Tag: A little rhyme

Haphazardly Poetical – The Reception

Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

I posted ‘The Wedding’ last week and mentioned that I also had this ‘poem’ prepared and, against all expectations, a few of you said that you would like to read it, so here goes…

The smoker’s bar at the Rat and Duck,
Was where they all went on.
The tables were all caked in muck
And so was Uncle Ron.
He’d tried, you see, to stand between
Aunt Daisy and Aunt May
And asked them not to cause a scene
Just let the matter lay.

It seemed to work – to some extent
They smiled with fond accord.
And this he took for good intent;
His optimism soared.
They acted like they’d always been
The very best of chums,
But poor old Ron had just not seen
The way that trouble comes.

It’s true, he felt a slight unease,
It seemed a little weird
That Aunty May fell to her knees
While Daisy stroked his beard.
“Is this all real?” Aunt Daisy quipped,
Her mouth fixed in a grin.
Then sudden fear, as both hands gripped
The growth upon his chin.

“Who do you think you are?” she cried
“To interfere like that.”
And then with all her strength applied
Her handbag round his hat.
Then gave a mighty push and heave
To where Aunt May was crawling.
Without the merest by-your-leave
They sent the poor man sprawling

Then when they had him on the floor
His two demonic foes
Both asked him if he ‘wanted more’
Whilst pounding on his nose.
And so he tried to run away
To leave them hell for leather
He would have done so, had not May
Tied both his shoes together.

He tried, but he could not escape,
Nor find a place to hide.
Salvation came in the awesome shape
Of a gently blushing bride.
“I’m doing the rounds of all the men
And you’re the next,” she said.
Before she latched on, there and then,
Like a plunger to his head.

Poor Uncle Ron, he tried to breathe;
He tried to pull away,
But Jane just wouldn’t let him leave
Until she’d had her way.
He tried, in vain, to shake her free
To get it over quick.
He really didn’t mean to be
So violently sick.

The bridegroom by this time had downed
A dozen beers or more
And, having fallen down, had found
He liked it on the floor.
He wouldn’t have to face his bride,
To breath her strange aroma,
Or feel her naked at his side
If he was in a coma.

He tried to stand, to order more,
His legs would not obey.
He fell again to the sticky floor
And there he thought he’d stay.
But burning thirst now ruled his head
“I think I’ll die quite soon,
If I don’t get a drink,” he said,
Whilst draining the spitoon.

The ‘breakfast*’ scoffed, the speeches made,
The wine (and guests) all drunk,
And from the plate where fruitcake laid
The DJ grabbed a chunk
“Now it’s time to spin the platters”
He looked around, askance –
They were all of them as mad as hatters –
It was time for the First Dance.

So Jane ran over to the bar
And hauled the groom upright.
The barman saw the door ajar
And attempted to take flight
As all assembled took their place,
The couple gently swayed
With all the elegance and grace
Of flies when sprayed with Raid.

Then all surrounding bundled in –
Aunt Fanny did the splits –
And Uncle Ronnie, tumbling in
Fell face-first in her décolletage.
Somehow he wound-up underneath,
His yells were heard afar:
The braces on his crooked teeth
Got hooked up on her bra.

The men hauled on his laces,
The women pulled her heels.
There were many reddened faces
And a multitude of squeals
As excess wind was broken
When the two were dragged apart
And Ronnie left a token –
A deadly, silent fart.

And so the evening ground along,
Aunt Daisy got quite merry,
Before they reached the final song
She’d swallowed all the sherry,
Some Cherry-B’s, a Babycham,
A snowball and a gin,
Been sick across a plate of ham
And three times in a bin.

The happy couple slid away
Before the night was through,
They’d really quite enjoyed the day,
And ‘the night’ was overdue:
The bridegroom couldn’t stay awake,
The bride was left frustrated,
She tried her best for goodness sake,
But left him half castrated.

His screams were heard across the town,
His voice was loud and high
As in her haste to ‘get them down’
She didn’t pull the fly,
But raked, instead, his wherewithal
With a thousand little teeth
‘Til the skin was barely there at all
Nor what was underneath.

