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In the beginning
God created the heavens, and
Might have left it there.

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La la la la la.
Why should the la la’s be last?
Let the la’s be first!

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A short poem a day
Keeps the temptation to write
Longer ones at bay.

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Rejoice and be glad!
For this poem is both short and
Comprehensible.

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I’m not an I am
Bic pentameter, only
A humble haiku.

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In the beginning
Was the wordle, but wordle
Couldn’t be the word.

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A haiku is ars
Brevis that aspires, like us,
To vita longa.

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You might not like this
But you cannot much dislike
Such short duration.

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As mighty oak trees grow
From little acorns, just so
Plant little poet trees.

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Self-evidently
The past no longer exists
But at least it lasts.

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To call Leamington
Leamington Spa still won’t do:
It’s really Royal too.

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No use listening
To roses: if they whispered
They wouldn’t make scents.

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From piano-forte
To pianissimo, improv
Has it all to play.

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Had it not been for
The Angles, we anglophones could play
At being saxophones.

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Greenwashing is when
Catastrophe’s conspired with
With a clean conference.

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Leave the Moon alone!
Be content with fucking up
Planet Earth, our home.

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Will lyric poets still
Be writing lyric poetry
Come the apocalypse?

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No need to be koi.
Carpe diem, no matter
What your element.

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They say the word Love
Is overused. Whereas love,
My love, is under

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Rather depressing
Can be rather beautiful,
If you’re not depressed.

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Mini-minor good,
Better than any make of
Maxi-major bad.

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Only one way in,
One out. Amazinoutly
Labyroutinthine.

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When deep in a maze
You may lose your head, but don’t
Ever lose the thread.

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A traffic cone sits
On the head of our hero.
Glasgow smiles better.

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Coventry’s three spires
Were seen from all sides. Alas!
Those views have expired.

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Now is the time for
All good men to stand aside
For better women.

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Allotments are more
Than war on weeds: peace and love,
And lovage and peas.

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Double you double
You double you dot: world-wide
Heaven, world-wide Hell.

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With whiskey butter
Porridge is poetry. The proof
Is in the porridge.

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Here’s a little dream
Where you’re dreaming of a dream
You dreamed that you dreamt.

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At New Street Station
Last night, the ghost passed me by
Of the late last train.

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If you’re nice, the train
At Platform 5 will take you
Straight to Paradise.

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In the human race
Don’t run too fast. Remember:
The first will be last.

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Trains and boats and planes,
Cars, bikes, busses and trams, and
Feet and legs to boot.

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Wait for the green man
And be patient with his twin.
Better red than dead.

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See Naples and die
Or see Little Eccleston-
With-Larbreck and live.

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Coventry Canal
Used not to meet with the Oxford,
But they’re best friends now.

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If your choice were this –
Earthly bliss or heavenly –
Which would you most miss?

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Red postbox, blue sky.
Push the envelope inside, but
Think outside the box.

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Yellow, blue and red,
Thence orange, green and purple.
Black and white? Not quite.

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Mondrian disliked green,
But whether that was mutual
Remains to be seen.

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Escherlators are
Escalators that only
Seemingly escalate.

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The Christian Alt-Right
Is the religion that’s right
For oxymorons.

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A mystery for
Misogynists: how on earth
They ever came to exist.

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It’s not right to call
People stupid, except for
People who are stupid.

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Seventy-six and
Never been in a mosh pit.
Should I regret it?

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Brexit meant Brexit
But also Little England
And big regretting.

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David, Theresa,
Boris, Liz, Rishi. Alack!
Years we won’t get back.

***

Will legislators
Who advocate a little state
Auto-evaporate?

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Your Royal Highnesses
And every aristocrat, pray
Be orf and don’t come back.

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A republic means
A state that’s remarkably
Unmonarchable.

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The rich and powerful
Like it when we bow and scrape.
Don’t participate!

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Live life by profit
And loss. Lose your soul and let
Profit be your boss.

