Terry Flood | + Follow Poet |
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Its a Fix

[In my youth, glue was tubes or bottles of gloop
for sticking stuff together: cement was grey powder
that you mixed with sand and gravel to make concrete]

***

I wish I spoke American when I was a kid
I might have built my airfix kits better than I did
I’d get so exited as I opened up the box
Even though the parts inside would end up being rocks

First I made a battleship but made a mess of it
So I tried another kit... a model Messerschmitt
I messed that one up totally, so tried a Saturn V
I built that rocket carefully... it made a mess of me

What the hell was wrong with ’glue’ or possibly ‘adhesive’
All of the instructions were frankly in-cohesive
The writer, were he English, would have written what he meant
And not suggested sticking bits together with cement.

Copyright © Terry Flood | Year Posted 2021

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Rico Leffanta Date: 3/7/2021 11:10:00 AM So now your children experience the same frustration reading instruction in Chinese/Indian-English? Well done! Aloha! Rico Login to Reply Terry Flood Date: 3/7/2021 3:19:00 PM Please don’t get me started on Chinese-English instructions..... oh... I feel a poem coming on! Thanks Rico. Terry

Gary Radice Date: 3/7/2021 5:22:00 AM Great poem Terry..I remember opening the Airfix model box and sighing as I looked at the grey plastic strip of wheels and fiddly bits and thinking it's never going to look at like the picture on the front of the box...and of course it never did :) Cheers - Gary Login to Reply Terry Flood Date: 3/7/2021 6:48:00 AM Actually, I wasn’t half bad at Airfix kits...but, as a kid, the word ‘cement’ always bugged me. I saw a couple of kits in Lidl last week... nowadays you don’t even use glue... or cement. So, what’s the point? Thanks for stopping by, Garry. Terry

Jan Allison Date: 3/6/2021 12:26:00 PM I'm stuck on your witty poems Terry! I adored the smell of copydex glue and picking it off my hands after a gluing session at school - how i loved using glitter and messy stuff like that... was never artistic or creative though lol:-) hugs Jan xx Login to Reply Terry Flood Date: 3/6/2021 2:40:00 PM Thanks Jan. I’ve sat in this poem for a while cos it didn’t flow well as it was. Stumbled across it in my files and had a tinker. Voila! Re the first line of your comment, might I be so bold as to get you to look at my ‘Double Talk’ poem... before I’d even finished it, I thought, Jan will like this one!