No-Fear Poetry
For Paul x
My weaknesses have always been food and men.
~ Dolly Parton
My weaknesses may not be good –
like Dolly’s, they are men and food:
if a man shows he can cook
I will be forever hooked.
A delightful dish
is my great wish –
if it comes as man and plate,
I’ll propose on our first date.
Nothing says ‘I’m yours!’
like a delicious home-made sauce.
A juvenile reaction
to a baby tooth extraction:
Yeah!
£2!
A middle-aged reaction
to a wisdom tooth extraction:
Quake
Quiver
Sob
Shiver
Cry
Weep
Pills
Sleep
Moan
Groan
Complain
Pain
An elderly reaction
to a last-ever extraction:
Sigh
Slurp
Burp
Sitting in state in the garden,
Cat contemplates his rotten fate:
damned an inferior runner-up
to Dog – that one,
peeing up the gate.
It was World Menopause Day on Monday and I completely missed it (o, the irony), so here, two days late, is a poem from my collection about the menopause, in celebration of the worldwide commiseration for our collective misery I’m sure I’m not the only woman of a certain age to have missed:
Silver Linings
I’m glad to be on the change
Hot sweats reduce heating bills
Bad moods make me assertive
There’s a full stop to periods
It’s a catch-all excuse
Crabby? It’s the menopause
Bitchy? It’s the change
Morose? It’s that time of life
It’s a license to be grumpy
And at last
At last
At last
My husband fears me
*Okay, so I prepared this post last Tuesday, to publish Wednesday morning, the fourteenth of October, when I suddenly realised that World Menopause Day is on the EIGHTEENTH of October! Which means my last-minute, sorry-I-missed-it tweet on Monday night was a week EARLY. TODAY is World Menopause Day.
Having realised THAT, I turned to my collection for a poem about forgetfulness in menopause to replace this one, and you know what? I forgot to write one.
The menopause: I rest my case.
Two goats in a boat
Sailed on a moat
‘Neath a castle remote
One tipped the other
Over the side
To see if she’d float
Alas, she died
See her corpse bloat
I’ve nausea
My body aches
Small fever and
I’ve got the shakes
I won’t complain
On chin I’ll take
The icing on
The vaccine cake
**
I don’t think we’ve had a Covid poem yet. As the point of this blog is to show that we can laugh at almost anything, I feel obliged to give you this one. Though it didn’t feel funny at the time.
Will Smith
Is no myth
But gorgeous from top to bottom
I won’t rest until I’ve got him
For more on the clerihew form, see an earlier post.
Let the wind blow where it may.
……………..Today, it was up a pigeon’s backside
……………..in the tree outside, knocking him off
……………..his screeching mate.
I swear they sighed.
Those in the know
know that those
who should know,
don’t know that
they don’t know
what they should know.
Those in the know
keep from them
what they ought to know.
No, say those in the know
(who run the show),
it’s no-go. How do we
know they’ll know what
to do if we let them
know what we know?
We know what we
know and that’s the
way it should go, so
we don’t show what
we know, no way.
They don’t get to know
what we know.
So, plausible deniability
is the government’s
ability to take liberties
with your right to know
what you don’t yet know.
But you’ll never know that
you don’t know what those
who run the show don’t want
you to know. No way will
they let you know.
So now you know.
I’ve no wish for my life to be over
Until I’ve found in the ground
A well-grown four-leaf clover
…
My wants are small. I once enraged my son when I found a four-leaf clover on a walk and he, confusing his superstitions, said, ‘Make a wish on it.’ I wished for another four-leaf clover. He was furious that I wasted my wish.
I’m not actually superstitious but even I felt a cold shiver when I found another four-leaf clover several years later…
PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS+PS
When I added the tags, I accidentally typed ‘four-leaf lover’. Maybe I should have wished for that instead 🙂
Poetry Fluff 