Best Yorkist Poems
I was born in 1943
in a rural backwater safe from the bombs
also a safety net still akin to the 19th century.
Neither electricity nor gas
only an old oil lamp and candles for comfort.
The luxury of the tin bath once a week
brought in from the scullery, placed in front
of the cast iron Yorkist fire range
with hob and side boiler, to source the hot water
poured into the bath at regular intervals
to help keep out the cold.
Old overcoats and hessian sacks placed across
the bottom of the doorways, to aid keeps out the icy drafts,
also aid as foot warmers once upon the beds.
A copper boiler for the weekly wash
a fire beneath to be lit, a combination of paper
sticks of kindling all pre chopped
as were the logs to maintain the heat
of the dark stained grey coloured water,
stirred by the posser, to aid mixture
of the home made soap, and the garments.
Slop bucket (The posh name for it)
to be emptied every morning,
carried down the lane to the tippler convenience
care not to spill on the seat or trouble with the neighbours.
Wet batteries for the wireless
to be carried once a week from the local store,
replacements for the empty ones
a choice of 2 stations
BBC and BBC.
Early nights, early mornings the darkness prevailing
throughout the long winter months,
only for the daylight to never end
in the month of June, impeding one’s sleep
even then we were never satisfied with our lot in life.
Only my father laying in a military hospital
a casualty of war, was missing the value of it all
after all he was fighting for it
his life style, his freedom our freedom
to enable me to write this, ever so simple story!
© Harry J Horsman 2013
This is possibly
a useless piece of information,
but in Yorkshire where I was born
we only have an alphabet
of twenty five letters,
as all true Yorkist will tell you
there is no ‘H’ in our dialect
which is a problem for me, ‘Harry Horsman’
So my middle name is Joe short for Joseph.
‘Told you, a useless piece of information.’
© Harry J Horsman 2012
Brexit Sonnet No.14
‘One Tragic Production’
Witness now this Carillion carry on;
Be it victim of its boundless chiming debt,
Or government multi-tasking gene now gone.
One tragic production awaits, our stage quite set.
A flying crown of fifty years brought low,
A treasured cat now eyeing Ireland’s shores.
Our EMA jobs and funds to Holland flow,
And no seat of comfort in Yorkist sofa stores.
So as director primes the nervous cast,
That padding beast ‘Uncertainty’ stalks the wings.
He knows his lines, for prompts he’s never asked,
But others falleth by his hand, like kings.
So slay this beast upon the Nation’s stage,
And acteth not from Brexit’s tragic page.
©Keith Murphy
Harry Horsman in poesy clad
a white rose bred Yorkshire lad
A PoetrySoup stalwart many a year
always true and sincere
Yorkist poet/playwright William Congreve
got his critics a little peeved
His writing became a bit erotic
within his very fine lyric