Best Codgers Poems
Some numpty bad mouthed my soup style
I’ve taken a break for a while
But I won't be deterred
From writing about turd
And subjects some others deem vile
I’m producing book number two
It contains some poems on poo
Foul flatus departing
Old codgers rank farting
And my pet hate vile doggy doo!
Who first thought to eat cornbread with chili?
And who first thought to add ketchup to fries -
Who first thought to put that bell in Philly -
And who first thought that yeast could make bread rise?
Who first coupled Abbott with Costello -
And who knew whiskers looked so good on codgers -
Who first added fruit to cherry Jell-O
And who first paired up Hammerstein with Rodgers?
Who first peanut butter'd up some jelly -
And who first thought to eat breakfast in bed -
Who made that first Reuben in their deli -
And who suggested Ginger dance with Fred?
Who first thought that tea could use some honey -
Who first put together nails and wood?
Fine folks - all; and yes, it may seem funny
But I should like to meet them if I could.
Now who first put the moon and stars together -
Who put lush green hills under blue skies -
Who made sunshine follow rainy weather -
And who first fashioned beauty for our eyes?
The same One who brought you into my life,
He knew we'd be just right for one another
He knew that we would be husband and wife
Before He formed each of us in our mother.
Great is the One who makes one out of two
Preserving them through sickness, joys, and tears
He knew that you'd need me and I'd need you
I thank Him for our many happy years.
// Dedicated to my beloved bride on our 27th anniversary in 2011 //
When I walk, my chest nearly touches the floor
With tail wagging madly I know I can score.
The judges look at my teeth and nails
I give that steely look that never fails.
My coat is brushed to a high sheen
I am the proudest dog you have ever seen.
Bred to scent, chase and flush out
Rabbits and badgers, with my long snout.
I might be small but a tough customer
Lion hearted to defend my master.
,
So don’t look at size look at content
Judges chose me to win the old codgers contest
With rosette on my collar, nearly as big as my head
I walk around the show arena, thinking, where’s my bed.
Gone are the days when out in the fields I would run
Now I would rather lie in the garden and soak up the sun
PERPETUUM MOBILE
I must go down to the pigging shops again
To Morrison, Tesco, Aldi or maybe Lidl
For I Just went there for the sodding milk in vain
How could I forget! it really is a riddle
To me, though to my wife it’s clear as day
It’s because my age is already well past middle
And the senior moments frequently make play
When I get there, wonder why, and so head back
Starting endless cycle - perpetuum mobile
Could it be I’ve found an answer to energy lack?
Send old geezers to the shops - instructions to buy
Tie to National Grid their unending there-and-back
We could call it ‘renewable’, answering Greeny cry
With old codgers in perennial supply.
22 April 2019
A mackerel sky fillets the village
then hides it in a breezeless blear.
Heads poke out of net drapes
sniff and fish behind trawling curtains.
Shopkeepers brace for
wet dog splatter and spray
for slopping boots and salty puddles.
On the sightless sea
far beyond the shore and shingle,
lost fog horns are lowing deep
like colicky cattle.
Later, misty reeks will be scoured
from groggy docks.
Hauling hands will rope together
tide-tossed tubs,
then tired feet trudge to taprooms
where the brackish parts
of codgers and young alike
can be oiled and quenched.
Two old codgers were talking about sex
And ones question popped up next
This Viagra have you tried
For me I can't decide
Mm, that's a hard one,what a subject
.
Hungry for munchies, on his way to the lunchroom,
a rambunctious, persnickety,“fuss-budget”, elderly
jittery, fidgety, geezer, named Cassidy…
whose questionable dexterity, aghast by a massive sneeze,
teeter-tottered precariously.
at the edge of the thingamajig, ...jigging one way, jagging the other!
Minding his own beeswax, without any rigmarole,
topsy-turvy on his feet, he reached for the balustrade,
became quite flabbergasted, and very discombobulated
when the doohickey provided for his ambidextrous aid
jiggled free from its screws, and found him footloose!
It seemed the doo-dad, put there by some nitpicking pipsqueak,
some flat-footed, hooligan, who knew diddly-squat, who obviously,
recklessly, constructed a railing, only worthy for failing!
Such foolhardy shenanigans! Was it some practical joke
to lambaste aged codgers, eliminate lodgers, and boondoggle the old folks?
Cass, was an old rabble-rouser, considered a blabbermouth,
was thrown off his epicenter, while his cane went a'sailing, appendages flailing
Onlookers, were outraged, ....in stage of amazement
but laughs grew contagious, and cock-eyed hilarious!
