Cut and saw
Align and draw
Rennovate, rotate or rewind
Poetry of the mind
Empower or embed without a "but"
Nibble your ideas or strutt
Trot or tighten with a nut
Revert with pliers or grip
Yawn with tape measure or dip
Open your space with a wrench
Fold and brace, not drench
Planes or phillips you drive
Or punches and standard you hold until five
Extract your work with sandlers
Tools you grind and play with, like toddlers
Remove the nails and gauge with a bevel
Yell and revel with awl and spirit level!
Those Tommies send their planes in large amounts
They drop their bombs but all they do is bounce
Like rubber balls their bouncy bombs all missed
Those British pilots must be really…
*
The steward asked the ‘Lady’ won’t you please enjoy our boat
The RMS Titanic is the safest ship afloat
The lady huffed and said a little service would be nice
I’ve got my gin and tonic… could you organise some ice?
*
Vesuvius is puffing out some wispy smoke today
They say there could be fireworks to brighten up Pompeii
How many more times will they say that mountain’s gonna go
And won’t somebody tell me what’s a pyroclastic…
…
Oh!
*
I learned my skills in marketing back in seventy three
For twelfth century Pisa was a training ground for me
I proved my salesmanship to market trader, Uncle Neville
I even got a few quid for that dodgy spirit level
COURT DISASTER
I survey the court with a cock-eyed view
From the top of the basketball pole.
My hoop hangs it head in abject shame,
And the players look up in dismay
The man who erected me got it all wrong,
Without the tools for the job.
Well, how could he possibly get me straight
With no spirit level to hand?
But it’s not just the lack of tools to blame.
For my slightly drunken posture
His problems go much deeper than that.
And so, in order to sort himself out
He needs to cut down on his intake
Of that strong Heferweizen beer.
27th April 2022
Sad Backboards and German Heferweizens poetry contest
Sponsor - Matt Caliri
A digit on the calendar year end shifts
Despair transitioning into doubtful hope
In truth what has changed, if we be adrift
Rooted in mind body as with fears we grope
Twenty twenty gone; we are lucky to be alive
Many a friend has crossed to the other side
We yet feel within joy, we cannot describe
It is the vibrant current of God inside
Aliveness in an unbroken continuum
Moment to moment, moments melded
Bliss ignition, each node our sensorium
As life unfolds, no scenes need be edited
With ego receded, vaporised presence smiles
Immersed in yet immune from the medley
As a mist of bliss free from narrow guile
Heart within sings a loving melody
The song of love touches all hearts
On the surface discord may manifest
At soul spirit level, all are one, none apart
Oh hermit! Know that all are already at the crest
So as years shift, dates change, in linear time
We say ‘thee, thou, thine’; not ‘I, me, mine’
In gentle resonance with divine sublime
Head-heart merged, we softly align
With love
02-January-2021
Your Words fall like rain drops
And there meanings disappear
They just melt away
Like a snow flake on a rainy day
Politicians promises soon fade away
Would I like to buy a chocolate fire guard
Or the autograph of the man in the moon
a bubble for a spirit level
they are snake oil salesmen
Politicians promises soon fade away
like unicorns and gorgons
Politicians promises are myths
they disappear like will o wisp
appear like a genie of the lamp on election day
Politicians promises soon fade away
My blood calculated
The width and diversity of my body
My hopeless spirit level
My anchor placing sunken paws
Into the grips of the dirty earth.
I have grown like good stock
And unhinged myself of
My restraints and set foot
Before foot and conquored a gait.
My body all the while
A little box
Full of grey bric-a-brac.
I have manipulated my mouth
To mutter animal sounds
And pieces of precious code
That the others can understand.
These pictures fluctuate and flutter
Painted inside my head
A screen of endless manufacture
And invisible machines which
Surely stand higher than a god.
My blood calculated
And my evolution continues
Locked and stifled
On the sacred ancient ground
Where we bury our dead
And build our cityscapes.
Some things in life are a mystery
That can’t be fully explained
Ghosts and Ghouls are just two of them
Because ‘everything’ has to be named
Have you ever tried to reason!
Why it’s only scary at night?
When the cloak of darkness has descended
And imaginations, easily take flight
It’s the fear of the unknown that haunts us
In life: what’s real, is key
Believing in ghostly apparitions
Is frightening to those who don’t see
So, what about our spirit?
Does it leave us when we die?
Is it something that lasts forever?
Maybe this is what’s catching our eye
So the next time your fears are awoken
By shadows and sounds in the night
Remember! It’s not only you being startled
A spirit could be catching a fright!!
Philip Royle copyright ©
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