An evening spent in A & E**
Their married life began.
A little stitch (or ninety three)
To ensure he stayed a man.
The honeymoon put back for weeks
To allow for partial mending
Another tale on which to peek
But for now we’ve reached the ending.

*Why the after-wedding meal is known as a breakfast, I have no idea.
**Accident & Emergency – the department at UK hospitals where you are taken to be ignored for several hours, if not days, before receiving treatment (a problem with the system and definitely not the wonderful, over-worked staff) for bodily damage and illness.

As I mentioned at the top of this piece, this ‘poem’ was ready to go – except that it wasn’t.  I read it through to find that it didn’t always rhyme where it should and it didn’t always scan.  Sorting these things out takes me forever – I cannot tell you how much I admire the likes of Obbverse who go through this pain regularly – each stanza is like a thorn under the fingernail and by the time I finish a poem, I really cannot stand it.  I hope you are better disposed to this than I…

Haphazardly Poetical – The Wedding

Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

A few days off and nothing prepared, so another rifle through the archive.  This ‘poem’ (I realise I am stretching a point here) has been in the file for blog posts since day one.  I wrote it many years ago with the intention of reading it out in lieu of The Best Man’s speech at a wedding – hence the deliberately non-pc, ‘Carry On’ feel of the whole thing.  Needless to say, I didn’t do it in the end – I am still talking to the groom, although not the bride, but then again, neither is he – but it only really works (really?) when read out aloud.  Try it and see – but don’t blame me…

The story I relate today
Is of my uncle’s wedding day:
He married Jane, a last resort
From one to ten, a certain nought.

It was really quite a rushed affair
Some said he did it for a dare
Some said he was too young a lad
Some darkly hinted he was mad.

He hadn’t proposed and nor had she,
She’d just demanded “Marry me!”
And he accepted, voice quite calm
Despite the fact she’d broke his arm.

And he was not the greatest catch –
From athlete’s foot to thinning thatch –
A body that had missed its best
In nylon pants and grey string vest.

Still, time flew by, the church was booked
My brother thought “Well I’ll be blowed.
I never thought this day would come.”
And slyly drank a tot of rum.

As both the families settled down
All hats and frocks and coughs and frowns.
All hankies tucked down in the ruffles
To be brought out at the merest snuffle

And Aunty Jan gave Jim a boot
For laughing at the bridegroom’s suit.
Then all their eyes turned to the door
And Uncle slid down to the floor.

The organ played ‘Here Comes The Bride’
The groom had thoughts of suicide.
He turned to see his sweetheart, Jane,
And decided he was quite insane.

She shuffled gaily down the aisle
All bandy legs and grisly smile.
A flower in her matted hair –
The bridal gown from Mothercare.

The vicar looked down at his watch
And slyly took a slug of scotch
Whilst looking round the wooden pews
He hated what he had to do:

To tie with matrimonial knot
This woman and a stupid clot
Who looked as bright as a slurry pit
And smelled – he thought – of chicken manure.

“Dearly beloved” he began to say.
“We are gathered here today
To join in matrimonial bliss
This couple who will shortly kiss

To finalise their wedding vow:
A lifetime’s oath – at least for now –
To be co-joined for ever more.”
The vicar stared down at the floor.

And closed his eyes, the slightest pause
To let someone find rightful cause
Why they should never be permitted
To ever let their genes be knitted.

The congregation then all rose
And aunty May crushed Ivan’s toes.
So Ivan, in retaliation,
Ripped apart her pink carnation.

“You swine!” she yelled and kicked him hard
Where he would least like to be scarred
And falling down he screamed in pain
As she kicked him very hard again.

“Don’t scream at me,” she said.  “Take that!”
And hit him with a prayer mat.
“Now let us pray,” the vicar said
As Aunty May kicked Ivan’s head.

“You make me sick,” Aunt Daisy spat.
“You shouldn’t hurt the man like that.”
Aunt May said “Just you keep it out.”
And hit her with a hefty clout.

Then Daisy cried out, “Well I never.”
And hit back with a rolled umbrella.
So Aunty May, with temper flared,
Ripped out a chunk of Daisy’s hair.

The vicar now was in a panic;
The going’s-on were quite satanic.
“Love your neighbours, please,” he cried
And turned in terror to the bride.