Those carpetbagger carbuncles of society….can’t stop this old fogy
Cass, brushed off his hinny, would not be blind-sighted..
Barbaric bedevilment, won’t halt his felicity!
Some even predicted, with his acid tongue lashings, and his eccentric behavior,
he would stir up entanglement, kibosh the haranguers
and strangle the caboodles, who hooted and hollered!
His face turned beet red, but no meltdown,......instead
He held his chin high
to the dining room, ahead....he ordered French bread
Ordered some bouillabaisse, toasted with balderdash and a shot of rye
He dined with the multitudes, ordered some strudel, and one snicker-doodle
Then he told folks a riddle, "There was a man with a cane, who slipped on a noodle, a handrail came loose, he injured his caboose….and cooked his goose!"
.....................................................
The Waiting Room
The April weather shifted high to low,
Exposing those early clout casters
To the concluding bite of winter;
Footsteps full of foreboding
Trudge their last legs up the inclined driveway
To the Doctor’s old house.
A hotchpotch of chairs and wooden benches
Cling to the borders of the waiting room
A ballroom of romance for the sick.
In varying degrees of ill-health
A gamut of the townspeople
Chorus a cacophony of coughs
Sniffling and wheezing feverishly,
While the readers’ digest stale stories
From the well-thumbed publications.
Eyes darting around the room
Surveying the afflicted to kill the time
Conjecture at the probable cause and severity;
Childlike comparisons to ones’ own condition.
A new mother fails to stifle a yawn
Spreading contagion to the assembled
Her flushed snoozing baby
Unaware of her blaming chatter.
Life-weary pensioner invited to the inner sanctum
Chilled to the bone, sciatica stricken,
Accepts the decree of the medic
Without question or comment.
His framed degree, long faded,
Enough to stifle her to silence
His stethoscope, as a Priests garb
To her, underpinning his status.
Two codgers still await their summons
More regularly neighbours at the bar
Boisterously chatting across the room
For the oblivious benefit of the throng;
Socialising symptoms best supressed
Public bravado before their private hearing,
Selective honesty, the order of the day.
Quiet couple with obviously hidden issue
Whisper conspiratorially in the half lit room
Embracing the background murmur
And the dimness, aid to their privacy.
Vice-Captain of the junior team,
Fit, and embarrassed at his minor disorder
Conjures up exaggerated “near death” vocabulary
For future reportage to the team
His shame cajoled into the ether
By his twisting of the physicians’ imagined words.
And all the while the waiting room remains
Constant, a silent witness to all ills.
Some of us get it, some of us don't.
Many of us start the work some of us won't.
Different rooms with unfamiliar faces
Similar stories from a myriad of places.
"Keep it simple, take it easy". That's what I hear.
Truly a blessing not to cower in fear.
Trying to be silent, absorb what is said
To leave the group hopeful, not filled with dread.
Thoughts of my brother now four years dead.
Still feeling pain over angry words said.
Knowing with his God he is at peace.
Asking of my God for some sense of release.
Struggled along the way to six months earned.
Know how to stir up hornets nests, that I've learned.
Hearing the wisdom of all the aged codgers,
Grumpy old men thinking they're Mr. Rogers.
Making amends to those I had harmed,
Most understood, while others not charmed.
My path is clear, of that I'm certain.
Others decide to raise their own curtain.
Failure of others is painful to see.
Not watching my ass, that could be me.
The beast is a menace, indifferent to all.
Some of us rise, too many of us fall.
I-95
“Ya got the horse race
Ya got the dog race
Ya got the human race —
But this is a ratrace”
~ Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Ratrace” from the album Rastaman Vibration (1976)
Across Boynton Beach ran a popular road known as Gateway Boulevard.
Commuting to work on it each weekday morning the traffic moved like lard
Cruising past Motorola, eastbound vehicles mostly went single-file
In the right lane starting at Congress Avenue, dragging through all the half-mile
Along Quantum Boulevard and High Ridge Road, where long stoplights delayed the dull drive
Until the right turn to the onramp that dropped to the highway called I-95.
We’re getting on I-95, in line, we’re getting on I-95
The road never ends but as long as we’re friends we’re all getting on I-95.
Florida drivers were cool and unhurried; some surely could be terribly slow.
Old codgers wearing old hats had no clue they impeded the old traffic flow.
I’d blow past all of them, taking the left lane; I most every day made the pole
Up at the High Ridge Road light. Once it turned, I’d just kick it in and quickly roll
Forward, ahead of the slouch to my right, so that at the onramp I’d arrive
Long past the long line of travelers waiting to turn onto I-95.