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Expensive perfumes
Containing hardly any scent
Make hardly any sense.

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I fell out of love
With my pre-loved pullover,
So I post-loved it.

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Last night I dreamt of
Rebecca again, and tonight,
Reader, I’ll read it.

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They were the best times,
They were the worst times, even
Without genitives.

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A foreign country
Where they don’t do things the same?
That’d be the past.

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April. Bright and cold.
The clocks were striking 13,
19, 84.

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A wife is wanted
For a rich young bachelor,
As the whole world knows.

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Turkeys, vote en masse
For Benjamin Zephaniah!
Don’t vote for Christmas.

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Humanity and
Humaneness: hopelessfully
Syninymical.

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One can never be
Too clever, except when one’s
Too clever by half.

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Cleverness is nice
But it’s not clever to be
Clever but not nice.

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Even the erudite
Can confuse what’s eruright
With what’s eruwrong.

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Social media is
People’s new opium, begging
Karl Marx’s pardon.

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Confucius him say,
Good poems save time; bad one are
Never really fin

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Personal ID
Isn’t the real entity
Of identity.

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Be true to yourself
(If you can still remember
Quite which self is you).

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Whether you travel
Near or far, it’s not easy
To arrive at who you are.

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The last time I looked
I wasn’t me, nor was I
Either one of we.

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Being good’s better than
Being godly, unless being godly
Makes good get better.

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Is your glass half-full?
In that case you should perhaps
Keep it somewhere safe.

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I remember that,
In the 1960s, I
Wasn’t really there.

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Would you have others
Do unto you, sisters, brothers,
As you do unto them?

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Perfectionism
Plus imperfectionism
Makes humourism.

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OSCAIL AN OKNO

Neznámý jazyk.
Krásný schovaný výhled.
Otevři okno.

Teanga iasachta.
Radharc an-álainn i bhfolach.
Oscail an fhuinneog.

Língua estrangeira.
Bela vista escondida.
Abre a janela.

Une langue étrangère.
Une scène très belle mais cachée.
Ouvrez la fenêtre.

Eine Fremdsprache.
Schöne versteckte Szene.
Öffne das Fenster

A foreign language.
A beautiful hidden view.
Open the window.

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Erratic spelling
Didn’t in the least demean
William Shakspere’s name.

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I wandered lonely
As a cloud that floats on high
O’er No Entry signs.

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Half of England owned
By one percent is serfdom
By another name.

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The fearless soldier
Goes down fighting. The writer,
Right to the full stop.

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Indefinite a
And most definitely the
Shouldn’t end like that.

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What’s not rocket science
But is now the new normal?
No brainer! Cliché.

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Please bring some apples
Up the pears, when coming down
The pears and apples.

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Being invisible
Shouldn’t mean you can’t be heard,
Just you can’t be

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Always a better,
Always a worse, but never
A mediocrer.

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Pandemonium, pan,
Pandemic, saucepan, frying pan,
Panic, deadpan, pan.

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Did it just happen
By happenstance? Half the world
Ruled by psychopaths.

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Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Was just one piece in a world
Of wars and peaces.

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How to put the world
In a pother: pander to
People like Putin.

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What’s so familiar
About the mass murderer
Vladolfmir Pitler?

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Says Mr Putin,
Don’t be good. If I could be
More evil, I would.

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Seven, eight, nine, ten,
Eleven. Evil bastards
Don’t go to heaven.

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Tories are revolt
Ing. Boris Johnson’s revolt
Ing. Why aren’t we re

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Poems won’t stop a war
But we must fight to make sure
That wars don’t stop poems.

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The Taliban ban
Women from doing what men can.
Ban the Taliban!

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Sod the effing bastards!
(Unpoetic language is fine
If kept to one line.)

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One peace is never
Enough: it takes many more
To make just one peace.

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Things could be better
Elsewhere in the multiverse,
If not multiworse.