He quickly grabbed the couples’ hands
And asked them both if they would stand.
The preacher, frightened for his life,
Pronounced that they were man and wife.

The organist, in state of shock,
Played madly to the gathered flock.
The choir sang a verse or two
While hiding down behind a pew

And as the punches flew each side
The bridegroom leaned to kiss the bride
But tripped and ripped her wedding gown
And pulled her Marks & Spencer’s down.

The vicar, having taken oaths
Was shocked to see her without clothes.
The verger, made of sterner stuff
Stared at this vision in the buff.

The bridegroom saw what he was taking
And all at once he started shaking.
He looked at her in consternation
And dreaded the thought of consummation.

Still, that was that, his fate was sealed
As in the tower the church bells pealed.
They walked outside into the air
And a pigeon dropped one in his hair.

His face turned up towards the sky
And it dropped another in his eye.
“You wait!” he yelled, his voice was strained
As pigeons flapped and droppings rained.

The photographer, a redundant hosier
Had once been arrested for over-expos-i-er
But now he stood and shook his head
“Come on now boys and girls,” he said

And Uncle Jim gave his biggest smile,
Which baffled everyone for a while
‘Cos he’d put his teeth in back to front
He looked a sight, the silly fool.

The cameras flashed and so did Jane
And Uncle swallowed hard again.
Then all was done, confetti gone
The pigeon dropped another one.

The couple climbed into the car
And sped towards the local bar
Where the party raged in all its glory,
But that I’m afraid is another story…

…which I also have on file, so behave, or I may publish that as well!

Zoo #52 – My Last Word on the Subject

The beast that shakes the tiger’s cage
And stirs gorillas into rage,
Who loads the straw on camel’s back
And goads the lions to attack.

Who throws the dregs of KFC,
Pulls faces at the chimpanzee
And finds in every petting zoo
The chance to pinch a chick or two.

Who locks away in fenced-in void
The species that it first destroyed.
The beast that should be in a pen
We call it Homo Sapien…

The zoo is now closed.

Zoo #51 – Monkey

A monkey screamed with righteous rage
At those who locked him in a cage.
So sad for him, he didn’t know,
They’d chopped his home down long ago.

This was one of the very first Zoo Rhymes that I wrote, but it seemed so melancholy that I sat on it until now.  It emanates from the films of the last Orang Utan climbing to the very top of the only tree left standing in the middle of a burned out forest.  The pictures are excruciatingly sad,  particularly as the Orang is pretty much as close as we get to a family in the wild.  The real selfishness of the human race is that it puts its own needs so far above the needs of every other species, whilst it salves its conscience by preserving the last of the line in a zoo…

NB I do know the difference between a monkey and an ape, but it’s just a little rhyme after all, isn’t it…

Shameful bloody humanity…

Zoo #50 – Rhinoceros

The short-sighted rhinoceros
Is known to try and charge a bus.
If you were driving, would you dare
To ask a rhino for his fare?

A short nonsense rhyme again this week about a rhinoceros because, well… you see I was watching a television programme about fish.  The fish were blind cave tetra, and they were being introduced into a zoo’s aquarium.  These little chaps wile their lives away in pitch-black caves where eyesight is of no value to them at all, so evolution has equipped them instead, with what is more or less, a highly tuned sonar system and a sense of smell that could detect a Stilton cheese in the Sahara.  In return, it has taken their eyes.  Now, the tank which was to become their new home was nicely dressed, very cave-like, except for one distinctly incongruous feature: in order that the fish were visible to the glass-tapping multitudes, it was very brightly lit (not, of course, that the fish would have known it).  Well, it just occurred to me, if they were kept in such conditions for long enough – year after year, generation after generation, eon after eon – would evolution give them their eyes back?  Is evolution reversible?  Moreover I wondered, if this poor benighted planet of ours should survive long enough with us on it, would evolution start mitigating our effects on other species?  Would it, perhaps, rob the elephant of its tusks given that tuskless elephants were much more likely to survive to old age without becoming part of a piano?  Would it rob the sharks of their fins, because on balance, what was lost in agility might be gained in stealth (eg not being spotted off the beach by troubled town sheriffs) and the liability not to wind up in noodle soup?  Would whales cease to be slaughtered by the Japanese if they could monitor their own stocks?  Could the leopard change its spots?  Would rhinos evolve without horns; shorn of the fearsome ability to charge, but far less likely to be consumed by some ancient idiot with erectile dysfunction?  Could the human race begin to realise that it is merely part of a whole, and not the entire reason for its being?  I’m not sure, but I shall keep a very close eye on the tetra…

