The Shaman

Duck-billed Great mother

Barefoot in Babylon with Dog

Yes, it's that bloody woman again!

It occurs to me that as there is an ass, some stars and a cafe (that no doubt serves tea) in the picture they indicate the name of the woman - AsStarTe(a) = Astarte.

Can't explain the dog, or the idiot with the balloon, though. Perhaps one of you clever people can?

10p for a cup of Tea?

This picture and the following poem are pretty old, as they refer to days when you could actually sit down in a cafe and have a cup of tea for 10p - unless you were a tramp.......

10p For A Cup Of Tea.

Who dares 

Ask questions like that?

Man with twigs in hair

Spittle in beard

Whose out-thrust paw

Has mushrooms growing

Between the fingers

And dead rivers crossing the palm.                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                      He asks more than we can give

                                                      And he makes the town look untidy

                                                      When all we want to do is live

                                                      Not forgive.

                                                      BUT HE COULD BE ME.

 

                                                     Don’t say that my children –

                                                     You don’t know where that thought has been.

                                                     But come with me down to the shore.

                                                     I have a plastic bucket,

                                                     A spade as well.

                                                     Come bury me my children

                                                     Before the tide comes in.

Poetry Workshop

People have asked me why I have such a down on so-called literary folk and say they are appalling people.
This picture is one of the reasons. They are for the most part ill-mannered, insolent, and self-opinionated pigs who put down people like Wordsworth and Shelley. Will they be remembered by anyone in two hundred time like these great poets?  Somehow, I doubt it!

 

Heard at a Writer’s Workshop.

Your poem has too many images.

It doesn’t say anything to me.

I suggest you cut out all

the images except this one.

What you do with that is your

problem – perhaps you could write

a completely different poem

(we will be kind enough to believe

  it came from your own head

  and was not rammed down your throat

  by Us), and then we can play

the game of Spot the Cliché.

    By the way,

               I liked your poem

Grunt Monk in all his Dubious Glory

OMIGAWD!

Someone I know, once knocked at Grunt Monk's door at an inopportune moment.

She was disgusted - not so much by his wedding tackle - but by his skinny hairy legs!

The place was infested by rats at the time.

Jill and the Box-Kite

Jill and the Box-Kite

Watch the girl in the blue skirt. Her name is Jill, and a few years later she will become very important to me when I discover something called sex! Wonder what she's doing now?