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A part of our world,
Our galaxy and universe.
Unique: you, me, us.

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Whilst waiting in line,
Synchronised jigging of hips
Might help pass the time.

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Précis: concisely
Saying what was said. There’s really
Nothing else to say.

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This might have been like
What one would write, were one not
Sick of subjunctives.

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Is thought inferior
To not thinking? That’s something
One might think about.

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Money makes the world
Go round, whereupon the rich
Round it up, not down.

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If you’re somebody,
Seems you must marry someone
Who’s not nobody.

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Yeats keeps arising
And going, going but never gone
Along to Innisfree.

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Round about midnight
Is about the right time for
Midnight roundabouts.

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Woke up this morning,
Got them City blues. Five nil
To the visitors.

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A game of two halves:
Forty-five minutes followed
By the same again.

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A field is a field,
A pitch is a pitch, except
When pitch is playing field.

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Raynauld’s wouldn’t be
So-cold, if it wasn’t he who
Discovered Raynauld’s.

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The extremely unctious
In extremis have no need
Of extreme unction.

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Veritas vincit.
Vincit veritas. Looked at
Front or back, truth wins.

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Charity may be
The best of the three, but hope
Is the last to leave.

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Nudging native tongues
To linguacide’s a silent
Sort of genocide.

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The Land of the Free:
A euphemia where people
Get shot frequently.

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America, please
See common sense: amend that
Murderous amendment.

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Owning a joke shop
Is no laughing matter: it’s
The way they sell them.

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Little Bo Peep’s sheep!
Lost! … Leave them alone! Wagging,
Tails have happy endings.

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Hey, Talking Black Sheep!
Got any wool? Yeah, three bags –
One each for three peeps.

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Higgle Piggle Hen
Lays lots of eggs, which I then
Sell to gentlemen.

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Hey diddle diddle,
Cat cow little dog fiddle.
Dish spoon skedaddle.

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Miss Muffet. Tuffet,
Curds, whey. Spider beside her!
Miss Muffet hops it.

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Little Jack Horner,
Corner, Christmas pie, thumb, plum,
Self-praise. Rum-ti-tum.

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Humpty Dumpty. Wall.
Fall! King’s cavalry. First aid.
Alas! Too ovulate.

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Old lady swallowed
Fly spider bird cat dog goat
Cow horse. Dead? Of course.

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Grand Old Duke of York.
Ten thousand men. Up. Down. Up
Up. Down down… Dope.

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Down the woods today?
Surprise! There’s a picnic there
For teddy bears. Yay!

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A lesser grievance
Of old age, good grief! is pips
Stuck between your teeth.

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Two coincident
Cups of cocoa has to be
Cocoincidence.

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When all’s said and done
And the battle’s lost and won,
Earth still orbits Sun.

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After poetry, there’s
Doggerel, caterwaul and –
Begad! – bugger all.

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Live in the mo… Woops!
Live… Woops! … or just keep living
In the past… Perfect!

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Live life like a poem.
No matter how hard at times,
Try to make it rhyme.

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We all live to die,
Which explains why we mostly
Spend life dying to live.

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The future presents
An enigma wrapped up in
A real-time riddle.

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Life is a struggle
Of Now versus Then, in which
Then is the winner. Amen.

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Metaphorical
And literal heartache. Not
Even simile.

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Heart failure is bad
But not even half as bad
As failure of the soul.

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I’m dead, I think, though
According to R Descartes,
Erm… therefore I aren’t.

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Humorous alive,
Perhaps post-humorously
Funny on the other side.

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When you’re feeling up
Side down, fix your feet firmly
Upon the ceiling.

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What happened before
The beginning began? And
What, after the end ends?

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Spring summer autumn
Winter. Birth adolescence
Adulthood death. Spring

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Et in saecula
Saeculorum orum or
Um orum. Amen.

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Horror without end
Is even worse than an end
With horror.

The End.

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