Zoo #48 – Red in Tooth and Claw

Nature executes her duties,
Fills the world with savage beauties
Sharp of tooth and fierce of claw –
Mighty is the carnivore.

Creatures which are most beguiling
Merely furnish stomach-lining:
Nothing in the world as edgy
As animals both small and veggie.

This earth was never meant to be
A place of equanimity:
Reality, it seems, is bleak
The strong will always eat the weak

Might and muscle, fast and sleek,
Feast on fluffy, cute and meek.
Fortunate the favoured few
Nature paints in vivid hue.

Red provides a broad suggestion,
‘Eating me gives indigestion’ –
Always saved a savage mauling
Anything that tastes appalling.

Hunters know that prey dressed kitschy
At very best will leave them itchy
And those that wear a peacock suit
Are seldom worthy of pursuit

Creatures written most prosaic
Merely join this earth’s mosaic
Fate and future clearly wrote;
Listed under Table d’hote.


A few double entendres and a scattering of preposterous rhymes.  I look out of my window as I type this and the countryside is currently beyond beautiful.  Everything is in full leaf, most is in colourful bloom; everything that bloomed in early spring is full of fast-ripening fruit.  Nature provides the most stunning backdrop to the most gruesome of fates…

Zoo #47 – Unicorn

The Unicorn was no bright spark,
He missed his place on Noah’s Ark
While looking at his own reflection,
Trying to find some imperfection
In the flawless beauty he
Supposed that he was meant to be.

Admiring each and every feature,
Mother Nature’s favourite creature
Buffed his horn and groomed his coat…..
Sad to say, he missed the boat.
Perhaps if he had been less vain,
We might have seen his kind again.

(The moral of this story’s simple:
Don’t get worried by a pimple.
You should always view with scorn
The story of the Unicorn.
He worried over every flaw
And now, alas, he is no more.
So, if you have to be like him
Perhaps you ought to learn to swim.)

Another poem aimed directly at children and at my two granddaughters in particular, but this time with a slightly more melancholic air.  As I know that patience has a limit, this will probably be the last mythical creature to find a place in my zoo, which is anyway nearing closure.  The unicorn had to be male because my granddaughters know that no girl would be so vain…

Zoo #46 – It (2)

It’s red and green

         and in between

                 its spots are sometimes yellow.

Its head is red

         its feet instead

                 are something much more mellow.

Its beak is white

         except at night

                 when some of it is dotted.

It’s fair to say

         that anyway

                 it’s rarely ever spotted.

Clearly a part two to last week’s ‘It’ and just as much of a ‘children’s’ rhyme.  My three-year olds don’t get the joke, but they still think it is funny – and that will definitely do…

Zoo #45 – It

Continuing the rather more fanciful little spate of zoo poems aimed more directly at children.

This thing is like two balls of string
With half a horse between.
Its head is like a cream éclair;
Its feet like butter beans.

A tail of green, a mane of blue,
With spots along its back –
A cheerful disposition
Although its mood is black.

It could be `He’, it could be `She’,
It could be `Them’ or `They’
(I think it knows the answer
But is not inclined to say).

Its eyes are green, like tangerines,
It hasn’t any hair.
It’s really very common
Although extremely rare.

In fact, I’ve never seen one,
I promise you, it’s true,
And if you stay awake all night
You’ll never see one too!

Q.    What is it?

A.    I haven’t the faintest idea.

I’ve always written ‘children’s poems’ (even when I’m trying to do otherwise, my output seldom rises above the infantile).  The absence of any call for logic is incredibly refreshing and saves hours of time in Wikipedia research.  Spike Milligan had the greatest gift of writing for the child in all adults.  It is something to which we should all aspire…