66 poems on this blog!

I counted them.  Are 66 poems enough for a book?  I guess they might be.  There’s a competition in the name of TS Eliot for the best unpublished book-length collection of poetry.

Mm.  Trouble is, I’m not a huge fan of ToiletS, as Mark calls him.  I don’t think he’s bad, I just think he’s overrated, especially by himself.  Still, it’s an opportunity….

Better not include the parody of his work if I do send it in.  On the other hand, sometimes a bit of cheek can work wonders.  It’s so hard to know… If you don’t know anyone on the inside track, you’re really working in the dark.

Anyway, here’s a work in progress:

Trial

The price of prejudice runs high

the guilty and the judged

the jury of your peers floats by

the signature is smudged

The verdict of the inmate

(the powerless know best)

the innocent are intimate

and call at your behest

The guards like dead policemen

override your sleeping form

reverse two-fingered peace, man

your block goes down a storm

You’re calling on Jehovah

while warders work to rule

slop out till time is over

as they’re witnessing your stool

That’s all I’ve got so far.  It’s a bit rough round the edges.  And I know the “peace man” is a bit contrived – but do you know how few words rhyme with “policeman”?

Kirk out

it’s persisting it down…

This was a joke made by Mr Pepper (hey!  D’you realise we’ve had Dr Pepper’s, Sergeant Pepper and Mr Pepper, all in the same week?) who used to run the shop now known as Igreen and Splea, where Mark will be working this aft.  If you’re on Queen’s Rd, drop in and say hallo.

Or hello

Or hullo.  Hey, why is it nobody spells it “hullo” any more?  It’s almost like spelling Hindu with two oo’s ie Hindoo.  It’s just not done.

But why?

Anyway, Mr Pepper (not, we suspect, his real name) was a miserable g*t who, although he saw me three times a year when I came round with my yoga posters, pretended each time that he didn’t know me and that he’d never seen my posters before and therefore the proposition of actually putting one up in his shop needed to be carefully considered.  Each time.  He also once cut the mould out of a vege sausage roll and gave it back to the customer who’d returned it.

I guess he’s retired now, little ray of sunshine that he was.  Anyway, when our friend Andy went in on a rainy day, he made the above joke about the weather.  When Andy didn’t fall about laughing, he made it again.  And again.

I guess that’s persistence.  Which, as I keep telling Mark, is 80% of success.

Except with bad jokes.

Don’t get wet.

Kirk out.