We’re getting on I-95, my friends, we’re getting on I-95
It makes us feel proud to be part of the crowd all for getting on I-95.
In the South Bay there’s no waste of a chance to exploit the available lanes.
Drivers move quickly to block one another from realizing possible gains
That may have been realized, had lane-changing tactics let somebody else take the lead,
Yet for all that I have nothing to say of this crowd in its ruthless stampede
Than that it’s just like that past Florida crowd in the sense that it’s no more alive
In any real way, whether faster or meaner, than those back on I-95.
You’re getting on I-95, old crew, you’re getting on I-95
All throughout life, in each gladness and strife, you’re just getting on I-95.
~ Thanks Always Returns
I recognize your vivacious gaze
A saffron blaze as speckled as the sun
And how you framed your lips
I despise having to say goodbye
Thus, our ethereal realm is descrying.
caused by the sham of wholeness
A nebula sparked a throb in my heart
Innocence is lost at an early age
until the moon swallows it all, I wage.
I was jolted awake when we spoke
Until her love-worn heart broke
At first light, a human spirit awoke.
Now I will tell the terrible truth
Nor exert effort, as this is really smooth
Our hapless path had been specified
It was the source of a haphazard journey.
I frequently sit and ponder
Yet I love to rhyme, – particularly to wander
On what oceans do you set sail?
However, the sun never dries the dew
on a dreary shore where no air blew
Breeze sighed amber codgers too
Whatever was lost is now null and void.
Written: February 08, 2023
Brian Strand Contest No 1183 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand
The fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers
Once rivaled those of Roy Rogers
But when Trump came on
Those standards were gone
Trigger got stuffed with old codgers
When I was young, eight years at most,
I pedalled to Miss Weatherby's house...
down the street,
past salty old codgers
cheating at checkers,
past Dad's bakery,
around the bend to duck ponds with
silly-faced Buddha frogs
showing toothless grins,
past the poor shack-lodgers,
speeding by the boogie man's
house on the hill,
down a plank of brown road
to the stand displaying Ann's handbags,
across from the palette where
buttercups wag in topaz fields
swallowing golden pepper rays,
to the cow path ending at
Miss Weatherby's picket fence.
She stands with apple cheeks and
a gray bonnet, plucking roses
from vines, placing them in
plaid apron pockets, and tossing
toasted crumbs to red hens.
She gives me tan eggs and I
pay her with blueberry muffins and
conversation...then back up the road again.
Machines With Madmen Groaning
Machines with madmen groaning above me at 10 thousand feet,
Grumbling and growling like maniac sky monsters slurping on bloody prey,
Those steel dragons of yore spewing fire and corpses into the excesses,
Like Rodan and Godzilla maiming each other in the frozen spasming countrysides,
Giant crazed beasts reciprocating the deafening overtures of contrived violences,
Contrived annihilations, a few math equations, and we have the Beast rising from the sea.
Here, pour me a glass of your backwashed spittle as it internalizes with basically nothing.
It’s time to find the time to describe a time when clocks will rage on like crazed moon dancers,
When the girls on the boulevard were cool and accessible in their cruising flirtations.
When tanned nomads inside their cool cars found gliding nirvanas, and a bra strap,
Amidst the midnight milkshakes and the incredible nude conversations in the backseats of time.
Machines with motorized redundancies tap into the central eye where speed finds inertness.
Life can be found below the stage on the Thames, river of history, by the Black Friars on Coffee Street.
Incense-filled rooms lie mysteriously down a long gloomy walkway around the opaque tree line.
Ghosts of codgers and spillmen greet the toothless ladies with bloody knees and rotting finery,.
A young bard shakes the hands of broggers and yeomen with dripping quills and pig’s blood.
Grind on young thespians! Read your antique lines, not forgetting your monologues dedicated to fear.
Grant that the music of the spheres above captures the relative major, with silent egresses to be heard.
Young geeks, txt with lightning speed,
Old dudes, lol, trying hard to find the next key to text,
w/e our asl may be, we are trying to convey,
our feelings, imho, in a cryptic language.
Codgers love the high from aged malt,
Whipper-snappers are already addicted to texting before they know,
You may go to jail for dui,
But you may be dead texting and driving,
Texting has its own dictionary and personalities trait,
Btw idk if still ily? u wre my og,
Nvm ‘m smh, hmu asap,
No cap, tbh Ily.
Kit w/ ur hak, ur pain and sorrow, ur social events,
I will reply you with im chat,
a chat waiting to be responded,
Is like missing ur xoxoxo.