the opinion that haiku can never work properly in English because it is a verbose language where as Japanese is a highly nuanced language with a completely different structure. Undeterred, your resident intrepid adventurers Mike St. Mark and Ian Thorpe plunged into the deep end...

1. Haiku in English

Haiku are fine things
but not always well suited
to the rules of Eng...

2. 'ear 'ear

Do old mens' ears grow?
Or is it their heads that shrink?
Ask them; they won't 'ear.

3. Disconnection

A butterfly flaps
its wings in the rain forest,
that's all, la,la,la

4 To The Poet Laureate - Poetry on Motion

Poet Laureate?
He is not a poet and
he does not know it

5. England

England, my England.
Held up in a gridlock I
miss the soaps again

6. Haiku to Autumn (after Keats)

Season of mists and
mellow fruitfulness. Christmas
in shops already.

We have all been annoyed by the outbreak of trackback spammers. This is just a ruse by people to zonk their site up the search engine ratings and is not personal so nothing to worry about. Each trackback they do creates a link from your page to theirs thus zapping up their page rating score in Search Engine listings.
To stop it:
Open your [Blogs] tab on the taskbar above your workspace. All your blogs are shown in a list
For each blog in turn:
Click on the (Settings) icon
When the page opens look along the task bar for the [publishing] tab and open it.
Scroll down until you find the Trackbacks checkbox. It will be set to allow trackbacks. Click on the box so that it is clear. Trackbacks on your blog are now disallowed and the robots these spammers are using should not be able to function in your page code.

If you find any of the above makes your mind conjure up pictures of little pink mice dancing the can can just mail me.
Also spread this info around to your friends.
Power To The People
Ian

NOW SCROLL DOWN FOR TODAY'S POST

The Dinner Plates of Old England by Hereward the Worzel

The dinner plates of old England
are forever under threat
by foreign foes of every hue
from Capsicum to Courgette.

Since Romans brought their zucchini
to plant roots in English soil
invaders from around the world
have come, soaked in olive oil.

'taters from the Virginias,
Tomaters from Armenia,
Perfidious papist mange-tout peas?
They gave us schizophrenia.

The zestful, sneering citrus fruits
with their gaudy, ghastly skins
give native apples a complex, but
the fightback now begins.

Mangol Wurzel warriors, warlords
of the noble turnip clan
marshal radishes, parsnips, beets;
plumed carrots march in our van.

We will ally our armies with
hoards of stately English greens,
make kitchen gardens safe again
for honest native beans.

Hark to the hungry Englishman,
and heed his famished shouts
the phlegms can go back to Brussels,
and they can keep their sprouts

We shall drive out the offcomer,
no compote or julienne,
but steaming hunks of boiled grey gunk,
food fit for Xenophon.

Apologies for posting two of my own poems on successive days, but this one is kinds topical:- Ian

If reincarnation is a fact
and we all must visit this earth again
with God or the Devil I'll make a pact,
but one condition I must make plain
I don't want to return as a TV star
a pop singer or Hollywood icon
I would not enjoy life as an athlete,
politician or business tycoon.
When I return to begin my new life
for me it will quite enough
if I can be just a humble flea
and live in Katie Melua's muff.